Escape to the Movies: Django Unchained

rbstewart7263

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HellbirdIV said:
Therumancer said:
Bla bla white-supremacist diatribe
While I'm always in favour of telling african-americans to get over themselves and stop acting like all whites everywhere are responsible for slavery, there's a pretty fundamental flaw to your argument;

Two wrongs don't make a right. No amount of previous injustices ever mitigate the evil of a later one. Would you argue the Berlin Wall wasn't too bad because, after all, they were only Germans?

... Also, "black egyptian slavemaster"? Egypt was never a "black" nation. Great Zimbabwe is the greatest "black african" empire to exist, Egypt was inhabited at first by north africans (what we today would consider ethnically Semitic or Persian) and later by Greco-Europeans (Cleopatra was Greek) and today by Arabs.
What about that 100 years where nubians had taken it over? or after when nubians had made themselves culturally indistinguishable from the egyptians?
 

Cheesus Crust

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I really want to try and watch this movie, cause its Tarantino. Saying his movies are good is kinda like saying water is wet. But, it stars Jamie Fox a man who I have seen in three films all of which (IMHO) sucks. Then again Waltz is there so.....

Can someone say something (hopefully someone who isn't being a douche or sarcastic) that'll help me get over this Jamie Fox phobia?
 

rbstewart7263

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Therumancer said:
TAdamson said:
Therumancer said:
I'm not saying Django is a bad movie on it's own merits, it just doesn't deserve credit for being anything other than a blaxploitation action movie, it doesn't go anywhere paticularly new, or say anything remotely relevent.
Apart from being an unflinching portrayal of this dark stain on American history that has not been seen outside of written literature? Dunno.
"Roots", "Amistadt" , we've been here before in the media. It's a fairly popular thing for people to drag up to get some quick contreversy. It's not like this is something people forgot about.

That said, my point isn't so much that the movie was made, it's that it receives any kind of Kudos for it, when it's just a generic violence "Blaxploitation" movie trying to use a really over the top version of historical events to justify the violence. While a decent movie on it's own, you can't say it carries any real menaing on the subject or has any redeeming value because of it. At the end of the day it's just an excuse to have a black dude shoot a bunch of white guys and be 'edgy' because of it.

Tarantino doesn't deserve a whole lot of credit for this one.
I felt the movie covered alot more bases than roots or amistadt. Roots was sort of masturbatory in its depiction of the slave struggle back then. I felt that django did a better job of outlining who all was involved back then in promoting such a culture and who indeed was not. While not one to one accurate all the players are here whether mandingo fights was a confirmed pasttime or if hotboxes were used to subjugate slaves or whatever.

first we have the white slave owners thats obvious all the films dealing with this have those.

But an Uncle Tom who is just as bad if not worse as the slave owners themselves! thats new. Now the white man isnt the only one. Add to that djangos comment about there being nothing lower than a black slave owner(or seller cant recall) and we have a broader view of who all is responsible for this cruelty instead of just the white devil.


It was everyone. Which is an important distinction if you want to get past the usual gradeschool observations of slavery. Ie: swavery is wong....its baaaaaddddd....

Now we can ask some really daring questions. Since white people are taught to on occasion feel really really bad about something that they didnt and in most cases couldnt do because ancestors right? Now we can ask about those whose ancestors were uncle toms about there share of the burden. The ones who sold there own.(To be fair race wasnt exactly the strongest glue that kept any culture together. Dont think africa is the only one) as well as those bastard ass slave owners who sat around drinking sweet tea while other men did there work.

Or maybe we can all finally start afresh. Treat each other as men and women and as equals instead of pointing fingers and guilt tripping and creating separation. Something some of our not so best civil rights people are good at.(spike lee Im lookin at you)
 

rbstewart7263

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Cheesus Crust said:
I really want to try and watch this movie, cause its Tarantino. Saying his movies are good is kinda like saying water is wet. But, it stars Jamie Fox a man who I have seen in three films all of which (IMHO) sucks. Then again Waltz is there so.....

