Inglourious Basterds: A Riff Too Far?

I've not seen IB yet, but did come across this bit from Entertainment Weekly.

Having not seen it, I really can't comment very much, except to say...

1. Its Tarantino, what did you expect?
2. See #1
3. Using the '78 IB as a guidepost, again, what did you expect?

I just got through (unfortunately) watching Spielberg's 1979 disappointment "1941."  Its not like taking WWII and tweaking it to your comedic requirements is anything new.  "Operation Petticoat" anyone?  Stalag 17?  Hogan's Heroes in its entirety?

I'm wondering if we're not taking the whole thing and putting it on some kind of pedestal.  Dig back into war movie history and you'll find plenty of examples which, in retrospect, might have been considered "inappropriate" or "trashing history."  Doesn't mean we need to all go "*gasp* *cover mouth* What would grandpa think?! *gasp*"

I'll chime back in (via the comments, or an edit) once I've seen it.

FTA: (sorry for the weird formatting, still working the bugs out of the new theme apparently!)

He said that he thought Tarantino had stepped over a line of historical veracity, and that audiences, especially younger ones, might be led by Inglourious Basterds to embrace the idea that World War II was just another meaningless pulp fantasy. By now, I’ve heard this line of reasoning echoed in several other places; it could even be the core of a potential backlash. Yet the reason I was shocked is that even though I take history pretty seriously myself, it never even occurred to me to think of Inglourious Basterds as a “trashing” of history.

Link: Does Quentin Tarantino have the right to rewrite World War II? | EW.com

Related posts:

1. Brad Pitt Cast in Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds”
2. Inglorious Basterds (2009)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 8:04 am and is filed under New Releases, War Movie News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.