I just got done watching Inglorious Basterds.

It was a well made film, it had a lot of tension.
But I wouldn't really call it enjoyable.
There was a really awesome scene where they were in a tavern and you were wondering if the Germans soldiers were going to catch them or not which I enjoyed...but over all it was not fun to watch.

I think the problem was that the Americans in it were really really horrible.
Which, considering they were fighting evil nazis who machine gunned innocent jews and strangled unarmed women to death...is saying something.
The whole gimic had them going around occupied France ambushing and killing german soldiers. This is a pretty silly concept at the best of times and obviously would not have really worked. (Where would the Americans sleep? Who supplies them? What about German reprisals? How do they get informed of where the Germans are to attack them? The film seemed to suggest they just walked around a forest machine gunning any germans they happened across.) The idea that eight guys would have been even the slightest problem for the germans to deal with really stretched my suspension of disbelief.
But silliness aside...the Americans were really fucked up.
Germans they captured they would brutally murder, including a character who enjoyed beating them to death with a baseball bat while the others laughed.
The Americans also had no problem machine gunning women (including fleeing, unarmed civilian women who they shot in the backs.)
As far as I could tell they were exactly as bad as the germans they were fighting.
The final scene of nazi killing carnage made me feel disgusted rather than exhilarated. The close up on the really psychotic expressions on the American soldiers face as they fired into a crowd was repelent to me.
Other than a rather weak "the germans started it" defence, there seems nothing to differentiate the two groups.
Everyone was a psychotic asshole, so why should I feel happy about anything they do? I ended up feeling saddened to see any of them survive by the end.

But what really got me was not just a story telling perspective, it was that suggesting American soldiers were a bad as Nazis...I dunno...that doesn't seem cool. Especially when they made a point that they were Jewish Americans (chosen for that express reason.)
Jews commiting war crimes against Nazis? Yeeeah....that doesn't really sit right with me.
While bad things happen in war, I am sure some American soldiers behaved badly yadda yadda yadda, the idea that they had anything like the systematic and instituationalised evil of the Nazis is kind of offensive. Americans torturing and murdering prisoners? In a War where the Nazis actively murdered prisoners (including at least one occasion when they murdered captured Americans) acting as if both sides were doing it...that is kind of fucked up.

I dont like revenge fantasies...they make me uncomfortable.
I think imagining horrible things you want to do to someone you hate is crass and unconstructive. We all do it sometimes, but we should also probably all try to do it less. I dislike the impotent rage of the revenge fantasy, imagining ghastly acts that you will never have the opportunity to do....and thats what this film felt like to me.
Lots of anger and hate at the Nazis.
But we cant hurt the Nazis.
All those in their regime of any importance are long dead, as are their victims.
History puts them beyond our reach now, so seeing them slaughtered with such relish just felt empty and meaningless. We see Hitler machine gunned in the face but its just a reminder that in real life we didn't get to see him die, or even see his body. We didn't get the chance to parade this greatest villain out in defeat. Doing so now, 70 years later, in a movie...I mean whats the point? I don't feel better for his "death". Why should I? It's not real and never will be. When the American soldier is emptying a machine gun into a dead Hitlers face...I hate the soldier as much as I hate Hitler. In fact perhaps I hate the soldier more, as he is a developed character in the movie, rather than a clich recreation of one of the most often recreated people in history. The soldier has been shown to be monstrous and hateful throughout the film, Hitlers evil is just taken for granted (because its hitler and we all know hes bad.)

Well the film gave me something to talk about, had some good performances and left an impression. You could possibly defend the film on the grounds that it is so ludicrous in its revisionist history, to the point that clearly its not meant to be educational or even taken seriously. It even features a subtle dig at iteself, when the germans watch a film that is basically a long sequence of americans being killed by a german soldier in graphic detail... a reverse of the film we are actually watching. But again its that idea of moral equivalence between America and the Nazis, and I cannot accept that.

So a good film in one sense....
But I didn't enjoy the experience.

The "Jew Hunter" was the best character. The actor did a great job.

