Huh, I've discovered a line....

[bluegargantua]

Hey,

So Quentin Tarantino is going to re-make an Italian WWII movie called The Glorious Bastards.

Here's the trailer.

So Tarantino always walks a fine line with me. I'm not much for gross-out/gore/splatter so he's really gotta push to make me want to go see his films. The fact that I liked Kill Bill as much as I did (except for the one bit where I knew not to look) is really impressive.

But this one? Man, I don't know. Normally, Nazis are the perfect movie bad guy. Kill all you want, we'll make more. But if the trailer is any indication, there's going to be a fair amount of torture/killing Nazis and that just seems....depressing. I mean, the big draw about Nazis is that you know you're fighting against the darkest tendencies of mankind. So to Tarntino-ize it, now who's the bad guy?

Maybe that's Tarantino making a point. Or maybe the the movie is more of a straight up fight and the commander in the trailer is just talking trash. Either way, this is probably one I'll skip.

Oh, and here's the trailer for the original film. When a guy gets shot, he throws his hands in the air and falls over. Worlds apart from Tarantino.

later
Tom

Comments

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit ambivalent about Tarantino as well. Sometimes I think he tries too damn hard.

[drwex]

I'm ambivalent about some of his work, but rarely about him. I like that he tries hard and tries things outside of norms and pushes boundaries. Everyone has failures and lesser works, but at least he's not churning out sequels, no?

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

Or maybe the the movie is more of a straight up fight and the commander in the trailer is just talking trash.

If it helps, there's plenty of precedent. For instance, in Patton, General Patton's soldiers do not actually, despite his instructions in the opening scene, cut out the Germans' living guts and use them to grease the treads of their tanks.

[bluegargantua]

Yeah, but I probably wouldn't want to see a Tarantino remake of Patton either. :)

Although Samuel L. Jackson as Patton would be pretty awesome...
Tom

[agthorr.livejournal.com]

Although Samuel L. Jackson as Patton would be pretty awesome...

Would you settle for Nick Fury (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Nick_Fury)? :-)

[mikecap.livejournal.com]

So you want to see this then, right?

http://www.deadsnow.com/

[bluegargantua]

Yeah, that's kinda interesting.

later
Tom

[satyrgrl.livejournal.com]

OMG, why has there not been a zombie Nazi movie before now?

[satyrgrl.livejournal.com]

I kinda love Tarantino. Seems to me that what he is good at is making viewers sympathize with someone they would never otherwise sympathize with and view as permissible conduct they would otherwise never consider permissible. Hence, Kill Bill. He knows how to infuse violence with just enough fantasy to make it attractive rather than repulsive. He has a unique way of blurring the line between man and monster. I think this is why he loves bad-guy on bad-guy violence. This movie seems like the perfect vehicle for that. We go in with the Nazis already dehumanized because they do represent the darkest tendencies of humankind. Then the Americans, the heroes (historically, if not in the movie), do completely repulsive things to them that would never be heroic in any other context. As the commander said, they do to the Nazis exactly what the Nazis did to the French. It could almost turn the violence around into a humanizing force, because unless viewers want to see the Americans as non-humans, they will have to accept that the conduct the Nazis have engaged in does not make them any less human than it makes the Americans when the do the exact same things. I guess what I really love about Tarantino is that he turns the spotlight onto the worst we humans have to offer, but in a way that completely obscures the moral certainty that normally allows us to distance ourself from such conduct. Of course, sometimes that does just spill over into one-dimensional, masturbatory violence, but not ever artist is perfect.