Can someone say something (hopefully someone who isn't being a douche or sarcastic) that'll help me get over this Jamie Fox phobia?
Well he can apparently be a bit of a hypocrite about race issues. Hell make broad sweeping comments regarding whites but will demonize any whites who do the same about black people. Two wrongs and all that but still.

That said I loved jaime in this film I dont let mild racism stop me from being friends with certain people so it was no problem to look past that.
 

Cheesus Crust

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rbstewart7263 said:
Cheesus Crust said:
I really want to try and watch this movie, cause its Tarantino. Saying his movies are good is kinda like saying water is wet. But, it stars Jamie Fox a man who I have seen in three films all of which (IMHO) sucks. Then again Waltz is there so.....

Can someone say something (hopefully someone who isn't being a douche or sarcastic) that'll help me get over this Jamie Fox phobia?
Well he can apparently be a bit of a hypocrite about race issues. Hell make broad sweeping comments regarding whites but will demonize any whites who do the same about black people. Two wrongs and all that but still.

That said I loved jaime in this film I dont let mild racism stop me from being friends with certain people so it was no problem to look past that.
Would you say he delivered a great performance? I mean, there's this thing with Tarantino where anyone who stars in his film seems to become better actors or actresses (at least better than they usually are). I'm just hoping it rubs off on Jamie Fox.

Could you be a bit more precise on what made you like Jamie in this film?
 

rbstewart7263

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Cheesus Crust said:
rbstewart7263 said:
Cheesus Crust said:
I really want to try and watch this movie, cause its Tarantino. Saying his movies are good is kinda like saying water is wet. But, it stars Jamie Fox a man who I have seen in three films all of which (IMHO) sucks. Then again Waltz is there so.....

Can someone say something (hopefully someone who isn't being a douche or sarcastic) that'll help me get over this Jamie Fox phobia?
Well he can apparently be a bit of a hypocrite about race issues. Hell make broad sweeping comments regarding whites but will demonize any whites who do the same about black people. Two wrongs and all that but still.

That said I loved jaime in this film I dont let mild racism stop me from being friends with certain people so it was no problem to look past that.
Would you say he delivered a great performance? I mean, there's this thing with Tarantino where anyone who stars in his film seems to become better actors or actresses (at least better than they usually are). I'm just hoping it rubs off on Jamie Fox.

Could you be a bit more precise on what made you like Jamie in this film?
Personality. Like he just sort of brought out his A game for this one really. (gotta think of more to say....um...) Id say your right he probably is somewhat better for the part and from being in a tarantino film.

Tell you what. go see it. if its a waste of cash than I dont know you can inbox me and be like "OMFG YOU WASTED MY TIME GOFRGAMAGA!!!
 

Cheesus Crust

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rbstewart7263 said:
Cheesus Crust said:
rbstewart7263 said:
Cheesus Crust said:
I really want to try and watch this movie, cause its Tarantino. Saying his movies are good is kinda like saying water is wet. But, it stars Jamie Fox a man who I have seen in three films all of which (IMHO) sucks. Then again Waltz is there so.....

Can someone say something (hopefully someone who isn't being a douche or sarcastic) that'll help me get over this Jamie Fox phobia?
Well he can apparently be a bit of a hypocrite about race issues. Hell make broad sweeping comments regarding whites but will demonize any whites who do the same about black people. Two wrongs and all that but still.

That said I loved jaime in this film I dont let mild racism stop me from being friends with certain people so it was no problem to look past that.
Would you say he delivered a great performance? I mean, there's this thing with Tarantino where anyone who stars in his film seems to become better actors or actresses (at least better than they usually are). I'm just hoping it rubs off on Jamie Fox.

Could you be a bit more precise on what made you like Jamie in this film?
Personality. Like he just sort of brought out his A game for this one really. (gotta think of more to say....um...) Id say your right he probably is somewhat better for the part and from being in a tarantino film.

Tell you what. go see it. if its a waste of cash than I dont know you can inbox me and be like "OMFG YOU WASTED MY TIME GOFRGAMAGA!!!
Nah, even if I didn't like him I probably wouldn't go that far, I'd just probably point out what made Jamie Fox lame, if I find his performance wanting. My only real issue is that Jamie might ruin the film for me cause I love Waltz and Tarantino's works.

