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Kill Bill: A Dangerous Precedent? (1 Viewer)

PaulP

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Actually I don't know where people got the 90-minute thing from. The theater I went to stated it was 1 hour 52 minutes long. So both parts, if equal, would approximate 4 hours. Hardly something most people can take at the cineplex.
 

Edwin Pereyra

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Actually I don't know where people got the 90-minute thing from.
Same here. It has always been 110 minutes give or take 2 minutes but it has never been 90 minutes.

Whether it should not have been split into two films remains to be seen as nobody knows yet how long the second half is or whether its content is better served as a totally separate piece instead of just one.

But I never felt I cheated with Volume 1.

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.

~Edwin
 

Chris

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Exactly. Counting credits, etc. Kill Bill is 112 minutes. The second part is supposedly slightly longer. So you'd be looking at a 4+ hour long grindhouse movie.

I think a lot of people keep bagging on this 90 minute thing, but Kill Bill was NOT 90 minutes, and that kind of myth is wrong.

There are films that broken apart might be better then together (as I feel with some of the Harry Potter later books) and some where it will be a disaster. But I can't see it setting any sort of precedent unless the material can "work" in that way; studios don't want two films that are flops rather 1 fair-to-success.
 

Dennis Pagoulatos

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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! :emoji_thumbsup:

-Dennis
 

Bruce Hedtke

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I'll third that, Dennis. I think the choice to make it into two volumes was the correct call. In the first volume, you get very little in the way of Elle, Budd or even Bill. They were not really part of the story at all and that should make Vol. 2 a film unto itself. That's why it works in this particular film. Obviously, if it's a successful ploy, it will have copycats.

Bruce
 

Chris Farmer

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My concern wasn't about Kill Bill itself. I think it was well done, and certainly felt like I got my money's worth from Volume 1. But let's face it, most filmmakers don't have near Tarantino's talent, so trying to split a movie that was originally conceived as a whole would be a far riskier proposition. Kill Bill got too big for one movie, 4 hours or so is far too long for a movie without an intermission, but it was originally planned as one movie. My concern will be that now we get other movies that will be split, and diminished because of it. That's the precedent that concerns me.
 

MatS

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Just remember those who attempt to split their films in two in the future to copy upon the sucess of KB will most likely meet with the same lack of sucess of those who will be rushing to copy the themeatic style of KB.

QT is an original, KB is an original

Kill Bill Volume 1 is both brilliant and breathtaking, I will gladly wait till Feb to see 'The 5th Film By Quentin Tarantino" ;).
 

Arman

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We can't wait for Kill Bill Volume 2 thus we are planning to watch Kill Bill Volume 1 at least one more time (it will be a very very rare theatrical repeats for me). If other filmmakers will follow Tarantino's leads, bring it on! :D
 

Ziv L

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I think that it's wrong to split movies to parts (unless it was originally planned to be a trilogy, like LOTR), if you want to take breaks, you can rent the dvd of the movie.
 

PaulP

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I think that it's wrong to split movies to parts
Would you then sit for over 4 hours watching the complete unedited Kill Bill? I loved the first volume but no way would I sit in the theater for that long. That's what DVDs are for.
 

Lew Crippen

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The 4+ hour length has another commercial problem, so far not mentioned: theaters got only a couple of showings per screen per day (and only one during their peak periods). This is a real financial problem for these owners.

So not only does splitting the film get everyone to see the film twice, it helps maximize the profit in the theatres. I suspect that a two hour film has a lot more potential for repeat viewing than a four hour film. I am very tolerant of long movies, but I would think twice about seeing a four hour movie in the theatre a second time. And I can’t imagine it a third time.
 

Jason Seaver

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I think that it's wrong to split movies to parts
I think stating hard and fast rules for any sort of creative endeavor is going to get you into trouble, especially one as collaborative as film. Yes, this idea did come from the Weinsteins, but Tarantino worked with it. If I recall correctly, once the idea of splitting the movie into two was proposed, Tarantino was able to air the movie out, change the pacing, heck, probably re-arrange the order of scenes given how episodic this movie is.

It's not as though Tarantino delivered a 3.5-hour movie and Harvey Weinstein arbitrarily cut it in the middle - splitting this into two volumes probably allowed a 2.5-hour movie to grow to what it is now.
 

Stephen_Dar

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Kill Bill was a 3 hour story. Selling it as two 90min stories is a crime. A very serious crime.
You didn't even see the film and yet you speak this strongly? Out of line, as others have debunked the theory about this being a 90 min rip off (it's almost 2 hrs).

I'm in favor of this development. The number one problem we have with film today is they seem to have run out of short stories to adapt or otherwise are at a loss for suitable material, so they increasingly turn to novels and non-fiction books. If these sources were translated scene for scene into scripts, something like LOTR would probably be 25 hours long or more, which means even Jackson's brilliant job of adaptation comes up pretty short.

Thus, any trend that finds a way to deliver greater complexity to audiences is a trend I will be behind. I'm so thrilled that Band of Brothers is 10 hours long. Can you imagine how lame the film treatment would have been if the whole story had ended up as a 2 hr movie? That, in essence, is THE explanation for why so much Hollywood output is so horrible. Take 14 hours of great material and hack it into 2 hrs, shake, bake for 30 min, what comes out is the typical Hollywood steaming turd.

Edit: actually, it might be more reasonable to say people are getting more sophisticated and demanding better adaptations of long material, because this sort of hacking has always gone on in Hollywood.
 

Jason Seaver

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Edit: actually, it might be more reasonable to say people are getting more sophisticated and demanding better adaptations of long material, because this sort of hacking has always gone on in Hollywood.
Or they're getting less sophisticated and simply demanding more literal adaptations. 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. I'm not sure wanting a movie to be an expensively mounted book-on-tape is really sophisticated.
 

Adam Lenhardt

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adaptations.
And what's wrong with that? I can only think of a few films radically different from their source material which became great movies. And the implication is that literal adaptations can't be great. Harry Potter may be an "expensively mounted book-on-tape," but it was an almost entirely satisfying experience in the theater. If the source is good enough to put down the money for the rights, then it deserves to be respected.
 

Jason Seaver

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Nothing wrong with it; it's one way to go, and probably the path of least-angry-people-posting-on-the-internet. I just wouldn't equate it with "sophisticated".

If the source is good enough to put down the money for the rights, then it deserves to be respected.
Well, it's not always "good enough", but often enough "popular enough" or "contains elements we like whose use might be legally actionable." :)

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.
 

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