People are always wondering when, or if, we’ll ever get the first truly great video game adaptation. In an age of intellectual property ruling the confines of Hollywood, it’s almost confounding to note that perhaps the best we’ve gotten to this day is Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022), which is somehow both a beautiful and extremely cursed thing to note.
Thankfully, dear reader, you have me to illuminate — to wipe away the fluff, notice all the tiny details like I’m Paul Atreides — your minds and reveal that there has, in fact, been a stellar video game adaptation hiding in plain sight: Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. The 2019 Best Picture nominee is hailed for its performances, homage to classic Hollywood, and for its ability to tell a story about what it’s like to be washed, among other things. But even more importantly, it’s a tribute to one of gaming’s most influential properties: Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto (GTA).
While it may sound far-fetched on the surface, the two share a multitude of commonalities that will have you seeing the truth in no time. Now, make no mistake, a lot of the main storylines of these two are vastly different; this is more of an observation towards the aesthetic and, admittedly, frivolous details. And aesthetically, it starts with the poster.
Exhibit A: That Oh-So-Glorious Poster
The comic book-esque, cel-shaded art style for the posters of the GTA games is iconic, and while the poster for Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood doesn’t have the same separate panels, the cartoonish style is still present. But, more importantly, both posters showcase wildly different scenarios and characters interspersed across its area. GTA V, for example, features cars, motorboats, a heavy firearm, and even a barking dog; Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood features Bruce Lee (Mike Moh) flying through the air with a kick, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) shooting a heavy firearm, dancers, and even a dog. It’s both chaotic and serene in the way it delivers snapshots of the world you’re entering into.
Exhibit B: Just Driving Around, Man
Aesthetically, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood also features a good amount of driving around from place to place with Rick and his partner/stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). They cruise around the city like it’s an open-world sandbox, embracing all it entails and interacting with the various characters residing in it. That’s one of the things that makes GTA so timeless — 1960s Hollywood, like everywhere from Los Santos to Vice City, is a character with depth of its own.
Early on in the movie, we see Cliff’s reckless driving after dropping off Rick at his house, speeding away like a guy with nothing to lose. It’s just like how you drive in GTA after completing a mission: you just start driving like a nutjob to get to your next destination. In the games, that can vary from strip clubs to construction sites to meeting zany characters at a carnival. In the movie, that can be a restaurant, a ranch, a movie set, and lively movie executives like Marvin Schwarz (played by the always-entertaining Al Pacino).
On top of that, the radio, which is a major fixture in the GTA series (from both music stations to the talk show “Chatterbox”), is something that’s used throughout the film. The selections of music, especially, are almost a character in of itself. Both use music as an effective means of capturing the time period; Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood featuring hits of the era like “Mrs. Robinson” which can be associated The Graduate (1967), the Dustin Hoffman-led classic released during this same time; GTA: San Andreas channeling west coast hip-hop with Tupac Shakur and GTA: Vice City getting all 80s-pop like with Michael Jackson and Kate Bush.
Even the individual character trailers releases GTA V played a key role; Trevor’s country-style romp of “Are You Sure Hank Done it This Way”, Franklin’s hip-hop banger of “Hood Gone Love It”, and Michael’s nostalgic and upbeat “Radio Ga Ga” oldie all serve as the perfect introduction to each character.
And while it’s certainly not unique to these two properties, the music also serves as a tool for moving along the plot. The “Out of Time” needle drop in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood as Rick and Cliff prepare for their final time together, and the oddly soothing crescendo at the end of GTA III that serves as a counter-balance to the mostly chaotic violence you just committed.
Exhibit C: Our Main Protagonists
But, of course, it’s easy to say there’s a correlation between Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood and the GTA series from a visual point of view. After all, GTA is a series that focuses on being a realistic open-world; you could feasibly relate it to something like Dazed and Confused (1993) for the driving or Zodiac (2007) with the world-building. Thankfully, it goes deeper with our two aforementioned leads, Rick and Cliff, being similar to what you’d find in the gaming franchise. They’re both anti-heroes; Rick is much like Michael from GTA V, a wealthy star (in the underground world, Michael was a star of his own) going through a midlife crisis and feeling like a has-been. They both even have a pool in their backyards!
Cliff, on the other hand, is your classic handyman — dangerous as hell, in possession of a questionable past, and perhaps most crucially: the most ordinary kind of outfits. Heck, Cliff’s shirt has an eerily similar vibe to the one Tommy Vercetti, the main protagonist of GTA: Vice City, dons as his default.
Exhibit D: Who Doesn’t Love a Good Side Quest?
Lastly, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood and GTA are both chock-full of “side quests” that aren’t necessarily pertinent to understanding the story. Sometimes, there’s a sense of roaming that the movie is intentionally trying to get across. Things sort of just happen, especially with Cliff, who buys drugs from random girls on street corners, gets into a fight with Bruce Lee, feeds and walks his dog, fixes an antenna with his shirt conspicuously off — which is exactly the kind of random, tedious sort of side quest GTA can occasionally throw your way (e.g. the forklift mission in GTA V) — and even travels to a ranch and gets into a fight with hippies.
Even the ending of the movie features a fight between the two and the Manson murderers, which is the exact kind of absurd set-up you’d see in a high-leverage GTA mission. From the comedic writing of it to Rick pulling out an over-the-top weapon (a flamethrower) to dispense with the invaders, there’s no shortage of wildly different developments that occur, side-quests or otherwise. There’s a connective tissue to it all, but it’s mostly for the purpose of creating a world ripe with layers of personality, and you’re free to take it in any way you choose. This malleability makes both the gaming series and Tarantino’s 2019 hit so similar and, more importantly, memorable.
There’s no doubt that GTA, as a piece of pop culture, has a lifespan of relevance that will continue for decades. There will still be questions about when a proper sequel to GTA V (which came out in 2013) will be released. If the number of websites and aggregators that report on it suggest, people are quite hungry for it. So hungry, in fact, that practically the whole ass game leaked online and caused such an uproar that even my gaming-ignorant friend asked about it.
But instead of constantly thirsting for the future — projecting their wishes onto a project that is clearly not yet ready — fans should take the headcanon approach. It’s like pretending that The Mummy (1999) was actually the movie adaptation of the Uncharted series. Simply take a moment, reheat those chicken nuggets on your counter, and put the disk back into your player, because GTA VI was already released to us in the form of Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, and at the same time finally gave us the best video game adaptation one could ever ask for.
