Let me preface by apologizing if this post is hard to read I'm writing this as I'm getting ready to leave the house.
Spoilers for DJANGO AHEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
While an important plot point its subservient to the meat of the film: Black slave killing white slave owners. You didn't see Django because it was a romantic story, you didn't see it because he had to rescue his wife. It was marketed in such a way to play up the aspect of revenge and violence.
Django represents the repressed and enslaved African American, the other slave owners and Mr. Candie and his plantation represent exactly what Mr. Tarantino said in the interview: "[A] genocidal white racist class, and the institution of slavery..." Django: Unchained (the film's name tells you exactly what to expect within. What ideas come to mind when you think of a title such as that?) gives physical identities to all those ideas. The symbolism of the film very clear. Whether or not there is one person that we can pin all the past atrocities on doesn't matter at all.
Tarantino also says that's why he started writing!
There's nothing in that quote that talks about rescuing a damsel in distress. We all know the true point to the film and because you have further exposition for the reason behind his killing doesn't mean that it nullifies or takes higher precedence than "A folkloric hero that...pays back blood for blood." Whether or not he helps other slaves is moot. He's not required to free slaves. He's required to kill white slave owners, nothing more. (He did actually make sure the black servants left safely though)
I'm not entirely sure why you're telling me Stephen was in control or running things. You may be right in some manner, but ultimately he still answered to the authority of Mr. Candie. And perhaps I'm too naive to see where you're going but this is also seems to be a moot point -- The antagonist of the story was Stephen, a black house negro. Yes he had some clout, but the main antagonist had better have some clout. Otherwise, why do we care if he dies?
Django going back I would say only helps my point. It's a revenge film. Like you said he could have left. But he went back and decimated the entire Candie house, and even Mrs. Candie who really did nothing wrong in the film (except wanting to punish the man who was the cause of the death of her husband which is very understandable) The denouement was supposed to be very cathartic because Django was killing everyone who wronged him... the representation of slavery finally setting things right. Underneath it really had nothing to do with Broomhilda but everything to do with the main premise of the film.
And Broomhilda could easily have been killed and the story still would have served its purpose. It doesn't really hinge on Django rescuing her. Again, Brromhilda only serves to contextualize a former black slave killing white slave owners.
And I argue that it is directly comparable to Inglorious. You don't need every single plot point or every single conflict to be symmetric. The thematic motif is that of an oppressed class, enacting vengeance (the reason they can or do is moot) on the oppressive.
With that said, even the most memorable lines to both movies are extremely similar in nature. Paraphrasing here but you have a bunch of Jews saying, "We're in the business of killing Nahzis!" and as harSon said a black slave saying, "Kill white people for money, what's not to like about that?"
I really don't think we'll agree on this. It's clear we have very different interpretations of the film. I think having a black man as the final baddie is a cop out to the entire premise of the film, and to the subject of slavery. You of course do not. I understand why you'd think that, I just disagree.
More spoilers for Django Unchained below.
You're right that we disagre on a base level about this movie's status as a revenge film, though I acknowledge revenge plays a large part and served as the main draw for audiences. And that's fine.
What I had a problem with since your first post was your assertion that the revenge that was in the movie was unsatisfying, and, while that's subjective, I still have to disagree because of how you're viewing Stephen's character and all of the violence Django carries out against those who perpetuate slavery and the institution of slavery itself. And it's strange you still say it's unsatisfying because you even quite Tarantino saying why he started writing the movie in the first place:
For a movie to be a straight-up revenge flick in my eyes, it needs to have a specific target. If I made ti sound like I meant that that target has to be a particular person, then I apologize for not being clear. In IB, Shoshanna sets out to kill the Nazi's upper echelon and the Basterds do the same — I just mentioned Hitler before because it's easier for that to be . That's hard to interpret that differently. It's fair to gauge the satisfaction of that revenge based on whether and to what degree they reach that goal, which is the driving force throughout the movie. Kill Bill is the same, as if Once Upon a Time in the West (though the reason why is left as a surprise until the end), True Grit, Leon the Professional, Hamlet, Etc. I might even call Memento a revenge movie, but the concept of revenge is subverted hard, same with Oldboy. Revenge in most decent revenge movies isn't always clean and safe, but I'll get back to that later.
