YMMV / Inglourious Basterds

• Accidental Innuendo: "Wait for the cream."
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Who are the actual protagonists? Are the Basterds the protagonists? Shosanna? Is Landa the Villain Protagonist? Or is Raine the Villain Protagonist? Can any of the characters be considered genuine good guys whom the audience can root for? Are the Basterds (especially Aldo and Hugo, the non-Jewish members) Anti Heroes, Sociopathic Heroes, or just sociopaths?
  • Also, Fredrick Zoller. Is he a Dogged Nice Guy trying to help out his crush, only to get manipulated and shot over it? Or is he a creepy, annoying Stalker with a Crush, hounding Shosanna (a woman who repeatedly shows that she has no interest in him), believing that due to his fame, he is entitled to get whatever he wants? His last scene where he yells at and threatens her after getting fed up with her rejections lends credence to the latter interpretation, but on the other hand, some of his lines seem practically lifted from a cliched romance, and Tarantino has stated that, in any other time, they probably would have ended up together. Or is he a traumatized soldier trying to get away from his dark past through Shosanna, and watching himself kill repeatedly pushes him over the edge?
  • Bridget's motives in aiding the Allies are never stated; they could plausibly be anything. Is she a courageous and committed anti-Nazi? A bored actress who became a spy for the kicks? A pragmatic, female version of Landa who is trying to secure a life for herself in the inevitable Allied victory?
  • Does Landa recognize Shosanna in the restaurant, or does he simply treat every conversation as an investigation? Does he initially suspect her and get convinced by her cover story? Or does he in fact confirm her identity and do nothing about it because her cinema is being used for the premiere? If so, is his question he forgot to ask a subtle dig that means he plans to keep an eye on her?
  • Was Landa ever a true believer in Nazi ideology and made a deal at the end because he knew the war was a lost cause, or is he simply a psychopath that was born in the right place at the right time and used Nazi ideology as a means to terrorize others?
  • Did Hellstrom only figure out that Hicox was an imposter after his revealing drink order - or was he fairly confident he's dealing with a spy all along, and the botched gesture was less of a final clue and more of a distastefully blunt blunder ruining the whole subtle cat and mouse game he was playing with Hicox?
• Alternative Joke Interpretation: When Landa over-laughs at Bridget's excuse for her broken leg, is he just toying with her, or is he laughing that that's the best excuse she could come up with?
• Applicability: The Nazis are utterly and completely destroyed by Jews in a movie theater. Now, remind us, what did Hollywood do to the legacy of the Nazis?
• Award Snub:
  • Losing Best Original Screenplay Academy Award to The Hurt Locker. It also lost Best Picture, though it wasn't the favorite.
  • Other than Christoph Waltz, many found the best performance in the movie to be that of Mélanie Laurent's Shosanna, who was nominated neither for Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress by the Oscars, despite some thinking she would've easily been a top five contender either way.
  • Diane Kruger was also nominated for a SAG Award for Supporting Actress that failed to translate to an eventual Oscar nod.
• Awesome Music: Oh so much. If there's one thing you can expect from a Tarantino film (well, you can expect many things out of a Tarantino film), it's an awesome soundtrack. "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)" by David Bowie stands out during a truly awesome montage sequence at the beginning of the movie premiere. You can watch Tarantino absolutely nerd out about the soundtrack here.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Shosanna's Imagine Spot of Goebbels banging Francesca Mondino doggy-style makes more sense in the script. The narration describes Francesca as both Goebbels' favorite actress and his mistress. But without any narration, we get introduced to Francesca, then immediately get a very awkward sex scene, and an equally awkward cut back to the present.
• Catharsis Factor: Admit it; seeing the Nazis get what is coming to them from a bunch of Jewish-American soldiers is very satisfying, and even more so seeing Hitler himself not being subject to a Foregone Conclusion.
• Crazy Is Cool:
  • Hugo Stiglitz, the Devious Daggers-wielding German Nazi-killer.
  • Shosanna Dreyfus's audacious act of revenge, especially when donning her blood-red dress and lipstick to the sound of David Bowie.
