This was my biggest disappointment with the movie; I still can’t understand how no one did this…
Maybe this was too obvious, but I was fascinated by the way we watched these horrible Nazis (or, as Aldo put it, Gnat-zees) laugh and cheer at a movie about a sniper killing hundreds of soldiers, then were put in the same situation of cheering as the movie-goers on the screen are being burned, shot, and blown up for their transgressions.
The theme of how much fun it is to watch someone else suffer (deservedly or not) hangs heavily in the air…
Great movie. Loved it…
The only thing that bugged me was the stupid, idiotic teenagers sitting behind me. After every violent scene, one felt the need to shout “That dude just got FUCKED UP!!” loud enough for everybody in the theater to hear and ruin the mood. Fucking kids… grumble grumble…
I can see it now - a whole generation of teenagers growing up thinking Hitler died in a hail of machine gun fire. Awesome…
:smack: I seem to recall that now. For some reason, I thought all three of them had explosives strapped to their legs.
Since the movie barely touched on the specific exploits of the basterds, I just assumed that two had died along the way and Tarantino didn’t feel it necessary to go into details.
Yes, my sense is they were caught unawares. Maybe they were willing for it to be a suicide mission but since the bombs had timers and not triggers I assume there was a plan to drop them and leave (presumably even if they were ok with a suicide mission, von Hammersmark would not have been).
However, they were not aware that Landa had planted Rains bomb in Hitler’s opera box and that was the explosion that triggered the bombs on them.
I assumed he was a getaway driver/lookout. Landa knew that the threat was coming from von Hammersmark so I presumed he’d had her followed from well before they got to the theater. So he’d already grabbed the outside guy(s).
Those bits of story massaging/assumptions aside though, I did not find it easy to go along with the idea that Hitler himself would be in the theatre and apparently the security detail never looked behind the screen to discover the 5 foot tall pile of nitrate film. And that during the movie not a single guard was posted in the lobby of the theater.
What I found most fascinating to watch was the theater goers point of view of the theater screen erupting in flame. Was a little too eerie.
I was annoyed that Landa got off too easily. Also, the first time I saw Eli Roth I thought it was David Schwimmer.
Yeah, I’m annoyed that Landa would get to make a deal, but that doesn’t even require altering history. Quite a number of questionable people got deals from various Allied countries after the war.
Also annoyed that Landa not having something else on the hook to make sure the deal was kept would be the stupidest thing in the movie. Once they were in the forest and the deeds were done, there was no need to keep the deal and nobody would ever know otherwise if they just shot him there.
By the way, was it obvious to everyone that Samuel L. Jackson was doing the voice-overs? I seriously had no clue it was him!
I did catch Harvey Keitel as the voice on the other end of the phone, though!
Okay, I (and a very jaded “I”, at that) had to avert my eyes during the baseball bat scene. It was not only ultra-graphic, but was a strong statement on what gang mentality and war can do to people. I didn’t censor anything but hard core sex when my kid was growing up, but I have a feeling many parents will say that this scene is too much for their young’uns.
I didn’t know going in that it was an alternate history World War II, so I was actually thinking through the whole movie that it was probably going to fail, or at the very least that Hitler and his lieutenants would somehow slip away (seeing as how in reality they all died at the end of the war).
Also the last chapter of the movie takes place in 1944. I can’t recall whether they said if it was before or after the Normandy Invasion. But either way, at this stage of the war, would Hitler really be willing to travel to Paris with all his top lieutenants in tow and gather them in one place? I figure at the very least they’d do an extremely thourough background check on the theater owner, and as someone else mentioned here, have a shitload of security in the theater lobby.
I’m willing to give them a pass on this. It is a theater after all, and whoever was conducting the security sweep probably just assumed they were using the area behind the screen for storage.
Uh, and scalpings. Those were extremely graphic.
Did Landa know the theater owner was really Shoshanna? Is that why he ordered milk for her? On the other hand he didn’t do anything to her, but maybe he was going to after the movie premiere. The way she reacted to the milk she seemed to think he knew who she was.
Extremely graphic. Very realistically done, in my opinion.
There was the scene where Hitler explained to Goebbels why he would be attending the screening and in it he mentioned that the Allies were on the beach. I took that to mean that this was after D-Day and that things weren’t looking so good and so boosting the morale of the French lines was the goal of the premier in Paris and Hitler attending.
Doesn’t make it more realistic that it would actually happen but did give the “within the reality of the movie” explanation.
In my opinion, he did not know. I think he just liked milk, and that was the connection in her mind for the horror she witnessed.
I read that there is talk of a prequel, not sure what it would cover. Maybe just another WW II story with some of the same people.
Tarantino has talked about making prequels/sequels to several other of his movies as well. So far he’s never made one. I wouldn’t put too much stock in it.
At the very least, I’d imagine he thought she was a jew due to her reaction to him. If he’s the best detective Germany has to offer, I’d imagine he has a pretty good instinct for those things.