There’s nearly a three-decade-long gap between Quentin Tarantino’s feature directorial debut, Reservoir Dogs, and his last film, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. Still, despite featuring very different characters and chapters, there are striking similarities between the two. The same applies to his other eight films.
Nonlinear narratives; loud and lurid characters; and graphic violence are all staples of Tarantino’s movies. The enigmatic filmmaker doesn’t seem to be the one to scale back when it comes to including epic sequences to create his distinct visual style. However, he was compelled to do the same while shooting Kill Bill.
Why Quentin Tarantino Had to Cancel His Plans to Include an Epic Fight Scene in Kill Bill
Kill Bill chronicles the vengeful journey of The Bride, a pregnant assassin, who goes into a coma for four years after his ex-boss Bill brutally attacks her. The uber-violent martial arts film, which reunited Uma Thurman with her Pulp Fiction director, is considered one of Quentin Tarantino‘s most critically acclaimed movies.
While Kill Bill is certainly a Tarantino-esque film by all accounts, fans were robbed of seeing the auteur’s true vision for the project due to interference from studio executives.
According to a 2003 report in Entertainment Weekly, Tarantino’s shooting of Kill Bill failed to wrap up before its scheduled time. As such, Miramax, which also backed Pulp Fiction, gave the director a “drop-dead” completion date.
This warning led to Tarantino scaling down a climactic beach fight between the Bride and Bill (David Carradine). The first chapter of Kill Bill ends with the Bride slicing off the top of O-Ren Ishii’s head after an intense duel in the snow.
The two-part story ended with Thurman’s character killing Bill – as the title promised – but fans missed out on the 60-year-old’s epic idea. The Bride kills her former boss by using the five-point-palm exploding heart technique.
How Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction Led to Kill Bill
Reservoir Dogs helped Tarantino show Hollywood bigwigs his talent. But it was Pulp Fiction that really put him on the map as one of the best filmmakers of his time, and to this day, it remains his most popular work.
Incidentally, the story about the realm of the underworld also led to Kill Bill. According to the movie’s DVD documentary (via IMDb), the idea for the martial arts film began during the shooting of Pulp Fiction, wherein Thurman played Mia Wallace.
The actor and director talked about the kinds of movies that they would like to do, which eventually led to Tarantino mentioning his desire to do a 70’s style kung-fu flick. Interestingly, it was Thurman who came up with the opening shot of the Bride beaten up in Kill Bill.
