Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair is a 2006 American martial arts film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. It combines the films Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003) and Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004), which were conceived and produced as a single film, but split in two. Uma Thurman stars as the Bride, who swears revenge on a group of assassins after they try to kill her and her unborn child.
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2006 and screened at Tarantino's New Beverly Cinema in 2011. Tarantino said he had waited until he owned the rights before giving the film a full release and thought that asking audiences to come to his theater gave it more meaning. It was theatrically released in the United States by Lionsgate on December 5, 2025, to critical acclaim.
Plot
Note: This plot summary has been combined and shortened. For further details, see Kill Bill: Volume 1 and Kill Bill: Volume 2. In addition, the film is presented in a nonlinear narrative. The following is a linear summary of the plot.
In 1999, the Bride, a former member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, is rehearsing her marriage at a chapel in El Paso, Texas. The Deadly Vipers, led by Bill, attack the chapel, shooting everyone. As the Bride lies wounded, she tells Bill he is the father of her unborn child just as he shoots her in the head.
The Bride falls into a coma. In the hospital, Elle Driver, one of the Deadly Vipers, prepares to assassinate her via lethal injection. Bill calls Elle and aborts the mission, considering it dishonorable to kill her while she is defenseless. The Bride awakens four years later and is horrified to discover she is no longer pregnant. She vows to kill Bill and the other Deadly Vipers.
The Bride obtains a sword from the legendary swordsmith Hattori Hanzō in Okinawa. In Tokyo, she defeats a squad of yakuza fighters, the Crazy 88, and assassinates their leader, the former Deadly Viper O-Ren Ishii. In Pasadena, California, the Bride kills Vernita Green, a former Deadly Viper, at her suburban home.
In El Paso, Bill's brother Budd, another Deadly Viper, incapacitates the Bride, sedates her, and buries her alive in a coffin. The Bride uses techniques taught to her by the martial arts master Pai Mei to escape. Elle Driver arranges to buy the Bride's sword from Budd and kills him with a black mamba hidden within a case full of money at his trailer. As Elle exits, the Bride, now addressed by her real name Beatrix Kiddo, ambushes her and they fight. Beatrix plucks out Elle's remaining eye and leaves her screaming in the trailer with the black mamba.
Beatrix tracks Bill to his home in Mexico and discovers that their daughter, B.B., is still alive, now four years old. Beatrix spends the evening with them. After she puts B.B. to bed, Bill shoots Beatrix with a dart containing truth serum and interrogates her. She explains that she left the Deadly Vipers when she discovered she was pregnant, in order to give B.B. a better life. Bill explains that he assumed she was dead and had ordered her assassination when he discovered she was alive and engaged to a "jerk" he assumed was the father of her child. The two begin to fight, but Beatrix traps Bill's sword in her scabbard and strikes him with the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, an attack learned from Pai Mei. Bill reconciles with her, then falls dead as he walks away. Beatrix leaves with B.B. to start a new life.
Cast
Uma Thurman as Beatrix "the Bride" Kiddo (code name Black Mamba), a former member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, described as "the deadliest woman in the world".
Lucy Liu as O-Ren Ishii (code name Cottonmouth), a former Deadly Viper who has become the leader of the yakuza in Tokyo.
Ai Maeda as O-Ren Ishii (The Origin of O-Ren sequence) (voice)
Vivica A. Fox as Vernita Green (code name Copperhead), a former Deadly Viper and now a mother and homemaker living under the name Jeannie Bell.
Daryl Hannah as Elle Driver (code name California Mountain Snake), a former Deadly Viper, Bill's lover and the Bride's fourth target.
Michael Madsen as Budd (code name Sidewinder), a former Deadly Viper and Bill's brother, working as a strip club bouncer. He is the Bride's third target.
Julie Dreyfus as Sofie Fatale, O-Ren's lawyer, confidante, and second lieutenant. She is also a former protégée of Bill's and is present at the wedding chapel massacre.
Chiaki Kuriyama as Gogo Yubari, O-Ren's sadistic Japanese schoolgirl bodyguard.
Gordon Liu as Pai Mei: An immensely powerful and extremely old martial arts master. Beatrix, Bill, and Elle all train under him. Liu also appears as a separate character, Johnny Mo, leader of the Yakuza gang The Crazy 88's.
Michael Parks as Ranger Earl McGraw, a Texas Ranger who investigates the wedding chapel massacre. Parks originated McGraw in the Robert Rodriguez film From Dusk till Dawn, which Tarantino wrote and acted in. He reprised the role in both segments of the Rodriguez/Tarantino collaboration Grindhouse. Parks also appears as a separate character, Esteban Vihaio, a retired pimp and the first of Bill's "father figures".
