Leonardo DiCaprio is one of the greatest actors of this generation, as he picks his roles wisely and has one the greatest track records out of all of his peers. Even the movies he stars in that aren’t great, he still gives a terrific performance. But a collaboration that’s a sure-fire hit is DiCaprio and Quentin Tarantino.
DiCaprio played the evil plantation owner Calvin Candie in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. The two roles couldn’t be any more different, but their differences are what makes them so great - although one still has to come out on top.
Calvin Candie: Audiences Rarely Ever See DiCaprio As A Villain
Leonardo DiCaprio hasn’t been considered America’s sweetheart for decades for nothing. For as long as he has been acting, DiCaprio has been extremely selective in the roles he takes on, as he doesn’t act in half as many movies as his peers. Between Titanic, his early years saw him as a romantic lead.
Later in his career, he started taking on more three-dimensional roles, but none of them were overly violent or outright antagonists. That changed completely when he took on the role of one of the evilest antagonists of the past 10 years, Calvin Candie. DiCaprio should act as a villain more often because if Calvin Candie is anything to go by, it’s the best kind of role that he hasn’t tapped into enough.
Rick Dalton: He’s A Flawed Character
There’s no denying that many of Quentin Tarantino’s characters are deeply flawed, but the thing is that those characters don’t know how flawed they are, and it certainly doesn’t slow down their confidence. However, with Rick Dalton, it’s the first time a Tarantino-written character has suffered multiple hits to their ego and has affected them in major ways.
The scene when Rick speaks with Trudi on the set of Lancer is one of the funniest moments in Hollywood, but it’s also the most layered. Trudi, an eight-year-old girl, helps the middle-aged has-been realize that he’s exactly that. No other character in a Tarantino movie has been written or acted in such a deeply flawed way like that before.
Calvin Candie: He’s A ing Character
As actors become more successful and more famous, they tend to take on only leading roles. It’s extremely rare when actors of DiCaprio's caliber go back a step and take a ing role instead of a leading role. There are very few examples of it, but DiCaprio playing Calvin Candie is one of those shining cases.
Calvin Candie is essentially there to further the story of Django finding his wife and freeing her from captivity. It goes to show how many great performances audiences could have missed because a bankable star didn’t want to play a ing character. To this day, many fans even feel that it’s blasphemous that DiCaprio wasn’t even nominated for Best ing Actor for the performance.
Rick Dalton: He’s A ing Character In His Own Story
Being the movie star that he is, it’s rare for Leonardo DiCaprio to share top billing. Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt having top billing together is like if The Beatles went on a co-headlining tour with The Rolling Stones in the 1960s.
But, for much of the story, Rick Dalton takes a back seat to Pitt’s Cliff Booth, who has his own troubles going on, some of which are even caused by Rick. However, Rick being a ing character in his own story and leaning on his sidekick for moral is what makes him a better person by the end of the movie.
Calvin Candie: The Flamboyant Outfits Are Great
The costume design in Tarantino’s movies is usually on point, whether it’s the matching suits in Reservoir Dogs or the historically accurate costumes in Inglourious Basterds. But nothing tops the outrageous outfits of Calvin Candie, as he looks like if Willa Wonka was an outrageously racist plantation owner from the 1800s.
It isn’t just his outfits either, as Calvin is theatrical in just about every possible way, such as the way he talks and even his choice of beverage, which is a Polynesian Pearl Diver drank from a coconut.
Rick Dalton: There’s Clear Character Development
Calvin Candie started out as an evil human being and he was murdered as an evil human being. Even after being taught that his favorite author, Alexandre Dumas, was a black man, he was never once deterred from his inherent racism. Rick Dalton, on the other hand, has far more character development.
Despite the movie glamorizing the lifestyle, at the end of the film, Rick has learned that being a movie star in Hollywood isn’t the most important thing in the world. He finally takes pride in acting instead of it being some kind of bravado-vessel for him. His relationships in his life get stronger too, as Rick grows closer with Cliff despite firing him. But he still doesn’t overcome his margarita addiction.
Calvin Candie: He’s The Most Depraved Tarantino Villain
Not only was it great seeing DiCaprio in such a sadistic role, but Calvin is Tarantino’s most depraved villain too. What makes him so great is that Calvin isn’t just another murdering thief or assassin like many of the villains in the director’s movies.
Though the character is entirely fictional and obviously from the creative mind of Tarantino, there were real-life plantation owners in the 1800s just like Calvin Candie. It’s part of what makes all of Candie’s actions so hard to watch, such as his introduction during the mandingo fight scene, or when he orders a group of dogs to tear a runaway slave apart.
Rick Dalton: He Isn’t A Murderer (By Choice)
Almost every Tarantino-written character is a mass murderer in one form or another. However, one way that Hollywood broke the Tarantino mold is by being relatively bloodless, and one primary reason as to why is because the protagonist isn’t a murderer at all.
Though he completely torched one of the of the Manson family with a flame thrower, that was in self-defense, and it was clear from the absolute shock that Rick was in after the fact. Murder might be in Cliff’s blood, but that isn’t the case for Rick, and the novelization even mentions that the idea of murder makes Rick feel uneasy.
Calvin Candie: DiCaprio Continued Acting Through The Pain
DiCaprio might have floundered when Matthew McConaughey improvised the chant in The Wolf of Wall Street, but in Django Unchained, the Calvin Candie actor proved that he can improvise himself.
DiCaprio improvised Rick’s mental breakdown in Hollywood, but what’s even better than that is that he literally cut his hand open when he was playing around with the hammer in Django. And, even when he cut his hand, DiCaprio kept on acting through the scene, obviously in a lot of pain. The suspicious amount of blood that audiences see trickling down the actor's hand is real.
Rick Dalton: It’s Multiple Characters In One
There’s a fan theory about Django Unchained that Calvin Candie is actually played by Rick Dalton, and that Django is just a movie in the world of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Though that’s just a theory, there are a ton of scenes in the movie where Rick Dalton plays a different character, being the versatile actor that he is.
Whether it’s as the convoy-jacking villain in The F.B.I., or as the crooked cowboy in Lancer, in which audiences are treated to several full scenes of the fictional western show, DiCaprio really does play different characters all under the Rick Dalton umbrella. There are even moments where he’s interpolated into other movies, such as when he plays Steve McQueen’s role in The Great Escape.
