Kill Bill: A Dangerous Precedent? (1 Viewer)

[Lew Crippen]

Btw, I'm an extremely unhip grandmother.

None of us think you unhip, Vickie—and it is only now that I’ve become aware of your grandmother status.

 

[Jeremy Anderson]

Actually, if you listen to QT at the press junket (which is available in MP3 online if you search), he knew that the length of the script needed to be two movies and even knew where he would split it. But he didn't tell anyone until he had completed filming, at which point he showed it to them split as two movies. Harvey agreed that the ending of 1 and the beginning of 2 were both perfect, so they decided to make it two movies. He figured if they let him put it out as two, great... and if they made him put it out as one, he'd just have to do some serious editing.

So knowing that, I don't have a problem with it the way he did it. It hearkens back to the old serials, though it leaves you with a cliffhanger ending that still satisfies and lets the film stand on its own.

 

[Stephen_Dar]

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

Actually, I agree with most of your position and admire your dedication to quality film. I think we may be saying something similar but with slightly crossed wires. My basic point was that, given a world with short attention span (the past 20 years of movies), I think one great way to improve complexity in film is with this idea used by LOTR and Kill Bill. If your source material, whatever it is, is too complex for a 2 hr movie, serial films offers a way to get it out there that is superior to the previous approach which was simply to hack the source material until it fit into 2 hrs. This invariably produced crap, I think. And, if audiences are truly open now to the idea that Jackson's or Tarantino's ideas might occupy 4 or 10 or 12 hours on the big screen instead of 2, that seems like an indication mass audiences are getting more sophisticated on some level.

I wouldn't try to straightjacket interpretation, however; things should definitely remain open for your more wide ranging interpretive works. But, greater complexity means longer run time in my book, and that's what I think is great about the Kill Bill situation.

 

[Stevan Lay]

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'm just wondering then how much more Titanic would've made if it was split into two volumes? First ever film to surpass the $1 billion benchmark in domestic box-office returns, perhaps?

 

[Jason Seaver]

Who's to say Titanic would have split well, though? Its first half works as a build-up to the end, but if released on its own, might not a lot of the audience growled about nothing happening and either skipped Part 2 or at least really changed the repeat-viewing pattern?

 

[Stevan Lay]

There'll be those who would share such views that KB is a much hyped build-up to the end and that nothing really happens except for repetitive gore and self-indulgence (not me though, I really enjoyed KB and thought there was more on offering than its basic revenge driven plot).

The sinking of the Titanic is akin to watching Bill meet his fate.