First reviews are in for Taika Waititi's 'Jojo Rabbit' and they are glowing

[masterofmystery]

#JojoRabbit : Taika Waititi knocks it out of der park with the meaningful lunacy of his anti-hate satire. Title 10-year-old, a Nazi in training with Hitler as an imaginary friend, has something to learn: love conquers hate, and laughter makes it easier. #TIFF19 pic.twitter.com/V1eI5QFLvG
- Peter Howell (@peterhowellfilm) September 9, 2019

The

Comments

[eldvno]

It's cool when people take risks in the industry, particularly now when everything is an adaptation/sequel/preboot/remequel, but taking risks with a woobified Hitler? Other paths could have been chosen.

[surprisesidney]

Uhhh I wouldn't say he's woobified. Obviously I haven't seen it yet but it seems like the point of the imaginary Hitler is that it's how a brainwashed young Nazi-in-the-making has been conditioned to see him.

[poisoned_summer]

i mean i've seen various outlets refer to taika-as-hitler as 'affable' and 'charming' so idk......

[merel_93]

Isn't Hitler characterised as charming when he needs to be, though?

[surprisesidney]

That's still not the same as woobifying, and doesn't that go with my point anyway? The kid is probably told that Hitler is his friend, and affable and charming, so that's how he imagines him.

[abbiemills]

The idea that bad people are just bad people with no "positive" traits is exactly one of the reasons monsters get away with loads of the shit they do because people expect them to be one-note and dimensional bad. The world doesn't work that way.

You can be affable, charming, and absolutely pure evil. It's not mutually exclusive and portraying Hitler as such doesn't inherently mean it's ignoring all of the bad that he did. If it did that and portrayed him as someone to root for, that's a different story entirely, but I highly doubt that's the route Taika would take here.

At any rate, Hitler got followers and people to listen to him from having exactly those sorts of traits and being able to use them to play people. That was part of his whole rise to power.

[cbluechicken]

The responses you are getting are...hmmmT

[cbluechicken]

I didn't think ONTDs ability to see the complexities of terrible white people could any worse but here we are

[frankthesheep]

MTe- I was already lost by the first one. What the fuck is with white people and being open to "charming" serial killers?

[eldvno]

I haven't seen it either, but it's one thing to remind people that Hitler was human and he cracked jokes and whatnot because it drives home the message of the banality of evil, that you don't have to be a supervillain to actually be evil. But because he is specifically an imaginary friend to a child, I just don't see how you could write that in a way where he won't eventually do something silly.

Idk, I think if it was an adult having delusional thoughts or something your imaginary Hitler wouldn't necessarily need to be woobified, but when it's a kid's imagination, I think that is inevitable.