Beatrix Kiddo

Beatrix Kiddo
Kill Bill character
The Bride fights the Crazy 88
First appearance	Volume 1
Last appearance	Volume 2
Created by	Q & U
Portrayed by	Uma Thurman
Information
Aliases	The Bride Black Mamba Arlene Machiavelli
Occupation	Assassin
Children	B.B. (Daughter)
Nationality	United States

Beatrix Kiddo (primarily known as The Bride), codename Black Mamba, is a fictional character and the protagonist of the two-part movie Kill Bill directed by Quentin Tarantino. She is portrayed by Uma Thurman and was selected by Empire Magazine as one of The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.^[1] Entertainment Weekly also named her as one of the 100 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years.^[2]

Beatrix Kiddo's past

Kiddo is a former member of the "Deadly Viper Assassination Squad", an elite, shadowy group of assassins. A formidable, ruthless warrior trained under martial arts master Pai Mei (Gordon Liu), she served at the right hand of Bill (David Carradine), her boss and lover, a position that provoked the furious envy of fellow Viper Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah).

Kiddo, a master of the Tiger/Crane style of kung fu, is the only Viper to learn the "Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique", a method of killing a person by quickly striking five pressure points around the heart with the fingertips. After the victim takes five steps, the heart explodes and he/she falls dead. Pai Mei supposedly refused to teach this technique, which was said to be "the deadliest blow in all of martial arts", to Bill or anyone else. Kiddo's determination wins his respect, however, and he teaches her the forbidden technique - a secret that Kiddo withholds from Bill until they meet for their final showdown.

Kill Bill Vol. 1

These events are described as they happen in chronological order. In standard Tarantino style, the film does not tell the story chronologically.

Kiddo is first seen on the day of her wedding rehearsal in rural Texas, pregnant and living under the name "Arlene Machiavelli", having previously left Bill and abandoned the Vipers. Bill finds her, however, and gate-crashes her wedding rehearsal with the other Vipers and murders everyone inside. Bill then shoots her in the head, leaving her in a coma. Just before Bill shoots her, she tells him that it is his baby.

She remains comatose for four years, during which she is repeatedly prostituted and raped by an orderly named Buck (Michael Bowen). After being bitten by a mosquito, she awakens just as she is about to be violated by one of Buck's "clients." Even though weakened by atrophy, she kills the would-be rapist and then Buck, before beginning a mission of revenge on the other Vipers. She presumes that her baby died in the womb, further fueling her hatred of the Vipers.

She then travels to Okinawa, where she convinces the legendary swordsmith Hattori Hanzō (Sonny Chiba) to come out of retirement and forge a katana for her. After getting the sword, Kiddo arrives at the "House of Blue Leaves", where she faces O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu).

Kiddo encounters O-Ren Ishii's lawyer Sofie Fatale (Julie Dreyfus) in a washroom, where she recognizes her cellphone's "Auld Lang Syne" ringtone, and remembers her from the El Paso massacre. Kiddo captures her and brings her to O-Ren, where she cuts off her left arm and challenges O-Ren to a duel. O-Ren Ishii, the Crazy 88 gang and Gogo Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyama) fight Kiddo; the Bride kills or dismembers all but one. She then faces off against O-Ren in a dramatic swordfight in a snow-covered garden. At the end of the duel, Kiddo cuts off the top of O-Ren's head, killing her.

After killing O-Ren, Kiddo tortures Sofie Fatale for the locations of the rest of the members of the Vipers. She then sends her rolling down a hill to a hospital for medical attention so she could tell Bill what had transpired. Bill reveals that Kiddo's child is actually alive.

Kiddo then finds Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), who had renounced her life as a hired killer and started anew in a quiet suburban neighborhood with her husband and daughter. Kiddo shows up at her doorstep and engages her in a brutal fight. However, during the fight, Green's daughter Nikki comes home from school, and Kiddo is unwilling to kill Green in front of her child. Green tries to apologize for what she had done, but Kiddo is implacable. Green shoots at her with a handgun concealed in a cereal box, but misses, and Kiddo quickly throws a knife at Green, killing her. Nikki goes to the kitchen just in time to see Kiddo kill her mother. Kiddo tells the girl that it was not her intent to kill Green in front of her; and that if she wishes to avenge her mother's death when she grows up, Kiddo would be waiting.

Kill Bill Vol. 2

Vol. 2 expands on the circumstances of Kiddo's shooting. While on an assassination assignment to kill Lisa Wong, Kiddo discovers she is pregnant with Bill's baby. Immediately after, she is confronted by Karen Kim, an assassin sent by Lisa Wong to kill her. However, Karen narrowly misses her shot. During the resulting stand-off, Kiddo convinces Karen to pick up the positive pregnancy strip from the floor. The two mutually agree to abort their missions and go home. Kiddo runs away and cuts off contact with Bill and the Deadly Vipers, assuming a new identity as Arlene Machiavelli. She decides to marry Tommy Plympton and start a new life working in a used record store in El Paso, Texas. Bill finds her on the day of her wedding rehearsal and pretends to give her his blessing; moments later, he leads the Vipers in massacring the wedding party in the chapel and shooting Kiddo in the head, putting her in a coma.

The film then returns to where Vol. 1 left off. After killing Vipers O-Ren Ishii and Vernita Green, Kiddo goes after Budd (Michael Madsen), Bill's brother. Laying in wait underneath Budd's trailer, she charges in the front door only to be shot in the chest by Budd with a shotgun loaded with rock salt. He sedates her and calls Elle Driver, Kiddo's arch-rival within the Vipers, to bargain a price for Kiddo's Hanzo sword. Budd and an accomplice then take her to a graveyard and bury her alive. During her imprisonment, she recalls her rigorous training sessions under the tutelage of the martial arts master, Pai Mei. Using one of the many techniques she learned from him, Kiddo breaks open the casket and goes back to Budd's trailer where he lies dead, having been bitten by a black mamba. Driver engages Kiddo in a brutal battle, in which Driver reveals that she had killed Pai Mei as revenge for tearing out her eye. Enraged, Kiddo tears out Driver's other eye, leaving her completely blind, and leaves her inside the trailer with the angry black mamba still inside. Kiddo then pursues her final target, Bill.

When she finds him, from information provided by Esteban Vihaio (Michael Parks), she discovers that their daughter, B.B. (Perla Haney-Jardine), whom she presumed had died in utero, is alive and well. They spend the evening together as a family until B.B. goes to bed, and then Bill and Kiddo settle their differences. Bill explains that he shot her because he was angry at her for leaving him, and argues that she could never be anything but a killer. Kiddo, under truth serum, admits that she left because she wanted their daughter to have a chance at a normal life, but that she knows deep down that she will never have a normal life herself.

At the end of their conversation, a fight ensues where Kiddo fatally strikes Bill using the "Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique". As Bill dies, the two forgive each other and make their peace. He then walks five steps and falls to the ground, dead. Kiddo then disappears with B.B. in the middle of the night. The next morning, she lies on the bathroom floor of the hotel that she and B.B stayed in after she fled Bill's villa, crying and laughing at once. The two then drive off into the sunset to begin a new life.

Cultural impact

Beatrix Kiddo was well received by audiences. Empire Magazine ranked the character 66th out of 100 in its list of The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.^[1] Entertainment Weekly also named The Bride as 99th on its 2010 list of the 100 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years.^[2]

In 2013, researchers named a new species of parasitic wasp, Cystomastacoides kiddo, after the character, stating that the naming was inspired by "the deadly biology [of the wasp] to the host."^[3][4]

See also

• List of female action heroes

References

External links

• Beatrix Kiddo at the Internet Movie Database