Summary

• Quentin Tarantino's nonlinear storytelling in Kill Bill adds depth and excitement to the revenge plot.
• Flashbacks and creative scene placement enhance the epic four-hour timeline of Kill Bill's story.
• The Bride's journey of vengeance is filled with brutal kills, unexpected plot twists, and a powerful ending.

Quentin Tarantino is a filmmaker who loves to play around with nonlinear storytelling which he uses on an epic scale with the Kill Bill timeline. The two-part martial arts revenge movie Uma Thurman stars as Beatrix “The Bride” Kiddo, an ex-assassin who seeks vengeance against her former colleagues after being left for dead on her wedding day. The movie ends, unsurprisingly, with the Bride killing Bill, as the title promised. However, the journey that Tarantino takes the audience on leading up to that final confrontation, jumps from the past to the present, filling in the exciting world of this story.

Though Kill Bill's revenge plot is pretty straightforward with the Bride literally crossing names off a list, Tarantino elevates the genre with some interesting storytelling tactics. A given story only has one beginning, middle, and end, but since Kill Bill is chopped into two volumes, Tarantino allowed his imagination to run wild when it came to placing each scene on its four-hour timeline. With flashbacks filling in origin stories and characters revealed to be dead before being introduced, Kill Bill's timeline benefits from a deeper dive.

Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman came up with the concept for Kill Bill during filming for Pulp Fiction.

The Origin Of O-Ren

The Childhood Revenge Story Of The Bride's Future Advesary

While the Bride is lying in the back of Buck’s truck, wiggling her toes and trying to regain her mobility after spending years in a coma, she kills time by detailing O-Ren Ishii’s tragic backstory in a visually stunning anime sequence dubbed “The Origin of O-Ren.” As a young child, O-Ren witnessed the gruesome murders of her parents at the hands of a crime lord named Boss Matsumoto.

She trained as a killer, toppled the boss’s empire, and assumed control of the Yakuza. Since this sequence takes place during O-Ren’s childhood, it’s technically the first part of Kill Bill chronologically and acts as a short martial arts revenge movie that mirrors the Bride's own story in ways.

The Cruel Tutelage Of Pai Mei

The Bride Trains With The Legendary Warrior

Kill Bill's next sequence chronologically is the flashback to the Bride’s training. After being buried alive in the lonely grave of Paula Schultz, the Bride starts punching the lid of the coffin in a bid to escape. The movie then flashes back to her training under the cruel but infinitely wise Pai Mei as he teaches her the discipline that allows her to survive the burial.

Pai Mei, played by Gordon Liu, is a kung-fu master of legend in the world of Kill Bill, and is especially known for the Bak Mei and Eagle's Claw styles of martial arts.

Pai Mei, played by Gordon Liu, is a kung-fu master of legend in the world of Kill Bill, and is especially known for the Bak Mei and Eagle's Claw styles of martial arts. Initially, the Bride hates him and his somewhat harsh style of teaching, but she eventually comes around to respecting him. The Pai Mei training sequence explains how the Bride became such a formidable killer: she had a great teacher.

The Bride Finds Out She’s Pregnant

The Bride Chooses To Leave Her Life Of Violence

Upon completion of her training with Pai Mei, the Bride takes the top spot in Bill’s Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. While staying at a hotel on a mission, the Bride takes a pregnancy test and it comes back positive. She immediately decides to retire so that she can focus on raising the baby. However, moments after this life-altering news, she's attacked by a fellow assassin disguised as room service.

Though the Bride and the other assassin find themselves in a standoff, she explains the situation to her adversary and that she is going to leave the world of violence at this moment. Surprisingly, the assassin takes her at her word and leaves the Bride to start her new life.

The Massacre At Two Pines

Bill Attempts To Kill The Bride

The black-and-white opening shot of Kill Bill: Vol. 1 sees the Bride, beaten and bloodied, lying on the floor of a wedding chapel before Bill shoots her in the head and puts her in a coma. In the second movie, the rest of this scene is filled in. A pregnant Kiddo, her fiancé, Tommy, and their friends are at the chapel, rehearsing for their imminent wedding. Bill stops by to tell the Bride that he wishes her well, but he meets up with the other Deadly Viper assassins outside, and they go into the chapel armed with machine guns.

The assassins open fire in the chapel and murder the entire wedding party off-screen. Bill then torments the Bride, whose real name is bleeped out, and just as she's about to tell him he's the father of her unborn baby, he shoots her in the head mid-sentence — only this doesn’t kill her. Earl McGraw, the Texas Ranger sent to investigate the crime scene, is surprised to find that Kiddo is still alive, albeit comatose. She's taken to hospital, where she remains in a coma for four years.

The Bride Awakens From Her Coma And Goes To Tokyo

The Bride Begins Her Mission Of Revenge

Four years after Bill shoots her, the Bride awakens from her coma. Immediately after waking up, she checks for her baby and is horrified to find it's no longer there. She's even more horrified by her memories of an orderly named Buck renting out her comatose body to sexual predators. When Buck returns to the ward, she kills him and the man who paid him, then steals the keys to his truck, the “P**** Wagon.”

