Ahh, here it is. Quentin Tarantino is supposed to make further edits and tweaks to “Inglourious Basterds,” right? Possibly add additional scenes? Anne Thompson has the scoop. In the version of ‘Basterds” we saw at Cannes, there’s a jarring missing scene. There’s a bar sequence in the film (called La Louisiane) where British Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender), and a few other Basterds (Gedeon Burkhardt, Til Schweiger) rendezvous to meet Diane Kruger (Allied spy Bridget Von Hammersmark) to get Operation Kino (the plot to destroy axis leaders) underway.
However, in the film, the Basterds are never seen meeting up with Hicox and being introduced to the plan, so all of them seen together cozy in this bar feels rather odd and strange. They have a mission and a rendezvous point-person to meet this in this bar that will further elucidate the details of their scheme. The reason it’s not in the film?
Their introduction scene, which also features Brad Pitt’s Lt. Aldo Raine and is in the screenplay was never cut together because Tarantino was rushing so fast to have the film ready in time for Cannes according to Thompson who interviewed the director.
“As Tarantino goes back to the editing bay, he has some wriggle room. He’ll edit together one scene that he shot but didn’t assemble; it comes right before the La Louisiane sequence featuring Michael Fassbender and Diane Kruger as a British soldier under cover and a German movie star who wants to help him bring down the Third Reich. Fassbender pops in the movie, so it makes sense that the filmmakers would want to give him more screen time.”
Also, as we just predicted, Thompson says the missing scenes with Maggie Cheung won’t be restored. “It doesn’t add to the narrative,” she writes, which is essentially true, though it would add to Melanie Laurent’s character and would make her seem more like the lead character she’s supposed to be (though, agreed, they shouldn’t reinstate these scenes). Apparently, Tarantino also plans to “preview the movie in the States, outside of California, not with research cards but just to see how it plays with an audience.”
Well, there you have it. Essentially, more Michael Fassbender and not a whole hell lot of anything else. The film is still due August 21 in North America.
