‘Pulp Fiction’ At 30: Should This Still Be Considered Quentin Tarantino’s Masterpiece?

Is Pulp Fiction really 30 years old? Is it now, in 2024, as far away from us as The Pink Panther was back in 1994? This isn’t so hard to believe when situating Pulp Fiction in the context of its status as a particularly retro-1970s form of 1990s cool (or when John Travolta’s Vincent Vega makes a big deal out of a milkshake costing five dollars), but for those of us who were alive when it came out, it does seem disconcerting that such a blast of then-youthful cinematic energy has now existed for nearly a quarter of the medium’s history.

Pulp Fiction changed a number of careers: It revived John Travolta for a surprisingly sustained comeback that restored his place on Hollywood’s A-list for another decade, took Samuel L. Jackson from character actor and clutch supporting player to Oscar-nominated leading man, and made Uma Thurman an Oscar-nominated household name in her own right. But it’s conceivable that Travolta, Jackson, and/or Thurman might have found their way without this movie. It’s harder to picture the same happening for writer-director (and occasional supporting actor) Quentin Tarantino, at least not with the same level of global celebrity. The dude hosted Saturday Night Live; Spielberg or Scorsese can’t say the same.

Tarantino’s interest in these side projects, often involving his own on-screen presence, was just one factor that made it seem as if Pulp Fiction would be impossible to surpass. He made a variety of sorta-follow-ups – a segment of the underrated Four Rooms anthology; writing and starring in From Dusk Till Dawn, without directing it; uncredited rewrites on some Jerry Bruckheimer productions – before finally releasing Jackie Brown, an adaptation of the Elmore Leonard book Rum Punch, in 1997. Today, the movie has plenty of ardent fans; it’s a more mature and emotionally affecting work than Pulp, and features just as many great performances. But at the time, it was received in some corners as a sedate disappointment. Kill Bill went in the other direction: often stunning, visceral, and enormously entertaining. At the same time, it was also not as influential or seismic (or inexplicably awards-friendly) as Pulp.

Now, 30 years on, it seems like some of that cultural cache has faded. To be clear, Pulp Fiction will probably always be Pulp Fiction; it’s a dorm-room-poster movie forever, a rep-screening go-to, and simply one of most delightful and audacious movies of its era and beyond, especially for the way it’s willing to conceal its themes with immediate thrills. On some level, fans have been waiting for Tarantino to write something this funny and quotable for the three decades since; probably the single most difficult adjustment vintage ’90s Tarantino fans have had to make is that even the best dialogue in his later movies doesn’t have the same black-comic bravado as Travolta and Jackson bickering over “brain detail” after an accidental gunshot blows an associate’s head off.

What’s changed is that there now are plenty of people to go to bat for plenty of post-Pulp Tarantino movies. The realheads might pick something like The Hateful Eight, Tarantino’s poisoned-pen letter to the American experience disguised as a chamber-piece western, or even Death Proof, his one quasi-exploitation movie that keeps things under two hours. At minimum, though, even some relative normies might make a case for Inglourious Basterds or Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as Tarantino’s best. They both garnered reviews, box office, and awards attention to join Pulp as near-instant classics, and their love of cinema glows with a warmth absent from the more sensational earlier film. There’s also arguably something timeless about both of those movies’ positioning as historical-revisionist period pieces, while Pulp Fiction might be doomed, in a sense, to its ’90s-cool rep.

Plus, there’s the matter of many filmmakers improving substantially after making more than two movies; that’s certainly true of Tarantino as a director, despite Pulp’s masterful mix of flash and quiet. The famous sequence introducing Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent (John Travolta) as they pick up Marcellus Wallace’s briefcase and knock off Brett (“check out the big brain on Brett”) feels slightly stagy now, the drawn-out suspense less elegant than in similar scenes out of Basterds; not surprising that it’s both showier and (if only in how it’s assembled) rough-draftier than some of his later films. It’s also fascinating that the slower burn aspects of Pulp Fiction – not just the dialogue but what the dialogue is in place to delay – are what really resonated in Tarantino’s later career, moreso than the musically quippy back-and-forths. (Later QT characters are more likely to monologue than duet, something Jackson and Travolta do beautifully in this movie.)

Indeed, rewatching the film 30 years later in the context of Tarantino’s greater career, Jackson’s performance in the film’s final scenes stick out more than ever. Jackson’s Jules, a hardened hit man, is convinced that he’s witnessed a miracle, because a young punk who got the jump on him and Vincent (Travolta) somehow missed every shot, sparing their lives. Vincent dismisses the incident as (in the parlance of fellow ’90s masterpiece Magnolia) just one of those things, while Jules takes it as a sign. He will renounce his life and “walk the Earth, like Kane on Kung Fu,” and begins to practice what he preaches by refusing to kill the robbers, first seen at the beginning of the film, who hold up the diner.

We don’t know what happens to Jules after he quits (or even, for certain, if he follows through). We do know, thanks to Tarantino’s scrambled chronology, that Vincent winds up dead when he’s sent to kill Butch (Bruce Willis). It would be a stretch to call this turn of events a redemption for Jules, but it does seem like a turning point, and it’s hard not to think of Tarantino himself as Jules walks away. That comparison is overly flattering to the director, especially when he casts himself as Jimmy, the wiener friend of Jules who helps them hide out earlier in the film. In retrospect, though, not even known to himself at the time, Tarantino was walking away from plenty after Pulp Fiction. Countless directorial signatures, from profane mouths down to the soles of ladies’ feet, would remain, but the particularly youthful brashness of this movie would be retired, impossible to recapture. For the most part, Tarantino’s savviest move was to not really try. I’m not sure if Pulp remains his best film; I’m inclined to agree with that winkingly self-aggrandizing final line of Basterds and speculate that, indeed, that might be his masterpiece. Pulp is the one, however, that most needed him to walk away.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.