“Revenge is Never a Straight Line. It’s a Forest.” Quentin Tarantino’s Personification of a Serpent

While Quentin Tarantino was working on the filming of Pulp Fiction, in 1994, he had devised a plan with one of the main characters, played by Uma Thurman, to create either a revenge movie or a 1970s style kung-fu movie. The plan seemed to have been forgotten with his release of the movie Jackie Brown in 1997, but six years later, at an Oscar party, Tarantino and Uma Thurman ran into each other. She asked if he had made any progress with the idea, and he had made a promise to her to finish the script for the movie in two weeks. Tarantino had to learn on the fly on how to create a kung-fu film because he had never made one before. He had to rework sequences in his script and he ended up taking a year to complete it.

Kill Bill vol. 2 reflects western cinematic influences. Budd, one of the assassin squad members, encounters Beatrix Kiddo at the doorstep of his trailer home. He only allows for her to blink. No words were spoken, and he had already fired his shotgun. He went for the “Shoot first, ask questions later” approach. He then injected her with a sedative and buried her alive. Western films often portray the confiscation of territorial rights of the original inhabitants, and Budd’s objective was to kill Beatrix and report back to the snake charmer, his older brother, Bill. Beatrix held a high position in the squad and when she left, that spot opened up. By killing the best, you prove to be the best. Later on Elle Driver appears and kills Budd with a black mamba and takes credit for the “death” of Beatrix. She says, “Its [Black Mamba’s] neurotoxic venom is one of nature’s most effective poisons, acting on the nervous system causing paralysis. The venom of a Black Mamba can kill a human in four hours, if say bitten on the ankle or the thumb. However, a bite to the face or torso can bring death from paralysis within twenty minutes.” She proceeds to call Bill, Budd’s brother, and tell him that Budd is dead, as he is dying, because of the inevitability of his death. Budd was the only Deadly Viper who defeated Beatrix, so it’s only fitting that he be killed by her snake, the black mamba.

Uma Thurman plays the main character, Beatrix Kiddo, in Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Kill Bill Vol. 2. The story is of a woman who decides that she wants to start over by giving up her job of assassinating. She was finally going to start her life anew, but Bill, her jealous ex-lover and leader of their killing squad, drags her back into that life when he tries to murder her at her own wedding. Beatrix Kiddo’s character is re-revealed when she wakes up years later from a coma in a hospital bed and realizes that her baby is gone. At this moment, she reverted back to her own ways as an assassin. This scene is in the second chapter of Kill Bill Vol. 1, an example of Tarantino’s use of a non-linear storyline.

Before Beatrix Kiddo had retired, she was a part of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, which was led by Bill. The squad consisted of Beatrix Kiddo, who went by Black Mamba, O-Ren Ishii, who went by Cottonmouth, Vernita Green, who went by Copperhead, Elle Driver, who went by California Mountain Snake, and Budd, who went by Sidewinder. Even though the name of the squad suggests that these are all vipers, a California mountain snake and black mamba are not part of the viperidae family. Black mambas belong to the elapidae family and California mountain snakes belong to the colubridae family. This sets these two apart from the rest of the group. They shared a similar romantic interest, and they were both personally trained by Pai Mei, a martial arts master.

While Elle Driver and Beatrix Kiddo may share some characteristics, even down to their race and hair color, a California mountain snake has no chance against a Black Mamba. A black mamba is considered to be the fifth most venomous snake in the world. Black mambas are known for their deadly precision and their extremely toxic venom. A single bite from a black mamba can produce up to 400mg of venom, and only .25mg is sufficient enough to kill a human.

Shortly before black mamba wakens from her coma, Elle Driver changes into a nurse’s outfit and goes into Beatrix’s room and tries to kill her. Bill, the snake charmer, calls her right before she does the job. He tells her “one thing we won’t do is sneak into her [Beatrix’s] room in the night like a filthy rat and kill her in her sleep. And the reason we won’t do that thing is because that thing would lower us.” It isn’t in a snake’s nature to attack an animal that is not moving. They prefer their prey to be alive before they attack, but because of the mismatch between Beatrix and Elle, she wanted to take the easy way out. There is a final shot before Elle leaves the room, where the camera is looking up towards Elle to make her seem more superior, and looking down on Beatrix to make her look small and inferior, and she tells a comatose Beatrix, “Word of advice, shithead. Don’t you ever wake up.”

Black Mambas are also known for their exceptional speed. They are the fastest land snakes in the world. This helps us to explain Beatrix’s speedy recovery. After someone has been immobile for just a couple of weeks, they require rigorous physical therapy to return to some form of normalcy. Side effects include joint stiffness and muscle atrophy. Beatrix was in a coma for four years; the work that would need to be done to complete simple tasks would take years. Her characteristics, her will and her need for revenge all combined, and after only a couple of hours, she was able to recover at a remarkable and quite impossible speed.

Quentin Tarantino has an amazing ability of taking the characteristics of a serpent and applying it to real life. The speed, danger and the resilience of the black mamba are all represented in the character Beatrix Kiddo. She’s quick to recover, she is considered to be the best of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, and she doesn’t let anything stop her, not even a hit from a shotgun to the chest.