I thought Quentin did this as a throwback to Yojimbo and Sergio’s Dollars trilogy, and was going for the whole “deadly mysterious person with no name” thing.
Didn’t anyone else think that the Deadly Viper Assasination Squad might have been a reference to the characters in the pilot that Uma Thurman’s character (Mrs. Wallace) played in Pulp Fiction?
Fox Force Five?
Yes, Fox Force Five.
[OUOTE]I was also dissapointed that Budd seemed to do such an instant 180 as soon as the bride showed up. He was a sympathetic guy that was tired of killing and thought he deserved to be shit on for awhile until he saw Beatrix.
[/QUOTE]
Budd seems to feel the same way about Beatrix that Elle does. They respect her, they may feel sorry for her, but they do not like her.
The personal vendettas that Budd and Elle have are much stronger then O’Ren or Vernita. O’Ren and Vernita had purely professional relationships with Bill, hence when Beatrix came for them, it was a simple matter of defending themselves.
For Budd and Elle it was diffrent, both had intensley personal relationships with Bill. They relished so much more killing this woman. She threatened Elle’s closeness with Bill, Budd was angry with her for hurting his brother. Remember what Budd says before he closes the coffin? “This is for breaking my brother’s heart.”
I was dissapointed that Beatrix didn’t get to kill him. It also would have been cool to see him fight.
The point of the boss in the bar scene was to show how far Budd had fallen. Four years ago, if any one had talked to him like that, he would have killed them, no questions asked. But he can’t do that now, this is his new life, without Bill. Now he takes people’s shit and cleans up shitty water. I thought it was sad.
No more bad-ass Budd.
I noticed that about a minute into the Kill Bill trailer there is a clip of Bill throwing a knife at someone that is not in the movie. According to Kill Bill’s trivia from IMDB.com,
This scene was not in the movie either – are they the same scene? And if so, what happened to them?
Not to mention Bo Svenson, who played the preacher at the wedding rehearsal.
Man, I love the “Ironside” theme. Used to watch that show every week.
For those complaining about the “slow dialogue” – I don’t mean to be snarky, but if the dialogue bores you, then you’re really not “getting” Tarantino’s movies.
I’ve got to admit that, within his limitations, nobody does it better than Tarantino. I don’t want to see him try and direct a normal, serious drama, but for this kind of thing, he’s the best. At least, you can tell he didn’t just get into movies for the money; the guy obviously eats, breathes and sleeps movies. I don’t know if he’s ever read a book in his life (maybe Modesty Blaise) but he sure as hell knows the movie universe, and doesn’t mind making movies that only exist there, and have little reference to anything in normal reality.
In Tarantino’s own way, Budd did fight Beatrix. Beatrix’s codename was Black Mamba (the snake that Elle used to kill Budd). I think the way Budd just went down without a fight showed that Beatrix/Black Mamba would’ve beaten him easily when given the chance.
No, I “get” Pulp Fiction. I “get” Reservoir Dogs, and True Romance, and even Jackie Brown. I definitely “get” KIll Bill Volume 1. I get and love and can just about recite all those movies. What I don’t “get” is why there was so much pointless and drawn out dialogue in KIll Bill Vol. 2.
Sure there was “pointless” dialogue (meaning it didn’t drive the plot) in Pulp Fiction but it was either funny, interesting, or just bad as fuck. The pointless dialogue in KB2 seemed flat to me.
I felt like, throughout the entire movie, I was on the edge of my seat waiting to be on the edge of my seat.
Man, I loved that Elle used the Black Mamba on Budd. I thought that was a lovely little tribute to her enemy.
I can’t do much more than agree with what others have said here. Loved the music, loved the dialogue, loved the acting, loved the action, loved the references. Oh, and the beard. Loved Pai Mei’s beard. In short, loved this movie. How many times can I fit the word “love” in one post? A lot.
Just saw it today. I loved it. My words seem to escape me when I really like a movie like I did Kill Bill, but I’m going to try to say something coherent anyway.
I appreciated the tone and pace of Vol 2. It offset the hyper-violent and general “b-movie” quality of Vol 1. It became a complete work…
…which I guess is the point.
A few things that stick out in my mind. Spoilers to come, obviously. Hell, I avoided this thread like the plague until tonight, so if you’ve come this far you probably don’t care. 
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I really enjoyed the fact that Tarantino made me forget about B.B. I don’t know how I could have forgotten. When I saw her, I jumped more than I did when the mamba popped out. I was just so in the moment, anticipating the climactic confrontation between Beatrix and Bill that I forgot the third party involved.
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I loved how the final sword fight went down. I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the symbolism packed into those 5 seconds. Bill’s sword, Beatrix’s sheath…wow.
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Pai Mei. heh. Yeah, he was awesome.
I dunno, that’s all I got for now. I am sure I’ll be back in this thread too. I’ve decided not to buy the Vol 1 dvd yet. Boxed set is the way to go.
I wanted to see this on Friday, but my band was gigging so I had to wait until today (Sunday). Anyway, I loved it. Excellent movie.
