Fortnite's Kill Bill collaboration censors the Pussy Wagon, because I guess you can't say 'Pussy Wagon' in Fortnite
We learned last week that the realm of Fortnite, the real 'everything app,' will be expanding its borders even further through the adoption of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill—specifically an "unfilmed scene" entitled The Lost Chapter: Yuki’s Revenge. A colorful videogame filled with cartoonish characters struck me as an odd thing to mash up with Tarantino's signature violence and profanity, but now we've got a brief teaser giving us a better idea of what's in store, and I have to be honest: I was absolutely correct.
For those who haven't seen Kill Bill, or maybe just forgot, one of the film's secondary fights is a showdown between The Bride and Gogo Yubari, a teenage psycho killer in the employ of O-Ren Ishii, head of the yakuza in Tokyo. Gogo dies, rather badly (spoiler, sorry), and then, well, so does everyone else.
The unfilmed scene in Fortnite will focus on Gogo's sister Yuki, whose existence (as far as I can remember, anyway) went entirely unmentioned in the film. Based on the teaser, Yuki is basically Gogo, except maybe a little psychotically peppier and with a fondness for guns rather than a meteor hammer.
The first thing I noticed in the teaser is a change to the Pussy Wagon, the famous vehicle driven in the film by Buck, who's here to converse with patients at a safe and respectful distance. It's been, you might say, Fortnite-ified.
This is the Pussy Wagon in the film:
And this how it appears in Fortnite—I'm no expert in the field, but I'm pretty sure that's Meowscles:
It's not a big deal as these things go, nor is the first time someone's had to put the PG13 filter on the ol' PW: In televised edits of Kill Bill it's typically CGI'ed to be the Party Wagon. But it's a real reminder of the incongruity of the whole thing.
We get more of that when Peely shows up (because of course Peely shows up), only to be yelled at by Uma Thurman. He just wanted to help!
Look, I get that Fortnite is an 'open to all comers' kind of thing: As PC Gamer editor Rich Stanton pointed out when this was first announced, "you'll soon be able to pitch the Bride against characters from the Simpsons, Star Wars, WWE, King of the Hill, Squid Game, KPop Demon Hunters, Mortal Kombat, the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," and countless others.
And yes, a lot of those properties—Mortal Kombat is one obvious pick—are very violent. But even in that context, Tarantino's work stands out as a strange fit for Fortnite: His violence is cartoonish but also extremely intimate, and that gives it an impact that games like Fortnite can't even come close to. (And then there's the dialog, which is beyond the scope of this conversation, but you know what I'm talking about.)
But who knows? Maybe this collaboration will be a big hit, and Epic and Tarantino will move ahead with new partnerships in the future. By this time next year we could be tying Homer Simpson to a chair and cutting his ear off!
First things first, though. Yuki's revenge will premiere in Fortnite at 2 pm ET on November 30, with doors opening (in a metaphorical sense) 30 minutes prior. If you miss it (or just don't play Fortnite) you can also see Yuki's Revenge in Kill Bill: the Whole Bloody Affair, a five-hour cinematic monstrosity that kicks off a limited run in the US, UK, and Canada on December 5.