In Kill Bill, Vol. 1, Tarantino offered an homage to kung fu films, showing how easily they translate into American cinema, particularly the super hero genre, wherein a hero is created by circumstance. The Bride (Uma Thurman) is shot in the head on her wedding day and her child in utero is taken from her. When we meet her, she feels and taps the metal plate in her head. From here on out, she is only partially human, and her near preternatural ability to wield a katana sword reinforces this notion. Moreover, she’s known only as The Bride – or Black Mamba. Regardless, we don’t discover her true identity until Kill Bill Vol. 2.
Ten years ago, Kill Bill Vol 2. was released, and we met Beatrix Kiddo for the first time in an additionally genre-crossing endeavor by Tarantino. Whereas the first was a kung fu-driven. The continuation transcends to the Western genre, weaving a love story between the younger Beatrix and the older Bill (David Carradine). Their love is both creepily avuncular and intimately palpable. Mordantly, there is affection shared between the two until the very end, and then an understanding that they were destined to do this dance and battle until one expires.
In the first film, revenge is predicated upon the supposed death of The Bride’s baby. But the second develops Bill as more – despite his protests – than a killer and the revenge is more justified than it isn’t. I’m not sure that I support his capping his former lover in the head – he does admit he might have “overreacted” – but she scorned him quite well and led him to believe that she had been murdered. Moreover, she led him to believe that she had been murdered because of him.
While “killer” is both of their identities, we understand that Bill’s interpretation of Beatrix’s deception has to do with a matter of honor and an utmost disrespect and not just jealousy.
And it’s here that Tarantino links the Kung Fu and Western genres, showing that the latter feeds from the former. Simultaneously, he injects an exploration of the superhero genre, positing that all three circulate on misunderstood chaos – or the creation of a perceived bad guy. But often we find that the hero – or in this case heroine – is hardly innocent and has a hand in the creation of the evil. The same can be seen in the first film, where O-Ren’s rise to power is in reaction to her family being slaughtered when she’s a young child. It’s at this moment that she can follow Bill and become a heroine, or be seen as the villain. Through circumstance, namely the introduction of the massacre of the Bride and her wedding party, O-Ren by default becomes the villain, but she is saddled with the curse of omission. Beatrix is just as – if not more – dangerous and villainous. We just don’t happen to understand this until the second volume.
The only certain antithesis to Bea throughout both films is Elle Driver (Darryl Hannah), who tries to off the comatose Bride, kills her mentor, kills Budd, and tries to steal Bill away from Beatrix. So perhaps her death is the most appropriately gruesome because she is the truest villain. There is nothing more sinister than ripping out someone’s eye and inflicting the knowledge that they know they are in for certain death. Their choices are few, and all – without a miracle rescue – lead to perdition. She can either stumble out into the dessert sun or die of dehydration, sunstroke, or by impaling her jugular on a cactus, she could starve to death in Budd’s trailer, or she could be bitten by the very same black mamba that she delivered to the dilapidating domicile.
Ten years after its release Kill Bill Vol. 2 holds its own, and why shouldn’t it – it transcends genres by mooring their tropes together.
