7 curiosities you didn’t know about ‘Django Unchained’, Quentin Tarantino’s western that you can see today on La 1

More than 10 years have passed since Quentin Tarantino released his first western film, ‘Django Unchained’, a film that is a tribute to the best westerns of the Wild West at the same time that it addresses racial issues that, unfortunately, never cease to be topical. If you haven’t seen it yet or want to enjoy Tarantino’s wild west again, take advantage because You can see it tonight on May 21, 2023 on La 1 de Televisión Española.

With 2 hours and 45 minutes, his longest film to dateThis was Tarantino’s first work without his faithful editor Sally Menke, who sadly passed away in 2010, but neither his rhythm nor his cadence of shots is affected at any time. Tarantino recreates himself in the duration of the scenes and in maintaining the image until its final consequences, and at the same time he is still one of the best action movies from the Tennessee director.

‘Django Unchained’, one of the best westerns of the 21st century (if not the best), tells us the story of Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave who teams up with a German bounty hunter, Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), to win back his freedom. After doing some jobs together, the two embark on a mission to free his wife, still in the thrall of the evil cotton plantation owner, the tyrant Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio).

The film is one of Quentin Tarantino’s most popular and, of course, a lot of anecdotes and curiosities about the filming have spread through the network, such as Will Smith turned down the role of ‘Django’ because he wanted a less violent and more romantic story, or that Leonardo DiCaprio actually cut his hand during his terrifyingly brilliant speech at the cotton plantation mansion, and that’s the take. What was left in the final cut?. But let’s go a little further and investigate the spaghetti westerns that inspired ‘Django Unchained’ and the “Djangoverse” of related movies and series somehow with the Tarantino tape.

Tarantino had used winks, musical cues, and cinematic techniques from the western in his previous films, but ‘Django Unchained’ was his first full-fledged western, although in order to carry it out he “borrowed” (as is usual with him) details from many other films of the genre. Especially those run by Sergio Corbucci, one of Tarantino’s favorite filmmakers, only behind Sergio Leone as far as the western is concerned.

‘Django’ and the other Sergio Corbucci spaghetti westerns that inspired ‘Django Unchained’

Among Quentin Tarantino’s 20 favorite spaghetti westerns we find up to 5 films directed by Sergio Corbucci, one of the greatest exponents of the genre. From ‘Django’, of course, to ‘The Ruthless’, passing through ‘The Specialist’, ‘Joe the Relentless’ and ‘The Great Silence’.

In the original ‘Django’, the main character played by Franco Nero (who makes a funny cameo in ‘Django Unchained’) It doesn’t have much to do with the one in the Tarantino film. The 1966 film follows the adventures of an ex-Union soldier who wanders as a lone ranger. dragging a mysterious coffin behind him. Arriving in a town, the stranger finds himself involved in a dispute between a Confederate paramilitary group and a band of Mexican revolutionaries who they do not know that the greatest danger is not the enemy, but the newcomer.

‘Django is without a doubt Sergio Corbucci’s most iconic western. In fact, it spawned countless imitators: More than 30 movies have been made about the Django character, though most are unofficial. And precisely speaking of this…

‘Sukiyaki Western Django’, the crazy movie inspired by ‘Django’ and Akira Kurosawa in which Quentin Tarantino participated

Yes, you read it right. ‘Django Unchained’ is not the first film about the character in which Tarantino participated. 5 years before the premiere of his first western as a director, Tarantino played a small role in the Japanese version of the western directed by his friend Takashi Miike, one of the best directors of Japanese cinema of the 21st century with more than 100 titles to his credit. backs.

‘Sukiyaki Western Django’ is a unique tribute to spaghetti westerns with revolvers and katanas in the purest Miike style, but it also refers to a Japanese civil war that took place centuries ago. In this sense, what it does is close the circle by taking the story back to Japan, since both Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood’s Dollar Trilogy and Corbucci’s ‘Django’ were loosely based on Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Yojimbo’.

