In a supermarket yesterday as I was going through the checkout line, I heard a couple of cashier guys chatting and instantly knew what the subject matter was.
“The first one was great, it was like this terrific action movie. But the second one sux.”
Having seen “Kill Bill Vol. 2” today with Kathleen, I fully understand the sentiment. I don’t *agree* with it, but I get where the young guy was coming from.
While “Kill Bill Vol. 1” was the Quentin Tarrantino version of a 1970s Hong Kong action film, “Kill Bill Vol. 2” is QT’s version of–don’t laugh–a chick flick.
If you haven’t seen it but plan to…stay through to the very end for an amusing out take.
Spoilers follow:
KBV1 (to use the handy abbreviation) was powered by the Bride’s thirst for revenge, amazingly powerful action set pieces, QT’s trademark non-linear storytelling (it was only while watching the DVD that I realized the battle with Vivica Fox’s character came *after* the one with Lucy Lui) and so many blood geysers it was like watching a documentary about a sanguinary Old Faithful.
KBV2 is powered by the non-visual. QT makes the audience sweat in other, far more effective ways. The first fifteen minutes of the film are almost entirely conversation as, in flashback, the jilted Bill shows up at the Bride’s rehearsal. She actually embraces the notion that he’s going to be a sport about her ditching him. It’s horror at its best, thanks to the oldest trick in the book: The audience knows something the protagonist doesn’t. Bill acts casual, the Bride acts hopeful, and we squirm in our seats because we’re very aware of the bloodbath to come, and the Bride’s obliviousness renders that knowledge excruciating.
The rest of KBV2 keys off relationships: The Bride’s with Bill, the Bride with a teacher, Elle Driver’s with the Bride (Elle clearly resents the favor with which Bill looks upon the Bride), and ultimately the Bride’s with her daughter. QT completely inverts the traditional concept of the revenge film scenario. Instead of the protagonist encountering and overcoming greater and greater waves of opponents, the Bride actually had the toughest time in the previous film. As opposed to the wildly choreographed battles in KBV1, KBV2 has exactly one major set piece (the Bride vs. Elle, although admittedly it’s a beaut). This time, the Bride’s challenges are far more varied, testing her strength of character, endurance, and her wits.
And there’s talking. Lots of talking. Pages and pages of talking. It’s *great* talking (including one of the most fascinating analyses of the Clark Kent/Superman relationship I’ve ever heard. It’s Bill’s dialogue, but we know it’s QT’s voice speaking.) But it’s talking. It’s not the Bride buzzing around town on a motorcycle or mowing through swarms of Kato wannabes. It’s about feelings and emotions and shifting priorities. I thought the final confrontation with Bill was distressingly brief until I realized that it was actually exceptionally long: Close to half an hour. Everything leading up to the final swordfight was foreplay but, as in real life, the actual climax took only seconds. The general thinking is that women focus on foreplay while men focus, uhm…elsewhere. With QT putting all his emphasis on the final dance between the Bride and Bill on foreplay, it’s really a showdown that reflect female priorities.
On it’s own, as noted, it’s a QT chick flick. Linked to its predecessor, it gives Vol. 1 more depth, more context, and more reason for being beyond just that QT wanted to make a chop sockey flick with in-joke references to everything from “Captain Harlock” to “Ironside.”
But KBV2 makes it clear that there was no way this film was released in two parts simply due to length. Taken separately, the two films are excellent. Taken as a whole, if seen for the first time in a single sitting, “Kill Bill” wouldn’t work. The audience would get incredibly pumped up from all the action and violence in the first half and, conditioned from years of Hollywood actioners, would naturally expect the stakes to escalate. She fought the Crazy 88 halfway through? Then by the end she should have to penetrate an evil castle populated by 150 ninja warriors…not talk for half an hour. Audiences would have complained that it was a film with no focus, that didn’t know what it wanted to be. An action film with a dull second half and pacing problems.
Splitting it in two, though each half can be judged individually and, amazingly, works individually. KBV2 is, appropriately enough, the yin to the first film’s yang.
PAD
• 
I watched it today too. Enjoyed it more than the first one. I like QT for his dialogue and there wasn’t a lot of talking in the first one. I liked the first one as sort of an over the top cartoon.
