Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood was one of the biggest films of 2019, receiving mostly positive reviews but also a good amount of controversy. Still, the film has been receiving a lot of nominations during awards season, with Brad Pitt winning most of them thanks to his performance as Cliff Booth.
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood follows actor Bruce Lee (Mike Moh). The ending offered a twist on Sharon Tate’s story, with of Charles Manson’s family going after Rick instead of her, but they weren’t counting on Cliff’s agility.
When Tex, Sadie, and Katie break into Rick’s house, they come face to face with Cliff and his dog, Brandy. Cliff recognizes them from his visit to Spahn Ranch, and before they can do anything, Booth orders Brandy to attack, and together they kill Katie and Tex and injure Sadie. Although Cliff was a war veteran skilled in hand-to-hand combat and everything else learned during his years as stuntman, the events can feel a bit surreal – and it might be because of the acid cigarette Cliff smoked minutes before.
Theory: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’s Ending Was A Hallucination Of Cliff Booth
The theory, shared by Bounty Law, Cliff not noticing the car on his way back to the house, and his somewhat super-human strength and agility when fighting against the killers this theory. Though it’s an interesting perspective of these events, there are some things that don’t really match.
Why Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’s Ending Can’t Be An Acid Trip
As mentioned above, Cliff was a very skilled in hand-to-hand combat and more, so his “super-human” strength is not out of the ordinary. The theory also mentions that it makes no sense that Rick takes out the flame-thrower he used in The 14 Fists of McClusky, as the studio wouldn’t have let him have it, but in reality, stranger things happen in film sets and actors more often than not take some of the objects (including weapons) home with or without permission – and keeping the flame-thrower is definitely something Rick Dalton would do. The biggest question this theory leaves is whether the killers really went after Rick Dalton or if they carried on with their original plan, and Cliff hallucinated them going after his friend. It’s very unlikely that Tarantino left something this open to interpretation, but it’s an interesting way of seeing the ending of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