Now, I take issue with your use of "a developed character." There were very few of those. The tension was undermined by the fact that characters didn't have time to develop. I didn't bloody care about any of them. The movie should have focused on one thing or the other, but was all over the place.

And there were some points I was cheering for the Germans. Not the Nazis, the Germans, because for the most part? That is how I saw them. Hell, one of them kinda looked like someone I knew, you know, the guy who gets the baseball bat to the head? That character was more like-able than almost anyone else.

And, yeah, what Hark said.

Christoph Waltz put in a great performance, Landa was probably the most developed and complex character in the film, and certainly one of the best that I've seen in a film for a while.

It certainly is telling when the antagonist in a film is far more likeable than any one of the protagonists. I actually felt cheated when Brad Pitt survived.

A part of me wants to believe that the whole thing was intended as a sort of satire, but I don't think Taraentino does satire.

And Hark, at no point did an innocent woman get strangled, Diane Kruger's character was helping the American war criminals.

It is worth watching only because of Landa. Really, a great character well done.

Mr Vast, it is 'Inglourious Basterds' not 'Inglorious Basterds' get your misspelling right! As you know the tension in the basement pub when the German officer joined the spies to play the card game caused my stomach to hurt to a point I had to leave. One thing Tarantino did well was shocking suspense. Something War Horse could have used more of.

Oh there was tension for me too. But not the type that actually mattered. I mean, a bunch of guys I hardly recognize are in a place trying not to get owned by Nazis. The British dude introduced two scenes ago is there and fucks up. Everyone dies.

It isn't that there wasn't tension. It was that I didn't give a damn, so the tension was worthless. To me anyway.

Hell, I watched "Season of the Witch" last night and liked it more than Inglorious Basterds. And that movie has Nicolas Cage in it. Okay, so it was a decent film and the end makes sense of everything. But Basterds? Just... I didn't care.

Well, it did happen in reality, of course not like in the film, but yeah.

Anyway, I didn't see the movie, and I'd rather refrain from making sarcastic comments based on its premise (though I believe I could).

Why isn't this in the hate section?

StykD its not in the hate section because my views on the film were more subtle and nuanced to be classified as hate because...
Okay I will move the thread.

Anyway, I rally liked the Jew Hunter character....okay that sounds wrong....I mean I found him engaging and VERY well played.
I didn't like the bit when he suddenly strangled the woman though, that seemed really out of character. It made him seem less like an affably evil, ruthless nazi and more like some kind of psycho serial killer. You cant just pile random bad actions on a character that dont fit with what we know about him.
The same was true of the German War Hero guy the were making the movie about. He didn't seem a particularly bad guy for most of it (I missed some of the subtitles in his first scene, but I dont think he was presented as unpleasent) and he actually left during the movie, seemingly uncomfortable with seeing the killings he had done in war glorified. Then suddenly he turns all "abusive, date raping boyfriend", getting all threatening and in her face, saying no one tells him no and saying he was glad he hurt her. What the fuck? Did I miss something? Why was he suddenly made into a jerk moments before he was killed off? It felt like they suddenly changed the character in order to make us feel better when she shot him in the back.
Personally, I thought the idea that the guy being used for the propaganda film was an okay guy was really interesting and added a bit of complexity to the situation. But then suddenly it was back to cartoon town so I guess I could feel glad about all the mindless killing? Instead I just felt confused and uncomfortable.

I didn't like Brad Pitt in the film. I felt like I was really supposed to in places, but I found him grating. Not just because he was a psychotic asshole that I wanted to get stabbed, but because the performance was so ridiculous. Everything from his accent to his mannerisms were just so over blown that when he was on screen with the Jew Hunter it felt like two different films going on at once.

Canouvea makes a good point that a lot of the time when the film kept insisting they were killing "nazis" it was mainly just random german soldiers. Now while all german soldiers (and everyone in germany) were in the nazi party (you did not get a choice!), constantly identifying it as killing Nazis made it sound like they were taking out the gestapo or SS rather than regular army grunts who didn't seem to have done anything wrong beyond being conscripted.