This one….well for a while I thought it went too much the other way, but I love how people talk in his movies.
One of the things I noticed was how sometimes you could see that QT told the actors exactly how to read a line or two, some bits it was almost like Q playing the part…including the Superman bit. Some of Uma’s lines were like that too.
I missed the bit after the credits….
I liked how the background music styles changed with the themes of the scenes. You got great over the top spagetti western music then samurai music.
All in all a good movie.
I couldn’t agree more. Walking out of the theatre after seeing Vol. 2, I was struck by the severe differences between the two films. I remarked to my friends that now I understood why Tarentino and Weinstein split the film in half. I’m sure length was maybe part of the reasoning, but as you said, the way the second half of the film plays out, it’s more character drama than anything else.
I thought both films were incredible, but for different reasons. Tarentino has a gift for action films, which is a little odd. When you look back at Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown, there is absolutely nothing in any of those movies that suggest that the man has it in him to do the insane action sequences found in Vol. 1, but he quite obviously does.
Vol. 2 was what we’ve come to expect from Tarentino. Lots of great dialogue interspersed with brief scenes of violence, be it with guns or swords or poisonous black mamba snakes.
I’d still like to watch both films together, back to back, hopefully with a director’s commentary (thank you, DVD). But the movies do stand on their own, for totally different reasons.
The first movie seems a bit soulless until you see the second movie. The second movie is a punctuation to the violence of the first. Yin/Yang indeed.
I was talking with a friend of mine about the Clark Kent / Superman analysis today. One of my first comments I made after he said how interesting it was, was “Yeah, but that’s so very Pre-Crisis.”
Post-Crisis, that analysis comes closer to describing Bruce Wayne / Batman than it does Superman…
Excellent view on the movie Peter. I enjoyed the hëll out of the first one (more than I expeted) and so did my wife to both our surprise. I knew the second was more subdued and quiet and I thought it was very good, but still had a slight feeling of…..wanting more on some level.
Then I understood that indeed, it’s not one movie cut in half. It’s two movies with two different tones. I wish I’d been able to realize that sooner, since expectations can throw you off a movie in a first sitting. I thought it was great, and many great, great moments in there that hit me beautifully first time out already, but I think I’ll enjoy a second sitting more now that I ‘got’ it.
And your comments on the male and female view on it are probably right on the nose. And I have to say it does me good, since a movie reviewer I love, and always read, didn’t even slightly get either of the Kill Bills and completely ripped them to shreds. I was happily surprised to see that the great majority of the critics were raving, but this particular review left me a bit ‘aw come ON!’
I thought Carradine was excellent btw. He excuded a calmness that comes with the inner self confidence of a man who knows how dangerous he is and has nothing to prove. (As well as someone who has lived with death for so long that he can’t fear it anymore).
I also liked how in spite of the shortness of their battle, he clearly could have killed her several times over (the gun moments proved that, as well as how he disarmed her within 5 seconds of the fight). Without the ‘heart thing’ I’m pretty sure he would have killed her. And instead of continuing with ‘upping’ the fights, ending with an even more over-the-top finale than the last movie, QT managed to find a different conclusion to pretty much each of he confrontations. And managed to give Bill’s death a dignity in spite of the silly ‘5 point’ technique nonsense that was straight from kung-fu b-movies.
He just manages to make impossible mixes of ideas work together. I have to wonder though, if he had shown it as one movie, how different the order of scenes would have been.
Oh and apparently there is a fight scene presumably from Bill’s past that was filmed but didn’t make it into the movie. Hopefully it will be on some DVD version one day.
If both movies had been squashed together into one, we shouldn’t assume that all the parts would have been shown in the same order. It might have gone Vivica – Hanzai – Wedding – Budd – Bride wakes up – Pai Mei – Elle – Bride’s pregnancy – 88s – Bill. I dunno, just spitballing.
SEAN
Even if it was shot linearly the fight against the 88’s would have still fallen somewhere in the middle of the film because it wasn’t until after Beatrix went to Japan did Bill have his meeting with Bud to warn him she was coming.
As an aside was anyone else completely surprised at how good Carradine was in this movie? I have seen every episode of Kung Fu yet I never gave him any credit for being a good actor but he was just awesome in this movie.
