Welcome to The Queue — your daily distraction of curated video content sourced from across the web. Today, we’re watching a fake trailer that unites the Vega brothers from Quentin Tarantino’s films Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs.
One of the more delightful and titillating discoveries as a young cinephile was the notion of a “shared universe.” And while these days, the over-eager proliferation of meta tie-ins has become a bit tired, when movies are a relatively new thing, learning that two seemingly unrelated properties aren’t so unrelated feels like being let in on a secret. So let’s cut ourselves a little bit of slack here. Not all shared universes are created equal. And reveling in the “what-if?” implications of interconnected films can be fun rather than cloying.
Keen-eyed fans of the work of Quentin Tarantino are positively spoiled when it comes to subtle connections, cross-film relationships, and filmography spanning easter eggs. From fictional product placements (Red Apple Cigarettes and Big Kahuna Burger) to generational ties, Tarantino’s filmography is less of a straight line than a web. But of all the cross-film connections, one stands out: the Vega brothers.
In Tarantino’s directorial debut Reservoir Dogs, we learn that the real name of the sadistic Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) is Vic Vega. Two years later, in the 1994 film Pulp Fiction, we’re introduced to Vincent Vega (John Travolta), one half of a hitman duo. Coincidence? Absolutely not. As Madsen confirms in this film.com interview from 2008, Tarantino planned to make a “Vega Brothers” film about the siblings. Then, in 2020, when everyone was very, very bored thanks to the arrival of COVID-19, Madsen spilled more beans to The Hollywood Reporter regarding the project, even hinting that the film might be about each Vega brothers’ respective twin to get around the inconvenience of both Travolta and Madsen’s characters (spoiler) failing to survive their respective films.
All that said, and with the buzz of speculation in the air, here’s a fake trailer that imagines what a Vega Brothers film might look like. There’s prison time, old faces, and even older grudges. Squint hard enough and you can pretend that it’s the real deal.
Watch “The Vega Brothers”:
Who made this?
This delightful fake trailer for a Tarantino-helmed Vega Brothers film comes courtesy of the fine folks at Little White Lies, a film-obsessed magazine based in the United Kingdom. Luís Azevedo edited this video. You can follow Little White Lies on Twitter here. And you can check out their official website here. You can subscribe to their YouTube account here.
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