The Vices of Non-Linear Storytelling: The “Most Controversial” Plothole of Kill Bill vol. 1
I still remember where I was when Kill Bill: Vol. 1 was released. Despite my young age, I was aware of the adverts and interviews playing non-stop throughout my final year of elementary school, enough to understand just how monumental the film was. Images of Uma Thurman squaring up against Vivica A. Fox or clad in her iconic jumpsuit and staring down the Crazy 88 in the reflection of her katana were forever seared in my memory. A few years later, I became more passionate about filmmaking and went to my local Blockbuster (remember those?) every day after school.
One day, I came across the DVD and begged my mom to let me watch it. Despite being only twelve at the time, I was never an impressionable child and she agreed that I was mature enough to watch it if I wanted to. Memories of my first watch-through were full of shock, awe, admiration, and confusion. While I was still too young to fully grasp the story, I knew I’d witnessed something unlike anything else and made a note to watch it again when I got older.
After studying screenplay structure, I began dissecting all of my favorite films with a critical eye and this one was no different. However, on my first watch-through in years, I spotted a plothole – small and insignificant – but enough to gnaw at the back of my mind for the rest of the film and every other watch-through since. Remember Gogo Yubari?
Chiaki Kuriyama still scares the crap out of me.
While she’s introduced as O-Ren Ishii’s unhinged, 17 year-old personal bodyguard, the film’s non-linear storytelling has left a wound that movie buffs have been prodding at for nearly twenty years in hopes of figuring out just how old the sadistic schoolgirl really is. But first, in order to answer this, we need to fully understand the structure of Tarantino’s storytelling.
Story Structure
Like many of his films, both volumes of Kill Bill are told non-chronologically. After the dramatic opening, the story is set in motion with the Bride arriving at Vernita Green’s house. While it looks like the beginning of our story, we can clearly see O-Ren Ishii’s name has been crossed off her “Death List Five”. Even the most wet-behind-the-ears nonlinear noob can figure out that this takes place after the climactic showdown at the House of Blue Leaves.
The rest of the film is told in a variety of flashbacks peppered with present-day ruminations as the Bride provides us with the details of her betrayal and quest for revenge. By the time she tackles O-Ren, we feel as if we know her story as if we’d experienced it first-hand ourselves.
When laid out chronologically, all ten chapters of Kill Bill (vols. 1 and 2) are told as such:
Chapter 3: The Origin of O-Ren
Chapter 8: The Cruel Tutelage of Pai-Mei
Chapter 6: The Massacre at Two Pines
Chapter 2: The Blood-Splattered Bride
Chapter 4: The Man From Okinawa
Chapter 5: Showdown at the House of Blue Leaves
Chapter 1: 2
Chapter 8: The Lonely Grave of Paula Schultz
Chapter 9: Elle and I
Chapter 10: Face-to-Face
Since we’ll only be discussing the first film, we only care about chapters 3, 2, 4, 5, and 1 – in that order. There’s no confirmation on exactly when the film takes place, but it’s generally assumed to be around 2003, the year of release. All of the film’s wiki-pages also center around this year, making it a reliable point-of-reference for Tarantino geeks on forums. This would make the original massacre take place in 1999, the Bride would wake up around 2003, and kill O-Ren the same year. This infographic should help you keep tabs on the story.
Besides a few brief shots at Two Pines, the first scene we see O-Ren in the flesh is in a flashback in Chapter 5: Showdown at the House of Blue Leaves, where she has officially been named “Queen of the Tokyo Underworld”. The Bride tells us that this opening scene takes place about one year after the Massacre at Two Pines – around the year 2000. It opens with the famous scene of O-Ren in front of a council of yakuza with Johnny Mo and Gogo Yubari by her side. Now pay close attention because this storytelling speedbump starts here.
Since the Bride introduces Gogo here as being 17 years old, we can safely assume that when she awakes from her coma three years later, Gogo’s actually 20 – the age of consent and adulthood in Japan. Keep in mind, she’s not referred to as being 17 anywhere else in the present-day, only in this flashback. Tarantino maintains that Gogo is 17 as she fights the Bride, but that would mean that she’s only 14 in this flashback and even younger when she was drinking at the bar. Here’s where the continuity issue lies.
Where is your mother?
