If you thought Quentin Tarantino didn’t have even more to add to “Kill Bill” and make the film any longer, think again.
Tarantino is set to release possibly his greatest movie, “Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair,” which is a four-plus-hour cut of “Kill Bill” combined as one film, in theaters next month. It includes an un-seen anime sequence that wasn’t even in the original Cannes cut of “Kill Bill,” but that wasn’t the only thing he had previously left on the cutting room floor.
There was yet another chapter of the film that Tarantino wrote for the very first draft of his film, but he trimmed it and the sequence was never filmed. Now, more than 20 years after the release of both “Kill Bill” movies, Tarantino has turned to an unusual means to bring his vision of this lost “Kill Bill” scene to life: the massively popular video game “Fortnite.”
Tarantino using “Fortnite’s” game engine Unreal Engine directed a motion-captured short film that reunites him with Uma Thurman, reprising her role as The Bride. The sequence effectively fills in a gap in the lore of “Kill Bill” that had not previously been seen on screen. So yes, even though the short features Fortnite’s banana character Peely, this new short can be considered canon in Tarantino’s cinematic universe.
The short is called “The Lost Chapter: Yuki’s Revenge,” and is set after the Bride takes down the ball-and-chain wielding killer Gogo Yubari. Now, we see the Bride battle Yubari’s twin sister Yuki. After a split-screen sequence of Yuki arriving in Hollywood “Battlewood” and even surveilling The Bride outside Vernita Green’s home, Yuki confronts The Bride, still driving the Pussy Wagon truck, and aims to gun her down.
What ensues is an elaborate shoot-em-up and car chase in which Yuki, in this version, ultimately dies not a bloody death but a blue, pixel-y one before she’s beamed up and set to be respawned, “Fortnite” style.
Unlike an animated sequence that just features Thurman’s voice, Tarantino is actually directing Thurman as dressed and photographed with a motion-capture helmet cam, and her performance and the whole sequence was rendered in Unreal Engine as though it were an in-game cinematic.
“Fortnite” intends to premiere “Yuki’s Revenge” as part of its latest season of gameplay, Chapter 7. “Fortnite” for this new season has a Hollywood theme, and rather than stage a virtual concert in the digital “Fortnite” lobbies as they’ve done before, the “Yuki’s Revenge” scene acts as a brand-new Quentin Tarantino film making its world premiere in the game. Players who log on can watch the film on November 30 at 2 p.m. ET.
Speaking at a special “Fortnite” event from Tarantino’s own Vista Theater in Los Angeles on November 19, Tarantino explained that the reason the Yuki fight scene was cut from his draft was because the movie was already shaping up to be over four hours long, and it was too much to have both the Gogo Yubari battle and the Yuki battle in the same film.
He clarified that, even though the fight was cut from the film, in his mind, we’re to assume the fight still happened as part of The Bride’s journey, even though we never saw it. In fact, an actual take used in “Kill Bill” outside Vernita’s home has the sound of an ice cream truck jingle in the background, and Tarantino used that take to suggest that someone, in this case Yuki, was secretly watching The Bride all along.
Tarantino was asked at the event if he would ever consider making another film in “Fortnite” or utilizing some other animation techniques in order to create some of the spinoff ideas he’s been teasing over the years, and he suggested there could be some future where it helps him craft an origin story for Bill or a side project about the Vega brothers as seen in “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction.”
While it means that we’ll soon see players running around “Fortnite” Battle Royales in skins as The Bride or Gogo Yubari, Tarantino praised the “Fortnite” team for wanting to help him create something he had lingering, rather than have him come up with something entirely new that featured some of his iconic characters.
“I always wanted it to see the light of day, and now it has,” Tarantino said at the event.