Former Union soldier Major Marquis Warren (played by Samuel L. Jackson), kicks off the trailer, asking, “Now what make a man brave a blizzard and kill in cold blood?” It’s clear that we’re going to find out, because immediately after he poses the question, there’s a gunshot and a body is shown falling into the snow. “I’m sure I don’t know,” he quips.
Next we meet, John Ruth (Kurt Russell), a bounty hunter who’s clearly on edge. When Major Warren asks for a ride in his stagecoach, Ruth tells him, gun in hand, that he “ain’t too anxious to be handing out rides.” The reason, it turns out, is because he’s got a prisoner in tow, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and she’s wanted dead or alive. He’s bringing her to hang, but he really seems to misplay his cards when he announces that there’s a $10,000 reward. We’re thinking that’s not such a smart fact to share with a room of armed men.
After he makes his announcement, we get a quick sequence in which horses go running, men stalk around, and of course, guns come out. And then come the bodies. We see bodies being thrown out of a stagecoach, tossed into a well, and also just lying on the ground. This group clearly doesn’t mess around. “One of them fellows will kill everybody in here,” Ruth says.
The trailer is full of the elements that Tarantino fans love so much: snappy dialogue, awesome music, and violent action sequences. Best of all for film fans, it’s first coming to select theaters in “glorious 70mm,” a particularly wide image that will make cinema diehards giddy. Why “spend the holidays with someone you hate,” as the preview suggests, when you can spend it with Tarantino?
The film will arrive on Christmas Day in its Ultra Panavision 70 form, and then in cinemas across the country on Jan. 8.
