YMMV / Django Unchained

• Adaptation Displacement: Nowadays people are more familiar with this movie than the original 1966 Django film.
• Accidental Aesop: Sometimes, you must swallow your pride and walk away from a no-win situation. While Candie was a bloody killer who deserved to be shot by Schultz, Schultz accomplished nothing but getting himself killed, ruining Broomhilda's chances at freedom and damning Django to a horrendous fate as a slave for a mining company.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Django. Is he a good man, forced by the world and by circumstance to stand by while people do unspeakable evil in order to rescue the woman he loves? Or a vicious, cold-blooded jerk with rather questionable morality, not so different to the bad guys of the movie?
  • Taking the tone of Tarantino's films into consideration, the majority of the protagonists usually fall under the Villain Protagonist or morally gray categories. It's up to the individual as to how they see Django in that paradigm.
  • Django seems to be a plain ol' hero to Tarantino, as he thought Django, being too much of a good guy, would have clashed tonally in the film that would have been a sequel to Django Unchained. That film? The Hateful Eight.
  • King. Is he a benevolent, kind-hearted mentor with pure intent? Or is he using Django, manipulating him to make more money on bounties over the winter, concocting the whole mandingo scheme to get Broomhilda without having to pay more than a little of his own money, and only having a real ethical quandary when he's exposed to the brutality of Candieland? Does he kill Candie because Candie is an evil, racist bastard, or because Candie got the better of King, took all his money, and still had to gloat?
  • A minor case when Candie's sister, Lara Lee, reprimands her brother for proudly showing off Broomhilda's scars at dinner. Did she simply think it was not good table manners, or was it a genuine Even Evil Has Standards moment from her?
  • There's no doubt that Stephen is a Jerkass and callously indifferent to the treatment of enslaved black people, but is his participation in slavery, his hatred towards free black people and his constant N-word dropping a straight case of Boomerang Bigot? Or is he keeping up an act to ensure that his position as privileged slave remains undisputed, something that is of course challenged by a free black man like Django, and doesn't really believe in any of the scientific racist crap being peddled by his owner? Given that he's revealed to be much smarter than Calvin and the true brains behind Candieland, the latter seems very plausible.
  • Does Stephen actually care for Calvin Candie, or does he just see him as the most valuable asset in his empire? For that matter, does he genuinely mourn Calvin's death, or is he just horrified at the realisation that he no longer has the privileges of being Calvin's head slave and most trusted compadre?
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • Calvin Candie, who is simply shot in the chest by Schultz, without seeing it coming.
  • Stephen also. He has only a few henchmen, who are easily dispatched, and Stephen himself is unarmed. Stephen is then kneecapped and left to be blown sky-high.
• Anvilicious:
  • Slavery is horrible (obviously), but this film pulls no punches and shows us exactly how hideous the whole institution was. There are extended scenes of slaves being whipped, shot, and abused in graphic detail. Despite being a Tarantino movie rife with Bloody Hilarious, the scenes of violence on slaves are never Played for Laughs.
  • The Overly Long Gag where Big Daddy tries to describe to his slave Betina how to treat Django since he's a freed slave but not white that just keeps going whenever you think the gag is done. The general absurdity about it is pointing out just how stupid racism is.
• Award Snub:
  • Quentin Tarantino didn't receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Director, though he did win his second Best Original Screenplay award. (He said he thought Ben Affleck not getting a Best Director nomination for Argo, which won Best Picture, was a worse omission by the Academy than his own that year.)
  • Many complained about Leonardo DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson not getting supporting nominations for both of their wildly against type performances.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • King Schultz shooting and killing Calvin Candie after the latter demands a handshake is downright satisfying, considering how utterly demented and disgusting he's been throughout the film at that point. While very far from the film's bloodiest death, the look of shock on the smug bastard's face right before he drops dead more than makes up for it.
  • The destruction of Candieland, ensuing no more slaves will have to endure the Hell of living there ever again. Bonus points for a kneecapped Stephen being blown up along with it, all while screaming like a madman. A fittingly miserable end for a despicable human being.
• Common Knowledge: Although the white supremacist bag heads led by Big Daddy are a blatant reference to the Ku Klux Klan, they are not the actual Ku Klux Klan, as it was founded in 1865 and the movie takes place in 1858. In fact, they're not referenced by any name at all in the movie. However, it's not rare for people to get this wrong and refer to them as the Ku Klux Klan.
