Quentin Tarantino has written dozens of memorable characters throughout his career. What would “Pulp Fiction” be without Vincent Vega? Would “Kill Bill” be nearly as good without The Bride? But for the Oscar-winner there is one character that stands out among the others as the most fun character to write: Christoph Waltz‘s despicable Hans Landa from “Inglourious Basterds.”
While speaking with Empire magazine, Tarantino said Landa was the most fun he’s ever had writing a character. “The minute he enters a scene, he dominates it,” Tarantino said. “All the things that he was supposed to be good at, he was that good at them. I found I had a really interesting situation with him that has been hard to have with any other character. It was the fact he was not only a bad guy, not only a Nazi, but a Nazi known as the Jew Hunter, who is finding Jews and sending them to the concentration camp, but when he shows up towards the end of the movie, kinda figuring out what the Basterds are doing, the audience wants him to.”
“They’re not rooting for him, but it’s a fucking movie, and if he figures it out it’s going to be a more exciting movie!” Tarantino continued. “You know, you don’t want him to let you down. We’ve set up that he knows everybody’s secrets, so he’s got to know theirs. And it will make a more exciting climax if he does.”
He’s certainly not wrong. Not only did Hans Landa prove popular enough that Christoph Waltz won an Oscar for his performance, but wanting such an evil character to do bad things made Landa stand out from other Tarantino villains.
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Yes, Hans Landa is an absolute monster of a person, but unlike Leonardo DiCaprio‘s slave-owner from “Django Unchained,” you knew seeing Landa gaining the upper hand would bring hilariously thrilling and disastrous consequences for the main characters, instead of just unspeakable horror.