For nearly a quarter of a century, Quentin Tarantino enthusiasts have eagerly anticipated Kill Bill. Following the release of Jackie Brown three years after Pulp Fiction and a variety of interim projects, Tarantino’s directorial presence seemed to vanish. In the early 2000s, he penned Kill Bill, collaborating with Uma Thurman, who was instrumental in crafting the central character. Thurman was destined to portray The Bride, a woman who, after being attacked on her wedding day, awakens from a lengthy coma to seek vengeance on her betrayers. When Thurman became pregnant as production loomed, Tarantino postponed the endeavor, insisting on waiting for his ideal lead. Filming commenced in 2002, and a teaser trailer later that year heralded “the 4th film by Quentin Tarantino,” teasing that “in the year 2003, Uma Thurman will KILL BILL.”

After Kill Bill Vol. 2 premiered in April 2004, many expected a re-release that would merge Tarantino’s two films into one cohesive narrative, whether in theaters or on home video. Yet, such a version never materialized—not on DVD, nor with the rise of high-definition Blu-ray, nor during the films’ decade anniversaries, nor amidst streaming services offering extended cuts like Zack Snyder’s Justice League and, notably, Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight.

However, this wasn’t entirely accurate. Adding to the frustration was the existence of a complete version, Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006, fueling hopes for a wider release. It eventually screened at select Tarantino-owned theaters in Los Angeles, leaving most fans in anticipation. Until now.

Now, Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair is set to hit theaters nationwide in a format that surpasses Tarantino’s earlier version. This release includes an entirely new animated sequence, along with necessary adjustments to seamlessly blend the two previously separate volumes into one film. Select theaters will offer the experience in 70mm format, complete with an intermission, akin to the presentation of The Brutalist.

Yes, Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair is coming to movie theaters nationwide, in a version that goes beyond Tarantino’s previous cut. Here a full all-new animated sequence has been incorporated into the film, alongside the various changes that needed to be made (or, rather, un-made) to make two re-edited volumes play once again as a single full film. Select locations will even screen a 70mm print of the movie (and, as with The Brutalist, there will be a built-in intermission).

By now, Tarantino fans have become more accustomed to waiting it out; he typically takes three to four years between movies, and ironically, the time elapsed between 2019’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and the re-release of Kill Bill matches the six-year gap between Jackie Brown and Kill Bill Vol. 1. Because the complete cut of Kill Bill doesn’t exactly count as a new film, whenever Tarantino puts out his tenth and allegedly final movie, it will set a new personal record for time between directorial features. Given that there’s no news of a completed screenplay, Kill Bill could very well mark the halfway point between Hollywood and his next/actual/final project as a director.

Speaking of which: Tarantino has long talked about his plans to retire after directing ten movies, and even scrapped a project called The Movie Critic and gave a spinoff script from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to David Fincher out of concern that they wouldn’t be quite right as his final-ever film as a director. But the whole reason he’s “on” number ten rather than already reaching it is his asterisked counting of Kill Bill as one film, not two. Fair enough that he shot it that way, but the films’ original releases, and how they play in those forms, very much feel like a pair, rather than one long movie split into two parts.

The splitting of Kill Bill might, in retrospect, be the precise moment that Tarantino became particularly self-conscious about his legacy and his output. Doubtless he thought about these things beforehand; he’s too much of a self-taught student of film history to never think about what the arc of his directorial career might look like. But Kill Bill was originally billed as his fourth movie, illustrating a trust that he was no longer “the director of Pulp Fiction” but a brand unto himself – and one that might have an intentionally limited – call it curated? – lifespan. “The 23rd film by Quentin Tarantino” admittedly doesn’t sound as momentous, even if directors from Spielberg to Soderbergh have made stunning careers out of vastly more prolific workloads, and filmmakers like Spielberg and Scorsese have handily disproved Tarantino’s outdated notion of directors losing their fastball if they make movies well past the normal retirement age.

Thematically, Kill Bill also feels like a turning point in Tarantino’s work; though there are elements of revenge in Pulp and Jackie, that entire motivation for the story of Kill Bill turns up again in Death Proof, Inglourious Basterds, and Django Unchained. That’s not a knock on those movies – especially Basterds, which might, to quote the movie itself, be his masterpiece. The conventional anti-Tarantino wisdom that doing Kill Bill diverted the filmmaker from the warmth and nuance of Jackie Brown strikes me as oversimplified. There’s something thrilling, in fact, about Tarantino’s excavation of genuine human emotion from the over-the-top movie-movie craziness of Kill Bill. (Is that shot of Uma Thurman on the bathroom floor, sobbing with joy, the most moving in the entire Tarantino catalog?) But the physical ambition of the Kill Bill movie(s) (combined with a story that’s largely composed of colorful digressions) certainly informs Tarantino’s subsequent projects, which aim for a sense of both scope and violent catharsis that isn’t really a major part of his earlier films.

So while Basterds may be the movie Tarantino deservedly considers his magnum opus, there’s something inescapable about Kill Bill: Its stylistic maximalism, its financial success, its protracted release. Some have snarked that with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Tarantino accidentally made a perfect “final film” too early. But Kill Bill could just as easily sub in as an out-on-top contender. In its place, Tarantino seems to be recreating the only part that can be easily (if not happily) replicated: the waiting.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.