People in movies can be pretty dumb, because most movies would be boring if they weren't. How many horror films would end after five minutes if the characters decided not to go camping in the isolated cabin the locals warned them about? How many romantic comedies are based on one stupid misunderstanding that could be explained in 30 seconds by anybody not suffering from minor brain damage? We've got to give them a pass on that kind of stupidity. What's less forgivable, however, is when a movie tries to fool us into thinking its stupid characters are actually being clever. Like in ...

5 Django Unchained -- Django Assumes Racists Hate Money

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Django Unchained is the story of a slave getting his revenge, and also a convenient excuse for Quentin Tarantino to drop as many N-words as possible. Django is the titular unchained slave who's taken on as an apprentice by adorably German bounty hunter Dr. Schultz. After Boba Fetting it up through the winter, Django finally gets bored of side missions and decides to advance the story -- he goes to use his new blood money to buy his captive wife, Broomhilda's, freedom.

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She was high on his shopping list, right behind some cool new threads.

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But Schultz argues that if her owner, Calvin Candie, finds out she's Django's wife, he won't want to sell her out of random, unexplained spite. Instead Schultz suggests that they pretend to be interested in Candie's brutal slave fighting business and arrange to buy one of his best and most expensive fighters. Then they can ask Candie to throw Broomhilda in for free, like how you get a free tank of gas when you buy a new car, but with way more human rights violations.

What They Should Have Done:

Wait, why would Candie refuse to sell, again?

Sure, slavers are jerks, and Candie is sort of violent and crazy, but he's still a rich white guy. And what do rich white guys love? More money. As horrible as it sounds, Candie simply thinks of Broomhilda as property. We're never given any reason to believe otherwise. If Django offered him more than Broomhilda was worth, he would have absolutely no incentive to refuse. Big money for a slave who can't even kill things with her bare hands? Candie would have been doing racist back flips all the way to the bank.

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"Now I can buy enough slaves to fill THREE torture holes!"

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But let's suppose Candie likes being petty to strangers more than he likes money. Why would he have to find out that Django is Broomhilda's husband? Just because honesty is the best policy? In fact, why the hell does Django have to be there at all? Schultz goes into Candie's home pretending to be Django's boss anyway. Why couldn't he have just gone in alone and explained that he heard there was a slave who spoke German here (this was their excuse for being interested in Broomhilda in the actual movie, remember) and that he could use help translating some of the finer nuances of his enemy's pleas for mercy?