• Complete Monster: In the original script (link), Ace Woody is the overseer of Candyland's slave training pits, subjecting dozens of slaves to horrible training and killing any that fail. Introduced by executing multiple slaves just because they look weak, Woody forces others to do push-ups constantly and kills whoever gives up first. When his employer Calvin Candie is killed, Woody strings up Django and plans to castrate him as punishment before sending him off to the LeQuint Dickey Mining Company to live the rest of his days in agony.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Most of the film, really. It probably contains more N-bombs than any films since Blazing Saddles, and does some outright bizarre stuff (like Django casually shooting Lara, causing her to be Blown Across the Room at a completely oblique angle) for pure Rule of Cool.
  • In his introductory scene, Schultz kills one of the slave traders and severely wounds the other. While the surviving trader is screaming and cursing at him, Schultz casually converses with him as if nothing had happened. Meanwhile, the slaves are looking utterly baffled by Schultz's actions.
• Designated Hero: Some people (case in point) felt that Django is kind of a dick who permits or commits all sorts of terrible deeds because he thinks seeing his wife was more important than all the murder, torture, and slavery in the movie. Not that he can do anything to stop them. Even the rescue of his wife is dependent on allowing horrible acts to be committed to maintain his disguise.
• Ending Fatigue: The shoot-out at Candieland, during which Schultz, Candie, and most of his henchmen are killed, seems like the climax. But then Stephen hangs Django upside down for torture, Django has to talk some Australians into helping him return to Candieland, and then finally shoot out all the remaining characters and rescue his wife. This is after things have already gone on for two and a half hours. The fact that both Schultz and Candie die in the fake climax makes this trope even more noticeable, as it means the film keeps moving along without its two most popular characters, outside of very brief appearances from the former. Word of God has said that the Candyland shoot-out was the original ending, but it felt too formulaic, hence his decision to add a bit more.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: One of Candie's henchmen is a woman in men's clothes wearing a mask, who gets a long closeup shot late in the movie... but never does anything remotely important. The original script had her as a Chekhov's Gunman who played a big role in the climax, but her role had to be cut for time. She's even portrayed by Zoë Bell, no less.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Inverted. The villains all dress in stylish period-appropriate outfits. However, Django’s blue outfit is not only over-the-top in its ridiculousness, but had also been out of fashion for many decades before the movie takes place. It would be like someone wearing a zoot suit today.
• Fountain of Memes: Calvin Candie, mainly due to being a Large Ham as well as a much different role than one would expect from Leonardo DiCaprio.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Schultz tells the freed slaves in the intro to follow the North Star. The star, for obvious reasons, was heavily used by the Underground Railroad to lead escaping slaves to Canada.
  • The year and Schultz’s background from Düsseldorf also suggest him being part of the Revolutions of 1848, making Schultz a freedom fighter whose efforts have switched to fighting for an individual’s freedom.
  • Django's blue outfit is modeled after Thomas Gainsborough's famous 1770 painting The Blue Boy.
  • Django mentions that being a slaver is the lowest a black man can sink, even lower than the "head house nigger, and that's pretty fucking low." In Real Life, house slaves enjoyed a much higher standard of living than the field slaves, earning them a lot of resentment from the rest of the slaves. Stephen, as a villainous head house slave, is basically a stereotype from a 19th-century field slave's point of view. In addition, freedmen were viewed with contempt from white people, but black slaves also showed contempt, as exemplified by Stephen.
  • In Candie's "Obedience Skull" scene, he cites an actual 19th-century science, phrenology, which continued to be respectable and popular until the early-mid 20th century (when its massive internal contradictions finally became apparent and it was derided as a 'pseudoscience'). Before and after the US Civil War, phrenology really was used to justify the enslavement and contempt of Africans in the USA. Ironically, the first studies discrediting phrenology came out in the 1840s, which means that even for the standards of their own time, slaveowners were just Wicked Pretentious who supported a pseudoscience.
  • During the scene in which Schultz buys Broomhilda, a woman plays Beethoven on the harp. There is a somewhat controversial theory that Beethoven was part-black. Beethoven was also an admirer of the French Revolution's ideals of freedom, equality, and fraternity, put music to Schiller's ode to universal brotherhood ("Ode to Joy") in his Ninth Symphony, and penned an opera, Fidelio, which is about a loyal wife rescuing her husband from the chains of captivity. It is almost a motif that the Candies are fans of European authors and composers that would loathe them if they met face-to-face.
  • What are two Australians doing in the middle of the Deep South? Well, remember that they work for a mining company, and the US experienced its first immigrants from Australia in the early 1850s as miners trying to strike it rich in the California Gold Rush. Presumably, these two are former Gold Rush miners who decided to move on to other mining opportunities in the US. The Australians being racist also isn't a stretch — violence and racism in Australia in the same time period was equally virulent, particularly against (but not limited to) indigenous people.
