Reaction: ‘The Hateful Eight’ Teaser Trailer

“Got room for one more?”

So, the trailer for Quentin Tarantino’s eighth film is here: The off/on/off/on ‘The Hateful Eight!’ Or the H8ful 8…or the H***ful Eight…I always finds it hard to believe how few films Tarantino has done, considering the size of his reputation. Eight films in just over twenty years. For example, Christopher Nolan, whose debut film came to us in 1998, has done nine films. It’s a testament to the strength of Tarantino’s films that (most) of his films are ingrained in our pop culture, and each successive Tarantino film has been released to greater and greater fanfare. So take a look at the trailer for The Hateful Eight:

Okay, snow, bleakness, a place in the middle of nowhere, Kurt Russell, Kurt Russell saying “one of them fellas is not what he says he is”; is it just me, or is there more than a whiff of The Thing in this trailer? You even have Jackson saying “Move a little strange, you gonna get a bullet.” Granted, a remake of The Thing, set in the Wild West, directed by John Carpenter, would be one of the few re(re)makes that I would like to see. But, alas, I don’t think that’s the case. Although after I write this I will start writing that screenplay…and then make a couple of million selling that script to Hollywood.

“Is there anybody here committed to stopping me from doing that?”

Anyway, back to reality. We get short and sharp introductions to most of the characters. Another Taranino film, another Grade A cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell (The Hangman), Tim Roth, Michael Madson, and Jennifer Jason Leigh as Daisy Domergue.(she’s Grade A, isn’t she? Or at least she was, at one time…she’ll always have Existenz under her belt!). Roth puts on a perfectly hilarious British accent From what I can gather from the trailer, there must be a heavy reward for Daisy, dead or alive. So it’s all about the cash for the male strangers from the Wild West.

Being a teaser trailer, it doesn’t give much away. I probably should have read that leaked script before writing a reaction to the trailer! But the Wild West is always a great setting. Westerns have had a revival in the past decade or so, culminating in Tarantino’s own pseudo-Western, Django Unchained. Will we see a Django cameo? But the snowy, isolated nature of the trailer will give us a Wild West that we rarely see: not one of saloons and duels at dawn, but eight strangers all willing to betray each other for cold hard cash.

Unfortunately, we have to wait until Christmas for this one. Tarantino, after losing his way for a while (I’m not a great fan of Jackie Brown, or the Kill Bills, and need to rewatch Inglorious Basterds to form a solid opinion of it), but Django Unchained was one of Tarantino’s greats (it could have lost half an hour, admittedly). So, whether or not The Hateful Eight is a remake of The Thing, or Reservoir Dogs set in the Wild West (another screenplay s forming in my mind), I am looking forward to it very, very much! Who doesn’t want to see Jackson, Roth, and Russell threaten each other with guns and ride horses, Wild West style?!?