Quentin Tarantino’s The Movie Critic is no longer moving forward, and the long-awaited Kill Bill Volume 3 is the perfect choice to take its place as his final film.
Tarantino Cancels The Movie Critic
Throughout his career, Quentin Tarantino (one of the best directors of all time) has been a wild card among A-list Hollywood filmmakers. He favours non-linear storytelling and places his characters in off-the-wall pseudo-realities where cartoonishly graphic violence and five-to-ten F-bombs a minute are the norm. Tarantino is also an anomaly in that he has long had a specific, self-imposed finish line to his directorial career of ten movies. That horizon was coming into view with Tarantino’s The Movie Critic, only for a shocking twist to emerge in Tarantino’s recent cancellation of his own film (via THR).
In writing, Tarantino has not announced what he intends to replace The Movie Critic with as his last movie. However, should Tarantino’s decision to conclude his career with ten movies be set in stone, Kill Bill Vol. 3 is the obvious frontrunner to take the place of The Movie Critic.
Kill Bill Volume 3
The first two Kill Bills debuted in 2003 and 2004, respectively. They were originally filmed as one movie and split into two in order for Tarantino to avoid trimming the running time, and are widely considered some of the best martial arts movies of all time.
This also gave Tarantino some wiggle room on his 10-movie rule, given that his filmography currently stands at ten if both Kill Bills are counted as individual movies. Still, Tarantino himself classifies them as a singular narrative.
In any case, the tale of Uma Thurman’s Beatrix Kiddo, a.k.a. The Bride taking her revenge, may have wrapped up when she finally killed David Carradine’s Bill. Still, there’s another player in the Kill Bill narrative – namely, the young Nikki Bell (Ambrosia Kelley).
The first chapter of Kill Bill Vol. 1’s story sees Beatrix off her former assassin associate Vernita Green, a.k.a. Copperhead (Vivica A. Fox), in full view of her daughter Nikki, with Beatrix offering Nikki the opportunity for payback “If you still feel raw about it” in adulthood. Nikki’s vendetta with Beatrix is the one loose end remaining from the Kill Bill story and one that Tarantino himself has teased at various points as the basis for the prospective Kill Bill Vol. 3.
However, Tarantino’s own commitment to making Kill Bill Vol. 3 has been extremely mercurial over the years, with Tarantino giving comments affirming his interest in making Kill Bill Vol. 3 at some points and outright cancelling the film at others.
That said, Tarantino’s decision to can The Movie Critic could hypothetically lead him to reconsider finally bringing Kill Bill Vol. 3 to life, and there is good reason to think it’d be the ideal movie for him to end his career on.
The Kill Bill movies are unique in Tarantino’s career in that they are his only real film “series” in the traditional meaning of the term (Tarantino’s shared universe, and the movie universe within that universe, is nothing if not nebulous). Moreover, Kill Bill is a series that remains not fully resolved with Nikki’s reckoning with Beatrix, the as-yet-unrealized final chapter of the Kill Bill saga.
Why Kill Bill 3 Should Be Tarantino’s Final Film
With Tarantino’s heart set on his directorial career having a built-in finale, what better way to finish it than his 10th and final movie being an actual finale to a story he began over two decades ago?
Indeed, part of what makes Kill Bill Vol. 3 so fitting as Tarantino’s last film is how much it could build upon the first two movie’s humanization of Bill in recasting Beatrix as the antagonist.
Despite their enmity and Beatrix’s slaying of Bill at the end of Kill Bill Vol. 2, both of them end on good terms in a manner unusual for a revenge movie. Nikki, in tracking down Beatrix and seeking her own revenge, could end the Kill Bill franchise on a similar note of Beatrix taking her final steps before her death in peace, she and Nikki coming respect each other in a way enemies almost never do.
Despite how non-committal Tarantino has been to making Kill Bill Vol. 3 over the years, such an ending might well be worth reconsidering as the closing chapter of his filmmaking career.
Tell us, would you like Quentin Tarantino to complete his filmography with Kill Bill 3?
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 |
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After awakening from a four-year coma, a former assassin wreaks vengeance on the team of assassins who betrayed her. |
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| Studio: A Band Apart |
| Running Time: 1h 51m |
| Release Date: October 10, 2003 |
| Cast: Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, David Carradine, Sonny Chiba, Julie Dreyfus, Chiaki Kuriyama, Gordon Liu, Michael Parks |
| Director: Quentin Tarantino |
| Writers: Quentin Tarantino |
| Genre: Action, Crime, Thriller |
| Box Office: $180.9 million |