Besides, I can't really bring myself to berserk on someone who has one of the best characters from Boardwalk as his profile pic.
 

Cheesus Crust

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Therumancer said:
bastardofmelbourne said:
Man, why the Bane hate?

I get that you didn't like Batman, Bob, but you're just trying to rile up the fans who did like it now. It's crass, and it came out of nowhere in the middle of an otherwise fine review.

you didn't even really make a joke, it was just "Bane sucked! On with the review."
Since I'm done with my other arguements (mentioned I was withdrawing, and now the newly created troll accounts are appearing to egg me on.. soo) I thought I'd address this.

For all the things I disagree with Bob on, he seems to approach this from a very specific angle, that's hard to disagree with. Ask yourself what the differance between Bane, and say Red Skull and Loki (just to use the other super villains) is? The answer is simply that The Red Skull and Loki were played well, and very much like the comic characters. The actors stepped into the role of an existing character and played it to the hilt and were able to convince you that they were a well known super villain, more or less as you'd expect them to be. Bane in comparison isn't anything like his comics counterpart, he doesn't look like him, doesn't act like him, and is carrying an agenda that isn't even a Bane-type plot. Bane also doesn't belong there as a movie villain, because he's not the villain, he's the henchman OF the villain who doesn't appear until the end of the final act (I won't give any spoilers for the moment).

I'll also say something you rarely hear from me, but a lot from Bob. The character was also "white washed". See, I go off about cases where it's not true, or being read into or projected onto something, but I don't agree with changing the ethnicity of established characters. All of the things I said about changing Heimdall's ethnicity, or using Nick Fury's "Ultimate" counterpart, or whatever else apply here in reverse. Bane is one of the cooler Latino super villains out there, the fact that he's spanish, wears the Lunchadore mask, and got tough in the south of the border third world are all part of what makes the character who he is. Turning him into a big, muscular, white dude with a british accent is absolutly stupid.

I get that the Nolanverse was taking certain liberties with characters to make them a bit more realistic (as hard pressed as I am to use that term), but where the essence of most of the Batman rogue's gallery survived, Bane wasn't anything like "Bane" he was just some big, muscular, kung-fu guy in a scary mask. It was the kind of role that might have once been played by Bolo Yeung in kung-fu movies. Entertaining as a villain, creates jeopardy for the hero, but the thing is this is supposed to be an iconic character.


Now, I'm not saying that "Dark Knight Rises" was a bad movie, or anything of the sort. Just like I don't say "Thor" was a bad movie for changing Heimdall's ethnicity or anything. I'm not even saying Bane didn't fit well into that movie. However when your doing a comparison of the best movie villains of the year, along with two actors who were able to play their character as it was created (the sign of acting abillity) as opposed to more or less having something written specifically around him, Bane *does* fall short... even if you liked "his" movie overall. On top of that, as I pointed out above, Bane isn't the villain of the movie, he doesn't belong on villain lists. He's a henchman, an attack dog. I won't say more about it for spoiler reasons though. In the comics he's a villain in his own right, here he is not.
I agree. Bane in the movie at first struck me as a villain with an agenda, but considering the whole nuclear fusion device blowing up Gotham, his whole anarchy shtick sorta felt stupid. I'm not very familiar with Bane but from what I hear he's more than just muscle, which isn't how he comes off in this movie more than halfway in.

PS I might not know Bane beyond what I've seen in the animated series, but I am bothered by the fact that he isn't Latino. Also, would you mind sharing your opinion on the person who plays the main villain? Cause I for one did not like the person they cast to play that role.
 

Jfswift

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I was wondering if that movie was any good. I saw one preview for it recently but that was it.
 

bastardofmelbourne

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Therumancer said:
I haven't got a problem with Moviebob not liking Bane as a villain, especially not if he's got sound reasoning for doing so. He's a movie critic; he's entitled to an opinion.

