Tarantino's Popcorn Feminism: Kill Bill in 4K in Home Cinema Test
14 years before #metoo, Tarantino sent his muse Uma Thurman on a spectacular revenge mission. Does the new 4K restoration offer more clarity?
(Image: Miramax)
- Timo Wolters
- Hartmut Gieselmann
Quentin Tarantino's double feature Kill Bill is currently back in the spotlight. On the one hand, a roadshow is starting in the USA that will show both parts of the roughly four-hour revenge epic as "The Whole Bloody Affair" in one go. On the other hand, Tarantino has just released a "lost chapter" as an animated film "Yuki's Revenge" for Fortnite.
Germany is lagging a bit behind. There, the new 4K restorations on Ultra HD Blu-ray (UHD) of Kill Bill Volume 1 from 2003 and Volume 2 from 2004 are scheduled for December 18th, which were already released in the USA in January. Tarantino was initially skeptical about the 4K restoration wave due to the poor image quality, so his films are only being remastered one by one (in addition to Kill Bill, now also Jacky Brown). Therefore, we take a close look at the UHD and compare it with the Blu-ray disc and the stream to see if it meets cinematic standards. For our detailed test, we use the UK release from Lionsgate, which presumably uses the identical technical basis as the German discs.
(Image:Â Miramax)
Before we delve deeper into the technical aspects, we will discuss the story and its pop cultural and societal impact. Because Kill Bill is not just a revenge epic, but is closely linked to questions of how women are portrayed on screen, what roles they play, whether Kill Bill is about a revenge campaign against old white men, and how the general discussion about depictions of violence is related to this.
Because 14 years after filming, the films came under scrutiny again when the discussion about producer Harvey Weinstein's power plays triggered the #metoo debate, and a culture war erupted in the following years that continues to resonate in gender and political debates to this day. Tarantino picked up on the discourses of the underground at the time, but packaged them in a way that was consumable for popcorn cinema, earning him broad recognition. How did he do it?
