If you’ve been reading this site over the years, from at least before the pandemic, you might remember our reaction to Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood when it came out.

Sarah’s review is here and it’s only gotten better over time. This paragraph in particular:

“[Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood] is loaded with interesting asides and amusements—I would happily watch any one of the fake Western shows Tarantino creates—but it also has a number of unraveled threads. Cliff has a history of violence, particularly against women, which is unexplored and actually discomfiting in context of the ending. There is a slight nod at the way men protect one another in this industry, and how that allows dangerous men to thrive, but it never fully connects to any of the larger themes in the film.”

I didn’t respond to the film not because of my gossip issues with Brad Pitt but because it glorifies something from a time that doesn’t lack reverence. There is no shortage of film bros on whatever platform every day jerking off about the cinematic 70s. But what I really hated about Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was the depiction of Bruce Lee.

The Bruce Lee that shows up in QT’s film is an asshole and I’m not the only one who objects to the portrayal. Bruce’s daughter, Shannon Lee, wrote a whole essay about how she felt about the Bruce Lee character in the film.

“I’m tired of hearing from white men in Hollywood that he was arrogant and an asshole when they have no idea and cannot fathom what it might have taken to get work in 1960s and ’70s Hollywood as a Chinese man with (God forbid) an accent, or to try to express an opinion on a set as a perceived foreigner and person of color. I’m tired of white men in Hollywood mistaking his confidence, passion and skill for hubris and therefore finding it necessary to marginalize him and his contributions. I’m tired of white men in Hollywood finding it too challenging to believe that Bruce Lee might have really been good at what he did and maybe even knew how to do it better than them.”

QT claims he was basing his version of Bruce Lee in the film on a book about Bruce written by Matthew Polly in which he says Bruce was a dickhead to stunt performers on Hollywood films. The author, Matthew Polly, has refuted this claim.

QT’s Bruce Lee then is simply that – Quentin Tarantino’s imagination and interpretation of one of the most iconic Chinese artists of all time and some of us find that interpretation offensive, misinformed, and prejudiced. But unfortunately for us, QT isn’t done. He’s made another film in the Once Upon a Time universe, one that centers Brad Pitt’s character, Cliff Booth, and a new trailer just dropped today. From the opening line in the trailer, it’s obvious that QT is doubling down on his Bruce Lee hate.

We are being reintroduced to Cliff Booth aka Brad Pitt with a Bruce Lee anecdote – like, this is the badass, cool AF white man who kicked the sh-t out of THE Bruce Lee… as IF. And I get it, I get that narratively QT and director David Fincher need to amplify the lore of the Cliff Booth character who previously in Once Upon a Time was already held up as, I dunno, some kind of icon to the “masculinity” of the 70s, in itself deeply problematic as Sarah noted in her review, but nobody here seems interested in really interrogating that model of man. Instead, the reputation of an actual Eastern icon who disrupted American cinema by redefining and reclaiming Asian masculinity from western stereotypes is being undermined by a recurring punchline. And what makes it even more gross on another level is that Brad Pitt has – or had, before they too rejected his name – two sons who are of East Asian descent. Are you seriously telling me they couldn’t have told this fiction without leaving Bruce Lee out of it?

Here is Brad at the San Sebastian International Film Festival on the weekend.

Brad Pitt arriving to the 74 San Sebastian Film Festival 2026 in San Sebastian, Spain

Photo credits: GJN/GTRES/Jean-Louis Hupe/SIPA/Shutterstock, Clemens Niehaus/Future Image/Cover Images/Instar Images

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