Animated Films Within Films in Beloved Movie Franchises

1. Kill Bill: Vol. 1, dir. Quentin Tarantino (2003)

Besides the nine killed at the wedding, The Bride barely survives the beating and Bill’s shot in the head. She is in a coma for four years and is repeatedly raped in the hospital while unconscious. She awakes, and goes on a revenge streak against the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad she once belonged to under the code name Black Mamba. Her main target is O-Ren Ishii, both Japanese and Chinese-American who becomes a boss of Tokyo’s criminal underground. When reminded of her race, she beheads a crime lord, saying that the subject is now a taboo. In the animated film within the film, her origins are shown, how at the age of nine, her parents were brutally murdered in front of her eyes by a crime lord, boss Matsumoto, her house was burned down. Since the latter was a pedophile, she lured him at the age of eleven, and killed him. At the age of twenty she became one of the top female assassins in the world. Her origins are beautifully animated, sprays of blood are contrasted with innocence, and later resolve, in O-Ren Ishii’s face.

Both The Bride and O-Ren Ishii share a traumatic experience beyond measure, and in this respect they are equal, not only in their skills with the blade. The respect they have for each other is shown at the end of the movie, when O-Ren apologizes to The Bride for mocking her, after saying she is a silly Caucasian girl who likes to play with Samurai swords. Later she says she can die like a Samurai, acknowledging her in the process. The final scene in which they fight in the snow is heavily inspired by a 1973 Japanese film Lady Snowblood, and Japanese culture plays a fundamental role in the movie, its unique blend of the chrysanthemum and the sword, as the scholar Ruth Benedict emphasized, in other words the culture with the emphasis both on beauty and samurai discipline and warfare. When she kills one of the Deadly Vipers at the beginning, a voice-over says in Japanese: “For those regarded as warriors… When engaged in combat, the vanquishing of thine enemy can be the warrior’s only concern. Suppress all human emotion and compassion… kill whoever stands in the way even if that be Lord God, or Buddha himself. This truth lies at the heart of the art of combat.”

2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, dir. David Yates (2010)

In the first part of the Harry Potter movie The Deathly Hallows, a brilliant choice has been made to animate the sequence in which Hermione reads the Tale of Three Brothers in Xenophilius Lovegood’s house. The Deathy Hallows are of extreme importance to the ending of Harry Potter, since by acquiring them all, Harry managed to become a master of Death, but not in the way Voldemort and Death Eaters understood it, simply to live eternally or not being able to be killed, but by “accepting death as an old friend”. At the moment of reading the tale which originates from a children’s book Tales of Beedle the Bard, Harry already possesses the Invisibility Cloak, handed to him over generations since he is a descendent of Ignotus Peverell, the third brother, whose grave is in Godric’s Hollow, place where Harry’s parents were murdered and buried.

Voldemort is also descended from a Peverell brother, the second one who obtained the Ressurection Stone from Death, which makes Harry and Voldemort very distant relatives. However, contrary to Dumbledore and Grindelwald, and very soon after hearing the tale, Voldemort is ignorant of the Deathly Hallows, to his own disadvantage, he only desires to possess the Elder Wand, being the most powerful wand in existence. This wonderfully executed short animated film shows the temptations and dangers of the Hallows, how the Elder Wand can bring about a wizard’s demise, The Stone of Ressurection drive one mad, and how by being humble one can truly become a master of Death. This animated film serves as a bridge for the movie’s main theme, before the Hallows entered the picture, it was all about Voldemort’s Horcruxes, now they enter in grand fashion.

3. Paddington 2, dir. Paul King (2017)

Paddington the bear is now cozied up with his loving Brown family, and he visits an old antique shop to search for a present for his aunt Lucy’s birthday, who longs to see London. There, he encounters a beautiful, but expensive pop-up book of London landmarks. In a short animated film within a film which represents Paddington’s imagination we can see aunt Lucy in London with him. She is surrounded by cardboards which pop up representing people, London’s famous red bus, iconic historical sites like Big Ben, pigeons which delight aunt Lucy, and flowers in the background. Paddington decides that the pop-up book is the perfect gift for aunt Lucy, but since the book is expensive, he needs to find a job to earn money. When Paddington finds his first job, hilarious things happen, but finally he finds out he is great at cleaning windows. All of this is interrupted when the book is stolen by a washed-up actor Phoenix Buchanan who now plays in commercials for dog food, played in a caricatural and ingenious way by Hugh Grant.

The book contains clues to the treasure which the beautiful carnival performer, the grandmother of one of the characters in the movie, acquired when she received gifts for her beauty and skill, and hid them in the fairground organ. Paddington is caught on the site while he tries to capture the thief while riding a big dog, and is sent to prison. There he reforms the prison conditions and atmosphere and befriends a feared prison chef named Knuckles, using his skill to make his iconic orange marmalade. It is worth noting that there is a brief hand-drawn black-and-white animated sequence which shows a disguised thief escaping the antique shop with a pop-up book. After Paddington is imprisoned, an adventure throughout London begins, since the Brown family tries to identify the real thief, resulting in a delight for all ages, and a wonderful family movie.