• Creepy Awesome: Hans Landa is a terrifyingly competent figure whose famous deduction skills rightfully horrify those around him.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: Lampshaded in a subtle, creepy way: there is a scene where Germans are watching a Nazi propaganda movie about a German sniper who killed massive numbers of Allied troops while behind enemy lines. They are laughing and enjoying themselves watching people from our side get slaughtered, while you're laughing and enjoying yourself watching people from their side get slaughtered. However, some audiences even laughed and hooted while the Allies were being slaughtered. Laughter, she is an infectious drug, is she not? And the funniest part is that both reactions were probably predicted and intended.
• Draco in Leather Pants: The more psychotic Basterds like Sgt. Donny Donowitz and Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz tend to have their more negative traits glossed over because their victims are Nazis. This is at least somewhat understandable — most are Jewish Americans lashing out against the literal Nazis, after all. Then, you get the people using the Basterds' brutality to justify the Nazi villains like Col. Hans Landa and his men. Yes, really.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Lt. Archie Hicox. He only gets about 15 minutes of screen-time, but Michael Fassbender makes every second count.
  • Shosanna, she is one of the first-billed characters, but has far less screen-time than many of the others in the film, and yet still gets credit for having the most thorough character arc of the story and a very powerful performance.
  • Donny, Hugo, and Bridget also make plenty of lists of the film's top 10 characters for a mixture of charming performances and awesome moments.
• Evil Is Cool: Hans Landa. Despite being a Nazi officer, his intelligence, smooth and confident demeanor, and polyglot ability serve to make him one of the (if not the) most memorable characters in the movie.
• Fanfic Fuel: The Basterds have spent years killing their way across Europe in Terror Hero style, and given how only a small, small fraction of their exploits are shown onscreen (with several group members getting little screentime or combat scenes), imagining their early adventures can be pretty cool.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: There are some cut moments from the script that fans feel would have fit really well in the finished movie.
  • Donny having all of his neighbors sign the names of their loved ones who died or vanished in The Holocaust on his baseball bat is a scene that could have added a lot to his character.
  • Utivich serving as the chauffeur for the team infiltrating the cinema (despite not being able to drive) is viewed as something which could have fleshed out his character and cleared up the confusion behind how he's present in the final act, but several other team members aren't.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Shosanna tells Frederick to go to Vichy if he wants a French girlfriend. Vichy was the location of the Nazi collaborationist French government during German occupation.
  • Hicox tries to cover for his strange accent by claiming that he was born in the shadow of Piz Palu. The mountain is located on the border of Switzerland and Italy, so people from this region would have a different accent than someone from Germany. And Swiss-German is practically a different language.
  • After catching the Basterds pretending to be Italians, Landa pours Aldo and Utivich glasses of Chianti, an Italian wine.
  • When Zoller praises the "mountain movies" starring actress Leni Riefenstahl, Shosanna makes a derogatory comment against her. Riefenstahl also directed a number of Nazi propaganda films, most infamously Triumph of the Will.
  • Bridget Von Hammersmark is wearing a name card in the game that says 'Mata Hari'. Of course, everyone knows that Mata Hari was a glamorous entertainer who led a double life as a wartime spy. However, contrary to the popular legend, Mata Hari was not a particularly competent spy and didn't contribute much to the war effort. Foreshadowing that Bridget will ultimately meet a similar fate.
  • Aldo greets Landa in Italian with "buongiorno." Even if his accent weren't awful, he's also using the wrong word. It means "good morning." A native Italian speaker would use the greeting "buonasera" in the evening.
• He Really Can Act:
  • Eli Roth earned lots of praise for his small but memorable role as Donnie the Bear Jew. Turns out being directed by Quentin Tarantino brings out the best in everyone.
  • Diane Kruger was mostly reduced to doing roles that catered to her beauty such as Troy and National Treasure before this movie. Here, she shows off plenty of charisma and comic timing as Bridget von Hammersmark, proving that she had more to offer as an actress.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In Landa's conversation with Shosanna, he tosses some casual racism her way about her black lover Marcel. Christoph Waltz's next Quentin Tarantino film Django Unchained has him as one of the few non-racists in the cast, and he spends the majority of the film helping a black man.
