Taika Waititi Made It His Mission To Ridicule and Humiliate Adolf Hitler From Beyond the Grave in Oscar-Winning Film For Personal Satisfaction

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Taika Waititi is a very talented and well-known filmmaker known for his work in massively successful projects like Free Guy, What We Do in the Shadows, Our Flag Means Death, and most famously, perhaps, his work in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Thor: Love and Thunder and Thor: Ragnarok, as well as playing the character of Korg in the series. He has made a name for himself through his unique films, having the perfect balance of excellent storytelling and, at the same time, having some of the most hilarious comedies of all time.

His most famous work outside of the MCU has to be Jojo Rabbit, a film starring Scarlett Johansson which won Waititi an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. Not only did he direct and write this film, but he was also part of the cast, playing the role of the most hated historical figure to this date, Adolf Hitler. When any real-life person is used as a character in a film, one of the first things anyone does is learn as much as they can about that person. This was not the case with Waititi, who did absolutely no research on the dictator.

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Taika Waititi Didn’t Do Any Research On Hitler for Jojo Rabbit

During an interview where Taika Waititi went into great detail about all of his past works, he revealed what it was like writing about Adolf Hitler in the script as well as while playing the character. Surprisingly enough, he mentioned that while doing so, he did absolutely no research about the dictator. Elaborating on this, he mentioned that initially, he did look up books about him online, however, he backed out from that very quickly.

Taika Waititi as Adolf Hitler in Jojo Rabbit — Taika Waititi as Adolf Hitler in *Jojo Rabbit*

“I did zero to no research about Hitler. I remember looking up books about Hitler on Amazon. I didn’t want to spend the money ’cause I was like, out of principle, I don’t want to spend money on the a**hole. Then I was like, I don’t even want to read about him. I don’t care about his life. I don’t care why he did things. I don’t care about the motives behind anything. I just don’t care about him.”

The reason for this was that, out of principle, he did not want to spend any money buying a book about a person like him. This turned into Waititi not wanting to know anything about his period. He explained the reason for this, stating that he did not want to know anything about Hitler as a person as he did not want to find the reasonings and justifications behind the things that he did.

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Taika Waititi Wanted To Make A Joke Out Of Hitler

This sentiment, very quickly turned into something completely different when Taika Waititi decided that he wanted to make a joke out of Hitler in this film, wanting to infuriate him from beyond the grave and make an absolute mockery out of him in this movie.

“I also wanted to ridicule him. I wanted to lambast him you know, even beyond the grave. I was hoping that you know, somehow like, you know, his spirit, what’s left of it, that I could somehow just humiliate him and piss him off even more from the grave.”

He then added that he also wanted to showcase Hitler in this movie through the eyes of a young child, considering the fact that his character appears as a figment in the imagination of a young boy. Waititi not doing much research on him in real life ended up being the right move and everything that he says and does in the movie is based on the very limited knowledge of a young boy, who perhaps only knows the things about the dictator that were taught to him in school.

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Source: GQ