Kill Bill: A Dangerous Precedent? (1 Viewer)

[JonSor]

Would the naysayers be happier if Tarantino edited down his movie to 3 hours? Then later released an extended edition a la LOTR?

I personally loved the movie and wouldn't want anything I saw in volume 1 edited out just to get volumes 1 and 2 down to 3 hours long.

 

[Galen_V]

To chime in here, I also felt that the movie ended on a good note. Not only was the very end a good cliffhanger, but the major fight scene felt like a very good climax. After all, I think that it would have cheapened the film in some way if there had been another hour after that large of a sequence, sort of how the car chase in Reloaded was diminished by the 30 minutes following it.

 

[Greg_R]

Is it blasphemy for me to say that the ending of Kill Bill Volume 1, though originally conceived as a single film, works MUCH better than the false cliffhanger of Matrix Reloaded? Because it sure does!

Not only that, but the large fight scene was much better in KB1 (vs. the Agent Smith fight).

 

[Chris]

Absolutely. I watched Matrix Reloaded again after picking up the DVD, and couldn't believe how weak the fight scenes were in comparison to KB1.

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

As nice and faithful as the Harry Potter and Lord Of The Rings adaptations are, they don't really contribute much new, and don't excite me nearly as much as filmmakers taking an idea or story and making a great movie out of it, especially if it's a new experience for someone who is already experienced with the source material.

That is unfair. Not much is contributed to Harry Potter, whichr eally is just a staging of the books, but with LOTR you can see some real moulding of the story to try and make it work cinematically. And it succeeded.

 

[Jean-Michel]

There are those who think that the entire film is only 3 hours long. With Vol. 1 clocking in at 110 minutes, I'd be really disappointed if Vol. 2 is only 70 minutes long.

Vol. 2 is going to be almost the exact same length as Vol. 1 from what I've read, i.e. 110 minutes including credits.

To give you an idea what the running time would be if the two had been combined, add 110 + 110 then subtract 15 minutes (since the closing credits are about 15 minutes long and they obviously wouldn't show them twice if the two were combined) and you end up five minutes shy of 3 1/2 hours. Not exactly 4 hours but not 3 either.

 

[Stephen_Dar]

Again, I think you get into trouble when you look at this as a hard-and-fast rule. Yeah, you get Harry Potter and Lord Of The Rings, but you also get Gus Van Sant's Psycho, and you don't get James Whale's Frankenstein or half of Kurosawa's work.

You've created an artificial comparison here. To come back to the real world for a moment, if what we're saying is it's a rare event for good films to result from faithful adaptation of strong source material, it's got to be a stunningly rare event for a broad film adaptation to be better than BOTH the source material AND any faithful film version of the source material.

To put it another way, implying that a desire for faithful adaptations of long, complex works in a world that demands 2 hr max film times would somehow be at odds with encouraging more Kurosawa-style film making is, frankly, one of the silliest notions I've heard this month. Anyone big enough to do what Kurosawa did will have no problem making movies (only finding an audience for them in a world with a 1 min attention span). And, why would you suggest that Kurosawa's re-interpretation of MacBeth is necessarily better than a long, detailed, faithful adaptation of the original? Can't there be room for both?

Any way you slice it, I see a desire or willingness on the part of general audiences to accept longer, more complex works as a darn good thing, so I'm in favor of the Kill Bill concept. As others have said, making an empty second film just for cash isn't going to fly, so the format actually will serve to enforce quality standards. From a studio perspective, once you've invested in LOTR, Part 1 has to be good on a level that one-off movies never need worry about, and that seems like a very good thing. In essence, the 1-weekend boffo box office concept will not be acceptable for such films, they MUST have legs.

For this reason I am hoping the sales of the Matrix 2 DVD disappoint, because I felt the film was so awful we need to send a message. Matrix 2 was not part of a planned trilogy, I don't care what anyone says, it was clearly a clueless sequel, and I don't want the Matrix movies to confuse the concept of what LOTR has achieved.

 

[Tino]

I don't care what anyone says, It was clearly a clueless sequel.

Sez you! I enjoyed it immensely as did many others here and all over the world. $750 million worldwide so far, and the DVD sales will be astronomical.

It makes no difference to me whether it was planned as a trilogy or not, I got my money's worth with The Matrix Reloaded just as I did with Kill Bill.

 

[Nathan V]

On a side note...

Yeah, I really hate to say this, being a Matrix fan and all, but the non-CGI scenes BLEW AWAY everything in the Matrix (except the car chase, of course, it had no correspondent in KB). Watching Uma Thurman fight 80-odd REAL PEOPLE is just so, so, so, much more entertaining of an experience. We should be glad that scene got made. I doubt other cinematographers would know the first thing about shooting a scene that incredibly well. It's pretty mind-boggling camerawork when you consider the logistics of it all.

Ok, I'm done. Back on the rails...

I do not want to see movie-miniseries's in theatres. That's ridiculous. It's what TV's for. I have no qualms with long films. Are the studios aware that (nearly) all the top grossing films are 2.5-3 hours long? KB is a rare exception. The movie is too damn intense for 4 hours. It's like a 3 hour cut of Requiem for a Dream. Not even I would sit through that, and I love that film. And Quentin's a very capable director. He can dice a movie in half and not make it seem like a haphazard mistake. The guy deserves credit. It's a great ending. And like somebody else said, having the huge, climactic battle in the middle of the movie would be a bad move. This really hurt the Matrix 2. And on a side note, how the hell is Quentin POSSIBLY going to top that House of Blue Leaves scene in KB2?