David Carradine as Bill (code name Snake Charmer), the former leader of the Deadly Vipers, the Bride's former lover, and the father of her daughter.
Michael Bowen as Buck, an orderly at the hospital who has been raping and prostituting the Bride while she lay comatose.
Jun Kunimura as Boss Tanaka, a yakuza whom O-Ren executes after he ridicules her ethnicity and gender.
Helen Kim as Karen Kim: An assassin sent to kill Beatrix, ultimately sparing her, after Beatrix informs her that she is pregnant.
Development
Kill Bill was produced as a single film.[5] After editing began, executive producer Harvey Weinstein, who was known for pressuring filmmakers to shorten their films, suggested that Tarantino split the film in two.[5] This meant Tarantino did not have to cut scenes, such as the anime sequence. Tarantino told IGN: "I'm talking about scenes that are some of the best scenes in the movie, but in this hurdling pace where you're trying to tell only one story, that would have been the stuff that would have had to go. But to me, that's kind of what the movie was, are these little detours and these little grace notes."[6] The decision was announced in July 2003.[5]
Changes
The film makes some changes that differentiate it from the separately released films, including:
Alternate shots and takes.
The Origin of O-Renanime sequence that was initially produced by Production I.G includes an additional scene showing the character vengefully killing the second lieutenant of Boss Matsumoto named Pretty Riki in an elevator and its surrounding shaft.
The House of Blue Leaves fight scene, which was partially in black-and-white to avoid an NC-17 rating in the U.S., is now in full color throughout with added scenes of violence.
The cliffhanger at the end of Volume 1 that reveals the survival of Beatrix's child is also omitted alongside the black-and-white recap at the beginning of Volume 2, though a silent version of it is played during the closing credits.[7][8]
Release
The film was screened at Tarantino's New Beverly Cinema on March 27, 2011.
In July 2014, Tarantino said that he and the Weinstein Company planned for The Whole Bloody Affair to have a limited theatrical release within the following year. This version was set to include an extended anime sequence, which had been commissioned, financed, and produced by Production I.G based on the original script without Tarantino's request. The film had a limited theatrical release in July 2025, at Tarantino's Vista Theater. Tarantino said he had waited until he owned the rights before giving it a full release and thought that asking audiences to come to his theater gave it more meaning.[12]The Whole Bloody Affair was given a nationwide theatrical release by Lionsgate on December 5, 2025.[13]
Tarantino said he may never release the film on home video as he prefers to keep it exclusive to theaters.[14]
The Lost Chapter: Yuki's Revenge
In 2025, a short animation made by Tarantino and Epic Games, in collaboration with The Third Floor, titled The Lost Chapter: Yuki's Revenge was announced, first debuting in Fortnite. Yuki's Revenge is based on an early draft that included a chapter after the confrontation with Vernita, in which the Bride has a gunfight with Gogo Yubari's vengeful sister Yuki, voiced by Miyu Ishidate Roberts. It was originally cut because it would have made the film overlong and added $1 million to the budget.[15]
The entirety of the animation was built in Unreal Engine 5 using Fortnite models with Thurman reprising her role in voice acting/motion-capture, Zoë Bell performing the stunts in motion-capture, and Bill being voiced by Tarantino, replacing Carradine, who died in 2009. The short premiered in game on November 30, 2025, and later uploaded on Fornite's official YouTube channel on December 4, a day before the theatrical release of Tarantino's film. The Lost Chapter was also shown as part of the theatrical run of Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair after the closing credits.[16][17]
Box office
As of December 13, 2025, it grossed a total of $5.5 million in the United States and $310,694 in other territories for a worldwide total of $5.8 million.[4] In the United States, the film made $1.6 million from 1,198 theaters on its opening day, and was expected to make $4 million in its 3-day opening weekend.[18] The film ended up grossing $3.4 million in its opening weekend.[4]
Reception
On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair has a score of 100% based on reviews from 25 critics. The website's consensus reads: "Merging both Kill Bill volumes together into a whole that's as seamless as a slice from a Hattori Honzō sword, this Bloody Affair finally realizes the full grandeur of Quentin Tarantino's gonzo vision."[19] At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score, it scored 96 out of 100 based on 11 reviews from mainstream critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[20]
Richard Whittaker of The Austin Chronicle gave the film four and a half out of five, writing, "With Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, Tarantino finally gets to complete his own work of cinematic archeology, and what he exhumes springs to life like the first time it was projected."[21]Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com gave it four out of four and wrote, "Whatever your feelings about Tarantino and his work, this is a tremendous visceral experience, with radiant colors, slate-somber black-and-white, and geysers of crimson blood. To quote the end of another Tarantino film, it just might be his masterpiece."[22]
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