At the start of this year Screen Rant reported on the fact that Quentin Tarantino is still on the road to bringing us the long-awaited, full, four-plus-hour version of Kill Bill that he originally intended. Fast-forward seven months, and even though we still haven’t seen Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair materialize in stores, Tarantino has updated us on the status of the project, continuing to promise that it’s still on its way.
Last time we reported on the promised full version of Kill Bill, several different details were revealed about what would differ from the separate Vol.1 and Vol.2 releases. Some of the details were that the black-and-white “House of Blue Leaves” fight sequence will be in color; that there will be gorier anime sequences; and no “baby cliffhanger” that’s at the end of Vol.1.
However, one of the biggest changes to the full version will be the addition of a newly created sequence that will take place during the anime segment featuring Lucy Liu’s O-Ren Ishii. Tarantino is still finishing up Inglourious Basterds (since it still hasn’t had it’s theatrical release), but says he’ll move onto The Whole Bloody Affair straight after that. Here’s what he told SciFiWire:
“I need to do one thing with it, though… I’m not going to monkey around with the movie itself, but we’ve actually done a whole new section for the anime as the last thing [we added]. I actually wrote a much longer script for the anime section during O-Ren’s revenge chapter. Remember the guy with the long hair that kills her father? It’s like, what happened to that dude? Well, I wrote it and it was the biggest, most elaborate thing I wrote-her taking him down.”
Tarantino says that this added anime sequence was conceived back when he had the four-plus-hour movie in mind, as opposed to it being split into two separate ones. He says that the reason they never had the full anime sequence is because it was so big (read: would add to the already VERY long runtime).
However, Tarantino reveals that he more recently showed Harvey Weinstein exactly what he had written before shooting the Kill Bills and they went ahead and made the extended anime sequence with the same team (Production I.G.) that made the existing sequence within Kill Bill Vol.1. Tarantino claims that all that’s left to do is go over it a bit with the anime team, to make sure everything’s right.
Kill Bill anime segment
SciFiWire also managed to get some information out of Tarantino about the also long-awaited full version of Grindhouse to be released on DVD and Blu-ray. He admits that they’ve just been lazy with getting around to it, but sadly doesn’t say anymore about when we should expect it. However, he points out the very cool fact that the full cut is currently being played theatrically all around the world at special midnight screenings and the like. For example, in Scotland (where yours truly resides) it was shown a few months after it was theatrically released in the US (to an extremely disappointing box office reception). Not long after that initial flop, tickets went on sale for other special screenings to be held a few months later.
I guess when a movie is hard to find or when it appears in a limited respect, people will flock to it because it may be a chance that won’t come around again for a long time.
I have actually been holding off on buying either of the Kill Bill movies on DVD, trying to wait for the full version to get released (both volumes appear on TV quite a bit, so I can still get my Tarantino martial arts fix). I’m really glad that we’re going to be getting some extra bang for our buck – especially if you’re making fans double-dip for a film (or in this case, two films). In that cast the re-release has to offer something extra. Extended scenes, bloodier scenes, and NEW scenes are all a great gifts to offer die-hard fans of a movie.
It must be noted that some of the things Tarantino has promised for The Whole Bloody Affair already appeared in the Japanese cuts of Kill Bill. For example, the House of Blue Leaves fight sequence with the Crazy 88 is in color in the Japanese cuts, and the anime sequence is a bit bloodier. However, the newly created anime stuff, amongst other things, will be completely new and unique to The Whole Bloody Affair.
Unfortunately Tarantino fails to mention a specific release date for Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, so we have to continue to wait indefinitely. While we wait: what do you think about what Tarantino has in mind for the full version of the Kill Bill saga?
Sources: SciFiWire (thanks to /Film)
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