Downton Abbey star Joanne Froggatt in awe of Quentin Tarantino

His latest film, The Hateful Eight, particularly lends itself to the stage, considering nearly the entirety of the procedure unfolds in the solitary setting of Minnie’s Haberdashery.

One of the parlor games this movie season has been counting the number of times a certain racial epithet is uttered in Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight”.

“I’ve thought [the stage version] out completely”, Tarantino told The Wrap.

The Hateful Eight goes beyond any previous Tarantino film in leaving us unsure where to stand. There’s no sympathetic hero, nor any chance to cheer along with what Uma Thurman in Kill Bill calls a “roaring rampage of revenge”. The locations, flashbacks, music, and overall filmmaking technique would be lost from a stage iteration of, say, Inglorious Basterds that would no doubt result in a drop in quality.

“The Hateful Eight” has been well-received by critics. Should the film be made at all?

“Harvey actually – he tried to talk me into doing it as a play first”, Tarantino said. This billing only helps to elevate the disappointment as the movie labors across its enormous, overwrought 3-hour runtime, as Tarantino seems to be more focused on doing his best impression of himself rather than honing his craft as a filmmaker.

Before going any further in my speculation of 70mm’s prolonged future in present day cinema, I shall provide a background for those that may not be as familiar with the film stock’s historical significance. If I feel that confident about that material, well, then let’s just do it big.

Variety reported that the film earned $16.2 million in its opening weekend, the lowest for a Tarantino film since “Jackie Brown” amassed $9.3 million in 1997.

Legendary bounty hunter John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell) is taking his captured fugitive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to hang for her crimes. That’s the first thing Walton Goggins says in this featurette and for a lot of people that’s true.

Among those characters is Major Marquis Warren, a former slave and retired Civil War Calvary hero, embodied with aplomb by the magnificent Samuel L. Jackson.