At one point, Ennio Morricone was attached to write an original soundtrack to Quentin Tarantino’s latest cinematic provocation. If this had gone through as planned (Morricone backed out due to a scheduling conflict), I’ve got to imagine that Basterds would still have sounded pretty much the same. There are two reasons for this.
First, Quentin Tarantino does not, as a rule, use original music in his films. Even in movies where there is a credited composer, such as Kill Bill 1 (the RZA) and Kill Bill 2 (Robert Rodriguez), the most prominently displayed cues are always preexisting music, respectively Hotei Tomoyasu’s Battle Without Honor or Humanity and a cue from Ennio Morricone’s score to Il Mercenario, which also turns up in the Basterds soundtrack.
The nice way of describing this is to say that Tarantino is a collage artist: he makes his films by combing through the scraps of other people’s creations, and he’s just as sensitive to sound fragments as he is to images. The not-so-nice way of describing it is to say that he’s a micromanaging sumbitch who cannot stand to let a composer have creative control over one of his movies.
Sort-of spoiler alert: this post deals with a particular scene towards the end of the Inglourious Basterds, so if you haven’t seen it yet and want to go into the theater with a clean slate, you should stop reading now (and get out there and see this movie pronto—it’s a gold mine for overthinking). That being said, I won’t reveal any major plot points, so if you don’t mind losing out a bit on the experience, then plow ahead.
Inglourious Basterds, the upcoming Quentin Tarantino World-War II action flick, has fanboys foaming at the mouth with anticipation. Some of this comes naturally from Tarantino’s following, but some of this may be coming from the relief that we’re transitioning away from those serious Oscar-baiting Nazi/WWII movies towards more amusing summer movie fare.
Clearly, Basterds is a different kind of movie than, say, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Take a look at the trailer:
Tarantino is the modern king of exploitation films, and this one is no exception. And part of what gives this trailer that lurid, exploitative feel (besides Brad Pitt’s crazy monologue) is its liberal usage of swastikas. After all, it’s a powerful, offensive, and evocative symbol that communicates a lot of ideas very quickly.
Perfect for a Tarantino Nazi movie trailer, right? But how about all of those “other” World War II movies? Can we use the frequency of swastikas (and other exploitative elements) in movie trailers as some sort of proxy for the degree that a film is Nazi-sploitative or not?
With that in mind, let’s investigate the Swastika-per-Minute (SPM) Rates for the trailers for Basterds as well as some major 2008 World-War II themed movie releases after the jump. Achtung! Schnell!
Inglourious Basterds, the upcoming Quentin Tarantino World-War II action flick, has fanboys foaming at the mouth with anticipation. Some of this comes naturally from Tarantino’s following, but some of this may be coming from the relief that we’re transitioning away from those serious Oscar-baiting Nazi/WWII movies towards more amusing summer movie fare.
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