Django Unchained impressions

[okiN]

Was really pissed (but saw it coming) when Waltz pulled out his derringer.  There were at least 3 spots of the movie where I was like "I highly doubt they'd be getting out of that situation".

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I just thought it was really corny how, instead of quickly spinning around and making some kind of move, he just stood and stared, then turned really slowly and deliberately while the bodyguard was still struggling to understand what just happened, and finally just cracked a joke and let himself get shot. I know it's Django's movie and so they needed to get him out of the way, but it was just so crudely done. It was especially stupid because the film treated the derringer as a single-shot weapon, but looking at the prop it clearly had two barrels on it.

[Commodore_Axephante]

I've got to say (and I know I'm in the minority, here), I found the film's storytelling to be really lazy. Yes, the acting was terrific (besides Foxx), and there were some stellar moments (thinking of the head-sack scene), but in general there were just too many convenient or ill-explained things for me to feel immersed.

Jamie Foxx felt like a modern man, not a freed slave. He had skills and abilities that no systematically abused and suppressed individual would ever possess. Everyone is amazed to see him riding a horse in the beginning. Well, that begs a good question - how the hell does he know how to ride a horse? Now, could a freed slave gain those skills? Absolutely. But we got no sense of his growth once given his freedom. He just jumped up and kicked everything's ass. No progression whatsoever. I mean, that line from the preview everyone keeps repeating: "Getting paid to kill white people? What's not to love?" Well, at least until he had spent some time in the world, someone who had spent his entire life toiling in a cotton field would have no sense of what "getting paid" even entails. Mercantilism, capitalism, personal possessions, wealth, all of that... their value is in the way they make room for choice - something totally foreign to him, which would be more intimidating than anything else, at least until he learned the ropes.

And the villains... outside of DiCaprio, they were utterly 1-dimentional. No substance there - just monsters to be destroyed. Again, lazy storytelling. At least Kill Bill (which I mention because it was also a revenge yarn) gave its villains real character, with their own motivations and insights.

I think Terantino is losing his edge. His early work was thoughtful, edgy, sophisticated... Django felt to me more like an action-oriented fart joke.

And, in a world where 100% of gunshots are perfect bullseyes, do we really feel impressed when someone hits a bullseye?

There is just so much emotional content to be explored in a story about freedom, vengeance, realizing what it means to be an independent human man, etc. So much power. And Django didn't take up any of it. Could have been a long music video for Nelly's "Here comes the boom".

[Arn_Magnusson]

I understand the person above, but I think it's a matter of "turn on" at Tarantino's films, you've got to thnik: this is Quentin.

I really, really liked that film - it was climatic (dunno if in english this means, what I mean ;_;), long scenes were +, for me ;) Waltz was perfect, but simple, but still the film (which rarely happens to me) was unexpecting, but mabye it's just a matter of my thinking: "Damn, it's Tarantino everything can happen, or..." and so, and so. And also the films, in a funny way' says that beeing nigga or silk it's in your mind ;)

Pulp Fiction on Wild West ;) Tarantino in form.

[Rumblood]

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I just thought it was really corny how, instead of quickly spinning around and making some kind of move, he just stood and stared, then turned really slowly and deliberately while the bodyguard was still struggling to understand what just happened, and finally just cracked a joke and let himself get shot. I know it's Django's movie and so they needed to get him out of the way, but it was just so crudely done. It was especially stupid because the film treated the derringer as a single-shot weapon, but looking at the prop it clearly had two barrels on it.

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Yep, I thought the exact same thing with the same conclusion. Remember earlier in the film? He shot it twice without a reload. Sure, he knew they would never get out of there because of all the armed men around, but surely he wouldn't have simply shrugged and cracked a joke. I simply let it go as the character had to go one way or another to finish the story in the manner it did.

[okiN]

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Remember earlier in the film? He shot it twice without a reload.

Did he? I remember that he shot the crooked sheriff twice with it when he first used it, but IIRC he was shown sort of fiddling with the gun in between shots, which I interpreted as a reload. But yeah, if they were actually treating it as a two-shot weapon in the film (which it clearly was going by the prop), then that makes it doubly stupid that he didn't whirl around and shoot Butch, or whatever that guy's name was. They could still have rubbed him out in the same scene by having the guard paste him with the shotgun at the same time, but I guess they sacrificed that less stupid option in favor of having Django do his cute disarm-gutshot combo.

[Rumblood]

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Did he? I remember that he shot the crooked sheriff twice with it when he first used it, but IIRC he was shown sort of fiddling with the gun in between shots, which I interpreted as a reload. But yeah, if they were actually treating it as a two-shot weapon in the film (which it clearly was going by the prop), then that makes it doubly stupid that he didn't whirl around and shoot Butch, or whatever that guy's name was. They could still have rubbed him out in the same scene by having the guard paste him with the shotgun at the same time, but I guess they sacrificed that less stupid option in favor of having Django do his cute disarm-gutshot combo.

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I may have missed it, but wasn't it an over/under? This looks like what I thought he was using.
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 Oh well. Its a movie!

[okiN]

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Yeah, exactly. That's why I thought it was so weird that he didn't go for a second shot. Only rationalization I could think of was that the movie was suggesting that he was out of ammo. Likewise Django only took one shot at the Brittle brothers before going for the whip to use on the second guy, when really you'd think he would have shot them both with the derringer.

