Every Samuel L Jackson Role In Tarantino Movies

Every Samuel L Jackson Role In Tarantino Movies

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The prolific Samuel L Jackson has impressed with countless roles over the years, but what characters has he collaborated with Tarantino on?

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Every Samuel L Jackson Role In Tarantino Movies

The prolific Samuel L Jackson has impressed with countless roles over the years, but what characters have the esteemed actor and controversial director Quentin Tarantino collaborated on? Ask a film fan what they associate with director Quentin Tarantino and the name Samuel L Jackson is bound to come up quick after mentions of comedic violence, unconventional narrative structure, the Big Kahuna Burger, and the helmer’s infamous foot fetish (maybe not in that order). Jackson’s collaborations with Tarantino date back to the director’s 1994 hit Pulp Fiction, and the actor has put in an appearance in almost all of the helmer’s eight subsequent projects.

It’s easy to see why the pair work together so often. Jackson’s laidback charm and distinctive delivery, which can switch between bombastic and reserved in an instant, are a perfect match for Tarantino’s stylized, self-consciously cool stories, with the director’s plots featuring frequent sudden tone switches that match the actor’s mercurial performances. Although Jackson wasn’t around for last year’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (with his absence adding to the list of Tarantino traditions that the hit missed out on), he’s nonetheless left a considerable mark on Tarantino’s on-screen legacy. So what roles has Jackson played for the divisive director in their years of collaboration?

Samuel L Jackson has played all manner of roles for Tarantino. Beginning as one of the main characters of Pulp Fiction, he soon switched gears to take on the role of one of Jackie Brown’s primary villains. A few years later, their collaborations were reduced to a minor cameo in Kill Bill Volume 2 and a brief, but vital, voice-only appearance in Inglorious Basterds. But later in their shared screen career, Tarantino and Jackson reunited for the actor to take on the part of Stephen, a vital villain in Django Unchained, before playing the hero of 2015’s gory siege western The Hateful Eight.

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Jules, Pulp Fiction

Every Samuel L Jackson Role In Tarantino Movies

Buoyed by a string of incredible performances, Tarantino’s first hit Reservoir Dogs won over indie film fans and critics. But it was the arrival of 1994’s Pulp Fiction that cemented the director’s auteur status and heralded a new era in American independent cinema, thanks in no small part to Jackson’s iconic role as hitman-turned-reluctant-existentialist Jules. The actor played an assassin whose miraculous survival during a job gone wrong (do they ever go right in crime thrillers?) leads him to question his profession, his place in the world, and his philosophy. Jules’ spiritual awakening bookends this unconventionally structured story and Jackson does a phenomenal job of moving from cynical killer-for-hire to thoughtful (though no less intimidating) agent of peace by the film’s closing moments. Despite the sprawling ensemble cast, it’s his movie, and Jules makes for a stellar start to the pair’s long on-screen history together (even if his infamous Pulp Fiction Bible verse isn’t real).

Ordell, Jackie Brown

Every Samuel L Jackson Role In Tarantino Movies

For their second film together, Tarantino and Jackson changed the recipe with the character of Ordell. A thoughtless villain where Jules was an introspective anti-hero, this gormless and braggadocious arms dealer offered Jackson a chance to affectionately parody his tough-guy image without entirely sacrificing the character’s threatening aura. Alongside DeNiro’s simmering villain, Ordell is a dangerous figure, but one who is easily hoodwinked by the titular antiheroine. Ordell may not be razor-sharp, but his unthinking temper makes him an unpredictable, effective, and blackly comic antagonist in this outing from the pair which remains underrated, perhaps because it doesn’t fit into the meticulously crafted Tarantino expanded cinematic universe.

Rufus, Kill Bill Volume 2

Every Samuel L Jackson Role In Tarantino Movies

The dynamic duo wouldn’t work together again until 2004 when Jackson appeared in the second volume of Tarantino’s love letter to revenge movies/exploitation cinema/anime Kill Bill. Poor Rufus the piano player doesn’t get much of a chance to make an impression during his limited role, but it’s a cute cameo nonetheless. Jackson plays the doomed musician who’s in the wrong place at the wrong time and ends up brutally offed, alongside the rest of the wedding party, when the Bride’s would-be wedding turns into a bloodbath.

The Narrator, Inglorious Basterds

Every Samuel L Jackson Role In Tarantino Movies

Perhaps the most mysterious, yet pivotal, of Jackson’s Tarantino roles production comes in the form of 2009’s demented WWII epic Inglorious Basterds. The film flips every audience expectation right down to its intentionally misspelled title, and its twisty plot meanders messily offs most of the heroes halfway through and ends up completely rewriting history in its closing moments. So the role of the narrator is vital in making sense of what might otherwise have been a complete mess. Thus Jackson’s never-seen narrator drops in and out of the action to clarify a few vital details, ensuring the audience is up to speed even if they technically never know who they’re listening to.

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Stephen, Django Unchained

Every Samuel L Jackson Role In Tarantino Movies

In a major tonal switch up for Jackson and Tarantino’s collaborations, 2012’s Django Unchained saw the star play a truly repugnant villain for the director. Although Leonardo DiCaprio’s Calvin Candy is the primary antagonist of this bloody, charming Western epic, he’s rarely seen without Stephen, a stooped-over aging slave, at his side. While Jackson never got to play a ghostly slave in Tarantino’s controversial proposed horror, the role of Stephen ends up touching on the themes that made that unmade project so deeply divisive. In a shocking twist, Jackson’s character opts to side with his sadistic master over the freed revolutionary of the title when bullets begin flying, refusing the option of solidarity with Django. It’s a brutal, brilliant subversion, and one which is sold entirely by the wearisome, lived-in spiteful demeanor that Jackson brings to the role.

Major Marquis Warren, The Hateful Eight

2015 saw the arrival of Tarantino and Jackson’s most recent collaboration to date in the form of the slow-burn Western thriller The Hateful Eight. Major Marquis Warren is a classic Quentin Tarantino/Jackson co-creation, and a superb role in a somewhat uneven, if nonetheless memorable, outing for the pair. The spiritual antithesis of Django Unchained’s Stephen, this vengeful and vicious gunslinger combines the quick wit and calculating cleverness of Jules with the guns-blazing brutality of Odell. Sure, the film’s action may drag at times, but this lengthy story is never more engaging than when Jackson’s character is regaling viewers with his convoluted backstory, rapidly rethinking his alliances to not only survive but secure his revenge, and generally running rings around the rest of the (largely doomed) cast.

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