Django Unchained (2012) Script Review | #74 | WGA 101 Greatest Scripts of the 21st Century
Quentin Tarantino crafts a blood-soaked yarn of revenge about a freed slave's quest to rescue his wife at the peak of the American slave trade.
Logline: With the help of a German bounty hunter, a freed slave sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner.
Written by: Quentin Tarantino
Pages: 166
Accusing Django Unchained for not being historically accurate about slavery would be like complaining that Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns aren’t realistic: that’s the point. They’re meant to be entertaining, not sticklers for realism. And Django Unchained isn’t about slavery, anymore than Inglourious Basterds was about the Second World War. Then again, when have Quentin Tarantino’s screenplays been ‘about’ anything? What is Pulp Fiction about, really? Or Reservoir Dogs? Tarantino writes screenplays to entertain us, not send a message.
Firstly, there’s something you ought to be aware of: The script available online isn’t wholly identical to the finished film. There are some scenes that weren’t filmed— such as Broomhilda’s story about how she ended up in Candyland from pages 55-68…
Then there are some that seem to have been filmed but got left in the editing room— such as the first private confrontation between Django and Stephen on pages 105-107.
Some scenes play out differently— such as the entire final act— presumably changed during shooting.
And some characters get merged into one for the film— notably, the character of Ace Woody is amalgamated with that of Billy Crash— due to scheduling conflicts; in the script, it was Ace Woody who almost castrated Django, not Billy Crash as in the film played by Walter Goggins.
Secondly, this is by far the most straightforward narrative that Tarantino has written in his career— it’s about as linear as it gets. Structurally, Django Unchained gets closest to Joseph Campbell’s template of The Hero’s Journey; an underdog story in which an unlikely contender (Django) is called to adventure as a bounty hunter, learns the ways of his new calling with the help of an older wiser mentor (Dr. Schultz), and sets out to snatch improbably victory from the jaws of defeat (everything that happens in Candyland).
Of course, it being told in the way only Tarantino can tell, this interpretation isn’t entirely obvious; there are many articles online that analyze Tarantino’s work, including Django Unchained, but I’ve never seen one that connected it with Campbell’s structure. Even I didn’t realize it until I studied the screenplay closely, because Tarantino’s unconventionality disguises the machinery that, in another screenwriter’s hands, would have played out different. But the Hero’s Journey structure is there. How does it work here?
For starters, Django Unchained consists primarily of three Acts:
Act I – Django is rescued by Dr. Schultz; Schultz takes him to a small town to kill an outlaw and collect the bounty, where Django is certain that the bounty hunter is going to get them both killed; Schultz proposes to teach Django how to become a bounty hunter in exchange for helping him track down the Brittle brothers, so that Django can find and rescue Broomhilda. By the end of Act I (page 52), Django is ready to go to Greenville. [total: 52 pages]
Act II – Django and Schultz trace Broomhilda’s whereabouts to Candyland, and hatch a plan to worm their way into the confidence of Calvin Candie, the plantation owner, to buy her freedom. But the plan goes awry when the suspicious house servant, Stephen, stumbles onto their plan; even though Schultz buys Broomhilda’s freedom, it ends up with Schultz and Candie getting killed and Django being captured (page 131) [total: 79 pages]
Act III – As revenge for Candie’s death, Broomhilda is kept back in Candyland and Django is sold off to die in a mining colony. But Django outsmarts his new captors to return to Candyland, rescue Broomhilda, and obliterate the plantation and its inhabitants [total: 34 pages]
I won’t lie—the simplicity of the plot took me by surprise. But on closer reflection, it also makes sense: Tarantino loves— and is great at— creating character-driven and dialogue-heavy scenes; a complicated plot would take time away from that. Simplicity in plot is a good thing; and a common theme in many of the candidates of the WGA’s 101 Greatest Screenplays of the 21st Century list, I’m beginning to notice.
As for Tarantino and dialogue—it’s worth spending some time to see what separates Tarantino from his slew of imitators. Here’s the secret to writing dialogue like Quentin Tarantino:
There is no secret.
Tarantino simply uses language to construct his monuments to dialogue on top of the basic building blocks of drama— that is, intention and obstacle, which generates conflict. Without intention and obstacle, even Tarantino wouldn’t be able to produce the style of gab for which his work has become famous for. Having established the intention, having defined the obstacle, Tarantino uses dialogue to:
Generate tension and conflict;
Reveal character;
Move the story forward!
There are no frills in his exchanges; every line fulfills a purpose. Take a scene early in the script where Schultz and Django have a pre-amble prior to entering the saloon.
What seems like Schultz being inquisitive is actually a ruse to find out whether Django entering the saloon (obstacle) would draw out the sheriff (intention)— which is what Schultz wants precisely because the sheriff is the target!
Allow me to repeat: EVERY LINE OF DIALOGUE MUST SERVE A PURPOSE.
Although Django Unchained won Tarantino his second Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and the script itself is entertaining, it’s also quite unwieldy. There’s a lot of characters, and a lot of scenes— while it’s unfortunate that Broomhilda’s backstory got removed in the film, which fleshes her character out, the entire flashback brings the pacing to a screeching halt.
Lesson for the aspiring screenwriter: Lengthy flashbacks should be avoided once the story is near the halfway mark or you risk upsetting the screenplay’s pace.
The screenplay is also a little more sadistic— unlike in the film, Stephen takes the opportunity to get his revenge on a tied-up Django by burning his nipples.
The climax of the screenplay, too, is underwhelming, especially compared with how it played out on the screen. Here, Django blows up the house before killing Candie’s sister, Lara, and Candie’s other acolytes on the lawn. In fact, what happens is that he challenges them to a duel; an homage, I suspect, to Leone’s showdowns. In the film, Django simply picks them off one by one because they’d left their guns before going for Calvin’s funeral.
Honestly, the version of events in the film are superior to what is here.
What else is there to learn from Django Unchained? Take Tarantino’s tendency to write paragraphs of description. He’s able to get away with it because his writing is evocative— they conjure imagery or build tension.
Every once in a while, he will add a comment that contributes to the atmosphere.
And then, as if to compensate for all those paragraphs— he writes his action fast.
He also takes great pleasure in mocking the KKK, the Speck Brothers, and white supremacy in general. This isn’t too surprising; since the days of Pulp Fiction, Tarantino has written many roles for people of color. And, like Charles Dickens, he creates Characters with a capital C— larger than life, memorable, but never a caricature.
Django Unchained is a fabulous, bloody tale of revenge, full of fire and brimstone. It’s one of three Tarantino scripts to end up on the WGA List of 101 Greatest Screenplays of the 21st Century (the other two being Inglourious Basterds and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood). By filtering it through his creative lens, Tarantino finds a way to make it work; even if you take out the clever dialogue and passages of description, you’ll find a story that still works because it obeys the basic rules of drama. That is the real secret of how to write a screenplay like Quentin Tarantino— and succeed.