Quentin Tarantino’s martial arts epic in two parts Kill Bill features the director’s usual non-linear narrative style, telling the revenge story out of chronological order to keep the audience on their toes. Uma Thurman stars as Beatrix “The Bride” Kiddo, an ex-assassin who seeks revenge on her former colleagues after being left for dead on her wedding day. The film ends, unsurprisingly, with the Bride killing Bill, as the title promised. Chronologically, this final scene is also the last scene of the story. But everything leading up to this point is confusingly out of sequence.
With the relatively simple narrative of the Bride crossing names off a kill list (an idea that came from Infamous BastardShosanna), Tarantino had more creative freedom than ever before. A given story has only a beginning, middle and end, but since then Kill Bill is cut into two volumes, Tarantino let his imagination run wild when it came to fitting each scene into its four-hour timeline. Tarantino had two opening scenes, two middle acts, two climaxes and two endings to play with. With flashbacks that fill out origin stories and a kill list that checks off out of order, the timeline of Kill Bill It’s complicated.
The origin of O-Ren
While the Bride lies in the back of Buck’s truck, wiggling her toes and trying to regain her mobility after years in a coma, she kills time by detailing the tragic story of O-Ren Ishii in a visually stunning anime sequence titled “The Origin of O-Ren.” As a young child, O-Ren witnessed the gruesome murders of her parents at the hands of a crime lord named Boss Matsumoto. She trained as an assassin, rose to the top of the boss’s empire, and took over control of the Yakuza.Since this series takes place during O-Ren’s childhood, it is technically the first part of Kill Bill in chronological order.
The Cruel Tutelage Of Pai Mei
Kill BillThe next sequence chronologically is the flashback to the education of the bride. After being buried alive in Paula Schultz’s lonely grave (a Tarantino line a nod to Django the Unboundby Dr King Schultz), the Bride starts banging on the coffin lid in an attempt to escape. The film then flashes to her training under the cruel but infinitely wise Pai Mei as he teaches her the discipline that allows her to survive the burial. At first, she hates him, but eventually she respects him. Pi Mei’s training sequence explains how the Bride became such a formidable assassin: she had a great teacher.
The bride discovers she is pregnant
After completing her training with Pi Mei, the Bride takes the top spot in Bill’s Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. While staying at a successful hotel, the bride takes a pregnancy test and it comes back positive. She immediately decides to retire so she can focus on raising the baby. But moments later, he is attacked by a fellow assassin disguised as room service. The Bride begs this assassin to spare her life because she has just decided to give up her career as an assassin and settle down.
The massacre at the two pines
Its black and white opening shot Kill Bill: Volume 1 he sees the Bride, beaten and bloodied, lying on the floor of a wedding chapel before Bill shoots her in the head and puts her in a coma. In Kill Bill: Volume 2, Tarantino turns back and fills in the rest of the scene. A pregnant Kiddo, her fiancé, Tommy, and their friends and family are at the chapel, rehearsing for their upcoming wedding. Bill stops to tell the Bride he wishes her well, but meets the other Deadly Viper assassins outside and they enter the chapel armed with machine guns.
The assassins open fire in the chapel and murder the entire wedding party. Fortunately, the carnage takes place off-screen. The audience only needs to hear their screams, not see them die. Bill tortures the Bride, whose real name is revealed, and just as she’s about to tell him he’s the father of her unborn baby, he shoots her in the head mid-sentence – only that doesn’t kill her. Earl McGraw, the Texas Ranger sent to investigate the crime scene, is surprised to find that Kiddo is still alive, albeit in a coma. He was taken to the hospital, where he remained in a coma for four years.
The bride wakes up from her coma and goes to Tokyo
Four years after Bill shoots her, the Bride wakes up from her coma. Immediately after waking up, she checks for her baby and is horrified to find that it is no longer there. She is further terrorized by her memories of an orderly named Buck who rents out her comatose body to sexual predators. When Buck returns to the ward, she bangs his head against the door to kill him and then steals the keys to his truck, the ‘P**** Wagon’. To begin Kill BillIn his revenge plan, the Bride heads straight to the airport and buys a ticket to Tokyo to confront O-Ren, her first target.
Match at the home of the blue cards
Upon her arrival in Tokyo, the Bride goes to visit the legendary swordsman Hattori Hanzō and commissions a new sword. When the sword is ready, he takes it straight to the House of Blue Leaves to face O-Ren. But before she can fight O-Ren, the Bride must fight her team, the Crazy 88. The bloody showdown at the House of Blue Leaves is one of Tarantino’s greatest action scenes. After defeating Crazy 88 on her own, the Bride loses O-Ren’s scalp and sends her assistant Sofie Fatale back to Bill with the message that the other Deadly Vipers are next on her kill list.
The Bride kills Vernita Greene
After the prologue Kill Bill jumps right into the action. The Bride goes to Vernita Green’s house, brutally fights her, takes a brief break when Vernita’s daughter returns home, and then kills her former colleague with a knife to the chest. Chronologically, this scene actually takes place after Kill Bill: Volume 1climax of The Bride goes to Tokyo and takes over Crazy 88 before going to Vernita’s house. However, this scene sequence makes sense from a narrative perspective. The Vernita fight kicks off the action in the first reel, and the showdown at the House of Blue Leaves concludes the film in an explosive, large-scale setting.
Budd Burie’s The Bride Alive
After sending Vernita, the next name on the Bride’s list is Budd, Bill’s brother. He goes to Bud’s trailer, but after being warned by Bill, he’s ready. Once inside the trailer, he shoots her and calls a friend to help him bury her alive. Many of Kill BillHis fight scenes are heightened and stylized, but his terror of being buried alive is played straight. The Bride is as scared as one would expect, being trapped in a box, thrown into a hole in the ground, and trapped under six feet of dirt.
Bride takes on Elle Driver in Budd trailer
After escaping a shallow grave, the Bride returns to Bud’s trailer to finish the job, only to find that his death has already taken care of the next name on her list, Elle Driver. Elle gives Budd a briefcase full of cash with a poisonous snake hidden inside. The snake kills Bud and then the Bride arrives to kill El. This sequence is hilariously anti-climactic, as Tarantino prepares for an epic fight scene and builds the tension with the music, then the fight ends immediately. In one of Kill BillHis most unexpected plot twist, the Bride rips out El’s one good eye.
The Bride reunites with BB And Kills Bill
After taking care of Bud and Elle in a horrible two-for-one deal, the Bride has only one name on her kill list: Bill. Its cliffhanger ending Kill Bill: Volume 1 tells the audience that the Bride’s daughter is still alive, as Bill asks Sophie if the Bride knows. But the Bride doesn’t know it herself until she gets to Bill’s house. She breaks down the door, ready to shoot Bill dead, only to be met by a little girl who calls her “Mom”. Bill has raised his and daughter-in-law’s daughter, BB (who would probably be his center Kill Bill: Volume 3′s history).
After putting BB to bed, the Bride returns to Bill. Instead of a bloody battle royale, their final showdown is a tense debate. At the end of this conversation, the Bride surprises Bill by killing him with the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique that Pai Mei refused to teach him. Learning that her daughter is still alive gives the Bride a greater purpose than revenge. She is no longer a grieving avenger. she has her motherly role back. But she still can’t let Bill live after what he did to Tommy and the wedding party — especially in a movie called Kill Bill.
