Dear Quentin,
"It was not my intention to do this in front of you. For that I'm sorry. But you can take my word for it: your mother had it coming. When you grow up, if you still feel raw about it, I'll be waiting."
Remember those words? We'll bet a certain little girl remembers every last syllable. Of course, it's difficult to shake the memory of your mum getting murdered.
It's been a decade since four-year-old Nikkia Bell saw her Pasadena homemaker mum Jeanne Bell – aka Vernita Green, aka Deadly Viper Assassination Squad Codename Copperhead – get crossed off The Bride's kill list in Kill Bill Vol 1. This means that we're well overdue your third course of this delicious dish of ruthless revenge, the ideal present to celebrate the 10-year anniversary.
"The Bride will fight again," you once told cheering festival audiences. "I love the character and I think she deserved 10 years of peace. But after 10 years, something will happen that makes her fight again."
And that something? Why, Nikkia Bell, with her big suspicious eyes that once silently accused the pretty blonde stranger she witnessed yanking a blade out of her dead mother's chest amid a cereal-splattered kitchen. She'd be a teenager about now...
"I've already got the whole mythology," you explained. "[Bill's mostly armless protégé] Sofie Fatale will get all of Bill's money. She'll raise Nikki, who'll take on The Bride. Nikki deserves her revenge every bit as much as The Bride deserved hers."
killbill-nikki.jpgActress Ambrosia Kelley: 2003 (left) and today.
Of course, there's another reason you can't let The Bride settle into retirement. While the other members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad get diligently ticked off the death sheet during the victory lap end credits, one name only receives a mysterious question mark.
Yup, the Empress of the eye patch, Elle Driver, might have last been seen blinded and flailing around a small bathroom with only a poisonous black mamba snake for company, but a filmmaker as deliberate as Quentin Tarantino doesn't leave his punctuation hanging without a good reason. And though The California Mountain Snake may require an extra patch – her remaining perfectly evil eyeball being squished between The Bride's toes – even relative newcomers to kung fu movies could tell you that vision isn't everything: there are more blind masters in China than noodle bars.
Well, we guess this is just a long-winded way of saying we'd really love to see The Bride – aka Black Mamba aka Beatrix Kiddo aka Mommy – back in her Game-Of-Death jumpsuit again, Hattori Hanzo steel at her side.
Quentinkillbill-bride.jpg: a decade on, your first two Kill Bill volumes – especially when watched back to back – remain the most satisfying work in your determinedly 'flawless' career: a cinematic one-two punch that takes us on a gleeful, demented journey around some of cinema's skuzziest corners. Kung fu, blaxploitation, spaghetti westerns – all lovingly weaponised for our new generation to the tune of $350 million.
Looking back, all that gory genre-glorification cruelly overshadowed a career-best performance from your muse, Uma Thurman, the muscular motor driving the movie to its operatic finale. The actress – credited with co-creating the character – matches every Samurai swish with an masterful emotional feint: The Bride's clawing of her baby-free stomach when she awakes from her coma becomes more devastating with every viewing, matched with a soul-curdling howl.
Because Kill Bill is not just what the critics call a rip-roaring rampage of revenge – a note-perfect love-letter to the kung fu movies you grew up with - but also takes you on an emotional journey that contains as much coronary-bothering thwack as the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique: its elegiac, tender finale contains more warmth and resonance than your last three films combined.
Of course, you've a history of tantalizing fans with dream projects that never quite materialise. Kill Bill re-edit The Whole Bloody Affair never got a proper release. Too much time has elapsed for The Vega Brothers – a prequel using Michael Madsen and John Travolta's characters from Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction – to be made.
"I don't know if there's ever going to be a Kill Bill: Vol 3," you told interviewers last year. "We'll see, probably not though." We'll hold out hope though: after all, the more little Nikkia Bell grows up, the more deadly an assassin she'll be.
If revenge really is a dish best served cold, the more time it gets to chill, the better it will taste. And take our word for it, we'll be waiting.
Yours,
Tom and the Virgin Movies team