• Ho Yay:
  • Django and Schultz. It hasn't gone unnoticed by Tumblr. Curiously enough, Schultz telling Django about Siegfried and Brünhilde is fairly reminiscent of Bill telling Beatrix the legend of Pai Mei and the Monks.
  • Candie's creepy obsession with Django.
• Idiosyncratic Ship Naming: Gay Wyoming (Django/Schultz), Spaghetti Threesome (Broomhilda/Django/Schultz).
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • Even the movie's detractors will say that Leonardo DiCaprio's against-type turn as Calvin Candie is the best thing about it.
  • Same goes for Christoph Waltz, who is widely agreed to have stolen the movie from its leading man.
• Love to Hate: Candie is such an over-the-top asshole, that some viewers enjoy him for his despicable villainy.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Django Freeman is a former-slave-turned-bounty-hunter on a mission to recover his wife Broomhilda "Hildi" von Shaft from the infamously hellish Candieland slave plantation. Playing the part of a black slaver and never breaking character, no matter how brutal things get, after Schultz's death, Django shows off his own ingenuity and how much he flourished under the doctor's tutelage when he is sold to the brutal LeQuint-Dickey Mining Company. Using a spare bounty handbill and his own natural charm, Django convinces the slavers that there is a fortune waiting for them in Candieland, even tricking them into unchaining him so he can get a gun and kill them all. Returning to Candieland, Django massacres all of the Candies' soldiers and traps the returning leaders in a house full of dynamite, gunning most down and leaving the evil power behind the throne, Stephen, kneecapped for the explosion to finish off before riding off with his wife for freedom.
  • Dr. King Schultz is a cheerful German dentist and Bounty Hunter who quickly showcases his wit and skill within the first few minutes of the film by gunning down a slaver and then shooting his partner's horse to have it collapse on him and keep him immobile. Talking himself out of deadly situations with his silver tongue after publicly gunning down bounties, Schultz trains Django Freeman in bounty hunting to help recover Django's wife, even having him kill a bounty in front of his son. Schultz lures a group of racist vigilantes into a trap with explosives to eliminate most all of them at once, and later forms a complex scheme to fool the greedy Mississippi plantation owner Calvin Candie with a scheme to buy a fighting slave, while in truth paying a pittance for Hildi and fleeing before paying more. Even when the scheme fails, Schultz finds himself so revolted by Candie's cruel racism that he finally pulls a gun and shoots him dead on the spot.
• Memetic Loser: Calvin's sister Lara Lee has become rendered to pretty much a joke thanks to her...highly subjective good looks (see Memetic Mutation for further context), her ambiguous relationship with Calvin, and her hilariously unrealistic death scene.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Gentlemen, you had my curiosity. But now you have my attention."
  • "I like the way you die, boy."
  • "Django. The D is silent."
  • The ending has Jamie Foxx producing one of the finest image-board-reaction faces◊ ever.
  • "I count six shots, nigga." "I count two guns, nigga."
  • "We're havin' whiiiiiiiiiite cake."
  • "WHERE IS MY BEAUTIFUL SISTER?!?!?!"
    • "THERE SHE IS!"
    • Everyone is still waiting for the beautiful sister ^note  This is a popular reaction in the YouTube comment sections of the aforementioned scene, in which Calvin's sister is revealed to be incredibly underweight and borderline skeletal. Their ambiguously incestuous relationship only cements this.
  • Star Wars' character Jango Fett's name is a Shout-Out to the original Django film, and some enterprising fans have created mash up photos of the two franchises.
  • The whole Bag Heads scene has become a minor one due to being quite possibly the funniest scene in the movie.
    "I can't see fucking SHIT out of this thing."
  • A shot of Candie laughing while drinking has become a popular meme, usually used when describing something mischievous.
  • "It's like a reward."
• Misaimed Fandom: People have begun to blur the line with their love of Calvin Candie.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Your mileage may vary as to when exactly Calvin Candie crosses it, but one of his cruelest deeds in the picture is ordering the Mandingo slave D'Artagnan to be ripped apart by dogs, just in case you hadn't already pegged him as irredeemable from his Establishing Character Moment, cheering on two slaves fighting each other to the death, even before his face is shown. That said, he has certainly crossed it by the time he insists that Schultz shake his hand after forcing him to buy Broomhilda for $12,000, which compared to all his other actions comes across as minor but is more or less the tip of the iceberg; he forces Schultz to go through with the transaction on pain of her death, and he could and should've just considered the deal complete once everything had been signed and the money transferred, considering that Schultz is so disgusted with his treatment of his slaves (including the aforementioned Mandingo slave) that he actually refuses to bid him "auf Wiedersehen" (which in German means "until we meet again") upon parting ways with him. Normally, sticking to tradition wouldn't constitute a puppy-punting incident, let alone a MEH, but Candie tries to force it on a buyer who clearly wants nothing more to do with him. No wonder Schultz "couldn't resist" popping him off while pretending to shake his hand, since it was just the straw that broke the camel's back, and he passionately hated him long before that.
