Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill films are considered cult classics and amongst the director’s most iconic works. While the two parts of the blood-soaked revenge drama were filmed together, they were released within 6 months of each other owing to the filmmaker’s reluctance to fit the narrative into one film.
Kill Bill: Volume 2 completed 20 years on April 16th, and was a fitting finale to the saga of The Bride played to perfection by Uma Thurman. In an interview a few years ago, Tarantino had a discussion with his lead star and spoke about the scenes he would have hypothetically cut off if he had decided to condense his story into just one film.
Quentin Tarantino Would Have Done Away With This Scene In His Cult Classic
Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill series worked magically thanks to the director’s decision to execute the revenge saga over two films. Uma Thurman’s The Bride and her bloody journey of revenge and killing reached a crescendo and culminated in violent fashion at the end of the 2nd film.
The Oscar winner’s decision to expand the story over two parts was caused mainly by the fact that its depth warranted proper development, which required two parts for him to do justice. Years after the films’ release, Tarantino sat down with Thurman to discuss the various aspects that shaped it.
The Django Unchained filmmaker also addressed the hypothetical possibility of condensing the narrative to just one film instead of two. In a chat with his lead star on IGN, he discussed one particular scene that he would have cut out in the process.
“The Esteban Vallejo scene wouldn’t be in the movie. If you’re trying to tell your story in three hours or so, you don’t need that scene.”
This segment in the film involves Thurman’s character meeting Esteban Vallejo in a brothel in Mexico in which he reveals Bill’s location to her. Despite Tarantino calling this scene mesmerizing, he admitted that it would have been one of the parts that he would have been forced to edit out of the film.
The director also stated that the iconic anime scene would have also been at risk of being snipped at the editor’s chair. He revealed that these were some of the hard decisions that he would have had to take if he had reduced the script to one film.
What makes Quentin Tarantino’s Filmmaking Appealing?
There’s no one quite like Quentin Tarantino in Hollywood. Whether it is the style of filmmaking or the nuances of the characters, the Oscar winner has proved that going off the beaten path is a risk well worth taking. While there are things that make him unique as a filmmaker, his choice to keep audiences guessing through unexplained details is something that adds more intrigue to his movies.
For instance, in Inglorious Basterds, Brad Pitt’s character Aldo Raine is seen to have a rope burn scar around his neck, the reason for which is never addressed throughout the film. Similarly, in Pulp Fiction, John Travolta’s protagonist opens a suitcase and reacts to the contents which are never revealed to the audience.
According to the filmmaker, these touches were pivotal to viewers coming up with their own theories about what transpired in those moments. Speaking in a deep-dive interview about Inglorious Basterds with Charlie Rose (via YouTube), the Kill Bill filmmaker explained why this aspect of his filmmaking was important for audiences to take in.
“Now if I tell you at this table what it is, you will throw that away, and I don’t want you to throw that away”
These finer details of direction and storytelling further solidified Tarantino’s position as one of Hollywood’s most influential artists who has inspired a generation of viewers to watch films with a different eye.
Kill Bill: Volume 1 and 2 can be rented on Apple TV.
