New Django Unchained Trailer: Jonah Hill, Funny Klansman?


We get all kinds of new footage in this new trailer for Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained: There’s more shootouts, more punches, more crisply enunciated QT dialogue, more oddly subdued Samuel L. Jackson, and even more of Leonard DiCaprio’s weird teeth.

The biggest giveaway is probably the bit where Jamie Foxx — as Django, the slave freed by Christoph Waltz’s bounty hunter — actually tracks down his stolen wife, the hunt for whom is the ostensible framing device of the movie. Does the fact that this presumed denouement is now in the trailer mean that the actual plot is not quite as straightforward as this movie has previously suggested? Or are Tarantino and his people convinced they can give away the big parts and you’ll still walk out of the theater satisfied? While we chew on that one, let’s appreciate the first footage of Jonah Hill in Django. Word was that Hill was on the movie as “Scotty Harmony, the kid who loses Django’s slave wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) to [DiCaprio’s character] Calvin Candie.” Then he was off, due to scheduling problems. Then he was back on, although not as Scotty. So now we don’t know who he is, really, other than a Klansman who has jokes (he forgets his Klan mask, and then asks if anyone brought any extras). Is the recently minted Oscar nominee continuing his blooming as an actor by delivering a high-wire performance as a funny Klansman? I guess we’ll find out on Christmas Day.

Filed Under: Django Unchained, Jonah Hill, Quentin Tarantino

Amos Barshad has written for New York Magazine, Spin, GQ, XXL, and the Arkansas Times. He is a staff writer for Grantland.

Archive @ AmosBarshad