Glad other people agree with me. A lot of people seemed to like the film so I was expecting some heat from this one.
One thing that might have detracted for me was that I new some of the plot points (hitler dying for example) before hand. Maybe that is really mind blowing and shocking if you dont know its coming since you would be assuming the mission to kill him is going to fail in some way. Wouldn't change the fact I hated all the characters, or that i was hoping to see the Americans killed more than the Nazis in places.

Well, actually, only about 10% of German society were members of the Nazi party. Not everyone was, not even everyone in the military. Some classes of society were required to be a member in order to continue their job, like teachers for instance, but certainly not everyone.

Brad Pitt was supposed to be funny. He wasn't.

The Jew Hunter was a great character. Terribly evil, but a great character. Only reason worth watching the film. As for him strangling the woman... well... yeah, out of the blue. But he pretty much figured out that she was responsible for killing a bunch of people, maybe even his people (like the officer? Was that fellow part of the Gestapo or something?). It could be explained away, but it wasn't apart from "she got what she deserved". And, well, I kinda agree with that. She had it coming. I didn't like her.

Another German character I had more sympathy for than all the other "good" guys, including the woman who killed him? The new father of a son named "Maximilian". I mean, the fuck? And we aren't supposed by be happy when Landa strangles the life out of her? Because I was glad about it.

The German War hero fellow was supposed to be, well, I don't know... pretending to be a nice guy but only ever really wanted to get in her pants? I guess? Moral of the story is that you can't trust Germans? What? Or that you can't trust men generally? I don't know.

It played almost like the Jews were the bad guys here. Maybe Tarantino was trying to make a social commentary? Maybe he was condemning Israel? Probably not, though, just because, well... yeah. Its Tarantino.

That's not true. While a large portion of the population supported the NSDAP, membership at it's height was about 8 million (I think), making membership less than 10%. The idea actually was to keep membership rather low, being that the Party was intended to be vanguard of the ideology, so membership was strict, and only those who exemplified what the Party was looking for were allowed membership in later years.

Even proper support for the Hitler is hard to judge; he never had the majority of the vote, but his party did receive more votes than any other party by itself. Then they got rid of the vote altogether and we can't really put a number on their popularity. Suffice to say the NSDAP did get some points for taking back land that had been claimed by the French after the Great War, and definitely when France was taken. They suffered when the war started going poorly.

As for the army, in the beginning soldiers were actually banned from voting according the laws put in place by the Weimar Republic, as a way of separating the military from politics. The Nazis scrapped this because they had support from members of the military.

Having said that, they lost significant support from the Wehrmacht during the later years of the war, when the Party started interfering with the military, when they began dragging politics into the military, and especially when inept commanders were put in place because of their political staunchness (it really pissed off the Wehrmacht when Himmler got to call the shots during one stage of the defense of Berlin, but fortunately even he realized that he was in over his head, and command of that particular army group was given to General Heinrici).


Oh, Canuovea already beat me to my point by 3 hours. I just saw "Every German was a Nazi" and jumped on it.

Wow, that makes the movie even dumber than I thought.
20 Harko points each to canouvea and Renard.

I think you've answered the question of why it was mostly the Red Skull that Captain America fought in the movie (though nazi's were mentioned there) and the cartoon.

In the cartoon they have the allies fight the evil organisation Hydra in place of the axis powers.
In a super hero context...it really makes things work better!

Captain America looks laughable in his costume fighting real world soldiers, but fighting the super villains, minions and giant robots of Hydra he fits right in.

The actual Wehrmacht and Waffen SS trained to shoot straight, and Capt. America would always be outnumbered. It would just be a case of flanking him while he deals with soldiers providing suppressing fire, then shooting him in the back or side, or wherever his shield isn't.

The ballistics and terminal velocity of 9mm, 7.92x57, and 7.92x33 rounds aren't really effected by thin layers of spandex.

So it's a good thing that he's facing the minions of supervillains who are notoriously bad shots (if they use firearms at all), and all have this strange sense of honor where they either attack one or two at a time, or refuse to attack from more than one direction at once.

My family history involves someone who had been in the Waffen SS (though he isn't related), and the guy was basically batman with guns. Cap wouldn't stand a chance.