Besides having possibly the greatest movie title of all time, the first movie had me grinning ear to ear for its entire length. The second was a deeper, more Sergio Leone thing. Seeing the two put together will be great for movie buffs like us but I’ll bet that the average viewer would have been put off by the Crazy 88 fight not being the climax.
LOVED the Superman speach.
Since I’m not going to see this movie for a while–and since this section has a spoiler–what is the Superman/Clark Kent commentary?
KIP
I thought this movie, like KBV1, was a good, solid movie. It’s almost nothing but style — everything is perfectly cool and gloriously unrealistic — but it brings you along for the ride the whole way. I was disappointed about the revelation of The Bride’s name: There was no reason to keep it a secret! Now if she’d turned out to be the Uma character from PULP FICTION or referenced in another QT movie, then I could understand bleeping out her name in all of KBV1 and half of KBV2.
SPOILER: Here’s the Superman reference. Near the end of the movie, Bill is telling the Bride how he always liked comic books, especially superhero comics (kudos to QT for knowing that comic books aren’t synonymous with superheroes), and his favorite is Superman. He explains that most superheroes are people who have to transform themselves to become a superhero: Bruce Wayne has to put on a costume to become Batman, Peter Parker goes to bed and wakes up Peter Parker, not Spider-Man. But, says Bill, Superman’s real identity is Superman. His cape is the blanket from the rocketship that brought him to Earth, he is always that strong. For Superman, Clark Kent is the disguise: He puts on glasses he doesn’t need, wears a suit that’s human and not Kryptonian, and acts like a klutz and a coward. Clark Kent, says Bill, is Superman’s crtiique of humanity; it shows how Superman sees people as flawed. Bill thinks the Bride is like Superman: She’s a killer, and even if she’d left, settled down, had a family, it would still be a disguise from her true self: a killer.
To be fair, that analysis of the Supes/Kent relationship has its origins back in the Jules Pfeiffer Great Comic Book Heroes essay, although QT definitely expressed it more cogently.
But yeah, I can see why folks might not enjoy this film as much as the first. But this was a masterpiece, imho. I’d love to see Madsen and Carradine up for the supporting and lead actor Oscars (Madsen not only had one of the more complex roles in the movie, but was simply masterful).
including one of the most fascinating analyses of the Clark Kent/Superman relationship I’ve ever heard. It’s Bill’s dialogue, but we know it’s QT’s voice speaking.
It’s QT’s voice speaking all right — and he’s quoting almost verbatim the analysis of the Superman/CK dynamic from Jules Feiffer’s “The Great Comic Book Heroes”. Nope, not giving Tarantino credit for any original insights on that one…
even if you don’t give him credit for the commentary, you have to give him credit for seeing the metaphor used in that superman speech and extending it to the bride. furthermore, QT deserfes credit for coaching one hëll of a delivery of the speech from carradine. i’ve seen a lot of carradine movies and was never impressed by his acting, and i think he deserves a supporting actor academy award for this movie. he was spectacular. unless carradine suddenly took some acting classes, that’s all terentino.
It’s been one busy & rough week for David Carradine. (SPOILERS FOLLOW) On Friday he stars in a movie largely devoted to killing him — and he dies. Then on Sunday he shows up in the show ALIAS — and gets killed before the opening credits!
(Incidentally, when Syd’s sister finally shows up, do you think Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger” will be playing somewhere in the background?)
A cluster of chuckleheads sat behind me and kept talking all through the movie. But I got the last laugh…I liked the movie, and they were clearly in the “What, no 150 ninjas? Ripoff!” camp. Ha!
I’ve finally figured out why all the “Beatrix”‘s were bleeped out: it’s because of the Superman speech. It’s commenting on her. She’s had all these identities- Black Mamba, impending mother, “Arlene Plympton”, and in this movie, the avenging “Bride”- but really, deep down, she’s Beatrix all along, even if she tries to hide it.
Though I do find it funny that Beatrix got bleeped out the whole time, but her last name gets used a fair amount and never gets a bleep. Surprise!
“As an aside was anyone else completely surprised at how good Carradine was in this movie? I have seen every episode of Kung Fu yet I never gave him any credit for being a good actor but he was just awesome in this movie.”
