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Once Upon a Time in Hollywood might have a connection with one of Quentin Tarantino’s previous works: Django Unchained. Tarantino’s movie universe keeps expanding, and the latest addition is the comedy-drama Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a retelling of some of the events from the 1960s that marked Hollywood. The film follows actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his friend and stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) as they struggle to stay active and relevant during the last years of Hollywood’s golden age. Dalton’s story is intertwined with that of Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), the rising star of the decade.
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All of Tarantino’s movies (including some that were written and/or produced by him but not directed) are part of the same universe, which is divided in two levels. The first one is referred to as the “real than realer universe”, which are all those movies set in the “real world”, such as Inglourious Basterds and Pulp Fiction; the second one is the “movie universe”, which houses all those movies the characters from the “real world” watch, such as Kill Bill and From Dusk Till Dawn. As Once Upon a Time in Hollywood follows the style of Inglourious Basterds by offering alternate versions of history, it belongs to the first level.
As such, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood could have taken inspiration from those movies from the same level that came before it (within this universe, of course. Not by release date), and it might have done so through the fictional TV show Bounty Law, which has some similarities to Django Unchained.
Theory: Bounty Law Was Based On Django Unchained
In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, viewers were quickly introduced to Rick Dalton and his work in the Western TV series Bounty Law, where he played Jake Cahill. Tarantino took inspiration from real life shows like Wanted Dead or Alive and Gunsmoke, but one of his previous movies might have played a part in the creation of Bounty Law as well. The set is that of the town in Django Unchained where Dr. Schultz (Christoph Waltz) invites Django (Jamie Foxx) to work with him, but when paying closer attention to the show, there are more similarities between the two.
Dr. Schultz was a German dentist-turned-bounty hunter who hated slavery and how slaves were treated and even killed, which is why he freed Django and other slaves as well, and helped him find his wife. Together, Schultz and Django killed many criminals and collected many bounties before moving forward with their plan to free Django’s wife, Broomhilda. Bounty Law, as the title says, centers on a bounty hunter, and the detail of the set being the same from Django Unchained could point at the series taking inspiration from the stories told about Django and Schultz’s career as bounty hunters.
Given that both movies are part of the “real than realer world”, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that they have an actual in-universe connection. Some of Tarantino’s movies are connected by characters (like the Vega brothers, for example), but the link between Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Django Unchained might be a different (and more fun) one – besides both having Leonardo DiCaprio, of course.
