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What Makes Bill One Of The Most Terrifying Villains In Film History
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Mar 31, 2025
Kill Bill Vol 1 and Vol 2 are probably at the top of Quinten Tarantino's filmography. The two movies staring Uma Thurman and David Carradine as Bill will forever be two of his crowning achievements. But other than The Bride's spectacular performance, one thing that really makes this movie great is the villain Bill. Though we don't see much of him in Vol 1, his presence is felt throughout the entirety of Kill Bill.
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Hello, kiddo
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Despite being the title villain of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Volume 1 and 2, Bill only makes three brief appearances
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in Volume 1, never once revealing his face. This makes it all the more surprising
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when Bill is finally revealed to us in Volume 2, not in a grand theatrical way befitting the villain of the story
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but in a b fashion. The name's Bill. Well, it's great to meet you
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Bill. But what is it about this introduction that makes Bill so terrifying
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And how does Tarantino subvert our expectations of villainy throughout this film
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2003's Kill Bill marked a major evolution in the career of filmmaker Quentin Tarantino
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It was this moment when Tarantino shifted from crime capers like Reservoir Dogs
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Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown to massive big-budget spectacles. It's hard to imagine a director going from witty dialogue-driven character pieces
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What country are you from? What? What? What? Ain't no country I ever heard of
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They speak English in what? To a full-blown martial arts epic, Tarantino did not sacrifice the character work
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in service of this increase in scale. The characters and dialogue of both volumes of Kill Bill
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are some of the best in the director's career. And the central character of The Bride
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crafted with Uma Thurman while the pair worked on Pulp Fiction, is one of the strongest protagonists in Tarantino filmography
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While we certainly take joy in the delightful carnage Thurman's The Bride leaves in her wake
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we are also invested in the story of a wronged woman who is trying to find some sense of peace
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through revenge. I am gonna kill Bill. Kill Bill is Tarantino's love letter to Asian action cinema
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and martial arts epics, containing visual references and nods to films like Lady Snowblood
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Game of Death, and Once Upon a Time in China. This reverent homage extends to the casting as well
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with actors such as Gordon Liu from the 36th Chamber of Shaolin, Sunny Chiba from The Street
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fighter, and of course, playing Bill, David Carradine from Kung Fu Kung Fu was a cult television series from 1972 that starred David Carradine as Kane a Shaolin monk who wanders the American West The series clearly left a mark on Tarantino
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referencing it in Pulp Fiction when Jules tells Vincent that he'll walk the earth. What do you mean walk the earth
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You know, like Kane in Kung Fu. After retiring from the life of a hitman
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If you want to know more about the origins of the series Kung Fu and its connections to Kill Bill, check out
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our video on the topic. Audience members who are aware of this background will come to expect martial arts mastery
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from Carradine's character. And if they aren't, Tarantino's visual language in Bill's early sequences will clue them in
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on his villainous nature. In an homage to the depiction of James Bond villain Blofeld
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Bill is always off camera, with a focus being on his hands. Whether they're grabbing his Hattori Hanzo sword
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or gripping the shoulders of Sofia Fatale, these hands are symbols of his deadly martial prowess
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We watch these hands as they hover like the sting of a scorpion about to strike
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lurking over the film like a shadow, his menace and mystique growing with each fleeting appearance
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Carradine delivers his lines in these scenes of Kill Bill Volume 1 with a sinister whisper
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adding even more power to Bill. Oh, you don't owe her s**t! Will you keep your voice down
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You don't owe her s**t! His control over the deadly Viper assassination squad does not require bombast or threats
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Tarantino recognizes that less is more in these moments, building up an idea of who Bill is in the audience's mind
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so they can only imagine the diabolical power this villain must wield if he can control
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some of the deadliest people in the world and barely have to lift a finger
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In turn, we can only imagine the kind of control he had over our hero, the bride
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Why are you here? Last look. Are you going to be nice
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After the shocking violence of the opening and the phantom-like threat of Bill that lurks through Volume 1
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we assume we'll be meeting the devil incarnate when Volume 2 begins