Hey, he managed to make everyone in that show believe that he was Chinese! It always amazed me how he would walk into a bar and some grizzled townie would yell out “Hey! Chinaman!”. I always expected one of the other characters to ask “Where? Behind David Carradine?”
I didn’t stick around for all the credits – what happened at the end? I would see it agaon, jsut don’t want to burn the $11.00.
It occurs to me that The Bride let two of her enemies live– the woman who got her arm lopped off in the first movie and the now totally blind Elle. Which means that if Tarantino does his proposed sequel involving Viveca’s daughter growing up and seeking revenge on the Bride she may be aided by the female versions of the One-Armed Swordsman and Zatoichi.
Um, wow. I really want to respond to what you said, but I can’t think of anything to add. So, just wow.
I have to agree with everybody else. I thought both parts were rather well done.
@Bill Mulligan…
I dunno. The woman from the first movie struck me as more of a lawyer/legal type, than one of the killers. Which, in its own way, is even more frightening. We can have the One-Armed Lawyer.
i enjoyed both movies, but the problems i had with the first one seemed to all get resolved with the second one.
what i mean – in the first one, you pretty much know what’s going to happen and it plays out pretty much how you expected. it’s stylistically cool, but there’s little to suprise, shock or do anything else.
in the second, you know exactly what’s going to happen and it couldn’t suprise you more, and still, practically every step of the way.
tarantino generally bugs the crap out of me, as a person. i want to hate his art, but i just can’t, though i don’t worship at his altar like other movie geeks. i really have to give him credit for getting workable performances out of both carradine and daryll hannah. both are quite wooden actors that seem incapable of subtext, yet he managed to wrangle some excellent character work out of them.
and i must’ve missed the outtake as well. upsetting, given that i stayed pretty dámņ near close to the end. i know i saw the music credits, which are usually the last ones.
SPOILER WARNING!!
Here’s what you’ll find at the very, very end. The outtake(in glorious black and white) is from the start of the crazy 88 battle in Volume 1. The bride plucks the eyeball from a bald Kato and screams. You hear QT yell cut, followed by Uma chuckling and saying,”Aww, let’s do it again!”
The credits also include plenty of tributes to pals and influences. I’m going again soon!
I loved both Vol. 1 & 2.
A question: Did I miss a reference to what the bad blood was between Bud and Bill. Was it what they did to the Bride, or was it just left up to our imagination?
You know, I think the whole bleeping of her name was to change the tone of Bill’s first words in the film. As she lies, beaten all but to death, he calls her “kiddo”. We think that’s a term of endearment, an incongruous courtesy to someone he’s about to kill.
Only once we know her name do we realize how cold and professional it is. He’s calling her by her last name, not by a pet name.
I’m not saying it necessarily worked… but I think that might’ve been the intent.
The Superman is the only hero who puts on the Clark Kent suit riff is from Jules Fieffer’s 1965 seminal work on comic history, Great Comicbook Super Heroes…
I’m suprised that more people don’t remember…
No offense intended, folks, but I’m not going to see any of this. It’s partially the mindless violence, and partially the mindlessness of Tarantino. The ability to copy and comment on the work of other films in your film may make you a big hit on the cult-film circuit, but it doesn’t make for an original work that surpasses a genre’s limitations. Especially the third-world fascination for mutilation that young guys think is so “cool.”
Heck, if copying the work of more original people would make you a success, I’ve got a drawerful of my “tributes” to Rocky Horror, Firesign Theatre, Kurt Busiek and even Peter David that could make me a genius among the culties. But I have too much taste to ever expose the stuff to sunlight.
Thomas, you’re missing the point. He’s not copying for the sake of copying, I think his goal is to use known, identified movie elements to tell the story in a more precise, deeper manner than you could otherwise. Now to be sure, there are pros and cons to this approach, but Quenten Taratino is the best at it. Kind of the same reason that Joss Whedon and Peter use pop-culture references is because you identify and instantly you have all this extra background knowledge about the subject that reach outside the media but is still relevant.