The reason I felt like making the post was because it was such a non sequitur. He just stops an entirely unrelated review to take a jab at a villain he sorta didn't like from a totally different movie. It's like...what are you trying to do there, Bob? It felt like he was just trying to make Batman fanboys angry. That's why I thought it was crass.

It'd be as if he stopped a review of a Zelda game to say "By the way, Master Chief is boring and Halo sucked."
 

Pheonixe

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I know this is a bit old and there's probably nobody who will ever read this, but...

"..aiming to rip the scab off of American history's original sin." (4:25-4:27)

Bob, you probably didn't put too much thought into this statement, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth. The genocide of the many indigenous peoples of America and the way many are still discriminated against today is far more often completely overlooked or forgotten about, as your own statement demonstrates. I'm sure you didn't mean any harm by it, just...be careful, alright?

ghostchild55 said:
...
Never mind the fact that America is responsible for conquering the indigenous peoples; slaughtering thousands all so they can claim the land as their own. Never mind the fact that America bombed civilian locations killing thousands in the initial explosions while countless others died of radiation poisoning and injuries. All of that is rarely if ever touched upon. If it is it never comes with the same pathos that anything having to do with slavery or black oppression does.

It's like the Resident Evil 5 racism scandal. No one gave two shits when a white dude was killing infected Spanish villagers but the moment it's a white dude killing infected African villagers, suddenly it's racist.

The idea of white guilt or expecting whites to feel guilty is inherently racist in itself and only helps to keep racism and racial stereotypes alive. The movie should be celebrated for being an unflinching look at a brutal period in American history and allowing introspection about the history of the US and the sins its fathers committed. But it shouldn't be praised for making people feel guilty about having a certain skin color. "You're white you should loathe yourself for what your people did" is a little unnecessary.
I'm happy someone said it somewhere within these five pages. I agree.
 

ghostchild55

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Pheonixe said:
I know this is a bit old and there's probably nobody who will ever read this, but...

"..aiming to rip the scab off of American history's original sin." (4:25-4:27)

Bob, you probably didn't put too much thought into this statement, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth. The genocide of the many indigenous peoples of America and the way many are still discriminated against today is far more often completely overlooked or forgotten about, as your own statement demonstrates. I'm sure you didn't mean any harm by it, just...be careful, alright?

ghostchild55 said:
...
Never mind the fact that America is responsible for conquering the indigenous peoples; slaughtering thousands all so they can claim the land as their own. Never mind the fact that America bombed civilian locations killing thousands in the initial explosions while countless others died of radiation poisoning and injuries. All of that is rarely if ever touched upon. If it is it never comes with the same pathos that anything having to do with slavery or black oppression does.

It's like the Resident Evil 5 racism scandal. No one gave two shits when a white dude was killing infected Spanish villagers but the moment it's a white dude killing infected African villagers, suddenly it's racist.

The idea of white guilt or expecting whites to feel guilty is inherently racist in itself and only helps to keep racism and racial stereotypes alive. The movie should be celebrated for being an unflinching look at a brutal period in American history and allowing introspection about the history of the US and the sins its fathers committed. But it shouldn't be praised for making people feel guilty about having a certain skin color. "You're white you should loathe yourself for what your people did" is a little unnecessary.
I'm happy someone said it somewhere within these five pages. I agree.

Like you said Bob's statement "aiming to rip the scab off American history's original sin." just leaves a sour taste. Statements like that are some of the reasons I have a problem with majority of Bob's sociopolitical views. It comes off as hollow and dishonest. Like a religious person who is being decent not because they genuinely want to love their fellow man but because God says you have to. He attempts to apologize for the color of his skin and his nationality by discussing "original sins" and praising the film for not "guilt shielding" US audiences. He continually asserts that it's better they portray white American's as villainous cartoon caricatures just so white US audiences can be robbed "of the comfort that slavery was the crime of "some" white Americans."

