From the title alone, it’s pretty obvious that Quentin Tarantino‘s next film, The Hateful Eight, is about eight different tough-as-nails so-and-sos. But from a lot of the footage we’ve seen and descriptions we’ve read, it looks like two of those eight are sort of a package deal, those being John “The Hangman” Ruth and Daisy “The Prisoner” Domergue (Kurt Russell and Jennifer Jason Leigh, respectively). And now, a new poster—one of a set of series—has come out featuring the two of them specifically.
In the story, Ruth’s a bounty hunter trying to take the nasty criminal Domergue to her date with justice, but they, like the rest of the eight, get stuck in the snow and have to hole up in a cabin. What I find most interesting about the poster is that there are eight marks denoting each of the characters; six are red and two are grey. Now, this could just be because there are two characters on the poster (which is probably the likeliest), but it could also point to the film’s theme of people not being who they say they are. Maybe two of the eight are liars out for something far more nefarious than we thought…or maybe only two of the eight are forthright and the other six are up to no good. This is speculation based on the SDCC Hall H panel I attended, which showed footage scored with Ennio Morricone’s music for John Carpenter’s The Thing, bringing home the theme about people hiding in plain sight.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Leigh said that “Kurt and I are essentially the most dysfunctional couple since Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” I foresee the two of them becoming unlikely allies in the mind game that will erupt among all of the character—not unlike the alliance between the two lead characters in another John Carpenter film, Assault on Precinct 13. Look at me, making all the connections today!
The other hatefuls are bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), Sheriff Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), Bob (Demian Bichir), Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), cattleman Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), and Confederate general Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern). I’m pretty sure nobody’s to be trusted.
The Hateful Eight is certainly the movie to which I’m most looking forward this year (tied perhaps with Star Wars. How excited are you? Let me know below!
