Cliff Booth’s Sequel Makes Tarantino’s Darkest Mystery Impossible To Ignore

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Come November, we'll have so much to be thankful for. That's right. We've got three incredible NFL games on Thanksgiving Day. By the time we get there, that relative you don't like that always shows up for Thanksgiving could be dead. And we're getting the sequel to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: The Adventures of Cliff Booth in theaters.

[00:00:17]But what happens when Cliff is taken from being a fun side character, the old reliable best bro who will just as easily do your falls, drive your cars, and make you look good on screen in a fight as defend your house and home from a murderous cult of hippies to being the main character whose POV we live in for a whole movie. Cliff Booth worked precisely because he was a side character. When you take away a Leo, are you left with a uh cancer? A guy who's actually kind of a terrifying sob. And in that way, he's all of our unwelcome uncles on Thanksgiving. Seriously, who is this guy?

[00:00:47]>> Let's get into it. So, what do we got here? We got Brad Pitt returning as Cliff Booth looking kind of like fellow generational hottie and old mustachioed Bob Redford in a sequel that may accidentally force audiences to sit with this uh interesting thing that Tarantino intentionally left unresolved. Did Cliff get an Alpine divorce from his wife? An alpine divorce is where you murder your spouse on vacation or similarly a trek into nature. I say that for clarity, not to give anyone ideas. Don't murder your spouse. Bad for the marriage. This Thanksgiving, movie, audiences will be treated to a Tarantino penned script and David Fincher helm sequel to the wildly successful Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with Brad Pitt reprising the role. And it's already being floated that even though this is a Netflix project, it will also be released in IMAX. In this video, we'll get into why David Fincher reuniting with Brad Pitt again and directing this character might give us some pretty telling insight about the movie's real tone. And you'll see how Cliff Booth becoming the main character fundamentally changes the moral arc of the entire story and why the sequel may be less about what Cliff's up to now and more about what made him the absolute killing machine in a sexy sheep's clothing. Sorry, I'm Irish. I should not be saying things like sexy sheep. Moving on. In 2019's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Tarantino leaves the character of Cliff more or less mysterious, which provided him a ton of intrigue and probably went a long way toward Brad Pitt's Oscar win. Obviously, not saying Brad Pitt isn't a great actor. Just saying it really helped that audiences were able to kind of project a lot onto the character and perhaps in a lesser actor's hands, or at least a less charismatic actor's hands, we don't get that incredible result. In the book the film is based on, Cliff is much more developed, and honestly, he's kind of a piece of [ __ ] But what Tarantino did was make the character mysterious and in so doing dynamic. He's a violent man.

[00:02:28]He's a war hero, but he's also maybe probably pretty sure a white killer, but hey, he's a great friend. Classic, you'd rather have this guy on your teen guy.

[00:02:36]The movie constantly places the viewer in an uncomfortable emotional position.

[00:02:39]Everyone likes Cliff. He's a cool guy.

[00:02:41]He can fix your antenna. He's kind of funny. He's chill. And he can wear the [ __ ] out of some jeans the way only Brad Pitt can. But then there's also this grizzly truth underneath everything.

[00:02:50]stuff like maybe this man murdered his wife and got away with it. When we see that boat flashback, it challenges the audience to divorce itself from the cool image we've had of this guy and take on one that's potentially much more sinister. And in doing that, Tarantino weaponizes that uncertainty. We get no answer, just discomfort. And because the movie never confirms anything, the audience gets to fill in the blanks for themselves. Now, we get to this installment where we'll dig a little deeper into who this guy is. And is Cliff Booth even his real name? Is this cliff booth or is this a cliff booth?

[00:03:24]And once upon a time when we the audience think there's a good chance old Cliff off his gal, it's fine. He's not our main guy. We're just casually observing him. He's Rick Dalton's buddy.

[00:03:33]Who cares what he did? Kind of. But when he becomes the guy and we're now locked in his perspective, all of a sudden that makes the wife mystery uh a little more of a big deal. We're supposed to root for protagonists. I know anti-heroes are nothing new, but we're not used to this guy being the protagonist. So, how does our view on him change when the only thing about him that's changed is his exposure? The more time that we spend with this guy, the more we're going to have to ask ourselves some uh uncomfortable questions. What kind of man survives Hollywood like this? What is Cliff's body count? And unrelated, uh, what is Cliff's body count? Just how much sadistic violence exists underneath that laid-back charm, Ted Bundy ass mother. Now, enter the fixer angle. This added layer creates not only another layer of intrigue, but also a device with which to teach us more about who this guy really is. Because a fixer isn't just a guy who solves problems.

[00:04:22]Shout out Ray Dunovan. A fixer is a somebody trusted to make ugly things disappear. Hollywood fixers are an even more nefarious version of this. You can learn more about Hollywood fixers from when this very channel covered it. Head over there and uh give the other Screen Rant mic a like. So suddenly Cliff Booth's unresolved past stops feeling like a quirky past and starts being more like a resume tidbit. a credential.