It's all just guilt by association and reverse racism. It's not progressive, it's counter productive. But what makes it all the more hollow is the fact that he says "American history's original sin." Ignoring previous atrocities committed to other cultures by America's forefathers; only because we are constantly reminded of America's involvement in slavery and it is often looked upon as the worst crime in the history of the country. It's unfair for starters to expect guilt and shame based on ones race, but even more so to place greater importance on America's oppression of one group over its oppression of others.

"A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man?s sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man?s nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason." -Ayn Rand
 

DarkhoIlow

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I'm really looking forward to seeing this one once it comes to theaters in my country.

Happy New Year Bob! :)
 

Therumancer

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rbstewart7263 said:
[

I felt the movie covered alot more bases than roots or amistadt. Roots was sort of masturbatory in its depiction of the slave struggle back then. I felt that django did a better job of outlining who all was involved back then in promoting such a culture and who indeed was not. While not one to one accurate all the players are here whether mandingo fights was a confirmed pasttime or if hotboxes were used to subjugate slaves or whatever.

first we have the white slave owners thats obvious all the films dealing with this have those.

But an Uncle Tom who is just as bad if not worse as the slave owners themselves! thats new. Now the white man isnt the only one. Add to that djangos comment about there being nothing lower than a black slave owner(or seller cant recall) and we have a broader view of who all is responsible for this cruelty instead of just the white devil.


It was everyone. Which is an important distinction if you want to get past the usual gradeschool observations of slavery. Ie: swavery is wong....its baaaaaddddd....

Now we can ask some really daring questions. Since white people are taught to on occasion feel really really bad about something that they didnt and in most cases couldnt do because ancestors right? Now we can ask about those whose ancestors were uncle toms about there share of the burden. The ones who sold there own.(To be fair race wasnt exactly the strongest glue that kept any culture together. Dont think africa is the only one) as well as those bastard ass slave owners who sat around drinking sweet tea while other men did there work.

Or maybe we can all finally start afresh. Treat each other as men and women and as equals instead of pointing fingers and guilt tripping and creating separation. Something some of our not so best civil rights people are good at.(spike lee Im lookin at you)
Well, I think the problem is that there aren't enough people who actually want to strive for equality or co-existance. There is always the entire issue of someone feeling that they need to be special for religious, social, cultural, etc... differances. It's kind of odd, but for something better to come along really bad things need to happen to basically force everyone together. This is one of the reasons why I am such a bastard in a lot of my politics (and get called racist, bigot, etc...) of course because of the basic realization that certain cultures and points of view need to basically need to be broken if we're ever going to acheive a human unity.

To put things into perspective, you'll notice that pretty much every science fiction concept which shows a hypothetical situation where humanity has gotten together as one, and racism and the kinds of tensions we have now are a thing of the past, involves some kind of apocolypse, extremely strong handed facism in the beginning, or even a combination of both to get things to that point. Typically explained through historical exposition which is overlooked by in favor of the present tense of the story. A good exmaple (but hardly the only one) with be Star Trek, where basically you had an apocolypse, a eugenics based war, and then finally a facist regime that basically told everyone "adapt to our society or die" and followed through with the mass murder. The result was the development of The Federation, and a sort of utopian period of human history, it's easy to overlook that cost, and to be honest a lot of later Trek writers tried to get around or re-invent that side of things. Roddenberry said a lot about it back when he did the first episode of "The Next Generation" which was called "Encounter At Farpoint" with Q's little history lesson about what assholes humans had to be to get to the point they were at. While Roddenberry was no longer around he had also apparently already planned out the basic themes there and the general ending for the show, which was Q's revelation about humanity being tested due it's potential to evolve to be even greater than the seemingly omniponent Q continuum. The basic point being that Q was being such a complete arsehole, and even killing millions upon millions of people at times (by say starting wars with The Borg) to pretty much make humanity ready to fit in at an even higher level. A lot more can and be said about that but it's food for thought when it comes to your last bit about everyone getting along. The bottom line is that it's a sad, sick, reality but the bottom line is that I think before any good can happen a lot of evil has to happen first, people are generally not capable of just evolving on their own through the passage of time to put everything aside and blend into one culture, as much as most people would like to see it happen on an academic level. On a lot of levels tolerance becomes counter-productive to creating a society where tolerance is viable (if you catch what I mean). I think a lot of principles of countries like the USA, especially the left wing, are good ones, but happen to be ahead of their time, we're a few steps, and a lot of nastiness, before such a point of view is practical. It's sad when being good is "out of context" to the rest of society... of course this is going beyond the actual point of the discussion, you just made me think of it.

