If Quentin Tarantino sticks to his plan to retire from directing after his tenth movie, then he’s only got one left to go. From a horror movie to another western to a John Brown biopic to an R-rated Star Trek movie, there are a ton of possibilities that Tarantino has mentioned that could end up being his next (and last) film project. He told Joe Rogan that he even considered rebooting Reservoir Dogs as his final film.
Tarantino said on CBS Sunday Morning that he’s considering making his final film a kind of “epilogue” at the end of his filmography, because Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is big enough to serve as his final epic. So, his official final movie could be something smaller-scale to act as a kind of postscript on the director’s career as a filmmaker. Maybe he’ll finally get around to readapting Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero for the screen as a cool hangout movie. But if he ends up wanting to go the other way with a big, extravagant, cinematic spectacle that tops everything that came before it, Kill Bill: Volume 3 could make for the perfect finale.
A third Kill Bill movie has been floated around as a possibility ever since the first two volumes became a box office success. Tarantino has outlined a vague plot that would see Vernita Green’s daughter Nikki Bell training under a blind Elle Driver to exact revenge against the Bride. B.B. would be all grown up and a well-oiled killing machine, having been trained by her mother.
The casting lines up perfectly with Uma Thurman’s real daughter Maya Hawke (who had a minor role in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) to play B.B., while Vivica A. Fox has suggested Zendaya to play Nikki. The time jump would allow Tarantino to round out the supporting cast with roles for fan-favorite collaborators like Samuel L. Jackson and Christoph Waltz in the Kill Bill universe. Not only would Kill Bill 3 allow just about everybody from Tarantino’s regular stable of actors to appear in his final work; the pulpy, unique world in which Kill Bill takes place means they’d all have a substantial and memorable role to play, big or small. Imagine Kurt Russell playing a grizzled hitman or Harvey Keitel playing a notorious crime boss or Leonardo DiCaprio playing a master martial artist.
If audiences are expecting a giant, action-packed, Endgame-style epic as the finale of the Tarantino-verse, then Kill Bill 3 is the best way to go. Tarantino has always referred to Kill Bill as his Dollars trilogy, and Volume 3 could be his answer to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: a full-throttle, action-packed epic to end all epics.
Nikki seeking revenge could offer a great twist on Kill Bill’s themes of eye-for-an-eye justice. After seeing her mom killed in front of her, Nikki has as much of a reason to want vengeance against the Bride as she did against Bill and the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad in the original movies. Revenge has been a common thread throughout Tarantino’s filmography – his last four movies have brutally righted the wrongs of history – so it would make a lot of sense to end his career on a straightforward revenge story.
Ultimately, Tarantino’s legacy as a filmmaker is his impact on genre. With Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Tarantino brought the subversions on Hollywood crime films found in French New Wave classics like Breathless and Le Doulos back to American cinema. In Django Unchained, Tarantino tackled the most challenging era of U.S. history through the lens of a blood-soaked spaghetti western. After Tarantino stops making movies, he’ll be remembered for his idiosyncratic, groundbreaking takes on various genres.
Since Kill Bill is his most ambitious cocktail of influences (it’s a spaghetti western, a kung fu actioner, and an exploitation movie rolled into one), Kill Bill 3 could be the perfect movie to end his career on. It would have a nostalgia factor for long-time fans to revisit the Bride’s journey later down the road, but it could also act as Tarantino’s final definitive statement on genre concluding the postmodern deconstruction that began three decades ago with Reservoir Dogs.
In addition to incorporating all the genre elements of the first two Kill Bill movies, Tarantino could throw in every genre from the kitchen sink that he didn’t get around to trying: spy movies, screwball comedies, prison movies, traditional gangster movies – the sky’s the limit.
It’s possible that Kill Bill: Volume 3 would give Tarantino a final movie loophole. Since he counts the first two volumes of Kill Bill as a single movie (if he didn’t, he’d already be on ten), Volume 3 could fall under that banner and open the door for a sneaky eleventh movie. That way, he could treat Kill Bill 3 as his final movie, but keep his prospects open in case the right story comes along to make another one.