Let me just say this: I am in love with Uma Thurman.
I’m interested in B.B.'s reaction, or lack of reaction, to Bill’s death. That left me wondering if perhaps Bill had prepared her for the eventuality.
I thought the expression on Beatrix’s face when she burst into the room and saw B.B. was absolutely priceless.
What was up with Pai Mei and his beard? Those gestures were downright comical. He demonstrated, though, why I stopped trying to grow my beard longer. I drove myself nuts absentmindedly tugging at it until I finally just had to trim it back.
BTW - what has Michael Madsen been in before? He looked damn familiar, but I just can’t place him.
He was Mr. Blond in Reservoir Dogs. He was also Bump Bailey in The Natural.
<hijack>I went to see this Friday night with my friend Vic, who was born in China. Upon seeing Pai Mei stroke and flick his beard, he mentioned the inside running joke of ours about how awesome it’d be if I grew a Chinese beard.
Ironically, the last time he asked me was after his cousin (still in China) sent him a copy of Hero, and he convinced me to shave selectively for about a month and a half. We learned that Semetic hair is instinctively rebellious and has a severe grudge against gravity.
He never translated Hero for me, but I ran across a subtitled copy of it about 10 months ago and bought it because it had neat action sequences/he only translated the first 10 minutes before he told me to shut up and ignore the plot. It’s not impossible for the plot to resemble that of the advertisment, but that would involve either cutting out the funniest fight scene (about on-par with Elle losing her eye, but as dramatic as the fight after that point), reordering the scenes noticably, or starting the script over from scratch.
The whole movie looks as though they spent a small GDP on scenery and special effects only to tape it on a hand-held camcorder.</Hijack>
The only problems I have with Vol II are every time Budd/his boss opened his mouth, there were whole seconds of silence between cue-card length segments of words (though I don’t doubt this was on purpose) and a definitve lack of The Whistle, which had been running in my head continuously for the past three days. The Kung-Fu and eye-gouging sequences were hilarious.
In a way I expect that the dialogue about the goldfish was meant to tell Beatrix, “It’s ok, she can understand now.”
There was also a gunshot with only an interior door and maybe 20 yards of air between it and the little girl who had just been put to bed, and she didn’t come running out to see what happened - I think she had been coached ahead of time that mom and dad were going to fight to the death and to stay out of the way. I kept thinking the whole time that if I was either Bill or Beatrix that I would have written a note telling her to call 911 in case both parties end up dead (not entirely unlikely), but then I remembered she was only 4 and not likely to be able to read yet.
That’s very true, Clear Air Turbulence. It seems like Bill’s character to have prepped his daughter for the day he knew would come when Beatrix didn’t die at the church–someone was going to die. And he didn’t seem to have any illusions that they’d just chalk it up to wacky assassin stuff and patch their differences.
Kill Bill Vol. 2 indeed rocked. It took all the loose ends of the first installment and wove them into a highly satisfying revenge film with a surprisingly tender heart.
Things that made me chuckle
[ul]
[li]The 70s chop-socky sound effects in the Pai Mei sequence [/li]
[li]Elle’s line that she liked the way “gargantuan” sounded but never had the opportunity to use it in a sentence. [/li]
[li]The use of different film stocks to reference different genres [/li]
[li]The final scene between Beatrix and Bill [/li][/ul]
I would also like to learn the Five-point Palm Exploding Heart Technique and use it on the [bad word] yammermouths who kept up a [very bad word] commentary throughout the movie. Stupid [quite shocking word indeed] like that should stay home!
I just saw it tonight and thought it was great, not quite up to par with ‘Pulp Fiction’ but if he had put volumes vol 1 and 2 together, then I think they probably would stand up pretty close to it.
I did notice a couple of pretty obvious makeup problems, which I suppose were done intentionally, for some reason:
a couple of times, once when bill has blood on his face and once when uma has blood on hers, the very next shot shows them each with clean faces, even though each scene is continuous and there’s no chance for wiping/cleaning up of their faces.
Also, right after punching her way out of the coffin, which gets covered in blood as she begins doing it, her hands in the very next scene are completely unmarked.
Maybe this is some kind of homage to the sloppy B-movie standards of low-budget, can’t bother with too much verisimilitude, can’t waste much film reshooting too many scenes movies?
As others have said, too, I absolutely loved the Pai Mei character. He was so hilarious, just overy the top, I found myself laughing in almost every scene of his. Also in her training struggles, which seemed to evoke memories of a range of sources, from kung-fu to rocky to Bruce Lee. The scene where she was struggling to eat with the chopsticks while he smugly glowered over her like a plumed peacock was outrageously funny. I started laughing as she fought to get a bite into her mouth and by the time she finally succeeded and he gave a little proud smirk, I was practically rolling on the floor with the outrageous silliness as it parodied master/student scenes in countless movies.
Pai Mei played the campiest role with such reckless, complete abandon and faithfulness, all the while with a twinkle in his eye, that he really managed to make his scenes riveting and hilarious.