At any rate, in the big picture I think my problem with "Django" is that it throws out just enough to have pretensions of being something other than a blaxploitation movie, with 'edgy' content, while never rising above that level. A few comments here and there for the sake of claiming depth really doesn't give it that much depth. Especially when you get down to the bottom line that it presents this as being something worthy of vengeance, at a time when what society needs is for the people victimized by this to just get the hell over it and fit into the rest of a society that has more or less re-defined itself and bent over backwards to allow it.

Also while irrelevent to the basic point, or my feelings on the subject in a "practical" sense, I think half the problem is that slavery is usually not presented with much context. Generally speaking slavery is always presented in very simplistic terms, focusing entirely on the idea of one person owning another. Little is ever said about why things got to that point to begin with.

We can get into the entire issue of changing morality, wars, etc... but the bottom line is that in the ancient world slavery largely came to exist when you had one people defeat another. Just left to their own devices the defeated would simply re-build and attack the people who defeated them, survivors seeking vengeance if nothing else. This pretty much gave your ancient civilization the question of what to do with the survivors of a defeated enemy, you could for example put them all to the sword, but that's not as easy to do as you might think, and even ancient warrior codes (and religions) tended to have rules about reckless slaughter of those who couldn't currently fight back. Slavery was largely a solution to this as it allowed a people to be "broken" and remove them from being a threat, especially when it came ot large empires, scattering the people accross a huge landmass in of itself was a massive weapon. You wound up with no enemies, and of course a way of controlling the defeated.

This is of course very basic, and differant ancient cultures got to this point, and were differant in their specifics, but that's more or less how it started. Of course once you had slaves you had issues like what to do with their children, since the owners of the slaves became responsible for the care and feeding of the children leading to questions like whether those children were slaves, ir should rather be considered indentured until they paid off the amount of money invested in them. Again, differance places handlded it differant ways. With slaves acknowleged to be property and traded, you also inevitably started to see operations and even entire military campaigns intended just to take slaves and make money.

The point of this though is that I think half the problem with even addressing this issue is the elementary school handling of slavery in general as in "it's evil". Presented in context, one has to ask things like oh "is it more evil than genocide?". In response to "it's better to be dead than a slave" there is also the question that can be asked of nearly anyone if they themselves would rather not exist, because if someone had embraced that, we all pretty much have forefathers who would have been wiped out by now, meaning most of us, and entire ethnicities, cultures, and civilizations wouldn't exist at all.

In the context of even American slavery, the slaves basically came from tribal infighting, and Arabs making inroads against non-islamic savages and wiping them out/absorbing them, and all kinds of things. When you say slavery is wrong, it can be argued anyone screaming about injustice against their forefathers is basically argueing against their own existance since the alternative would have likely been their death in some petty little skirmish or another.

Most notably there probably wouldn't be any white people at all, since the Romans would have killed every one of us. They really did a job on the peoples that grew to become what we consider "white".

The basic point is that the perfect solution of course would be for us to all live in utopian harmony, under one culture, full of peace, understanding, and plenty, so there would be no war, and issues like this would never come up, since it all starts with people disagreeing enough to come to conflict begin with.

Of course the bottom line is that humanity evolved in seperate groups, everyone became their own distinct flavor of asshole, and that's not going to change until the king of all assholes pretty much shows up to out bastard everyone else and force everyone together.

