Quentin Tarantino has become known for tying his movies together inside something of a shared universe, one that’s much more subtle than any other cinematic universe out there. Vincent Vega and Vic Vega, John Travolta and Michael Madsen’s characters from Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, for example, are brothers, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Now hear me out. In Tarantino’s ninth film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the great Kurt Russell is clearly playing some sort of cigarette-smoking stuntman type character, as revealed in today’s brand new trailer for the movie. In other words, Russell looks to be playing a character who’s pretty damn similar to his character from Death Proof, Stuntman Mike.
But is Russell actually playing Stuntman Mike in Once Upon a Time? Given the timeline – Once Upon a Time is set in 1969, while 2007’s Death Proof was set in the present – that seems highly unlikely. Kurt Russell has aged like a fine wine, to be sure, but there’s no way Stuntman Mike could possibly look pretty much exactly the same in 1969 as he does decades later.
But let’s not forget something Stuntman Mike mentions in Death Proof. When he’s asked how he got into the stunt business, he says that his brother got him into it: Stuntman Bob.
Presumably then, Stuntman Bob is Stuntman Mike’s *older* brother, so it’s entirely possible that Kurt Russell is playing Stuntman Bob in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Again, this sort of movie-to-movie connection is the kind of thing Tarantino loves to weave into his work, and if we’re on the money here, it’d likely come in the form of a passing reference.
Then again, the new character could even be Mike and Bob’s father. Thoughts?
