Hateful Eight was aweful. I just saw it. Too much overacting. The dialog was cliché and over the top (Quinton, kill your darlings!). I’m usually a fan of long movies but this thing just would not end.
I know I’m in the minority here, I’ve read all the online reviews. But honestly I don’t get it. It all takes place inside of a cabin (Reservoir Dogs, the western) how in the hell did he manage to spend $60 million on it. My mind boggles.
I don’t think you’re in the minority here, if you mean something like a 90-10 ratio love/hate ratio. I’d say 60/40 on this boards.
Taking place mostly in the cabin is OK. It creates a claustrophobic feeling. You don’t know who is who, who is on your side or not. It’s obviously [del]stealing[/del] homaging Russell’s version of The Thing.
Dragging out the ending may have been a deliberate homage too, but I think it was just interminable.
The TruFans say QT loves old films, and makes modern versions of what he’d want to see. I think lately more that he hates his audience and sees how much he can insult them before they realize and he looses them*. He hasn’t obviously reached that point yet.
*Just like Donald Trump
It was a well-made movie, but I think Tarantino has started to enjoy killing people just a *little *bit too much.
The flim never took off. It was nice to hear Samuel L. yell dialogue and Kurt recreate the blood test scene from The Thing but not 3 hours nice.
I’m not a TruFan, but I like his movies. Why not take him at his word, that he loves old films and makes modern versions of them? That’s what he likes, and that’s what he makes. I grew up with the films Tarantino pays homage to, so I ‘get it’. To me, they’re fun. A friend’s second feature film had this premise: What if Jean-Luc Godard directed a George Romero zombie film with a Roger Corman script and budget? It’s been called the worst film ever made. (Christian Science Monitor gave it a good review.) If you’re familiar with Godard and Romero and Corman, and if you understand the concept of the film, there’s a very good chance that you’ll find it hilarious. Same with many of Tarantino’s films. I often find myself nodding and chuckling.
Note: I’m not saying, ‘Well if you didn’t like it, you didn’t “get it”.’ I’m just saying that this is the kind of film Tarantino makes, and you know that going in. I liked Kill Bill, but I was never a huge fan of the kung fu films when I was growing up. There were some scenes in those films that I thought went on entirely too long. I got it, but there you are. I still liked the films, though.
I finally saw The Hateful Eight a couple of days ago. Mrs. L.A. didn’t like the dialogue (‘Nigger this, and Nigger that’). She loved Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character. But she only watched half of the film. Like JAQ, John Carpenter’s The Thing came immediately to mind. I knew what I was getting into, and the overacting is intentional. I like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction better, but I didn’t see much wrong with The Hateful Eight.
From what I’ve read, the production cost was $44 million, not $60 million. (I did see $62 million on a site I’ll link later.) About $16 million went to pay the cast and crew. I don’t know how much film you’ve shot, but it seems that the cost of film stock and processing doubles every time you go up a format. 65 mm film, and 70 mm for the prints, is expensive. Cameras and lenses in that format are somewhat rare, so they are expensive to rent. It was filmed in a fairly remote location in difficult conditions.
Personally I think films cost too much to make. This page concludes that the average big-budget movie costs $139 million to make. Unfortunately the author forgot to divide by 33 (the number of films in his example). Using his numbers, the average cost of a film would be about $4.2 million. The Numbers website lists films by production budget (descending). I don’t know if those figures include marketing costs, which *The Hollywood Reporter says has risen to $200 million for some films. I also don’t know if the numbers are adjusted for inflation. In any case, The Hateful Eight is #710 on the list.
You can make movies for much less. Robert Rodriquez famously made El Mariachi for $7,500. (IIRC Columbia Pictures spent about $350,000 to put it in a form in which it could be distributed.) It made over $2 million. According to IMDb, The Blair Witch Project cost about $60,000 and grossed almost $250 million. (That one had a helluva marketing campaign. People actually believed it was real.) But in general you have to spend a few million for a film – especially when you have ‘names’ in it.
The movie had its good points but absolutely was 30 minutes too long. At least.
@ Johnny (mostly), I get his movies in general. I like the fact that he makes “homage” movies. Loved Jackie Brown for instance. The 2 things that Tarentino is know for is violence and dialog. In my opinion he does them both exceedingly well. I know some people are bothered by extreme violence, I’m not. But in this movie the violence looked almost like a spoof of his movies. WAY overdone. Hokey.
But the thing that was really disappointing to me was the dialog. Again, I like Quinton’s movies. I especially like his dialog. Think of the cafe scene in Reservoir Dogs, sublime! Or The Dennis Hopper/Christopher Walken scene in True Romance.
So it’s not like I walked in to one of his movies cold. I “get” him. I just think the writing in this movie was sub-par. Terrible in fact. Terrible, not in comparison to other movies in general but terrible in comparison to his other movies.
I know you’re not making this argument, but it often goes along with discussion of QT films, so I’ll address it.
I know what kind of films he makes. He makes quirky films, homage films, fun films, enjoyable films. But, that just doesn’t mean every film he make is a good film. Just because he makes clever references and homages to other films doesn’t mean he’s always doing a good job. I think he needs to be reigned in from his excesses. He needs someone to tell him no, just once in a while. QT is good, but he’s no Mozart, and H8 has too many “notes”.
What I loved most about this movie was that it felt like a stage play- and a classic stage play at that. It reminded me of The Time of Your Life or The Iceman Cometh.
I was just thoroughly delighted to find myself being reminded of William Saroyan and Eugene O’Neill while watching a mainstream Hollywood film in 2015. There was a bit more blood though- I did notice that.