At the end of the day movies like "Django" are intended to make money off of being inflammatory and divisive. That doesn't mean they aren't still good movies though. It just means that there is no real constructive message present, and anyone tryin to lionize it on those levels is simply wrong. It teaches nothing, it presents nothin in the way of a valid viewpoint or commentary, it does however have some entertaining fight scenes. Claiming Django is some kind of message movie worthy of all kinds of praise, is like saying the same thing about the "Saw" movies and how they teach viewers to appreciate life more... no they do not, they are pure out wrong, and are entertaining for that reason (if your into that) you watch a movie like "Saw" because it's twelve differant kinds of screwed up at once. The same can be said about "Django", the set up it's socially relevent, it's an excuse to watch a dude shoot a bunch of people and go "wow, they will never top that... oh look they just did". I put it in the same basic catagory as "Machete" or "Hobo With A Shotgun" all pretensions aside, if you think there is actually a message there other than a thinly vieled attempt to string together a bunch of "WTF did I just see" moments (like dudes being hunt from the ceilling with nooses attached to crossbow bolts, or some dude swinging from one floor to another out the window of a building using some other dude's intestines as a rope), I think you have a problem. Basically if Django is supposed to be a deep, and important commentary on slavery, I actually think we should probably consider "Saw" the deepest and most socially relevent thing ever, since it probably spelled out/repeted it's message more... you know, instead of just saying it's a thinly vieled excuse to watch people be forced to torture themselves to death and make the audience oooh and ahh about how wrong it is that someone filmed these scenes.
 

Therumancer

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Cheesus Crust said:
[

I agree. Bane in the movie at first struck me as a villain with an agenda, but considering the whole nuclear fusion device blowing up Gotham, his whole anarchy shtick sorta felt stupid. I'm not very familiar with Bane but from what I hear he's more than just muscle, which isn't how he comes off in this movie more than halfway in.

PS I might not know Bane beyond what I've seen in the animated series, but I am bothered by the fact that he isn't Latino. Also, would you mind sharing your opinion on the person who plays the main villain? Cause I for one did not like the person they cast to play that role.

SPOILERS BELOW:

Basically they tied it into the whole reboot of "The League Of Assasins" or ummm "League Of Shadows". The basic idea here is that Ras got fixated on needing to destroy Gotham City in paticular as a hive of scum and villainy, and died in doing so. Talia is trying to complete this objective. The whole thing is a continuation of Ras' plan from the first movie combined with wanting to kill the dude who killed her daddy, Bane is just her #1 thug in this, and doesn't really have any real personal objectives. The whole bit about "Anarchy" is to kind of prove a point to Batman, and break him, showing him the "true face" of Gotham, which is why they don't just blow up the city when they have the abillity to do it, The whole idea at that point is to have forced him to watch the entire thing from prison. It's intended to be pretty personal, and to be fair works reasonably well with Batman when you get past the whole attempt to be realistic bit. After all villains being obssessed with Batman is oftentimes the result of their downfall, the bad guys don't ever just pull of his mask or put a bullet in the guy, no they need to make him watch their plan and watch the city burn, or strap him to a giant penny and flip it with a catapult (or other similar "easily escaped deathtrap").

To be honest I think one of the big failures with "Rises", well comparitively since it was still a good movie, was that they started to use too much "high camp" logic to hold it together, when the point of Nolan's movies was supposed to be his attempt to make it seem less comic-like and more like it could be remotely plausible. Basically the way things were defined Bane/Talia should have just put a bullet in Batman's head and set the bomb off ASAP, that would have been following the sensibilities of the rest of the movies if they got that far. Instead they acted like a couple of loony comic characters while still trying to come accross as having plausible motives.

As far as the actress in question goes, I'll say that I can't say much for or against her, she pretty much plays a bland, stock character, up until the very end of the movie and then gets to dust off the "super villainess" in such a limited context she never gets a chance to do anything with the role. It's pretty just just "hey, Bane was just the muscle, the real villain was Talia Al Ghul". The attempt being to tie it to the first movie, while invoking another character people would know from the comics... but it just didn't work that well. The end result is that the movie succeeds but it really has little to do with the strength of the villains or the actor's abillities to "sell" established characters.

