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From Ella Purnell’s role as Jackie Taylor on Yellowjackets to Kyle MacLachlan’s portrayal of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks, it’s likely you’ve seen the cast of Prime Video’s Fallout TV series before. The hit video game adaptation, now in its second season, is one of the most high-profile shows currently airing, and it has an ensemble cast of established talent bringing iconic characters to life. More than a decade before stepping into the shoes of one of the franchise’s most notorious characters, one Fallout star appeared in a controversial Western masterpiece that just joined Hulu’s streaming lineup.
Walton Goggins can currently be seen navigating the wasteland as The Ghoul in Fallout Season 2, but he’s also known for his portrayal of Billy Crash in Django Unchained. Quentin Tarantino’s 2012 follow-up to Inglourious Basterds is now available to stream on Hulu after it joined the platform on February 1st. The star-packed revisionist Western is set two years before the Civil War and centers around the titular Django, a slave an enslaved man who teams up with an unorthodox German bounty hunter with the ultimate goal of reuniting with his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation.
Django Unchained Controversy, Explained
Django Unchained brought home a big box office haul of $449 million, earned Tarantino his fourth-highest-rated movie in terms of audience reception with a 92% Popcornmeter score on Rotten Tomatoes, but it didn’t get there without some controversy. Critics, notably Spike Lee, argued that the film was disrespectful and exploitative, and arguments were made that Django Unchained turned brutal historical atrocities into a comedic and hyper-violent entertainment spectacle and trivialized historical trauma. There were also issues over the excessive, repeated use of the N-word, which was used more than 100 times throughout the film. Foxx later defended the excessive use of racial slurs, stating that he “understood the text — that’s the way it was back in that time.”
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None of that prevented Django Unchained from becoming a modern, albeit controversial, masterpiece. The movie was named one of the top ten films of the year by the American Film Institute and by the National Board of Review and lauded as one of the best Westerns of the 21st century. Under Tarantino’s direction, the movie used the aesthetic of Spaghetti Westerns to confront America’s brutal history of slavery, racial violence, and systemic oppression in a film that was both entertaining and deeply provocative. Even overlooking the intense, memorable performances of the star-studded cast, the film deserves plenty of praise for its stunning cinematography that captures diverse American landscapes and great soundtrack that blends classic Western scores with modern music.
What’s New on Hulu?
Django Unchained was part of a wave of arrivals to Hulu on February 1st. That rush of titles also made other movies like Ghostbusters (1984), The Hate U Give, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and When Harry Met Sally, with even more great movie set to arrive throughout the month.
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