SDCC: THE HATEFUL EIGHT To Have An Original Ennio Morricone Score
First the big news. At the very end of today’s The Hateful Eight panel, Quentin Tarantino announced that the film will be his first to have a totally original score. You probably already know where this is going, but that score will be provided by none other than Ennio Morricone, who will be doing his first western score in forty years.
That’s pretty exciting, but you might also be interested in hearing about the seven minutes (though it really didn’t feel like seven minutes) of Hateful Eight footage that screened in Hall H today. Instead of a trailer, Tarantino put together a presentation just for us. Basically, it introduced all the characters (with badass title cards, natch), explained the high-tension situation they are all in, and ended with a quick cut montage filled with shitloads of guns being loaded, cocked, pointed, and fired.
The footage was edited for speed and felt like it, but there’s no denying how beautiful this film looks. Shot in both 65mm and extreme Panavision (this panel was big on technical details), no one’s going to go home and call The Hateful Eight ugly.
It’s also really funny. In that small amount of time, I must have laughed a dozen times. Sometimes you feel a little bad laughing at Tarantino’s jokes. The Hateful Eight has a great example in which Jennifer Jason Leigh makes a joke about Kurt Russell’s character’s lack of brains. He laughs a little. Then elbows her in her already beaten-up face. It plays a lot funnier than it sounds.
Speaking of Jennifer Jason Leigh, I think this is the character we’re all going to be talking about from this film. The actress described her character as “feral” in the panel, and she’s not kidding. There’s something equally gross, alien, terrifying, and hilarious about her character, and she’s easily the one I’m most excited about seeing more of.
But The Hateful Eight is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to actors playing cool-looking characters. Demián Bichir’s character, for instance, supplied some good surprise laughs, and Tim Roth appears to be doing one of the weirdest voices in his career. Tarantino described him as “a gallery of British performers from the past,” and that’s a perfect description of what he’s up to. As for Michael Madsen, he plays a guy named “The Cow Puncher.” That’s about as good as it gets.
A lot of people are going to get killed in this film. I have a feeling we’re going to be a little bummed out about each one of them. But that’s how it goes with Tarantino movies, which is just one part of why we all (and his actors, who spent most of their panel time praising the guy) love him so much. He’s yet to make a truly bad film (no, I’m not forgetting Death Proof), and The Hateful Eight looks absolutely certain to carry on that tradition.