    • Similarly, Fur Elise shows up in both movies. In Inglourious Basterds, it is used non-diegetically in the opening scene to herald Landa's arrival. In Django Unchained, it is used diegetically in Waltz's character Schultz's penultimate scene and completely unnerves him.
  • German actor August Diehl played Gestapo Major Dieter Hellstrom in this movie. He then went on to play two real-life figures detested by the Nazis: Karl Marx in The Young Karl Marx and a conscientious objector, Franz Jägerstätter, in A Hidden Life.
  • Landa's brief interaction with LaPadite's daughters becomes this after Spectre in 2015, where Blofeld mentions at one point to Madeleine Swann that he visited her house to see her father one time.
• Ho Yay: When Hitler congratulates Goebbels on Nation's Pride, he addresses him as "my dear." Goebbels is so overcome with emotion at hearing this that he begins to weep.
• Iron Woobie: Shosanna had her entire family slaughtered right in front of her, literally running for her life for who knows how many miles, and now lives in fear that she could be discovered. But she keeps a cool head and low profile, and her only display of this angst is a brief sob when she's finally free from Landa's interrogation. She also immediately comes up with a plan to get her revenge after this conversation.
• It Was His Sled: The movie is an alternate history where Hitler, Goebbels, and loads of Nazis perish as Shosanna burns her cinema down with them inside it.
• Love to Hate: Hans Landa. He's an absolutely ruthless cold-blooded Nazi, but Christoph Waltz's amazing performance makes him so enjoyable to watch, even as he's doing horrible things.
• Like You Would Really Do It: We all know that Hitler died in his bunker in Berlin in 1945, and most of the Nazi brass was put on trial for war crimes or committed suicide, so it's a Foregone Conclusion that the theater plot is doomed to fail just to maintain the historical record. Except it's not.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Aldo "The Apache" Raine is the head of the Basterds. A ruthless, charismatic soldier who intends on tearing down the Nazis, Aldo leads his men behind enemy lines, performing daring raids to kill German soldiers while spreading fear throughout the Nazi ranks, including Adolf Hitler himself. Aldo formulates Operation Kino to eliminate the entire Nazi high command, and when he bargains with Hans Landa to let the operation continue, Aldo promptly denies Landa the satisfaction of victory by carving a swastika into his forehead, reasoning he's "been chewed out before" while retaining his sense of charm and composure to the end.
  • Shosanna Dreyfuss is a Jewish girl who loses her family to the Nazis. When approached on using her theater in Paris as the site of a premiere for Joseph Goebbels' major new film, Shosanna and her lover Marcel opt to lock the Nazis inside the theater and burn it down. Shosanna proceeds to enact her plan near-flawlessly, recording a message to all the Nazi leaders to see on screen that their fates are her vengeance and the vengeance of the Jewish people, ending up with the complete elimination of the Nazi leaders assured even before the Basterds get involved.
• Memetic Badass: The Bear Jew himself: BONK! In universe, the Germans think he's a mythical Jewish Golem, and Hitler orders that he not be referred to as the Bear Jew.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "WE'RE GOIN' TO BE DROPPED INTO FRANCE DRESSED AS CIVILIANS. WE'RE GOIN' BE DOIN' ONE THANG AND ONE THANG ONLY, KILLIN' NAT-ZEES."
  • The Basterds, together with Indiana Jones and Captain America, have become mascots for those who celebrated when a masked man punched self-proclaimed white supremacist Richard Spencer in the face on live television.
  • SOUND GOOD?!
  • NEIN, NEIN, NEIN! Which leads to a counterpart memetic joke: "What is Hitler's phone number?" (999...)
  • That's a BINGO!
  • Everything Brad Pitt says in "Eye-talian".
  • "I must say, damn good stuff sir."
