Plenty of column inches have already been devoted to Django Unchained on this site, so suffice it to say the movie still looks like it will kick ass based on what Quentin Tarantino brought to Comic-Con's venerable Hall H on 14 July. Tarantino strode on to the stage to join Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Kerry Washington, Don Johnson and Walton Goggins and proceeded to lead a lively conversation.
This is Tarantino's homage to the spaghetti western and he paid tribute in particular to Sergio Corbucci, the director of the 1966 movie Django whose spirit informs much of this new work. "The germ of an idea was a slave who becomes a bounty hunter and goes after the white men [who tortured him], before the civil war," Tarantino said. "Then other things like a love story came into it."
He showed an eight-minute "sizzle reel" that was presented to international distributors in Cannes, full of hip action, razor-sharp dialogue and actors at the top of their game including an evil Leonardo DiCaprio, who along with Samuel Jackson could not attend the Con. It looks like we're in for another memorable turn from Waltz, who won the Oscar two years ago for playing Col Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds. This time he's Dr King Schultz, a former dentist who's shifted his focus from filling holes to making holes as a bounty hunter.
As the lead Django, Foxx explained that Tarantino was concerned that the trappings of Foxx's life might have made it tough for him to get into the mindset of a slave. Foxx replied that he felt qualified for the role, having grown up in "racially charged" Texas.
"Being called a nigger as a young kid by white people was something I had to deal with," he said. "Having that done to me I was able to grasp what was going on in the script. When a project becomes magic and special it means that at certain points in the script it parallels your story."
Tarantino pointed out that sharp-eyed audiences might spot distant origins of a character they already know from his work. When asked if he would ever make a third Kill Bill movie, Tarantino said: "I'm not sure if there's going to be a Kill Bill 3. I was always going to wait 10 years so we will see what happens."
