What would the MCU look like if Tarantino's Luke Cage film had actually been made?
If Quentin Tarantino were to hand out a dollar for every “lost” movie he never quite got round to making, he would soon find his wallet pretty light. The director of Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood often resembles a gardener who has been blessed with fertile soil and a plentiful supply of creative seeds. He flings out ideas with cheery zeal, then sits back and waits to see which end up taking root.
It’s long been known that QT had considered a Luke Cage movie back in the 1990s, just after the film-maker had entered the public consciousness with his crime caper debut Reservoir Dogs. This makes sense: Cage was created in 1972, at the height of the blaxploitation era, and Tarantino has a passion for the genre that fed into his decision to plunge Pam Grier back into the limelight for the underrated Jackie Brown. The Marvel hero also teamed up in the comic books with Iron Fist, and we all know about Tarantino’s penchant for kung-fu kicking heroes with a thirst for bloody revenge.
Appearing on Amy Schumer’s podcast, 3 Girls, 1 Keith, Tarantino revealed this week that he considered casting Laurence Fishburne as Cage, otherwise known as Power Man. “There was a time before all this Marvel shit was coming out,” Tarantino said. “It was after Reservoir Dogs, it was before
Pulp Fiction, and I had thought about doing Luke Cage. Growing up I was a big comic-book collector, and my two favourite [comic books] were Luke Cage: Hero for Hire, later Luke Cage: Power Man, and Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu.
“What dissuaded me … was my comic-geek friends talked me out of it,” Tarantino went on. “Because I had an idea that Larry Fishburne would’ve been the perfect guy to play Luke Cage. But all my friends were like, ‘It’s got to be Wesley Snipes.’ And I go, ‘Look, I like
Wesley Snipes, but Larry Fishburne is practically Marlon Brando. I think Fish is the man.’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, but he’d have to get in shape in a big way. Snipes is that way already!’ And I go, ‘Fuck that! That’s not that important! Fuck you, you ruined the whole damn thing!’”
Regular readers of this column will be well aware that it only took a 2015 interview on the Nerdist podcast, in which Tarantino talked up the idea of directing an R-rated Star Trek movie, for him to be offered the chance to do just that. But while that project still seems to be alive, albeit with the Death Proof film-maker currently playing down the prospect of his full involvement, the chances of a Tarantino-directed Luke Cage movie ever happening are probably up there with the prospects of “Sweet Christmas” becoming a popular youth expression. QT purportedly only has one movie left to direct before he enters self-enforced retirement, and Marvel isn’t exactly the ideal employer for directors unwilling to toe the party line, as Edgar Wright once found out to his cost.
Still, the prospect of jumping in a Hollywood time machine to go back and green light Tarantino’s film is a tantalising one. While the Marvel Cinematic Universe would have been a very different beast, QT’s idea of asking an actor of Fishburne’s pedigree to bulk up to play a superhero, rather than employing the established action star Snipes, is exactly the kind of trick Marvel pulled off when casting Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man. Instead it took Fishburne another two decades to make his first Marvel turn in 2018’s AntMan and the Wasp. Meanwhile, Snipes got the role of vampiric antihero Blade in a trilogy of pre-MCU Marvel films, with mixed results.
Luke Cage did end up making it to the screen, via Marvel’s now-forgotten deal with Netflix to produce TV shows based on some of its lesserknown, New York-based superheroes. And perhaps herein lies the way for Tarantino, perennial culture vulture, to pursue his comic-book dream. After all, he has already hinted at loopholes to his 10-movie retirement plan. Surely a TV show wouldn’t count towards that total, and with the Netflix deal (and the Luke Cage show itself) now dead in the water, perhaps there’s room for an Rrated Tarantino-led revival? Just don’t mention that it would probably have to screen on Disney+.