Quentin Tarantino Calls This Take On Superman's Story A Modern Movie Masterpiece

Leading up to the 2009 release of Quentin Tarantino's WWII action movie, "Inglourious Basterds," he gave an interview to Sky Movies (via Quentin Tarantino Universe) and listed 20 of his favorite movies from 1992 to 2009. Not surprisingly, it includes classics like "Battle Royale," "Fight Club," "Shaun of the Dead," "Lost in Translation," and two Keanu Reeves movies, "Speed" and "The Matrix." The last film to be mentioned is "Unbreakable." Tarantino considers it one of the better takes on a Superman-like origin story. He even called it "one of the masterpieces of our time."

That's high praise from the director of "Pulp Fiction," "Reservoir Dogs," "Django Unchained," and the two "Kill Bill" volumes. He's made several pop-culture hits by making non-linear storytelling, profanity-heavy dialogue, and intense violence entertaining. But he's no stranger to praising movies from other directors. Tarantino called "The Thing" one of the greatest movies ever made because it got under his skin.

"Unbreakable" was released in 2000 and stars Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson. It was directed by M. Night Shyamalan, a director known for shocking plot twists. "Unbreakable" is no different. Willis plays David Dunn, the sole survivor of a fatal train wreck. What's special about him is that he walks away without a scratch. Turns out Dunn is superhuman, and he just didn't know it. That's why Tarantino loves it.

In an interview with Sky Movies, Tarantino praises Willis in "Unbreakable," calling his performance "magnificent" and the best of his career at the time. In the movie, he says it's "a brilliant retelling of the Superman mythology." He thinks the movie should have led with that, and burying the lede was a disservice. To him, the movie's concept, where David Dunn discovers he is virtually indestructible and later becomes a crime-fighting superhero, seemed obscured until he thought of it that way. Tarantino believes a tagline that would have served the movie better was: "What if Superman was here on Earth and didn't know he was Superman." 

Jackson plays Elijah Price, a comic book art dealer whose bones break easily because he has a brittle bone disease. He is more like the antithesis of Dunn. Still, Price helps him on his hero's journey, culminating in a shocking twist behind the train crash that shows that "The Sixth Sense" wasn't a fluke for director M. Night Shyamalan. "Unbreakable" was just the beginning for this weird take on superheroes, too, culminating in the "Eastrail 177 Trilogy," which includes "Split" (2017) and "Glass" (2019).