Tarantino Under Fire: Kill Bill Accused of Lifting from Lady Snowblood

Every few months film Twitter rediscovers 'Lady Snowblood' and decides 'Kill Bill' is a crime scene. We are back there again. So let me lay out what the fuss is, what actually connects the two movies, and what Quentin Tarantino has and has not admitted.

The tweet that kicked the hornet nest (again)

On Jan 7, 2026, X user @iloveairbagged (display name: kate bush's husband 2) posted a screenshot from the 1973 Japanese revenge film with the caption 'Now watching,' then quote-tweeted themselves with 'Put Tarantino in jail.' The replies did what replies do: more users piled on, accusing Tarantino of lifting from older films while pointing out that he has taken shots at other projects for being copycats himself. One example that kept coming up: his past claim that 'The Hunger Games' ripped off 'Battle Royale.'

Tarantino has always said 'Lady Snowblood' helped shape 'Kill Bill'

This is the part the pile-on tends to skip. Tarantino has been open about the influence for decades. Criterion straight-up notes that the first 'Lady Snowblood' was a major inspiration for the 'Kill Bill' saga. And in a 2004 interview with Screenwriter's Monthly, he explained that 'Kill Bill' was built from a stew of revenge genres: spaghetti westerns, classic kung fu, and Japanese exploitation cinema.

'At its core, it comes from all these different revenge movies I was bouncing off of. The Bride could be a cowboy in a spaghetti western. She could be Angela Mao in Deep Thrust or Broken Oath. There are two characters Meiko Kaji played — Scorpion, which she did in four films, and the revenge samurai movie Lady Snowblood. The Bride could be that, too. She fits in a long line of characters hell-bent on revenge.'

In other words: he did not hide the ball. He pointed at the shelf while he was writing the thing.

What is actually the same?

Quick refresher: 'Lady Snowblood' stars Meiko Kaji as Yuki Kashima, a woman raised with a single purpose — avenge her mother, who was assaulted, and her half-brother, who was murdered. 'Kill Bill' follows Uma Thurman's The Bride, who wakes from a coma and hunts down her former boss Bill and his crew one by one. Both films center on women who turn vengeance into their entire life mission — patient, methodical, and ready to pay any price.

There are on-the-nose echoes, some of them intentionally so:

- The snowy duel: The Bride vs. O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu) mirrors a famed 'Lady Snowblood' sequence in both setting and mood.

- Structure and style: Chaptered storytelling, operatic swordplay, and a heightened, manga-to-movie vibe run through both.

- Music you can Shazam: Tarantino literally drops 'The Flower of Carnage' — a key 'Lady Snowblood' theme — after The Bride defeats O-Ren. That is not subtle; it is a direct hat tip.

So is 'Kill Bill' a copy?

If you are just now watching 'Lady Snowblood,' it can feel like it, because the DNA is right on the surface. But Tarantino has consistently framed 'Kill Bill' as a remix of revenge cinema — Kaji's Scorpion and Yuki, Angela Mao knockouts, spaghetti western archetypes — rather than a 1:1 redo. He borrowed the vengeful narrative engine, the visual language, even specific music, and then mashed it up with his own genre cocktail. To me, that lands closer to spiritual successor than theft. You can argue the line either way, but you cannot argue he kept the influence secret.

Cheat sheet: where they align and where they do not

• Release years: Kill Bill (2003-2004), Lady Snowblood (1973)
• Directors: Quentin Tarantino; Toshiya Fujita
• Leads: Uma Thurman as The Bride; Meiko Kaji as Yuki Kashima
• IMDb scores: Kill Bill 8.2/10; Lady Snowblood 7.6/10
• Rotten Tomatoes critics: Kill Bill 85%; Lady Snowblood 100%
• Rotten Tomatoes audience: Kill Bill 81%; Lady Snowblood 86%
• Streaming now: Kill Bill on Amazon Prime Video; Lady Snowblood on HBO Max

Bottom line: the similarities are real, the influence is admitted, and the homage is deliberate — right down to the song cue. If you have seen one and not the other, it is absolutely worth the double feature, if only to see how a 70s Japanese revenge classic got refracted into a 2000s pop samurai epic.