  • All the trackers (Jake, Lex, Stu, Cheney, Catfish, and Peg) who kept the dogs well-fed and played poker with their victims' ears are without a doubt irredeemable, with the possible exception of Jake, who gets a little credit for looking uncomfortable as the dogs eat a slave and doesn't take part in the poker game.
  • Billy Crash crosses it by nearly burning Django's genitalia off (but for the intervention of Stephen) — that is, if he had any chance of redemption to begin with.
  • Stephen's actions — thwarting Django's reunion with his wife out of spite and then devising the cruelest possible death for him — certainly constitute a crossing. This last one is also courtesy of Lara Lee, who took his advice as to the worst fate for Django and followed through on it.
  • Big Daddy is the leader of a precursor of the Ku Klux Klan who attempt to lynch Django and Schultz for killing the Brittle brothers. They crossed it themselves (especially Big John) when they whipped and branded Django and Broomhilda.
  • All of Schultz's targets have done something to earn a place here. Bill Sharp was a rustler who tried to shoot him, and the Speck brothers were killers who tried to murder Schultz and were mean enough to slaves that the slaves murder them the first chance they get.
  • Curtis Carrucan, indirectly causing the events of the movie by selling Django and Broomhilda separately to split them up after they attempted to run away.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Bruce Dern as Django's terrifying original owner, Old Man Carrucan.
  • Jonah Hill as a member of the ineffectual Regulator group which argues about their impractical hoods.
  • The original Django himself, Franco Nero, as Italian Mandingo owner Amerigo Vessepi.
• One True Threesome: Going by the amount of fanfiction for the film, it's easy to see Broomhilda/Django/Schultz as this.
• Padding: At almost three hours in running time, the film is certainly not in any hurry. Some sequences stick out:
  • The scene with the proto-Klan, once they establish that they are going after Schultz and Django, turns into a long discussion about the impracticality of the hoods.
  • Schultz pours two glasses of beer, and we see every mechanical process required in that action.
  • Candie takes two plates of white cake and walks all the way across the room to meet Schultz.
  • The writing up of Broomhilda's bill of sale could be seen as this or as a necessarily long scene to draw out the characters' and audience's tension.
• Questionable Casting: The original Django Franco Nero's cameo. While this is certainly a nice touch, the choice to have the man who portrayed the titular hero playing a slave owner who participates in the horrific Mandingo fights may raise an eyebrow.
• Signature Scene:
  • Calvin Candie's lecture on phrenology immediately followed by a furious negotiation at gunpoint.
  • The members of the KKK's precursor comically struggling to see anything with bags over their heads.
  • Django taking his revenge in the Brittle brothers, particularly for the Ironic Echo.
  • The Candieland massacre as a whole counts, but especially its beginning where Schultz abruptly shoots Candie dead.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • One of Candie's trackers is a mysterious, unnamed figure who wears masculine clothes and a mask but who is quite obviously female. Late in the film, she gets a lingering close up quietly staring at a stereoscopic photo, implying she is about to enter the plot in a big way. Seconds later, she is unceremoniously shot dead along with the rest of the goons. She was originally planned to have a bigger role, but that was cut out due to scheduling difficulties. It would be revealed that she wore the mask to hide the fact that half her lower jaw had been blown away.
  • Broomhilda, Django's wife, barely has any characterization outside of being a MacGuffin Girl, which makes it hard for the audience to sympathize and care about her situation. Not to mention, she is played by Kerry Washington. The fact that a lot of the above Padding scenes could have been replaced by a flashback to flesh out her character just makes the entire thing more frustrating. She also spends most of her screen time being enslaved, not to mention treated creepily by Candie, and yet never gets to take revenge for herself. Likewise, complaints about Padding in the scene with the Australians could have been alleviated by having her facilitate Django's rescue.
• Too Cool to Live: Dr. Schultz. Christoph Waltz nails the character, but alas, he has a rather unceremonious death.
• Vanilla Protagonist: Django can come across as rather bland, especially when he's surrounded by more complex characters like Schulz, Candie and Stephen.
• WTH, Costuming Department?:
  • One of the LeQuint Dickey guards sports a well-worn Confederate cavalryman's képi...in 1859? What?
  • Played in-universe. As a costume for his decoy valet character, Django decides to wear a very bright blue suit with breeches and square-buckled shoes, modeled after Thomas Gainsborough's The Blue Boy. Even the slaves think it's stupid: "You mean you wanted to dress like that?!"

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