Whereas the first two editions of “MCC Q&A” were comprised of tongue-in-cheek responses to odd queries and sentence fragments that brought search engine users to my humble doorstep, this one is devoted to a single question from an MCC commentator. Far be it from me to allow the plaintive mumblings of nameless strangers to monopolize this slightly recurring feature.

In my previous entry about Django Unchained, I mentioned in passing that Kill Bill Vol. 1 remains my least favorite Quentin Tarantino film to date. To be fair, that statement was limited in scope since I’ve seen neither Kill Bill Vol. 2 nor Death Proof. I’ll concede that either or both could be worse. As of this writing, I wouldn’t know.

In response, reader Tommy Gardner wrote:

What do you have against Kill Bill? It was a perfect live-action anime. I don’t watch much anime because I think very few of them are really good (Trigun, Ghost In Shell, FMA) and Kill Bill nailed the genre in a very R rated way.

My answer involves the little girl in the above photo. Courtesy spoiler alert here for any procrastinator who still has both Kill Bills on their bookshelf and can’t wait to be surprised by them someday. Now is your chance to locate one of our poorly lit exits.

The entire two-part film revolves around the character of the Bride (Uma Thurman) seeking revenge on her former coworkers in the assassin career track who nearly murdered her at her own wedding years before. Her first target is Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), who’s spent the intervening years settling down and becoming a suburban mother. They fight and fight and fight. They temporarily call a truce when Vernita’s young daughter Nikki arrives home on the school bus. After Nikki leave the room, they have a few minutes’ recess, ended when Vernita tries one last time to kill this scary home invader. She fails and the Bride slays her…only to turn around and discover li’l Nikki watched her do it.

Nikki is motionless, probably in shock. The Bride coolly apologizes, wipes her knife clean and sheathes it, then departs with one last word to the girl she just orphaned: “When you grow up, if you still feel raw about it, I’ll be waiting.”

As the parent of a then-nine-year-old son, I found this immensely disturbing.

(I’ll concede the potential argument that all that stabbing and murdering should’ve disturbed me in the first place, but I share the same desensitization issues as 98% of American moviegoers, even as I’ve striven to improve in the spiritual aspects of my life. It’s been interesting to observe my own tolerance levels change in certain areas as time has advanced, and I find myself growing incrementally stodgier with each passing year…but that’s neither here nor there for the purpose of this specific incident.)

The ordinary revenge flick is strictly adults vs. adults. If children are involved, it’s because the hero is either saving them or bringing their parents’ killers to justice, vengeance, or convenient death by self-defense. We tend to take it on faith that bad guys have no children or families to grieve their fates. They’re evil. They probably live alone in evil bachelor pads and satisfy themselves with evil one-night stands picked up from evil nightclubs. If they die at the hands of a sword-wielding avenger or from bullets fired by the cinematic descendants of Charles Bronson, the only mourners at their funeral will be evil mourners. And who cares what they think, right?

Heroes don’t orphan small children. Even so-called “antiheroes” like the Punisher aren’t usually shown offing some gun-toting Mob punks and then holding a conversation with the school-age sons and daughters they’ve just traumatized. It’s practically in the unwritten Vigilante Code or whatever. At that moment, regardless of whatever horrors she faced from her own tormentors in the past, I lost all sympathy for the Bride and didn’t care if she succeeded in her quest or not.

That scene nagged at me for the next two hours and prevented me from enjoying any other part of it — not the animated parts, not the luxuriously choreographed sequence against the Crazy 88s, not even brief glimpses of Mister Kung Fu, David Carradine himself. I learned that day that I’d rather not support flagrant orphan-making protagonists in my escapist entertainment.

Shortly after my screening, Tarantino said in interviews that he had considered filming a sequel in ten years or so, one that would allow a grown-up Nikki to seek revenge in turn on the Bride, who I assume would be renamed the Spinster if she lived that long. The idea was clever to an extent, but I refused to wait that long for closure, and had zero interest in seeing li’l Nikki grow up to become just another bitter Bride.

Over time the effects rippled outward from there into my opinions of other films and works I’ve seen or read, in which the good guy’s primary motive was pure, hate-filled revenge above all else. Main characters who aren’t about seeking justice or thwarting heavily armed terrorists, those who just want to make someone pay for what they’ve done by murdering them dead dead dead, have become much harder for me to follow ever after. It’s not just because of what Scripture says on the subject of revenge in general; it’s also because I’m left wondering what lines such broken people would cross, how low would they go, and whether or not they retain any shred of decency inside their constant state of rage. While I’m hoping that my life continues to move in a more positive direction, it’s tough for me to maintain eye contact with characters moving in the opposite direction.

Despite my misgivings, I must hypocritically admit that Inigo Montoya still gets a free pass in this area, but he’s among an extremely select few. Besides, if Count Rugen had a family, they were probably an evil family anyway.

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[Questions for future MCC Q&As are welcome anytime, even if I’m not openly begging for them. Feel free to submit your questions in the comment box below, or go dig up an old entry that bugs you to this day and reply to it instead. Digging through old entries is like archaeology, only it’s more fun and there’s no sand getting in everywhere.]