Kill Bill: Volume 2

Plot

The pregnant Bride and her groom rehearse their wedding. Bill, the Bride's former lover, the father of her child, and the leader of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, arrives unexpectedly and orders the Deadly Vipers to kill everyone at the wedding. The Bride survives and swears revenge.

Four years later, the Bride has already assassinated Deadly Vipers Vernita Green and O-Ren Ishii. She goes to the trailer of Bill's brother and Deadly Viper Budd, planning to ambush him. Budd has been warned by Bill of her approach; he shoots her in the chest with a shotgun blast of rock salt, then sedates her. He calls Elle Driver, another former Deadly Viper, and arranges to sell her the Bride's unique sword for a million dollars. He seals the Bride inside a coffin and buries her alive.

Years earlier, Bill tells the young Bride of the legendary martial arts master Pai Mei and his Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, a death blow that Mei refuses to teach his students; the technique supposedly kills any opponent after they have taken five steps. Bill takes the Bride to Mei's temple for training. Mei ridicules her and makes her training a torment, but she gains his respect. In the present, The Bride uses Mei's martial arts techniques to break out of the coffin and claw her way to the surface.

Elle arrives at Budd's trailer and kills him with a black mamba hidden with the money for the sword. She calls Bill and tells him that the Bride has killed Budd, and that Elle has killed the Bride. She uses the Bride's real name: Beatrix Kiddo. As Elle exits the trailer, Beatrix ambushes her and they fight. Elle, who was also taught by Mei, taunts Beatrix by revealing that she poisoned Mei in retribution for his plucking out her eye. Beatrix plucks out Elle's remaining eye and leaves her screaming in the trailer with the black mamba.

Beatrix tracks Bill to the Mexican countryside and discovers that their daughter B.B. is still alive, now aged four. She finds her with Bill in a hotel and spends the evening with them. After she puts B.B. to bed, Bill shoots Beatrix with a dart containing truth serum and interrogates her. She recounts a mission in which she discovered she was pregnant, and explains that she left the Deadly Vipers to give B.B. a better life. She disables Bill with Mei's Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, which she kept secret. Bill makes his peace with her, takes five steps and dies. Beatrix leaves with B.B. to start a new life.

Cast

Music

As with Tarantino's previous films, Kill Bill features an eclectic soundtrack comprising many musical genres. On the two soundtracks, music ranges from country music to selections from the Spaghetti Western film scores of Ennio Morricone. Bernard Herrmann's theme from the film Twisted Nerve is whistled by the menacing Elle Driver in the hospital scene. A brief, 15-second excerpt from the opening of the Ironside theme music by Quincy Jones is used as the Bride's revenge motif, which flares up with a red-tinged flashback whenever she's in the company of her next target. Instrumental tracks from Japanese guitarist Tomoyasu Hotei figure prominently, and after the success of Kill Bill they were frequently used in American TV commercials and at sporting events. The end credits are driven by the rock and roll version of "Malagueña Salerosa", a traditional Mexican song, performed by "Chingon", Robert Rodriguez's band.

Theatrical release

Kill Bill: Volume 2 was released in theaters on April 16, 2004. It was originally scheduled to be released on February 20, 2004, but was rescheduled. Variety posited that the delay was to coincide its theatrical release with Volume 1's release on DVD. In the United States and Canada, Volume 2 was released in 2,971 theaters and grossed $25.1 million on its opening weekend, ranking first at the box office and beating fellow opener The Punisher. Volume 2's opening weekend gross was higher than Volume 1's, and the equivalent success confirmed the studio's financial decision to split the film into two theatrical releases. Volume 2 attracted more female theatergoers than Volume 1, with 60% of the audience being male and 56% of the audience being men between the ages of 18 to 29 years old. Volume 2's opening weekend was the largest to date for Miramax Films aside from releases under its arm Dimension Films. The opening weekend was also the largest to date in the month of April for a film restricted in the United States to theatergoers 17 years old and up, besting Life's 1999 record. Volume 2's opening weekend was strengthened by the reception of Volume 1 in the previous year among audiences and critics, abundant publicity related to the splitting into two volumes, and the DVD release of Volume 1 in the week before Volume 2's theatrical release.

