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I’m not sure QT is going for a coherent deep message with any of his movies. At least, not ones he doesn’t basically always contradict in the same movie. I always saw him as a fetishizer of (among other things) movies when they were churned out as product more than art. It’s why pulp fiction is called that and starts with the definition of pulp fiction basically being cheap, mindless, targeted-to-release-dopamine efficiently, bulk content. He’s making that kind of film from the 70s that somehow gets all the pieces together to exist even though the script is at least 50% corny/bad. But he gets unlimited budget (from Harvey Weinstein) and full-on movie stars and just goes all-out on them.

But then in most of the movies there is at least some navel-gazing/meta cinema tributes. And basically every plot line in IG is about movies or Hollywood or German Hollywood. And (outside the opening scene) the only ones who are not, the Basterds themselves, describe Donny bashing Nazis as “the closest thing we have to going to the movies.” So it’s not just the fantasy story where America beat the Germans, it also this fantasy story about Hollywood winning the war.