10 Fan Theories About Tarantino Movies That Make Perfect Sense

To the casual viewer Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight and John Carpenter’s The Thing couldn’t be more different. One is a sci-fi horror while the other is a revisionist Western-slash-murder mystery. One is set in Antarctica during the early 80s and the other takes place in late 19th century Wyoming. But the two movies have far more in common than one might think and it’s not just that they both star Kurt Russell.

Let’s take a closer look. They’re both set in isolated locations beset by blizzards – The Thing at an American research station in deepest, darkest Antarctica and The Hateful Eight in mountainous Wyoming at a remote stagecoach lodge. Each movie focuses on themes of mistrust and paranoia, they’re both pretty violent and gory with a whodunnit element. and they both end with two surviving characters awaiting their imminent deaths.

Even the Ennio Morricone scores featured in The Hateful Eight were borrowed from unused music leftover from the composer’s work on The Thing’s soundtrack and several shots in The Hateful Eight are composed in a suspiciously similar way to The Thing too.

To be fair Tarantino has already admitted The Thing was a big influence on The Hateful Eight but it may go a little deeper than simply homage. It’s possible Tarantino made a sneaky remake of Carpenter’s seminal sci-fi horror that swaps its backdrop of Cold War-era paranoia for post-Civil War racial tension. Clever, eh?