Outside of the United States and Canada, Volume 2 was released in 20 territories over the weekend of April 23, 2004. It grossed an estimated $17.7 million and ranked first at the international box office, ending an eight-week streak held by The Passion of the Christ. Volume 2 grossed a total of $66.2 million in the United States and Canada and $86 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $152.2 million.

Home release

In the United States, Volume 2 was released on DVD and VHS on August 10, 2004.

In a December 2005 interview, Tarantino addressed the lack of a special edition DVD for Kill Bill by stating "I've been holding off because I've been working on it for so long that I just wanted a year off from Kill Bill and then I'll do the big supplementary DVD package."

The United States does not have a DVD boxed set of Kill Bill, though box sets of the two separate volumes are available in other countries, such as France, Japan and the United Kingdom. Upon the DVD release of Volume 2 in the US, however, Best Buy did offer an exclusive box set slipcase to house the two individual releases together.

Both Volume 1 and Volume 2, were released in High Definition on Blu-ray on September 9, 2008 in the United States.

The Whole Bloody Affair

Tarantino announced at the 2008 Provincetown International Film Festival that a single film version of part 1 and 2 called Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair with an extended animation sequence was to be released in May 2009. Screenings of the complete film began on March 27, 2011 at the New Beverly Cinema. This was verified to be the original print that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003, before the decision was made to split the film into two parts due to the roughly four-hour length.

Critical reception

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Kill Bill: Volume 2 received a score of 84% based on reviews from 230 critics and reports a rating average of 7.7 out of 10. It reported the consensus, "Kill Bill: Volume 2 adds extra plot and dialogue to the action-heavy exploits of its predecessor, while still managing to deliver a suitably hard-hitting sequel." At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 83 based on 42 reviews.

Roger Ebert celebrated the films, saying "Put the two parts together, and Tarantino has made a masterful saga that celebrates the martial arts genre while kidding it, loving it, and transcending it.... This is all one film, and now that we see it whole, it's greater than its two parts." In 2009, he placed the film on his twenty best films of the decade list.

Accolades

Uma Thurman received a Golden Globe Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama nomination in 2005 for her role. David Carradine also received a Best Supporting Actor nomination in the same year. Kill Bill: Volume 2 was placed in Empire Magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Films of All Time" at number 423 and the Bride was also ranked number 66 in Empire magazine's "100 Greatest Movie Characters".

Possible sequels

In April 2004, Tarantino told Entertainment Weekly that he was planning a sequel:

Oh yeah, initially I was thinking this would be my "Dollars Trilogy". I was going to do a new one every ten years. But I need at least fifteen years before I do this again. I've already got the whole mythology: Sofie Fatale will get all of Bill's money. She'll raise Nikki, who'll take on The Bride. Nikki deserves her revenge every bit as much as The Bride deserved hers. I might even shoot a couple of scenes for it now so I can get the actresses while they're this age.

At the 2006 Comic Con, Tarantino stated that, after the completion of Grindhouse, he wanted to make two anime Kill Bill films: an origin story about Bill and his mentors, and another origin starring the Bride.

Details emerged around 2007 about two possible sequels, Kill Bill: Volumes 3 and 4. According to the article, "the third film involves the revenge of two killers whose arms and eye were hacked by Uma Thurman in the first stories." The article adds that the "fourth installment of the popular kung fu action films concerns a cycle of reprisals and daughters who avenge their mother's deaths".

At the 2009 Morelia International Film Festival, films, Tarantino stated that he intended to make a third Kill Bill film. The same month, he stated that Kill Bill 3 would be his ninth film, and would be released in 2014. He stated that he wanted ten years to pass after the Bride's last conflict, to give her and her daughter a period of peace.

In December 2012, Tarantino stated: "I don't know if there's ever going to be a Kill Bill Vol. 3. We'll see, probably not though." In January 2016, it was reported that Tarantino has spoken with Thurman on a potential return for a sequel, but noted that Tarantino remains non-committal on actually making a sequel.