DU has no such ultimate revenge goal, which is why I don't liken it to those revenge movies. The Brittle brothers are killed early on, Candie is only introduced 45 minutes in then killed an hour later, and so forth.
HOWEVER
If you're going to look at DU as a revenge movie — which is fine and fair to me, even if it doesn't seem like it — you have to judge the satisfaction of the revenge differently.
When I say there needs to be a specific target in a revenge movie and ask what's the target in IB, anybody can answer "the Nazis." No one will say "Germans," or "Evil in general. They'l say Nazis. If I ask that question about any film in that list above, I could get an answer. DU doesn't have that, even if you say Candie, he's still just an idiot who truly believes his way of life is right — the phrenology scene with the skull shows that. If you think that it's Stephen, but you mentioned how shallow it feels because he's not the big boss man that's been played up the entire movie and he's a tragic character despite being so vile since believing that black people must be subservient is all he's ever known.
The true target, which is mentioned in that Tarantino quote, is slavery itself. Django can't kill everyone who wronged him because he'd have travel through time to do that and kill those who instated slavery in the first place. Shoshanna gets to kill those responsible for the deaths of her family.
So then how does he get revenge against such a nebulous enemy? He gets it by simply being who he is. What makes all of DU satisfying is Django's rebellion against America and slavery. That's what makes that exchange between him and Billy Crash so great:
"You are one lucky nigger."
"Better listen to your boss, white boy."
"Oh, I'mma go walking in the moonlight with you."
"You wanna hold my hand?"
It's because even up into the mid 20th century where it was the status quo, black people were not supposed to talk back to white folk; it just wasn't done. You've got Django riding a horse when society says he can't. He pretty much calls Candie's lawyer a nigger. He kills white criminals. He reads, stares white people in the eye he has a wife when America tries to tell him he can't. That's what puts a smile on my and many others' faces.
That's what makes the whole movie satisfying; if Django could've saved his wife without having to track down the Brittle brothers, he'd have done that. Same with any other villain in the movie. If you're going to look at it as a revenge film, realize what's actually being revenged and judge it based on that.
I'm not trying to say you shouldn't feel the way you do, but if you see the movie again, look at it in a different way so that you enjoy it more: it's Django, Schultz and Broomhilda against American ideals, not against the people per se. Don't think of Django killing Stephen and blowing up Candy Land as the final act of retribution. The final act of revenge is Django being with Broomhilda and him living as a man, not as a slave.
And about revenge not always being clean and safe in these movies: All of the satisfying acts of revenge in IB would be, if placed in a different context, really off-putting to most viewers. The Nazi who gets killed with the baseball bat said he got his medals "for being brave;" had he been an Allied soldier and he killer a Nazi, it would've been touted as a horrifying scene rather than cheered for by audiences. I know my audience cheered when Shoshanna's movie theaters went up in flames. The only reason that stuff is satisfying to anyone is because we know the Nazi's have done awful stuff and we've grown to hate them for myriad reasons, so seeing them get fucked up is awesome at first. Looking back on it though, the revenge is kind of sickening; the Basterds end up being almost as bad as the Nazis considering how they revel in their suffering.
I see that as being similar to DU with Stephen, though you never experienced that initial satisfaction and went straight to feeling how empty the act of killing someone for revenge is. I went to see this with my folks on Christmas day and soon after Stephen was revealed, my dad leaned over and said "Samuel L. Jackson's character has to die."
I whsipered back "That's what they want us to think," only half joking. Again, Stephen was conditioned to be that way and killing him doesn't change much, though I did enjoy seeing him get some comeuppance, particularly for his speech about what he's seen done to slaves.