But it is that, in addition to ‘Sukiyaki Western Django’ and ‘Django Unchained’, Quentin Tarantino wanted to continue expanding the Djangoverso with a sequel, a comic and even a television series.

The ‘Django Unchained’ series with 90 minutes of bonus material

The script of ‘Django Unchained gave for much more than the film. According to Tarantino, the final cut removed more than 90 minutes of footage (practically another entire movie) and the director has always toyed with the idea of release the full four-hour version as a miniseries, expanding the stories and secondary characters. Something similar to what he has achieved with the series ‘The Hateful Eight’ on Netflix, although that version has not finished reaching the other side of the pond.

‘Django/Fox’: The crossover Between Jamie Foxx’s Django and Antonio Banderas’ Zorro

Taking advantage of the premiere of ‘Django Unchained’, DC and Vertigo Comics released a graphic novel adapting Tarantino’s scriptand the thing worked out so well that the following year Quentin himself wrote a sequel in comic book form set after the events of the film in which Django was meeting, hold on bucks, the Fox.

Years after Django rode into the sunset on Calvin Candie’s plantation, he continues his work as a bounty hunter and meets an elderly Diego de la Vega, who will fill a similar role to Dr. King Schultz in his life.

A few years after its release, Tarantino enlisted comedian and filmmaker Jerrod Carmichael to co-write the script. that would transform the comic into a movie titled ‘Django/Zorro’, in whichAntonio Banderas would repeat his role in ‘The Mask of Zorro’ and ‘The Legend of Zorro’. However, in 2019, Carmichael told GQ that despite having completed the script, the film would not go ahead.

‘Django in the White Hell’, the sequel that ended up becoming ‘The Hateful Eight’

The origin of ‘Django Unchained’ is also found in a novel, when Tarantino was writing a book about director Sergio Corbucci (which hasn’t seen the light of day yet either). A volume that came to be considered as a series of western stories, with the second titled ‘django in white hell‘.

This story was inspired by the theatrical episodes of old American television westerns, where bad men with guns are forced to sit and talk. That’s a very Tarantino thing to do, but in the writing process he discovered that “his Django” just didn’t fit into that kind of world. so finally ‘Django in White Hell’ became ‘The Hateful Eight’starring a Samuel L. Jackson who could well have been another, more mature version of Django.

Django, great-great-grandfather of John Shaft from ‘The Red Nights of Harlem’

‘Django Unchained’ is not only full of references to the spaghetti western, but also to other genres such as Blaxploitation. Quentin Tarantino revealed at Comic-Con that Django and Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) are the great-great-grandparents of the character John Shaft from ‘The Red Nights of Harlem’ (1971)an icon of African-American cinema who has been portrayed in several films by Richard Rountree and, recently, by Samuel L. Jackson (although he is technically the original’s nephew).

An overt reference to this connection can be found in the full name of Washington’s character: Broomhilda Von Shaft.

‘The Man with the Iron Fists’, the lost spin-off of ‘Django Unchained’

Rapper RZA was bitten by the itch to direct his own movie after having played a supporting role and having collaborated with Tarantino on the soundtrack of ‘Kill Bill’, so he pulled the agenda and allied himself with another person from the Tarantino clan such as Eli Roth to write ‘The man with the iron fists’, a western with Kung Fu fighters and magical powers.

Tarantino produced the tape by lending his name to the much hackneyed “tarantino presents“, and RZA convinced him to have his character, The Blacksmith, make a small cameo as one of the slaves in ‘Django Unchained’. The filmmaker agreed, but in the end it was not carried out due to scheduling problems.

This would have brought the Djangoverse back (what I like about this concept) to the Far East, although it finally couldn’t be. At least, ‘The man with the iron fists’ is a good homage to the martial arts films of Golden Harvest and the Shaw Brothersand the Tarantino name made it easy for faces like Lucy Liu and Russell Crowe to join the project.