The delivery of this information and the introduction of this new character is muddled, due to the fact that she was introduced in the past as being in the present. Now, if Tarantino says she’s 17, due to the laws of the “Word of God” trope, she’s 17. But despite being able to J.K. Rowling himself out of the conversation, his plot structure says otherwise because you simply cannot introduce a character in the past as being the age she is in the present.
Unless Gogo is a vampire and I completely missed that subplot.
Finally, Cyril, we agree on something.
The issues with numbers continue as in Chapter 3: The Origin of O-Ren, we find out she became the top female assassin in the world by age 20 – in 1994 – and that at 25, she participated in the Massacre at Two Pines in 1999. The math adds up perfectly and she ages as a young woman should. Based on the Bride’s information, O-Ren would have been 26 during her meeting with the council since it happened one year after. Again, Gogo was introduced as 17.
The climactic showdown at the House of Blue Leaves takes place three years after this meeting, making O-Ren 29 years old when she got her crown cut from her shoulders (literally). Her wiki page also has this as her age at death, so why would O-Ren age but not Gogo?
If time doesn’t exist…*gasp* then is the plot a coma dream?
My Thoughts
I personally love this theory as it makes more sense to me thematically and practically. If Gogo were a legal adult, portraying herself as an innocent schoolgirl is a clever fear tactic that could help her blend into daily situations, potentially doubling her role as an infiltrator. It also explains the slightly-more-than bodyguard relationship she seems to have with O-Ren – but that’s a conversation for another time.
Secondly, this makes the flashback at the bar more interesting and while this is another example of seeing the present within the past, it’s something Tarantino does throughout the whole film anyway. I mean, half the film’s backstory is told while Uma Thurman wiggles her toes in the backseat of a pickup truck.
There’s no way she would have been able to get alcohol in any reputable drinking establishment in Japan at a young age. Based on the mise-en-scène, we can tell this is a proper bar in Tokyo – perhaps in Shibuya, Roppongi, or Kabukicho – that has many people enter its doors. While some bars in these areas are reported to have yakuza presence and have scammed tourists out of thousands of dollars, locals will do their part to stay away from these areas. And the creep at the bar looked more like an average salaryman than a gangster.
We know that Gogo is a sadist in every way and it doesn’t seem hard to believe that doing something like dressing up as a young girl and killing men is how she spends her average Friday night. Or perhaps it was a gang hit – we’ll never know – but whatever the reason, many theories seem more believable than a 14 year old girl (at most) somehow getting a whole bottle of sake to herself in a bar in one of the busiest cities in the world.
Based on how the film was structured, Gogo couldn’t have been 17 when she died. However, if what Tarantino says is true, she would have been 14 at the council and should have either:
1) been introduced as such or
2) introduced as 17 in the present day (this option makes more sense considering the nature of the story he wished to tell).
Now, did the details just get muddled up in editing? Possibly. Probably.
Does this ultimately impact the story in any way?
Not really.
One of the most glorious parts of being a writer is that absolutely everything you say is canon, despite its flaws – after all George Lucas staked his career on this – but while it’s fun to play with structure as a writer, one can’t expect their audience to understand things to be innately true because “they just are”. Most importantly, we can’t expect them to just accept it lying down.
How do parsecs and British accents exist in A Galaxy Far, Far Away anyway?
If you’re a stickler for details like I am, something like this can shatter your suspension of disbelief and spiral you into a plethora of possible theories (now I can’t stop thinking about vampire Gogo Yubari). But despite this long-winded argument, at the end of the day, no one cares if a parsec is a unit of distance or time when all they want is to see the Empire destroyed. And honestly, Gogo’s age holds about as much weight as the disappearing bullet hole in Vernita Green’s kitchen. But you probably knew about that too.
Today, with a Bachelor’s in film production, I fully understand the beauty of non-chronological storytelling and why Tarantino’s name is so awe-inspiring. He developed a habit of taking the existing standards of filmmaking, shredding it to pieces, and pasting them together in a new way. By doing this, he forged his name as a Picasso of screenwriting – a master of creating something vaguely reminiscent of a familiar three-part structure (if you squint your eyes and tilt your head a little).
No list of plotholes or continuity errors will ever change my opinion that Kill Bill is a nearly perfect film. Every film has its flaws, every film; it’s the curse of being human. But I’ll always swear by Kill Bill because it is – and always has been – one of the clearest examples of a true cinematic masterpiece.
