Movies - TV
Why Quentin Tarantino Wanted Inglourious Basterds To Avoid 'Silly War-Movie Clichés'
By MICHAEL BOYLE
Considering how "Inglourious Basterds" ends, it might be a little surprising to learn that writer-director Quentin Tarantino cared about the movie's sense of realism. The movie takes creative liberties by having Hitler get machine gunned to death in a movie theater around a year before his actual demise, but it's quick to subvert the usual unrealistic tropes in war movies.
Tarantino said to Rotten Tomatoes in 2009, "I wanted to stay away from all the silly war-movie clichés [...] where a bunch of guys have to take out a guard, so they very lightly strangle him and that takes care of that … They kill a German soldier and all of a sudden, not only is there no blood on his uniform, or even a bullethole, but it miraculously fits them when they put it on!"
There is no moment when an easily-dispatched German soldier's uniform miraculously fits a character, and the movie takes great pains to highlight how difficult it is to be a spy in a foreign country. In many war films, a character knowing the enemy country's language would be all they need to blend in, but with Lt. Hicox, “Inglourious Basterds” takes a far more grounded approach.