[00:04:44]Thank god this takes place before the time of LinkedIn. I've killed dozens, maybe even hundreds of people. Some deserved it, some didn't. Anyway, here's what that taught me about B2B sales.

[00:04:54]Let's talk about the directing shift from the original to the sequel. We get David Fincher aka the Finch Man. Please comment if you have the earthliest idea what that reference is so that we can be losers together. Anyway, if Cliff Booth is operating inside Hollywood as a fixer, that means that unlike the audience, Hollywood knows exactly who Cliff was and is. And because of that cred, he has proven utility. And that is a classic Finchure concept. In fact, in a way, taking on this project is a near-perfect hybrid of his last two projects. M, an old Hollywood story about an alcoholic screenwriter, and The Killer, a methodically paced film about a hitman. Now, we get a combo of the toxicity of Hollywood, especially a bygone era of Hollywood, and flawed men whose greatest marketable skill is brutality. And a look at the systems that protect morally compromised people because of that very utility. Not only does it immediately evoke other Finchure movies like Zodiac, Gone Girl, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Stories where control matters much more than that pesky virtue truth, but we also get another installment of the Pit Venture collaborative partnership. Seven, Fight Club, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. If only little Benny Button kicked the [ __ ] out of every person that looked at him like a carnival sideshow freak, we'd have a real pattern on our hands here. Overall, Fincher loves to play with charming characters hiding some darkness, instability, emptiness, and yes, violence just beneath the surface. And that right there is Cliff Booth in a nutshell. Tarantino presented Cliff like a mythological cowboy, a legend in a Hollywood tall tale, drifting through the end of old Hollywood. Fincher is a dude who digs into the psychology. So instead of a guy just passing through, we're going to get to know the guy, and this is a guy who hasn't lived a clean life. And instead of just seeing glimpses of this cool badass, we might instead get to sit in the carnage he leaves in his wake and then be forced to ask of our guy, "Are you cool, man?"

[00:06:42]>> So, I've been sort of a broken record about Cliff killing his wife. Did he?

[00:06:45]Didn't he? Tarantino leaves it up to the audience. What does that mystery mean?

[00:06:48]And blah blah blah blah blah. Yes, I annoy myself, too. But does this sequel definitively answer that question? I mean, we'll have to see, but I actually don't think it should. Uncertainty is the entire engine of this character. If the film continues to build out around this man, the audience can perhaps fill in more blanks and maybe feel even more confident about whatever their preconception was going in, but still not get proof because proof might undo everything compelling about the character. If we, the audience, can't project onto him and what you see becomes what you get instead of what we imagine. Well, that blows, some people are going to think he's innocent, some guilty, while still some others might be like, I mean, he definitely did it, but like is that a big deal? The sequel shouldn't undo the mystique. Hopefully, it doubles down on it. Fincher goes more Zodiac on Old Cliff than Seven. Fincher understands that mystery is often scarier than Revelation. Once you explain every damn thing, well, then the fun's kind of over. But uncertainty, uncertainty, do do you have to let it lingers? That's why Fincher's stories stay with you like childhood trauma. And like childhood trauma, he's not giving you closure. You got to go get that yourself. Phew. That took a dark turn. No.

[00:08:00]So, yeah, The Adventures of Cliff Booth probably shouldn't give us an outright answer about whether Cliff killed his wife, cuz that's not the point. The point is that once we make Cliff our hero, we can't just comfortably ignore the possibility. And that's the good stuff, humanity and all that. For better or worse, that's what makes this sequel fascinating. Tarantino created the mystery, but David Fincher may be the perfect filmmaker to explore what it feels like living in the shadow of it.

[00:08:24]Narrative tension, you know, etc. the kind that just hangs out like a guy you don't know over staying at your party.

[00:08:30]Just looming beneath every conversation, every new act of violence, every coolest as [ __ ] Brad Pit move. Maybe the scariest thing about Cliff Boo was never whether he killed his wife, but how easy it was for us to be like, "Yeah, but he's so cool though. Dude looks like freaking Brad Pitt." So, let us know what you think. You going to outlast the tryptophan and peel yourself off the couch and get out to see this in theaters Thanksgiving Day? Do you think Cliff got that Alpine divorce or is it just a rumor that adds to the legend?

[00:08:56]What do you think Fincher is going to do with this source material? And uh how's he gonna finch it up? Let us know below in the comments. And if you're new here, this is a pretty good example of what we do all the time. So, if you enjoyed it, uh you know, give us a sub and bell combo to enable us to give you more of this good good. All right, I'm Mike Trudel and I'm sorry that I said good.

[00:09:15]See you next time.