Kill Bill’s Martial Arts Training Was As Brutal As It Gets
Miramax Films
By Ryan Leston/March 23, 2022 2:09 pm EST
The film stars Uma Thurman as The Bride, an unnamed woman who was left for dead at the altar. Now, years later, it’s time to track down her aggressors — her former colleagues in a deadly assassination squad — one by one and get the revenge she so eagerly desires. It’s a phenomenal film with obvious inspirations in classic martial arts cinema. The Bride’s yellow biker suit is clearly based on Bruce Lee’s iconic look from “Game of Death,” and there’s even a cool animated sequence that pays homage to anime classics. But one thing that really stood out was the film’s impressive martial arts sequences.
“There would be no quick cuts or getting away with special effects to make us look like real warriors,” she explained. “I had to commit to six months of training, and all of the actors needed to become experts in martial arts to make his vision real on the screen.”
What they embarked upon was one of the most grueling training regimes they had encountered.
“It’s mercy, compassion, and forgiveness I lack.”
“The training itself was brutal,” wrote Fox. “We’d do fight choreography, knife throwing, samurai lessons and hit the treadmill and weights in between. They liked me because I could do them high kicks from being a cheerleader.”
Clearly, Tarantino pushed his stars as hard as he could to get the most impressive martial arts performances out of them … but he may have pushed them a bit too hard.
“That woman deserves her revenge …”
“Third Friday, I was so proud of all that our team had accomplished,” wrote Fox. “I was sitting between cute little Lucy and sweet Uma, and I was ready for a high five for all of us. Instead, Quentin tore into us. Something about us lollygagging in the morning, taking too long to suit up, and gabbing over coffee. He said we should get here at 8:30, a half-hour early, if we wanted to do all that.”
Clearly, Tarantino took the process very seriously and demanded a lot from his stars. But the proof, as they say, is in the butt-kicking.
“You and I have unfinished business.”
“I was proud of my battle scars,” she recounted. “I had done a Tarantino film, and nobody could take that accomplishment from me. Quentin is a fabulous director and I’d love to work with him again. I appreciate those endless hours in the Culver City torture chamber. It was his way of breaking us down to build us back up.”
Across the board, “Kill Bill” showcases some truly spectacular martial arts performances — not least of which from its star, Uma Thurman. If the face-off between The Bride and Green wasn’t enough, a spectacular fight scene with the Crazy 88 elevates the film to legendary status.
“Let’s pretend we’re little kids and we’re making a Super 8 movie in our backyard, and you don’t have all this s**t,” Tarantino told his film crew. “How would you achieve this effect? Ingenuity is important here!”
It looks as though Tarantino pushed everyone to think outside the box and deliver their very best, not just his actors. The result is that “Kill Bill” is a modern classic — an American martial arts movie that practically defines the genre.