Oh, and thanks for the cheap shot about young guys being fascinated with mutilation and thinking it’s cool. That’s real mature. Would I be right to assume you don’t like it because apparently if I’m young, then you must be an old gramps? No. Allow me to share the point of view from someone 24, who identifies as a ‘younger guy’. I stopped reading through this week’s doonesbury becase the implied gore, the intensity is too much for me. I freaking adore the show The Shield, but after Vic applied someone’s face to a hot grill for ove a minute, I clenched in the place any man would and never watched another episode. I’m watching the Sopranos this season and just wondering if I’ll be able to make it through that. Volume 1’s was also cartoony and over the top. It’s was obviously fake and that made it less ‘gore’ as just visual fury.
The gore has value, because it is an expression or an analogy of sorts for the bride’s anger. It’s the product of her fury, rage and hate in return for all that’s been done to her. Any stupid toerag with a bucket of karo syrup can make gore, it’s pointless till it has a reason, till there’s motivation. And Taratino’s exceedingly thoughtful crafting of characters works for me, and in this movie more than any of his past work.
So yeah, it’s cool if you don’t like it, but I would say your system of judging the movie and an entire generation is shallow and inaccurate.
Especially the third-world fascination for mutilation that young guys think is so “cool.”
Mel Gibson isn’t exactly “young”…
Geedeck, consider yourself the exception. And watch your back; your classmates aren’t anywhere near as human as you. They’re probably planting a fuel bomb under the hood of your car as you read this.
And Craig J. Ries, Mel Gibson isn’t young, and his movie isn’t selling to a lot of young people. (Except parents who drag kids into the theatre to “get some religion into them.”)
Gibson certainly isn’t selling “Passion” tickets to the Third World kids who won’t see a movie unless someone is being mutilated on the poster. (I’ve seen this many times. “No, can’t see that one. No good. Nobody dies in it, nothing blown up.”)
My main point was that Tarantino is praised, mostly on “Ain’t It Cool News,” for all the references to other movies he sticks in his. Seems to me that’s not so much a way of showing respect for other filmmakers as a cheap way to get a leg up. In the same way, after Hitchcock helped make violence against women a popular national sport in his movie “Psycho,” all the dingbat horror filmmaker have included a Hitchcock reference in their own films. Heck, someone just did a scene-for-scene remake of “Psycho.” Is this supposed to make us respect this new guy, or curse the fact that Hitchcock is dead and can’t sit on this interloper until he dies?
Well, yeah, people view everything differently. If the AICN people they want to get all hype over his references just for the fact that they exist, well that’s not my problem. Nevermind the fact that those people aren’t exactly known for their logical, methodical approach to movie critiqueing. And if he just suddenly had say the ghostbusters show up, that would be retarded. But Hanzo Hattori had a good reason for showing up, because there’s one in every generation of the Hanzo Hattori stories, for example. Also, he just likes to make references, so many people, places and things relate to other movies of his like Dusk till Dawn, Pulp Fiction and so on. If his goal was merely getting a leg up, why not have a Don Knotts guest appearance? Now, I do admit there’s just a cool factor, but it’s not the point. Taratino knows he doesn’t work in a void, and I like that.
As for the violence thing, now you’re just being silly. I’d love to see where all these ultra-violent young-uns are. (Well, not really, but you know what I mean.) And this is coming from someone who does tech support *and* works in a bar. 😀
Anyone else realize that it’s Bud’s Samurai sword in the PULP FICTION pawn shop?
But Budd didn’t pawn his sword. He lied to Bill.
Hmmm… here’s an interesting thought. Maybe the sword Bud pawned, the one in the shop in PF, was Bea’s original Hanzo sword. (I mean, she was the best swordsperson out of the DVAS, *surely* Bill would have given her one, but she would have had to leave it behind when she went on the run.)
GnuHopper said:
It’s QT’s voice speaking all right — and he’s quoting almost verbatim the analysis of the Superman/CK dynamic from Jules Feiffer’s “The Great Comic Book Heroes”. Nope, not giving Tarantino credit for any original insights on that one…
Someone else said that the analysis in question applies more to the Batman then to Superman these days, and to some extent, i can buy that — more and more, we’re seeing Bruce Wayne as a sort of false face that the Batman hides behind (even/especially in the “Batman Adventures” animated-style comic, of which i will restate my oft-spoken opinion that it’s the best Batman stuff going these days), while Superman is these days often seeming more to be Clark Kent-with-super-powers than Kal-El, last son of Krypton.
These are both legitimate directions to go.
