Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair

[m0zart]

I saw this on Sunday afternoon. We went in at 3 p.m., and didn't get out until almost 8 p.m. This is partly because there's a 15 minute intermission (which was a good thing in the theater at that point), and there's an additional 15 minute feature after the considerably long credit sequence runs, which was done using the Fortnite video game engine.

I have to say that this is the definitive way to see Kill Bill. It no longer feels like two movies to me. It is much longer than the sum of its parts due to some additions. These were my favorite Tarantino films, but put together like this, they really do seem to be his biggest and most ambitious masterpiece. I highly recommend seeing it.

From this point on, there will be SPOILERS, even for people who already saw the original two films, so please don't read on if you don't want to know them.

There were a number of additions. One thing that really threw me off -- a long time ago, I could have sworn that I heard Tarantino confirm that the young Samurai assassin in the animated scene where O-Ren's parents were murdered was a young Bill. But... well, I guess he changed his mind? The animated sequence is extended to be much longer and includes O-Ren's revenge on that young Samurai killer, which it turns out was not Bill after all. I am beginning to wonder if I just imagined Tarantino saying that years ago at this point. But man... the extended sequence was much better.

There are a lot of little details added, too. Just glances at times, glances that really made a difference. Sometimes more than glances, like additional dialog. And when I saw these, and realized they were just cut from the original, I had to wonder why. They just made the whole thing feel more complete. Even the scene where Beatrix is getting information out of Sofie Fatale was extended, and it showed just how far Beatrix was willing to go to get her revenge. Tarantino must have been under some major pressure at the time to shorten each of the two features in their original releases.

One big difference was the revelation that her daughter was still alive was not given at that point. If this is the first time someone sees this film, it won't be known to them until the end (though I suppose many will suspect). But the sudden revelation that her daughter is alive at the end just works better than the original cliffhanger.

The additional post-credits film done in the Fortnite engine takes place right after Beatrix gets her revenge on Vernita Green. It's basically the story of Gogo's sister coming back from Japan to get revenge for her sister by killing Beatrix. It is genuinely tense and also really funny at times. It's also a bit silly in that stylistic way, but not any weirder than the animated sequence that tells O-Ren's story.

Again, it's well worth it if you have the stamina to be in the theaters for up to 5 hours.

[BlasteroidAli]

Thanks for watching it, and thanks for the critique, I know I will not be watching them. I am just gearing myself up for 3 hours of Avatar in a couple of weeks. So I appreciate, anyone dedicating 5 hours of their life to the cinema.

[m0zart]

Thanks for watching it, and thanks for the critique, I know I will not be watching them. I am just gearing myself up for 3 hours of Avatar in a couple of weeks. So I appreciate, anyone dedicating 5 hours of their life to the cinema.

No hay problema. If you like the film in question, it's always worth spending the time. I've sat through several operas that were around five hours, for instance. As far as genres though, we are at cross purposes, as I definitely will not be watching any Avatar movie, let alone one for more than an hour of my time.

[matmico399]

Sick of Tarantino and his films. The guy is somewhat demented. I saw pulp fiction on its opening day the first show and I thought it was fantastic. But he kind of lost me after that although Inglorious Basterds was great. I personally think he's highly overrated despite a few classics. Just my opinion.

[m0zart]

Sick of Tarantino and his films. The guy is somewhat demented. I saw pulp fiction on its opening day the first show and I thought it was fantastic. But he kind of lost me after that although Inglorious Basterds was great. I personally think he's highly overrated despite a few classics. Just my opinion.

Oddly, "Inglorious Basterds" was one of my least favorite. I don't talk about this much, but I converted to Judaism when I was 18. Nowadays, my religious opinions are rather mixed. But somehow, that film just didn't strike my interest in almost all cases. I think I had a problem with it in the same vein that I did with "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood". I love historical fantasias based on real events, but I like it presented as a possible interpretation of historical events ("Amadeus", "Immortal Beloved", "Shakespeare in Love", "Braveheart") rather than a complete historical revisionist thing where we must assume a different timeline. And those films were definitely the latter, not the former.

I say almost with respect to "Inglorious Basterds", because there was one aspect I really liked -- and that was its weird sort of elevation of some of the special effects tropes of the typical Troma film. I had a good friend in High School that was a real Troma freak. We had seen a few of those films together, and that death scene of Hitler in Tarantino's film was clearly a watermelon in a mask -- and I couldn't help but geek out over that. That's the typical special effect Troma films use when showing head crushing scenes. In this case, it was a machine gun scene, but it really made my geek spidey sense go off.

And that's partly what I loved about Kill Bill so much. It is full of these tropes from Samurai and Kung Fu films. When I was a kid, my dad was a mining boss in Southwestern Virginia, and there was a period of time that a Japanese company had purchased it or partnered with it or something similar. They sent these two Japanese mining engineers down to assess and rework some of the processes. But this Japanese company had oddly expected them to just be hosted in this on-site housing, which was abysmal, and up to that point had only been used for overnight stays for pretty hard miners. My dad decided he would invite the two to stay at our house. Both came, but one only had a few days left so he only stayed that long. My mom tried to go all out on showing them hospitality in meals and sleeping arrangements, etc.

