Django Unchained was released three years after Inglorious Basterds—a World War II drama also starring Christoph Waltz—which many critics viewed as a return to form for Quentin Tarantino, after the commercial disappointment of Death Proof, and the only-mildly successful two-part epic Kill Bill. Tarantino conceived of the film while working on a book about the Spaghetti Westerns of Italian director Sergio Corbucci, whose 1966 film Django is the prime influence behind Tarantino's 2012 production about a slave-turned-bounty hunter in the antebellum South.
Despite receiving a very positive critical reception, many critics noted how Django Unchained exhibits a less formally inventive structure than many of Tarantino's other films, which zip forward and backward through time, often in a seemingly haphazard but still carefully structured manner. Django Unchained, on the other hand, unfolds in a largely linear fashion, employing only one or two brief flashbacks to show Broomhilda before she and Django were separated. The film also contains fewer major characters than many of Tarantino's other works, which gather together an ensemble cast, and instead focuses more deeply on the ethically complex development of the relationship between Schultz and Django.
The film nevertheless showcases many of Tarantino's signature trademarks as a director: stylized ultra-violence, long scenes of dialogue, black humor, hip soundtrack, and above all, an irreverent combination of elements from "lowbrow" genres like Blaxploitation, Spaghetti Western, and 1970s exploitation films. As the hero of the film, Django Freeman is a twenty-first-century version of a Blaxploitation protagonist: an unapologetic African-American hero who seeks justice against racist white overlords, as well as corrupt collaborators like Stephen. Django Unchained is the second Tarantino film to feature a black protagonist, after Jackie Brown (1997), which starred Pam Grier.
The 1960s heyday of Spaghetti Western genre, which often featured long, slow-boiling scenes of ritualistic violence, is another clear influence on Django Unchained. Tarantino subverts the racial conventions of the genre by making Schultz and Django's vengeance against corrupt members of the white ruling class lawful according to the dictates of bounty hunting. Thus, Django is ironically able to murder white men within the confines of American justice system, which he comments upon at one point saying, "Killin' white folks and gettin' paid for it? What's not to like?" In centering the plot around this conceit, Tarantino was also able to satisfy the violent appetites and moral beliefs of a more racially progressive, twenty-first-century audience of film-goers.
Like many of his other films, Django Unchained features an eclectic and anachronistic soundtrack, at various points using contemporary rap music over images and scenes of the antebellum South. Tarantino uses "100 Black Coffins" by Rick Ross to score the scene where Django and Schultz tour Candyland, evoking the mass death to which slaves fall victim at the plantation, as well as the legacies of tragedy, suffering, and servitude that continue to influence the black American experience. "Unchained"—a song featuring samples from 2Pac and James Brown specially produced for the film—scores the scene where Django takes his revenge against Candie's men, repurposing the cathartic violence of early 1990s "gangsta rap" music and its roots in the Civil Rights Movement, to characterize both the ethical seriousness and the thrilling danger of Django's retributive action.
Still, Django Unchained frustrated some black critics, such as Spike Lee, who called the film "disrespectful," and Roxane Gay, who deemed it, "at times brilliant but mostly infuriating." Critics especially took exception to the film's widespread use of the word "n*gger," and its extreme level of violence, which prompted the release of the film to be delayed after the Sandy Hook school shooting. The film is nevertheless the biggest box-office success of Tarantino's career to date, and received five Academy Award nominations, winning Christoph Waltz the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
