The opening and closing scenes of any movie are arguably the two most important. The beginning of the movie has to grab the audience’s attention and the ending has to tie up all the loose ends and conclude both the narrative and the overall themes in a satisfying way.
From the opening montage immersing the audience in ‘60s L.A. set to “Treat Her Right” in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to the intense standoff finale in Reservoir Dogs, all of Quentin Tarantino’s movies have memorable first and last scenes. But which are the best of the best?
10 Opening Scene: Reservoir Dogs
The opening scene of Reservoir Dogs instantly established Tarantino’s unique dialogue style. Before the off-screen jewelry store heist, the color-coded gangsters eat breakfast in a diner and discuss everything from Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” to the etiquette of tipping.
While it’s now considered one of the movie’s most iconic moments, Tarantino originally only included the scene to give Edward Bunker’s Mr. Blue some lines. Ironically, Bunker — a real-life career criminal — didn’t like the scene, because he didn’t think it was realistic that distinctively dressed criminals would eat breakfast surrounded by witnesses right before a job.
9 Ending: Inglourious Basterds
Tarantino boldly declares Inglourious Basterds to be his masterpiece in its final moments. Hans Landa falsely emerges as the hero of World War II after taking a major left turn from historical accuracy, and Aldo Raine can’t allow him to get away with his war crimes.
So, he carves a swastika into his head. When this technique was introduced in an earlier scene, the carving happened off-screen and we only saw the scar later on. In the final scene, we see the knife going into Landa’s forehead. Despite all the atrocities he committed throughout the movie, it’s pretty gruesome to watch.
8 Opening Scene: Django Unchained
An exhausted Django is traipsing through the desert on a chain gang in the opening scene of Django Unchained. The white slavers take the slaves through the woods into the freezing night when they’re interrupted by a dentist-turned-bounty hunter named Dr. King Schultz.
Schultz wants to buy Django for his knowledge of his latest bounties, the Brittle brothers, but the slavers refuse to sell him, so Schultz kills one of them and injures the other, leaving the rest of the chain gang to deal with him.
7 Ending: Death Proof
Tarantino’s dynamite premise for Death Proof — a stuntman preys on young women with his “death-proof” car — is the perfect intersection between a carsploitation actioner and a slasher. But in Death Proof, there isn’t just one final girl; there are three.
Following the breathtaking climactic car chase, Zoë, Abernathy, and Kim drag Stuntman Mike out of the wreckage of his death-proof 1969 Dodge Charger and beat him to death.
6 Opening Scene: Kill Bill: Volume 1
Years before Tarantino would turn his concept for Kill Bill into a two-movie reality, all he had was the opening shot: a closeup of the Bride’s face, beaten and bloodied, looking up at her would-be killers, plotting her revenge.
This shot was realized beautifully in black-and-white in Kill Bill: Volume 1. An off-screen Bill shoots the Bride in the head and Nancy Sinatra’s “(Bang Bang) My Baby Shot Me Down” plays over the opening credits.
5 Ending: Jackie Brown
Pam Grier’s title character in Jackie Brown, arguably Tarantino’s most underrated movie, is a flight attendant working with both a gun runner and the cops trying to bring him down. Both parties underestimate Jackie and she ends up using that to make off with the loot at the end of the movie.
Before Jackie drives off into an uncertain future, she invites Max Cherry to come along with her but he turns down the offer, so they say a heartfelt farewell.
4 Opening Scene: Pulp Fiction
Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer play Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, a pair of Bonnie and Clyde-esque criminal lovers, in the opening scene of Pulp Fiction. They sit in a diner, talking about different places to stick up, and eventually decide to rob the restaurant they’re currently eating in.
The opening scene is seemingly unrelated to the rest of the movie until the final scene reveals that Jules and Vincent were in the diner the whole time.
3 Ending: Django Unchained
The glorious ending of Django Unchained sees Django returning to Candyland after being sold back into slavery. He kills his new captors, rides across America, rescues his wife, and makes it back to Calvin Candie’s plantation in time for his funeral.
When Candie’s closest associates return from his memorial service, they find Django waiting in the house with two fully loaded revolvers ready to blow them away. Before he and Broomhilda leave on horseback, they blow up the house.
2 Opening Scene: Inglourious Basterds
The opening scene of Inglourious Basterds introduces Christoph Waltz’s Col. Landa as one of the most unforgettable and sinister movie villains of all time. It could stand on its own as a tense short film. Landa and his men arrive at a dairy farm harboring Jewish refugees under the floorboards.
Landa smokes a Sherlock Holmes pipe and drinks some of the cows’ milk as he interrogates the farmer. The scene uses Hitchcock’s bomb-under-the-table technique to build tension.
1 Ending: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
After Tarantino killed off Adolf Hitler in Inglourious Basterds, no one expected his account of the night of August 8, 1969, to be historically accurate. On their way to murder Sharon Tate and her friends, the Manson Family killers decide to go next door and murder Rick Dalton instead.
However, they’re met with Rick’s tripping stunt double Cliff Booth and his ass-kicking pit bull Brandy, who dispatch most of them with brute force before Rick gets the last one with the flamethrower from The 14 Fists of McCluskey. When all the commotion is over, Rick is invited up to Sharon’s house.
source https://screenrant.com/best-beginning-closing-scenes-quentin-tarantino-movies/
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