War Handwavium

This is the War Handwavium score for the movie “Kill Bill” 1 and 2.

total: +289 points

!!!SPOILERS!!!

+5 points, 02:21, Bill tells Kiddo “This is me at my most masochistic” just before he shoots her in head. Pointless display of evil.

+3 points, 13:33, Kiddo kills Copperhead

+3 points, 29:30, Kiddo bites trucker’s lip as he was about to rape her.

+3 points, 31:40, Kiddo kills Buck

+9 points, 36:57, Cottonmouth’s backstory, her father kills three mob thugs

-3 points, 37:34, Thug kills father

-3 points, 39:30, Mob Boss kills mother

+3 points, 41:04, Cottonmouth kills Boss

+6 points, 42:32, Cottonmouth kills 2 thugs

+3 points, 43:30, Cottonmouth first professional hit

+5 points, 01:00:20, GoGo kills patron at bar, pointless display of evil

+3 points, 01:02:57, Cottonmouth beheads boss

+3 points, 01:14:24, Kiddo cuts Sophie’s arm off

+18 points, 01:15:34, Kiddo kills first line of bodyguards, 6 dead

+3 points, 01:20:30, Kiddo kills GoGo

information, 01:22:30, Arial shot shows Kiddo surrounded by 43 bodyguards, Crazy88’s.

+222 points, 01:22:30, Kiddo kills 74 of the Crazy 88’s.

Kiddo spanks 1 and tells him to go home to his mother
+5 points, Kiddo ducks an axe and allows it to kill another Crazy 88. Lethal Rube Goldberg Machine.
Kiddo cuts one man in the mouth with sword, looks like the Joker.

+3 points, 10:36:53, Kiddo scalps, kills Cottonmouth

+10 points, 01:40:31, Kiddo tortures Sophie, gets information

Kill Bill part 2

+17 points, 14:25, Bill and others kill everyone in church, 8 dead, Kiddo in coma. Camera pulls away, distancing audience from scene.

-3 points, 26:00, Bud shoots Kiddo with rocksalt

-5 points, 37:30, Bud buries Kiddo alive

+3 points, 01:09:50, California Mountain Snake kills Bud with a real snake.

+5 points, 01:19:52, Kiddo plucks out California Mountain Snake’s eye.

+5 points, 01:58:40, Kiddo kills Bill with 5 point palm exploding heart technique, Bill doesn’t die right away, distancing audience.

Summary:

I’m surprised “Kill Bill” got this low of a score. It appears that the Crazy 88’s were indeed meant to be composed of 88 people. 88 kills times 3 points a kill is 264 points, which gives “Kill Bill” quite a bump in the score. But it turns out that is also the biggest part of the carnage. Compared to “300″, which shows armies getting slaughtered, “Kill Bill” is relatively tame. “Kill Bill” also didn’t “other” the way “300″ did. In “300″, the bad guys were freaks and weirdos and nonhuman. In “Killl Bill”, the bad guys were just people who looked like anyone else. The “Kill Bill” 1 had nearly a hundred deaths on screen. “Kill Bill” 2 had 2 on-screen deaths: Bud and Bill. (It had a replay of the church massacre, but it was a replay, and the camera backed off and didn’t actually show the deaths). Which is probably why most people have the experience of “Kill Bill” that they love the first one or the second one, but they hate the other film. Few people, apparently like both films. The first one has 100 deaths on screen and is mostly a violent action film. The second one has 2 deaths on screen and while violent, spends far more time explaining people’s motivations and exploring the consequences.

There is something about Tarantino movies that comes off as voyeuristic towards violence. The movie starts off with a fake “Feature Presentation” intro clip from the 70’s. And when people bleed, they gush blood like a high pressure hose. Apparently Tarantino did this as an homage to the martial arts movies he was paying homage to. But the effect as a member of the audience is to be reminded that you’re a member of the audience, not part of the movie. When I think of Tarantino and violence, I keep thinking of Chauncey Gardner in “Being There” saying “I like to watch”.

That said, I enjoyed “Kill Bill”. I preferred the second over the first, but the two movies are really two parts of a single story, and as a whole, I enjoyed them.

I think one thing I appreciated about “Kill Bill” was the fact that it took place in our world, with our rules. “Kill Bill” isn’t out to show you that violence is superior to social structures. It shows you violent people operating under and outside of social structures. “Kill Bill” isn’t out to show us that Kiddo had to take matters into her own hands and become a vigilante to achieve “justice”. Kiddo was always a killer. Bill was always a murdering bastard. And when Bill tried to kill Kiddo, Kiddo killed Bill.

Some movies like to tell you the story of the frog and the scorpion, (scorpion asks frog for a ride across the river, halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog. Frog says “you fool, now we’ll both drown”. Scorpion says “It was my nature to sting”.) with the moral of the story being that we’re frogs and we can’t be nice to the scorpions of the world. And when the scorpion stings our spouse, our parents, our friend, whatever, the moral is we must become like scorpions (vigilantes) to fight the scorpions. This is the moral behind many high scoring war handwavium stories.

But “Kill Bill” doesn’t tell that story. “Kill Bill” tells the story of two scorpions who try to kill each other. And they don’t bother the frogs or the rest of the world. And for that, I was able to watch “Kill Bill” without the turn off of being told violence is superior to social structures, or the turnoff of being told that the world can’t handle the truth, and so on. It is a violent movie, no doubt about that. In a few hours of screen time, we see Kiddo kill about 100 people. But it isn’t trying to tell us that we’re frogs in a world of scorpions.

I preferred the second part to the first part, but really, it’s a single movie. And overall, I’d say it’s worth the price of an evening ticket at the movie theater. I also purchased the DVD to add it to my collection.

As for some oddities in the movie, I cannot for the life of me understand why the people are using swords when they have on occaission shown themselves willing to use firearms. When Bill and the rest kill everyone at the church, they’re using automatic rifles. When we’re shown the backstory for Copperhead, we’re shown her acting as an assassin, using a sniper rifle to kill a general in a motorcade. But when Kiddo confronts Copperhead, none of Copperhead’s bodyguards have guns. When Kiddo confronts Bill, Bill has a gun but uses to shoot a piece of fruit. In both cases, Copperhead and Bill fight Kiddo with swords. It was a weird inconsistency. I would have rather Bill and company killed everyone at the church using swords and shown Copperhead taking her first professional hit in hand-to-hand. With the assumption being that somehow super martial arts are better than firerarms. Then at least it would have been consistent.

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