Jojo Rabbit's marketing has revived the old Hitler Reacts meme for a funny video that promotes the release of Taika Waititi's upcoming anti-hate WWII satire. Waititi, an actor-filmmaker-producer who hales from New Zealand, has quickly become a big name in the U.S. following the success of his irreverent, '80s-inspired superhero adventure Thor: Ragnarok. But before he returns to the MCU for the recently-announced 2021 release of Thor: Love and Thunder, Waititi will unveil a smaller and even more idiosyncratic project that takes him back to his moviemaking roots.
The film in question, Jojo Rabbit, is an adaptation of Christine Leunens' novel Caged Skies and has been generating awards season speculation for some time now. That buzz only increased in volume this week thanks to the one-two punch of its teaser trailer releasing online and the announcement that Waititi's latest will premiere at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival. Now, in an effort to capitalize on that, Fox Searchlight's marketing team have revisited an old meme that's suddenly gained newfound relevancy.
Indeed, the Jojo Rabbit campaign continued today with the release of a Hitler Reacts video posted to the movie's official Twitter account. For more, take a look in the space below.
For those who need a refresher: the Hitler Reacts meme is a video parody series that takes footage from the 2004 German-language drama Downfall - which explores the final days of Adolf Hitler's life in his Berlin bunker near the end of WWII - and alters the English subtitles to make it seem like Hitler (as played by the late Bruno Ganz) is responding to all manner of different topics. In this case, the subtitles have been changed to make it appear that Hitler is reacting to the news that Waititi is not only writing and directing Jojo Rabbit, but also costarring as an imaginary version of Hitler who exists in the mind of the film's young protagonist, Jojo Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis). The resulting mashup works quite well, and even integrates a bit of self-reflexive humor by having Ganz's Hitler point out that Hitler Reacts videos are pretty old by meme standards.
As for Jojo Rabbit itself: the film's teaser trailer footage is reminiscent of Waititi's previous non-Hollywood efforts like Boy, What We Do in the Shadows and especially Hunt for the Wilderpeople, in terms of both its tone and the way that it uses offbeat humor to explore otherwise difficult and depressing subject matter. It's a smart approach to a story like this, though, and suggests that the actual movie may yet live up to its pre-release hype. After all, a film that makes Hitler upset must be doing something right.
Source: Fox Searchlight