 

[Kirk Tsai]

I was slightly irked when I first read about cutting Kill Bill into two volumes, but if it's Weinstein not forcing Tarantino to cut his ideal picture, then it's fine. One wonders if Mankiewicz could have made a pair of good films with "Ceasar and Cleopatra" and "Antony and Cleopatra" instead of the sub-par film that Cleopatra is now.

 

[BarryS]

I'd be really disappointed if Vol. 2 is only 70 minutes long.

The IMDb lists the runtime of Volume 2 as 94 minutes.

Regarding the issue at hand, I don't have a problem with it. I rarely see a whole movie without stopping or pausing at some point. As for paying for two ticket prices to see the entire film, well if I were paying to see 45 minutes of a movie then I would certainly feel ripped off. However, Kill Bill: Volume 1 is over 100 minutes long. That's certainly feature-length, so I felt in no way shorted and was completely satisfied with the first installment.

 

[JoeyNelson]

The IMDb lists the runtime of Volume 2 as 94 minutes.

i would definitely take that with a grain of salt.

 

[BarryS]

Yeah, I really hate to say this, being a Matrix fan and all, but the non-CGI scenes BLEW AWAY everything in the Matrix (except the car chase, of course, it had no correspondent in KB). Watching Uma Thurman fight 80-odd REAL PEOPLE is just so, so, so, much more entertaining of an experience. We should be glad that scene got made. I doubt other cinematographers would know the first thing about shooting a scene that incredibly well. It's pretty mind-boggling camerawork when you consider the logistics of it all.

I absolutely agree 100%. Kill Bill completely blew me away. When I rewatched Matrix Reloaded the other way, I was struck by how fake it looked compared to Kill Bill. KB looks awesome and MR looks like CG garbage from a Playstation 2 game. There's no comparison. MR went way overboard with the special effects. I will not be purchasing it, however I eagerly anticipate the Kill Bill DVD.

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

The IMDb lists the runtime of Volume 2 as 94 minutes.

Yeah, they also have the same running time for Volume 1, which we all now know is wrong.

~Edwin

 

[Angelo.M]

...Matrix 2 was not part of a planned trilogy...

Is that true?

 

[Stephen_Dar]

I do not want to see movie-miniseries's in theatres. That's ridiculous. It's what TV's for.

Why not? Give reasons? Without this idea, there would be no LOTR. How foul would that be? It's an overused and evil phrase, but can we not think outside the box a bit here for a moment? With crappy sequels, haven't we been getting a bad form of miniseries already? COmpared with that, how awesome is LOTR.

 

[Jason Seaver]

And, why would you suggest that Kurosawa's re-interpretation of MacBeth is necessarily better than a long, detailed, faithful adaptation of the original? Can't there be room for both?

That there's room for both is, in fact, what I'm saying - that trying to come up with hard-and-fast rules about how movies "should" be made, whether it be "stay as close to the source material as possible!" or "don't split what was originally envisioned as one movie into two!", will preclude potentially great movies from getting made. I'm not saying that Kurosawa's re-interpretation was necessarily better than a long, detailed, faithful adaptation - just that saying adaptations should or must be faithful and exclude as little as possible would exclude some great films.

That I tend to be more interested in a freer adaptation than something like the Harry Potter movies is a seperate issue.

 

[Angelo.M]

] not apparent to other Matrix fans?

Don't know if I qualify as a fan, but the last thing I wanted to see in the sequel was a carbon copy of The Matrix, and I felt happy with the result, even if the film had some flaws (it's far from perfect, granted). I like the way the differences gave the film a very different feel from the first. Of course, I can understand how other folks, Matrix-fans or not, wouldn't necessarily like the film.

I'm hoping Kill Bill Volume 2 shows us something different from the first chapter, and I'm guessing it will.

I do agree with your opinion regarding serialization of films, as I stated very early (Page 1) of this thread. I'm intrigued by the idea of multi-part films, being too young to have had the experience of the true film serials. If a particular concept lends itself to multiple installments, then I see no reason for a blanket rejection of the idea.

 

[Patrick Sun]

In sequels, I favor progression, rather than regurgitation.

 

[Vickie_M]

Matrix 2 was suddenly all about this gobbledygook mumbo jumbo about the cyber gate keeper or whatever, and fake simulated CGI kung fu fighting. Very NARROW audience appeal (geeky young men, no offense, I was/am one). Are these differences not apparent to other Matrix fans?

They're not to me, because I didn't hear the dialogue as "gobbledygook mumbo jumbo." The dialogue advanced the story and gave me more clues into the Matrix universe and what's going on. More puzzle pieces fell into place.

Btw, I'm an extremely unhip grandmother.

I will agree, though, I liked KB's House of Blue Leaves fight much better than Reloaded's Burlybrawl.


As long as I'm here, I'll say that Kill Bill's split works for me too. I was exhilarated when I walked out of the theater, anxious to see it again, impatient for the second part, and not disappointed by the ending.

Determining whether or not a movie should be/should have been split has to be done on a case by case basis. For KB it works beautifully.