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This makes the deliberate anticlimax of Bill's first appearance in Kill Bill Vol. 2 so powerful
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When we first see Bill, he is in repose, calmly playing a flute at the site of the bride future wedding David Carradine plays the scene masterfully with a gentleness saying goodbye to the woman he loved He seems to harbor no resentment towards her but we can see the terror in Uma Thurman performance
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What makes Carradine's performance so impactful in these scenes is the way he never speaks with anger and violence in his voice
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I am looking forward to meeting your young man. I happen to be more or less particular whom my gal marries
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His cruelty is masked behind the veneer of kindness. Despite knowing that his assassins will try to kill the bride
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it still comes as a shock because this version of Bill we've now seen
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doesn't seem capable of such a horrible act. Yet each of Thurman's micro gestures carry a feeling of danger
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like she's trapped in the room with a tiger. This disorienting feeling toward Bill is reinforced by the flashbacks to the bride's training
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where we see the genuine love the two once had for one another. And yet, the audience can't help but wonder if the love is truly reciprocated
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Does Bill genuinely love the bride, or is she just another tool he can use to manipulate in his collection of assassins
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Carradine and Thurman's performances as a couple in these scenes are so warm and loving
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The audience searches Carradine's performance for any cracks that show the monster beneath, but they aren't there
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It isn't until the final confrontation between the bride and Bill that we begin to see the depths of Bill's monstrous nature
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It's revealed that the bride and Bill's child, Bebe, didn't die during the wedding day massacre
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And Bill has been raising her in secret, telling her the story of their love as if it is a tragic fairy tale rather than a harrowing story of abuse
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This scene features one of the most famous speeches in Tarantino's filmography and one that is frequently misunderstood, the Superman speech
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Bill explains that Clark Kent, Superman's secret identity, is Superman's critique of the human race
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He's weak. He's unsure of himself. and that no matter what, Superman is Superman
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This is not meant to be Tarantino giving the audience a pop culture theory
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but rather a moment that reveals the psychology that motivated Bill's attempted murder of the bride
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He could not comprehend the fact that the bride wanted something more than the seemingly ideal life that Bill had given her He couldn understand why a Superman would want to be a Clark Kent Bill sees the bride efforts to change
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as an insult to himself and his choices to become a killer. If she changes, then Bill's entire identity
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is called into question. In this scene, Carradine continues to play Bill
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with a calm confidence. But for the first time, he gets angry, sloppy
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and rageful at the bride. now if you don't settle down i'm gonna have to put one in your kneecap the mask is slipping
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bill's death is another deliberate anti-climax up until this point the bride's epic showdowns
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range from a living room knife fight to a one verse 88 sword fight to an all-out brawl in a
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trailer after these stunning sequences her confrontation with bill is over almost before
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it begins. They cross blades, not even rising from the chairs. The bride catches his sword in her scabbard
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and delivers the killing blow. The bride defeats him with the five-point palm exploding
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heart technique, a move thought to be a secret that their shared master, Pai Mei, would never teach anyone
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Pai Mei taught you the five-point palm exploding heart technique. There was something Pai Mei saw in the bride
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that he didn't see in Bill, a heart, a moral code that Bill lacks, and gives the bride the tool
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to get her revenge. Knowing his death is inevitable, Bill returns to the tenderness we saw earlier in volume two
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He walks five steps away until his heart explodes, slumping pathetically to the ground
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All of this deliberate anticlimax serves to remind the audience that Bill is not some godlike evil
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but rather a broken, sad man. And this is perhaps what makes him so terrifying
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His abuses are not just his callous killing of the innocent, but in the way he uses and manipulates people
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and then tosses them away when he feels slighted by them. The scariest villains aren't the most theatrical or fantastical
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but rather the ones who we encounter in our day-to-day lives. The Bride's victory over Bill feels so triumphant
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because so many of us have had Bills in our lives in one form or another
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And through The Bride, we can see a path to have our own revenge and drive off into the sunset
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