  • A screenshot of Landa in full Nazi regalia protesting his arrest is commonly used as an anti-alt-right reaction pic, commonly captioned: "Oh so everyone you don't like is automatically a Nazi" (which isn't what Landa says in the film.)
• Memetic Troll: Landa's habit of toying with his prey has not gone unnoticed, particularly his barely hidden razzing of "the Italians".
• Misaimed Fandom: Sadly, the Nazi characters tend to get the Draco in Leather Pants treatment to an overwhelming degree, and this slides into real-life Nazi apologetics uncomfortably often. Hans Landa in particular receives this because he's a case of Evil Is Cool.
• Narm: The film of Shosanna laughing sadically projected during the theatre burning comes as this to people who realised that Shosanna must have sat in front of a camera and forcibly laughed for several minutes.
• Narm Charm: Raine's Southern accent is delightfully cartoonish, yet is actually fairly accurate to a thick, rural East Tennessean accent. For more of Pitt biting down deep on a southern accent, check out Kalifornia.
• Nausea Fuel: The death of Bridget von Hammersmark, specifically the shot of her face as it happens. Diane Kruger was really being strangled at the time.
• One-Scene Wonder: Mike Myers as Ed Fenech, Denis Menochet as Perrier LaPadite, Rachtman, Hellstrom, and Winston Churchill.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: The film was obliquely affected by the controversy of Uma Thurman being forced into a dangerous car crash in Kill Bill, which drew increased scrutiny to the already infamous scene where Tarantino's own hands are the ones strangling Bridget. Diane Kruger was quick to deny any wrongdoing, saying that Tarantino told her exactly what he had planned (a maximum of two takes where he would genuinely choke her for several seconds), only went ahead with it after she agreed, and stuck to his word.
• Parody Displacement: The film is more famous than its namesake, The Inglorious Bastards.
• Periphery Demographic: One thing Quentin Tarantino and Eli Roth didn't expect is the movie having such a large popularity among the yaoi fans, though they both announced their immense approval of the fan fiction upon discovering it.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Léa Seydoux had a bit role as one of LaPadite's daughters before her rise in fame.
  • Michael Fassbender would become far better known once X-Men: First Class catapulted him to the A-list.
  • Daniel Brühl will of course be better known to Marvel fans as Helmut Zemo.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Donny/Utivich, one of the fandom's most popular ships, even though they exchange no dialogue. It's still possible because we only see a little of the Basterds, and they probably had a lot more contact with each other than what is actually shown (a good reason to hold out for a prequel).
• Signature Scene: The much-lauded opening sequence, considered by many to be among the best scenes in Tarantino's filmography, which introduces us to our villain in a tense, chilling, and very memorable manner.
• Squick:
  • The scalping and mutilations performed by the Basterds, sometimes given very close and detailed attention.
  • The prospect of dying by a bullet barrage to the crotch.
  • Pressing someone to reveal information by sticking your finger into a bullet wound.
  • Goebbels having sex. Please pass the bleach.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The deaths of Omar, Donny, and Shosanna can raise some stink, with the first two being somewhat avoidable and cliched, and the last being a bit too abrupt for such a strong character.
  • In a non-death sense, about half of the Basterds never get that much to do, and outright disappear in the last third of the film.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • It would be really interesting to see what the world would've looked like if Hitler died in 1944, but sadly the film ends shortly after his assassination. Word of God claims that many movies in the Tarantinoverse (such as Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction) take place in a world where WW2 ended as shown in Inglourious Basterds and caused people to become more violent and pop culture-obsessed as a result, but it's hard to say how seriously this should be taken.
  • Not once in the film do Shosanna and Marcel get to interact with the Basterds.
• Tough Act to Follow:
  • Since its 2009 release, few of Quentin Tarantino's other films have come close to following this one's near universal praise. Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood were all more divisive, although still liked overall.
  • Shosanna as well is considered one of Tarantino's best female protagonists, and is among the favorites out of the heroines he's created (alongside Kill Bill and Jackie Brown, and that's saying something). Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood would receive criticism for their female protagonists not living up to those heights. Daisy in particular was frequently compared to Shosanna as a missed opportunity.

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