Warning: Spoilers forOnce Upon a Time… in Hollywoodare below.
Quentin Tarantino‘sOnce Upon a Time… in Hollywoodis a fairytale only he could have envisioned.
Set in Hollywood,Leonardo DiCaprioandBrad Pittplay Rick Dalton and his stuntman Cliff Booth, respectively, and chronicles the ups and downs of an acting career that is taking a downward spiral for Dalton.
While the film includes fictionalized versions of real people such as Tate, Steve McQueen and Bruce Lee, Tarantino famously takes history into his own hands and gives audiences a twist of his own (just seeInglourious Basterds).
Here’s every deviation the auteur took inOnce Upon a Time… in Hollywood.
Andrew Cooper
1. Sharon Tate’s Fate
Tarantino departs from Tate’s actual fate in his film, giving her the happy ending many wished she could have had.
Instead of breaking into her home and murdering her and her three friends, three members of the Manson Family — including Austin Butler as the real-life Charles “Tex” Watson — targeted the fictional Dalton’s home which, in Tarantino’s movie, is right next door to Tate’s.
Pitt, 55, has one of the most satisfying and gory fight scenes in cinema as he takes on three Manson family members on his own with the help of his character’s adorable bulldog Brandy.
Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate.Andrew Cooper
Even DiCaprio, 44, has a moment when he sets alight the final Manson Family member with a flame thrower he kept in his shed.
While Robbie’s Tate ends the movie greeting Dalton at her home and offering him a drink with her friends (Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger and Voytek Frykowski), the reality is Tate was killed while heavily pregnant with her first child, whom she was expecting with husband Roman Polanski.
2. Was Bruce Lee as Cocky in Real Life as in the Film?
Brash and full of bravado, Lee manages to get in the first punch against Pitt’s Booth, but it’s the stuntman who manages to throw Lee against a car hard enough to dent its passenger door.
Matthew Polly, the author of the biographyBruce Lee: A Life, said Lee’s depiction onscreen exaggerates the actor’s personality too much.
“Bruce Lee was often a cocky, strutting braggart, but Tarantino took those traits and exaggerated them to the point of caricature,” Polly toldUSA Today.
Even Lee’s daughter, Shannon, objected to Tarantino’s depiction of her famous father.
Mike Moh as Bruce Lee.Bona Film Group
“I can understand all the reasoning behind what is portrayed in the movie,” she toldThe Wrap.“I understand that the two characters are antiheroes and this is sort of life a rage fantasy of what would happen and they’re portraying a period of time that clearly had a lot of racism and exclusion.”
She continued, “[Lee] comes across as an arrogant a—hole who was full of hot air. And not someone who had to fight triple as hard as any of those people did to accomplish what was naturally given to so many others.”
What the moviedidget right, however, is Lee’s work as a martial arts trainer for some of the biggest stars of the era such as McQueen, Polanski and even Tate herself for scenes in the 1968 filmThe Wrecking Crew.
3. Sharon Tate’s Friendship with Bruce Lee and Steve McQueen
Tate first met Lee in 1965 when Sebring, who was her boyfriend at the time, helped Lee break into acting. After Tate broke up with Sebring and began dating Polanski, she continued her friendship with Lee and Sebring.
Polly claims Lee was paid $11,000 to give Tate martial arts training forThe Wrecking Crew.There is a scene inOnce Upon a Time… in Hollywoodin which Moh’s Lee is seen giving Robbie’s Tate training.
Cliff Kent/Shutterstock
The actor escaped that fate when he “ran into a chickie and decided to go off with her instead,” according to his ex-wife and actress Neile Adams who spoke to theNational Postin 2017.
“Going off with that girl saved his life,” Adams said. “After that, he became more paranoid and wouldn’t let me go anywhere without a gun.”
McQueen gave the eulogy at Sebring’s funeral, which was held on the same day as Tate’s.
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywoodis now playing in theaters.
source: people.com
