Kill Bill Volume 1 was released in 2003, and ever since then, rumours have circulated that writer/director Quentin Tarantino ultimately intended to combine both parts into one grand release. A year later, Kill Bill Volume 2 was released, and it looked like the right time for the big revelation. Nope. Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, which Tarantino screened at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, was a combined version of the movie that year. We mistakenly believed it would mean that it would eventually be accessible to the wider public, but regrettably, that was not the case. Although Amazon created a page about it, box art images appeared online, and Tarantino himself said that they were working on a new animation sequence, nothing materialised. After several years, Tarantino’s theatre, the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles, was eventually given the go-ahead to screen the movie theatrically for the first time ever in the country.
To mostly sold-out audiences, the print, which was the exact one that shown at Cannes and included French subtitles, was shown from March 27 (Tarantino’s birthday) until April 7. I was finally able to watch the movie on its final evening because I had missed it for the rest of the run due to being out of town, and it was an almost ideal moviegoing experience. Kill Bill is better than you ever imagined it could be after four and a half hours of pure ecstasy.
We’ll talk about the modifications and how they enhance the first theatrical releases after the jump.
The entire movie, including the interval, lasts 215 minutes. The Klingon aphorism has been replaced with a dedication to director Kinji Fukasaku, which is the first significant modification. By eliminating the statement, it becomes immediately clear that Kill Billisn’t just about revenge for the sake of revenge anymore because this is one enormous film rather than two very separate ones.
Up until the O-Ren Ishii anime section, the rest of the film is identical. This print, which debuted at Cannes a few years ago, does not contain the lengthy anime segment that Tarantino has previously teased. However, it also has some more bloody scenes that were undoubtedly removed to gain an R-rating in the US, including the yakuza boss Matsumoto’s guts leaking.
The Bride blinking to turn the colour back on has been eliminated, and the House of Blue Leaves combat is now entirely depicted in blood-soaked colour. The scene also features a number of unusual angles and graphic shots, as well as a brief previous meeting with the young boy that the Bride ultimately spanks with her sword. With that addition, the outcome of the second encounter is improved.
The evil Sofie Fatale loses her other arm in the film’s final scene, and instead of closing with Bill asking, “Is she aware her daughter is still alive?” They’ll all be as dead as O-Ren, says The Bride over the trunk as the scene concludes, before cutting to a musical interlude for intermission. The biggest alteration is that the movie no longer ends on a cliffhanger.
Both the direct address introduction and any titles for Volume 2 have been removed. Instead, we start just where Chapter 6’s Massacre at Two Pines begins, and from that point on, the movie is exactly like the theatrical version. The entire movie feels different now that Bill hasn’t revealed the shocking information that The Bride’s daughter is alive at the conclusion of Volume 1. There is no longer any dramatic irony. Even though we have previously seen Volume 1, if we just focus on The Whole Bloody Affair on its own without taking into account what we already know, we will be as shocked as The Bride when she learns that her daughter, B.B., is still alive once The Bride meets Bill.
In comparison to the original releases where we knew she would eventually learn the truth, this version does a much better job of saving that emotional revelation for the very end. Even though every murder was committed out of retaliation, knowing that The Bride will someday meet her daughter made it feel a bit less violent. After all, it was her daughter’s death that largely inspired the murdering spree. Her daughter was the reason she stopped killing and left Bill in the first place. An iron veil or morality also descends on us as the audience when B.B.’s genuine existence is suddenly revealed to the Bride. If The Bride had known B.B. was still alive, would she have attempted to kill every other assassin? Should Bill continue to be the child’s father? The answers to these and many more issues give the movie seriousness it never had before.
Everything else about the movie looks the same, but that reveal alters how the ending feels. Even still, the prolonged end credits montage is now much more interesting because it features characters you saw recently rather than a year ago.
We are spoiled here in Los Angeles, I have to admit. After nearly a decade of fantasising about seeing Kill Bill: Volume 1, being able to do it and having a customised print with that great Tyler Stout poster produced made it all the more meaningful. After watching both movies together as a single piece, it’s impossible for me to think of Kill Billas as anything other than one movie. I had always preferred the action of Volume 1 to the talking of Volume 2. One masterpiece that rivals Tarantino’s best, Pulp Fiction.
All viewers will be able to view The Whole Bloody Affair in its original, unaltered form when Tarantino eventually releases this edit on Blu-ray, complete with the new animation sequence. If not, it would be sinful considering that this is the final iteration of Kill Bill and even the smallest alterations have such a profound impact.
