See ‘Pulp Fiction’ as an Animated 8-bit, Side-scrolling Short

When I passed this video along to my editor, Eddie Wright this morning, he pointed out something peculiar about Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction that ever really registered for me (and likely never occurred to its legion of imitators): it’s actually pretty spare on the violence.

CineFix’s 8-bit remix of the 1994 film tracks the “action” beats of Pulp Fiction as a largely surface thing (we see all of the iconic moments reproduced here), but the soul of that movie wasn’t Marvin’s death or Butch and Marcellus’ encounter in the basement – it was the playful, silly, and sometimes wise language of Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary’s Oscar-winning script.

The 8-bit remix of the film largely captures all of the major beats from the movie, although it’s interesting to see the whole thing laid out chronologically like this. In fact, I recall in the wake of the film’s release some critics complaining that the disjointed structure was simply a trick, but consider how Vince’s death means more retroactively after you’ve spent time with him and Jules during the diner scene – that whole encounter revolving around chance, a higher power, and who/what these two men are is elevated knowing that at some point later that day, Vince will be dead.

Anyway, the video is cute and culls a lot of 8-bit tropes (side-scrolling beat-’em-up and shooting action) to revisit one of the most important movies of the last 20 years.