The death of Buck may occur early in Kill Bill, but it's one of the duology's most brutal kills.

The death of Buck may occur early in Kill Bill, but it's one of the duology's most brutal kills. The Bride crushes his head by repeatedly slamming a door into it. It's a glimpse at just how ruthless she's become both because of her trauma and the unrelenting teaching methods of Pai Mei. To commence Kill Bill's revenge plot, the Bride heads straight to the airport and buys a ticket to Tokyo to confront O-Ren, her first target.

Showdown At The House Of Blue Leaves

The Bride Takes On The Crazy 88 And Crosses The First Name Off Her List

Upon her arrival in Tokyo, the Bride goes to visit legendary swordsmith Hattori Hanzō and commissions a new sword. When the sword is ready, she takes it straight to the House of Blue Leaves to confront O-Ren. However, before she can fight O-Ren, the Bride has to fight her goon squad, the Crazy 88.

The blood-drenched showdown at the House of Blue Leaves is one of Tarantino’s greatest action scenes. After singlehandedly defeating the Crazy 88, the Bride lops off O-Ren’s scalp and sends her assistant Sofie Fatale back to Bill with the message that the other Deadly Vipers are next on her kill list.

The Bride Kills Vernita Green

The Bride Crosses Her Second Name Off The List

After the prologue, Kill Bill jumps straight into the action. The Bride goes to Vernita Green’s house, brutally fights her, takes a brief break when Vernita's daughter comes home, and then kills her former colleague with a knife to the chest. Vernita's death is witnessed by her daughter which could be a key moment the timeline if Kill Bill 3 happens.

Chronologically, this scene actually takes place after Kill Bill: Vol. 1's climax.

Chronologically, this scene actually takes place after Kill Bill: Vol. 1's climax. The Bride goes to Tokyo and takes on the Crazy 88 before going to Vernita’s house. When the Bride returns to her truck and crosses Vernita's name off the list, O-Ren's name has already been crossed off. However, this scene order makes sense from a narrative perspective. The Vernita fight kicks off the action in the opening reel, and the showdown at the House of Blue Leaves ends the movie on an explosive mega-scale setpiece.

Budd Buries The Bride Alive

Budd Nearly Kills The Bride

After dispatching Vernita, the next name on the Bride’s list is Budd, Bill’s brother. She goes to Budd’s trailer, but since he’s been warned by Bill, he's ready. As soon as she enters the trailer, he shoots her and calls a buddy to help him bury her alive. Out of all the characters in Kill Bill, Budd comes the closest to actually killing the Bride despite seemingly being the most sympathetic towards her mission of revenge.

A lot of Kill Bill’s fight scenes are heightened and stylized, but the terror of being buried alive is played straight. The Bride is just as scared as anyone would be as she’s encased in a box, dumped in a hole in the ground, and trapped under six feet of dirt.

The Bride Confronts Elle Driver At Budd’s Trailer

The Bride Crosses Her Third And Fourth Name Off The List

Once she has escaped from a shallow grave, the Bride returns to Budd’s trailer to finish the job, only to find that his demise has already been taken care of by the next name on her list, Elle Driver. Elle gives Budd a briefcase full of cash with a venomous snake hidden inside it. The snake kills Budd, then the Bride arrives to kill Elle.

This sequence is hilariously anticlimactic, as Tarantino gears up for an epic fight scene and builds the tension with music, then the fight is over instantly.

This sequence is hilariously anticlimactic, as Tarantino gears up for an epic fight scene and builds the tension with music, then the fight is over instantly. In one of Kill Bill’s most unexpected plot turns, the Bride rips out Elle’s one good eye and leaves her for dead, trapped in the trailer with the snake. While she is certainly beaten, Tarantino confirmed Elle Driver is still alive.

The Bride Reunites With B.B. And Kills Bill

The Bride Crosses The Final Name Off The List

After Budd and Elle are taken care of in a grisly two-for-one deal, the Bride has just one name left on her kill list: Bill. The cliffhanger ending of Kill Bill: Vol. 1 tells the audience that the Bride’s daughter is still alive, as Bill asks Sofie if the Bride knows. However, the Bride doesn't know for herself until she arrives at Bill’s house. She bursts through the door, ready to shoot Bill dead, only to be met by a little girl who addresses her as “Mommy.” Bill has been raising his and the Bride’s daughter, B.B.

After putting B.B. to bed, the Bride returns to Bill. Instead of a bloody battle royale, their final showdown is a tense conversation. At the end of that chat, the Bride surprises Bill by killing him with the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique that Pai Mei refused to teach him. Finding out her daughter is still alive gives the Bride a greater purpose than revenge. She is no longer a bereaved avenger; she has her maternal role back. However, she still can't let Bill live after what he did to Tommy and the wedding party — especially in a movie called Kill Bill.