[Commodore_Axephante]

In regards to Rumblood and Okin's spoiler-hidden discussion - my explanation -

... Again, lazy storytelling.

[Angantyr]

Those are two very different things, though. Slavery went out in the eighteen-sixties, apartheid lasted another hundred years.

Did I write anything to the contrary? 

[Angantyr]

@Commodore_Axephante,
Haven't watched it yet and as such have no opinion on its value as a movie, but I think I can glean the genre from just looking at the cover and reading reviews; this is an intended pulp movie, a simplistic and often lurid tale, with much action and few psychological thrills - never meant to be realistic.

We can agree that old Tarantino movies are better than the newer ones, though.

[Commodore_Axephante]

@Commodore_Axephante,
Haven't watched it yet and as such have no opinion on its value as a movie, but I think I can glean the genre from just looking at the cover and reading reviews; this is an intended pulp movie, a simplistic and often lurid tale, with much action and few psychological thrills - never meant to be realistic.

We can agree that old Tarantino movies are better than the newer ones, though.

I guess I am just never convinced that a story can't tick all the boxes at once. Seems like he aims low, these days. I mean, wasn't Pulp Fiction a pulp movie, hence the name? And that thought provoking, wherever possible, I thought.

But yeah, lets all just settle on that peaceful place of agreement: the man used to do it better.

...except I really loved Deathproof, and that was on the newer side.

[bilwit]

I've got to say (and I know I'm in the minority, here), I found the film's storytelling to be really lazy. Yes, the acting was terrific (besides Foxx), and there were some stellar moments (thinking of the head-sack scene), but in general there were just too many convenient or ill-explained things for me to feel immersed.

Jamie Foxx felt like a modern man, not a freed slave. He had skills and abilities that no systematically abused and suppressed individual would ever possess. Everyone is amazed to see him riding a horse in the beginning. Well, that begs a good question - how the hell does he know how to ride a horse? Now, could a freed slave gain those skills? Absolutely. But we got no sense of his growth once given his freedom. He just jumped up and kicked everything's ass. No progression whatsoever. I mean, that line from the preview everyone keeps repeating: "Getting paid to kill white people? What's not to love?" Well, at least until he had spent some time in the world, someone who had spent his entire life toiling in a cotton field would have no sense of what "getting paid" even entails. Mercantilism, capitalism, personal possessions, wealth, all of that... their value is in the way they make room for choice - something totally foreign to him, which would be more intimidating than anything else, at least until he learned the ropes.

And the villains... outside of DiCaprio, they were utterly 1-dimentional. No substance there - just monsters to be destroyed. Again, lazy storytelling. At least Kill Bill (which I mention because it was also a revenge yarn) gave its villains real character, with their own motivations and insights.

I think Terantino is losing his edge. His early work was thoughtful, edgy, sophisticated... Django felt to me more like an action-oriented fart joke.

And, in a world where 100% of gunshots are perfect bullseyes, do we really feel impressed when someone hits a bullseye?

There is just so much emotional content to be explored in a story about freedom, vengeance, realizing what it means to be an independent human man, etc. So much power. And Django didn't take up any of it. Could have been a long music video for Nelly's "Here comes the boom".

That's because you didn't understand what was going on. Not every movie is supposed to be a gritty, socio-political and realistic take where everything is laid out to you. It's a genre film. It's literally a Spaghetti Western as opposed to a story set in the pre-civil war era. It's supposed to be over the top, surrealistic at times, linear and have archetypal characters with the overall premise being the knight who goes on a journey to save the princess at the top of the hill (in which they even say as much). It's a throwback to all those classic Spaghetti Western movies of old. It's not even exactly a statement about slavery or whatever outside of "this is the story, this is the historical setting in which it takes place and deal with it."

The craft is in the situations he puts his characters in and how they deal with it. People love Tarantino because the main attraction is the colorful characters he comes up with and the awkward places they find themselves, with rythmic back-and-forth between them leading up to shit hitting the fan. I agree that it's not exactly as crafty/complex/whatever as his other films but that's the point of intentionally making a genre film: it's not supposed to be.

[Commodore_Axephante]

That's because you didn't understand what was going on. Not every movie is supposed to be a gritty, socio-political and realistic take where everything is laid out to you. It's a genre film. It's literally a Spaghetti Western as opposed to a story set in the pre-civil war era. It's supposed to be over the top, surrealistic at times, linear and have archetypal characters with the overall premise being the knight who goes on a journey to save the princess at the top of the hill (in which they even say as much). It's a throwback to all those classic Spaghetti Western movies of old. It's not even exactly a statement about slavery or whatever outside of "this is the story, this is the historical setting in which it takes place and deal with it."

The craft is in the situations he puts his characters in and how they deal with it. People love Tarantino because the main attraction is the colorful characters he comes up with and the awkward places they find themselves, with rythmic back-and-forth between them leading up to shit hitting the fan. I agree that it's not exactly as crafty/complex/whatever as his other films but that's the point of intentionally making a genre film: it's not supposed to be.

I feel you man - I understand. But as I see it, that's the definition of lazy storytelling. True, there are entire genres built around lazy storytelling, but to me, that doesn't make it any less lazy.

EDIT: and hey, "gritty, socio-political and realistic" and fun are not mutually exclusive.

But hey, the film was a blockbuster and most people loved it - clearly I'm on the wrong side of history. I can see that clear enough.