The one that stayed much longer, around four months, was named Haruki and he really took an interest in me, my brother, and sister. He would take us swimming, hiking, and he taught us how to make origami, which at the time seemed like another form of science fiction. He was pretty good at it. One time he taught us how to climb high trees without having to be super muscular to do so, and that was a skill we used for many years in the wooded mountain areas. But he took a very special interest in me, and as I was the older of the three kids, we would stay up late and watch these late night Japanese sci-fi and Samurai, and also Kung Fu/Karate films. I developed a real love of those types of films while he was staying with us, and I watched them for many years to come. He also discovered the TV show "Kung Fu" while at our house, and he loved that. Apparently he had seen it in Japan but had dismissed it, but when he got an opportunity to watch reruns in the States, he grew to really like it.

Now, I had long ago stopped watching these types of shows, but I had definitely developed a real appreciation for them. So when I went into the theater and saw "Kill Bill Vol. 1" for the first time, not being a huge fan of Quentin Tarantino at the time, I expected very little. I had enjoyed "Jackie Browne", but I was not a huge fan of "Reservoir Dogs" at the time, nor really "Pulp Fiction", which I was unable to finish when I saw it on video. I also wasn't a big fan of his for his uber-violence -- I had heard he had written the script for "Natural Born Killers", a movie I utterly detested. I had no idea at the time that he also detested the film version and disowned it, but I am not sure that would have made a difference.

I don't think I had really understood what he was doing as a filmmaker until I saw "Kill Bill Vol. 1". Because it had evoked a HUGE set of memories in me. Hattori Honzo -- just the mention of his name blew my mind. I was sure I had heard that exact name in a previous film. And he almost seemed like he was playing by the same actor. Everything from the slicing of limbs to the weird spraying blood just entranced me. One of the reasons I hated the idea of Tarantino-ish films was my hatred of uber-violence, but this somehow bridged that gap in my mind to make it somewhat acceptable in a film. That kind of bloody nonsense was cartoonish, tropish, and very much that 60s/70s-ish stuff of special effects in those old films. It was just a MUCH better version of the many Japanese Samurai films I had seen with Haruki. And even though it had been modernized to a degree that might have been otherwise off-putting, he had somehow kept some of the unintentional technical limitations in place, and his love of the material kept it in line with my expectations. The fact that the main actor from "Kung Fu" was the villain also really blew my mind at the time. I mean, it felt like I was having some dormant areas of my brain reawakened.

I fully expected "Kill Bill Vol. 2" to continue that Samurai stuff and was really excited about it, only to find that it had fundamentally switched to a Kung Fu style movie, which again, I had seen many of with Haruki. And when Pai Mei showed up (Bak Mei in some of the older films), I was again amazed. I knew exactly who that was. The tone even took on more of a Kung Fu mentality, and even more of a Western facade similar to the American "Kung Fu" TV series. And it somehow surpassed the first one, which I did not expect it to do.

So for me, "Kill Bill" is probably Quentin Tarantino's masterpiece. It's the only one he got 100% right, or at least 100% right up my alley. And I had some kind of exposure to avoid the distaste at the ultra-violence. I was able to go back and appreciate "Pulp Fiction" after that because I associated it with this "movie world" kind of environment, where the world behaves by the logic of movie scripts, which is what "Kill Bill" did for me, really.

I expect it won't be for everyone, but I'd say that about any Tarantino film.

[JohanOberg]

Tarantino to me is kind of like Suda 51, he's a quality creator but I don't want him lauded as some mega-genius.

[m0zart]

Tarantino to me is kind of like Suda 51, he's a quality creator but I don't want him lauded as some mega-genius.

I think it's pretty irrelevant whether he's considered a genius or not, by anyone, or everyone, or anywhere in between. The issue is always going to be specifically the quality of his work.

There are different types of geniuses, in any case. There are people that mastered their specific craft, but who are not much use outside of that. I tend to like it when people break away from the formulaic approaches of their respective industry, or when they simultaneously subvert and elevate genres within those industries. So I'm willing to refer to him as a genius in his field. But like so many others people in similar fields, I wouldn't consider them geniuses in that whole polymath sense. I certainly wouldn't put much stock in his moralizations , nor would I discuss ethics with him in any serious sense.

[BlasteroidAli]

The crux of the matter here is that M likes QT. I also like QT. Maybe not enough to sit through 5 hours of kill bill. I watched once upon time in Hollywood. I really liked it. QT has such a great eye. Plus, he really likes Lucio Fulci. I do as well. I like Pulp Fiction as well. Maybe I am not his biggest fan, but I like where he comes from.