See, Heath Ledger and Jack Nicholson kind of deserve their praise as epic Batman villains because they both managed to convince you they were "The Joker" as per an established character they were playing. I give Jack more credit because his "Joker" (allowing for the script) was a hell of a lot closer to the established character than Heath's, Heath deserves credit mostly because he managed to take something that was unlike the comics and still make you think it could be that character, showing off a truely phenomenal abillity to sell the role. In comparison Bane was never sold, he was never anything like Bane in the comics.


As far as what Bane is like in the comics, a short (which is still pretty long) synopsis would be to say he's this huge, dumb-looking, meathead who is actually supposed to be super smart on the level of other DC master villains. He's on Batman's level for planning, tactics, deductive reasoning, etc. He's also got "Venom" which is a super steroid that gives him a degree of super strength, while pretty lame compared to other DC heroes, it's FAR greater than any normal person's, and also means he's one of the few Batman villains with a bona-fide super abillity as opposed to being some skilled/smart but ordinary person on a costume, albiet Bane's power is derived from technology. Even without "Venom" (which he does away with after a while) he's supposed to still be an incredible threat.

Bane is kind of his own man, though he does work for other villains on occasion, but rarely just as a thug. At the most henchman like, he's one of those high-end guys that you know is going to be trouble up there with "Killshot" or "Deathstroke", or even "Cain". He's run his own gangs, and also been involved in mercenary work for guys like Lex Luthor, during the "No Man's Land" story arc, he's involved because he was basically paid enough money to found his own small nation in order to destroy the Gotham City property records as part of the whole plan for Lex Corp to take over the city.

Bane also has a sort of respectful relationship with Batman, he's not a rampaging monster. Batman respects that Bane has beaten him in the past, and in many cases the two have worked out compromises rather than coming to blows. For example when he runs into Bane in "No Man's Land" they talk to each other and Batman pretty much convinces him it's
not worth it.

To put things into perspective, when Bane beat Batman, he did it by being able to deduce Batman's identity (which while not uncommon now, was a bigger deal then), he then set up a massive breakout and pretty much made it easy for Batman to find the guys who escaped, so he wound up fighting most of the "names" in his Rogues Gallery one after another, after another (all while suffering from the Flu if I remember, to make it worse). When Batman finally returned to Wayne Manor, beaten to hell, Bane was waiting for him, at full strength, with Venom... it's pretty famous now how that one ended.

In short, slavish brute for Talia Al Ghul is not "Bane".

To be fair though I think over the decades "Bane" has turned into a kind of 'B' or even 'C' lister due to horrible writing, which might explain why the movie version was so awful. I think some of the cartoons and such kind of are to blame where they portray Bane as more of a mook.... when really the entire point was that he looks like "Zippy The Pinhead" but he's arguably as smart as Batman is.

In the comics (and in the cartoons) Ras Al Ghul oftentimes has a huge, muscular, dude, oftentimes with a turban (whom he replaces occasionally) that acts as his bodyguard, and the guard usually does pretty well. Sort of like having an entire Joker Squad of minions in one guy. It seems to me like they basically turned Bane into the latest incarnation of that goon, which really is unworthy of Bane. Of course having some anonymous muscle man fighting Batman wouldn't have made for good pre-release hype, and since they wanted to have Batman defeated and come back, the quintesstial person to do that is "Bane", since at this point even non-comics readers at least know the basics of "Knightfall" even if they don't know crap about how it all played out (with Azrael/Azbat, Lady Shiva retraining Bruce, the showdown with Azbat in the batcave, etc...).
 

Norman Bates

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Aug 12, 2012
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esperandote said:
Whats so awesome/cool about that guy telling his thoughts with the back to the camera?
Emotions are primarily communicated through facial expressions and the eyes in particular, so what's impressive is that Waltz was able to communicate his thoughts without using the actors' primary tools.

EDIT: although, having a really good hat can help in these kinds of cases (see Jack Nicholson's performance in Chinatown)
 

Ukomba

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Oct 14, 2010
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Didn't I see this on Boondocks, like, a while ago? Like, even to the point of having the same last name? Catcher Freeman, Django Freeman. Not that that's a bad thing, but was that the inspiration?