Quentin Tarantino isn’t interested in making a Marvel movie, but if the terms of the deal fit with his demands and vision, he knows well which characters and story he would cover, and through it, he would be fixing the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s most wasted team. Quentin Tarantino has famously stated he will retire after making 10 movies, and by his own counting, he has one spot left before retiring. There’s a lot of speculation on what Tarantino’s 10th and final movie could be about, but what’s for sure is that it won’t be a comic book movie, especially from the MCU.
Tarantino has never made a superhero movie from any universe and has been very honest about what he thinks about Marvel movies and their directors. Tarantino has said Marvel directors are mere “hired hands”, but if a deal allowed him to be way more than that, he knows which comic book movie he would like to bring to life: Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos. It’s a fitting storyline for a director like Quentin Tarantino, and while it can’t happen as he would like, he would be fixing the MCU’s most wasted team, as this universe quickly forgot about the Howling Commandos after Phase 1.
Why A Tarantino Howling Commandos Movie Would Be So Good
The Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos comic book series was created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee and published from 1963 to 1981. In the MCU, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) is a spy, the former director of S.H.I.E.L.D., and the founder of the original Avengers team. The last time the audience saw Fury, he was vacationing in space, but he will return soon in the TV series Secret Invasion, as the Skrulls have infiltrated all aspects of life on Earth. The Howling Commandos were a fictional World War II unit introduced to the MCU in Captain America: The First Avenger, and the team included Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) before he was re-captured by HYDRA.
Now, Tarantino is no stranger to war movies as he has already made one, though in his very peculiar style: Inglourious Basterds. The movie follows two plots – one by the title Basterds and one by Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) – with the common goal of killing as many Nazis as possible, including Hitler. The Basterds are a commando unit led by Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) and formed by Jewish-American soldiers (and a German soldier turned defector), ready to get rid of Nazis. The story of the Howling Commandos is similar in the sense of being a team that looked to eliminate every HYDRA base they could find, so it’s a tone, style, and story that Tarantino is already very familiar with.
In addition to finally doing justice to the Howling Commandos, Tarantino would make the most graphic and adult movie in the MCU, which is why it would surely be great. Tarantino’s Howling Commandos would have to be an R-rated movie as he surely wouldn’t hold back when showing everything the team can do, and it would be very interesting to see these characters interacting in Tarantino’s signature narrative style, more so as dialogues are not always the MCU’s strength.
Tarantino's Marvel Movie Wish Is Impossible (But Could Howling Commandos Happen?)
Unfortunately, Tarantino’s MCU movie is pretty much impossible for different reasons. First and foremost, Nick Fury has no ties to the Howling Commandos in the MCU, and the only remaining character with a link to them is Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier, but he’s already on a very different path as he’s about to join the Thunderbolts. Even if the movie was to happen, Marvel would have to make changes to canon and recast Fury, which is a very risky move. Another important thing is that, even though the MCU has recently been leaning towards darker storylines, Tarantino’s style is a bit too much for this universe, and it would inevitably be controversial. The only way a Howling Commandos project could happen is as a TV show, but definitely not with Quentin Tarantino in charge.