Winston T. Boogie
Senior HTF Member
This is the strangest thing I have seen. On the paper it sounds like a terrible terrible idea. On the screen the trailer looks like a comedy which again sounds terrible. This does not compute!
Well, I like Tarantino films because the dialogue is generally really good/fun and they are typically well shot and edited. In terms of "ideas" though, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown were it. Following those he was basically out of ideas and began to just be a guy that wrote fun dialogue. His "ideas" were always taken from other things anyway. The thing he wanted to do was watch things other people came up with and then create the dialogue he wanted to hear those characters say.
That's basically his thing. It's certainly still fun to me because whereas most films today come at you with a focus on the action, the CGI, or goofball one liners and situations...in a Tarantino picture the big moments are crazed monologues delivered by oddball characters.
His main interest seems to be revenge. I think where people called Hitchcock the "master of suspense" Quentin wanted to become the "master of revenge."
The thing is though his revenge tales are not "masterfully" done. They tend to be asinine and ridiculous but saved by the dialogue, music, and humor. They also tend to be presented in incredibly poor taste...which he revels in. With pictures like Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, and The Hateful Eight he seems to be composing from the perspective of an angry, confused, 15 year old boy.
My first guess when I learned he was including the Manson clan and Sharon Tate in this was that instead of Tate and her unborn child getting brutally slaughtered that he was going to turn the tables again and have Tate and maybe the Pitt character slaughter the Manson family, including Charlie. That would be as typically ridiculous as the slaughters in Basterds, Django, and Hateful Eight. Or the Tate slaughter happens in this and then Leo and Brad go on a crazed killing spree offing Charlie and the Manson family.
However, I also thought maybe he thought of that and knew that would make him all too predictable. So, who knows what he will do. I am kind of hoping that the picture is more a love letter to his favorite period of filmmaking more than another silly bloodbath revenge joke.
