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Quentin Tarantino Said This Western Was Perfect, Then Immediately Took It Back

Published

2 weeks ago

23 November 2025

Quentin Tarantino Said This Western Was Perfect, Then Immediately Took It Back

When it comes to Westerns, there are a few that some could consider perfect. Admittedly, taste is certainly a factor here as it can sometimes differ between viewers. But when it comes to the Western that Quentin Tarantino once coined as “perfect” (before immediately backtracking), it’s probably not the horse opera that you’re thinking of. It’s not Django, it’s not Rio Bravo, and it’s not even the Dollars Trilogy. For this filmmaker, it’s The Wild Bunch that stands above them all.

Quentin Tarantino Briefly Deemed ‘The Wild Bunch’ a “Perfect” Film

Over the years, Tarantino has sung the praises of many Westerns. It’s no secret that the genre has strongly influenced his filmography, and that’s not even including takes on the Western. The director has famously hailed Rio Bravo as his favorite John Wayne flick, expressed his love for Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood‘s Dollars films as a flawless trilogy, and has even defended the 2013 The Lone Ranger film while recommending several others. To say that Tarantino loves his Westerns would be an understatement. But while on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in 2022, Tarantino waxed poetic about films that he would consider perfect movies, including Young Frankenstein, Jaws, The Exorcist, and even The Wild Bunch…

“I could say that The Wild Bunch fits into that,” the director explained before quickly backtracking. “And that’s even not a perfect movie.” Although he started off confident enough in The Wild Bunch‘s place in the canon of Hollywood perfection, he wanted to make clear that it’s not actually as perfect as the flicks he noted previously. However, that doesn’t at all detract from his love of the film, nor its impact on the genre. “Its imperfections are part of its glory,” he further explained. The 1969 revisionist epic hit theaters the same year as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and True Grit, following an aging outlaw gang that recognizes their time has past. It’s a bloody, violent, and impressive picture that, when you think about Tarantino’s filmography, just makes sense. It’s no wonder, then, that it’s another film that has directly influenced his own work.

When writing about the making of Django Unchained for Daily Mail, the director connected the modern Western back to The Wild Bunch. “I used slow motion more in this film than I ever have before, but I didn’t want to imitate Sam Peckinpah too closely,” he explained. “The final shootout sequence of The Wild Bunch is a masterpiece beyond compare.” Although he attempted to recreate some of that movie magic on the screen with Django Unchained, Tarantino ultimately admitted that what Peckinpah was able to achieve was far more impressive. Calling The Wild Bunch a “masterpiece” and “perfect” is no small thing, especially considering how controversial the film was at the time of its release. Indeed, even some of the greats of the genre had no love for it.

‘The Wild Bunch’ Was a Hotly Contested Western Back in Its Day

At the time of its release, The Wild Bunch was praised by some for its violent and complex depiction of the fading American West, while being largely ignored by other outlets. Roger Ebert even went so far as to compare it to Pulp Fiction years later in his retrospective review, noting that it was “praised and condemned with equal vehemence.” Perhaps one of the most famous outcries against the film came from the face of the genre himself, John Wayne. The Duke couldn’t stand The Wild Bunch, believing that its realism went too far in comparison to his more traditional takes on the genre. While he didn’t hate the film itself, he detested the gore that accompanied it, believing its commitment to realistic and bloody violence set a dangerous precedent. If only he could’ve seen Tarantino’s pictures decades later…

But it’s likely that Tarantino better understood Peckinpah’s take on the genre — which he made after the more traditional Randolph Scott Western Ride the High Country years before — than Wayne ever could. While the Duke came from an era where movie violence was subdued by the Hayes Code, with plenty of pictures insinuating the most heinous acts rather than committing to showing them on the screen, Peckinpah hoped to examine the actual violent nature of Old West outlaws on the screen, using The Wild Bunch as an almost anti-violence film to show audiences the horrors and dangers of it. While it’s debatable if this worked in the long run, we can understand why Tarantino considers the film a “near perfect” movie.

The Wild Bunch is available to rent or buy on VOD services.