My favourite Feiffer comment on this sort of thing, however, was in his article on Eisner’s “Spirit”, in which he said (more or less):
…Batman has to go through the whole fetishistic process, putting on his Batshorts and his Bat-tights and his Bat-belt and his Bat-mask and his Bat-cape and jump in the Batmobile to go fight the Joker, who, with one punch (defensively described by the writer as ‘maniacal’) slaps him silly…
**Posted by: Thomas E. Reed at April 21, 2004 01:48 AM
No offense intended, folks, but I’m not going to see any of this. It’s partially the mindless violence, and partially the mindlessness of Tarantino. The ability to copy and comment on the work of other films in your film may make you a big hit on the cult-film circuit, but it doesn’t make for an original work that surpasses a genre’s limitations. Especially the third-world fascination for mutilation that young guys think is so “cool.”
Heck, if copying the work of more original people would make you a success, I’ve got a drawerful of my “tributes” to Rocky Horror, Firesign Theatre, Kurt Busiek and even Peter David that could make me a genius among the culties. But I have too much taste to ever expose the stuff to sunlight.**
I don’t mean to pick on this guy although I’m sure it will come across that way, but I don’t get a post like this at all and it’s the kinda thing that makes people roll their eyes at Internet postings, I think.
Thomas, this thread is from a someone who enjoyed a Tarantino film and it’s responded to by other people who liked or disliked the film. What is it in your head that makes you feel compelled to pop in just to let everyone know that they’re idiots for liking Tarantino and you’re way too cool to be fooled by him. (I mean besides the fact that it’s making us all gasp and say, “Wow, that guy is so hip he’s even trashing Tarantino! He must be even cooler than the guy who revved his engine when he passed me on the highway today!”…)
We won’t get into the fact that *everyone* is inspired by other things and the difference between a true creative mind and a hack is as clear as the difference between Steve Rude and Rich Buckler, but instead, let me just ask, what motivates this?
There was someone else who used to drop in with snotty, name-dropping posts just to let everyone know that she didn’t watch “Buffy” when PAD used to write about the show. Even at the time, I thought, “Well, then this conversation is not for you. Why are you posting here?”
I have no interest in whether someone likes or dislikes a topic. I think that’s all fair game. But why would anyone waste my time and theirs to tell me that they don’t have an opinion on the topic? And what is it about the Internet that everyone feels this obligation not only to hate everything but to try to make others feel the same way?
PAD posts pretty regularly about baseball during the season. I don’t follow the sport so, rather than post about how I don’t follow baseball or, better yet, how baseball is stupid and anyone who follows it is wasting their time, I ignore those posts. Is that really so odd?
Boo, that stinks!
I hate that movie.
Oh, yeah, why won’t this stupid remember personal info thing work.
That thing is really hokey
if your wondering, hokey means stupid and it’s pronounced ho-key
No! It’s David Carradine doing the talking. He spoke it over a dinner conversation with QT and QT then wrote it in the movie.
Never malign the master.
CJA
I saw it this thursday (after watching the first one on DVD), and I loved it. Lots of things to enjoy here, especially David Carradine’s performance.
I also noticed something about Tarantino’s influence. In fact, what he does in that movie (I haven’t seen his other ones, although now, I’ll have to) is what Ian Fleming used to do in his novels. People who have read James Bond (and not only seen the movies) have noticed how Fleming had his characters go into digressions that had nothing to do with the plot. A few cases in point: in Thunderball, Domino gives the (probably apocryphal) biography of the sailor we see on Players cigarettes. In You Only Live Twice, Bond and Tanaka launches into a discussion as to why the japanese, a violent people, don’t have a violent language. When Elle reads about the properties of the black mamba, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the list of poisonous plants found into the villain’s “garden of death” in You Only Live Twice. And so on. Plus, there’s the fact that (especially in Vol. II) the Bride has to go through extreme punishment, both physical and mental) in order to accomplish her mission, just as James Bond did (he often ended up in a hospital room in the novels, very rarely in the movies).
All that to say that, if somebody decides to do Bond movies faithful to Ian Fleming (and the best ones have always been the ones who were faithful to Fleming, like From Russia with Love, or On Her Majesty’s Secret Service), Quentin Tarantino would be the ideal writer/director to do it. And yes, I know about the Casino Royale rumour, but it’s just a rumour right now).