Movie deaths are a dangerous thing. They can be very powerful in a story, but they can also anger your entire audience. While it’s pretty much necessary to sometimes kill off a character, it makes sense to treat your character with the proper respect and actually have the death scene work for the story – not against it.
Let’s take a look at some movie deaths that pissed people off for various reasons.
Scott Summers
Leader of the X-Men gets vaporized by his somehow-not-dead girlfriend in what’s generally considered to be the worst plot in all the X-men movies. Not to mention we all know they killed him off to leave room for Wolverine (the bigger actor) to confess his feelings for Jean Grey for some added emotional impact.
General Zod
Superman doesn’t kill, period. It’s one of his things. He realizes that especially someone with his power shouldn’t take a life. Or at least he does in the comics. In the DC Universe, he just snaps Zod’s neck whenever he pleases.
Luke Skywalker
I’m so glad we waited 30 years to see Luke on the silver screen again, only to have him disappear as a nod to Yoda and Obi-Wan’s deaths. Apart from keeping Kylo Ren at bay for a whole three minutes, there was zero use for his Force projection act and subsequent death, however. Also, there’s so much backstory left to uncover. Why kill him off now?
Optimus Prime
Oh, Transformers: The Movie, how I loved you so. Until you killed off Optimus Prime to create Roddimus Prime and then realize it was a bad idea and retcon the entire thing in the next series of the TV show. Apart from that, top class movie though.
Jack Dawson
Come on, Rose. There was plenty of room on that board you were floating on. You don’t do stuff like that to Leo DiCaprio, it’s against the rules.
Captain James T. Kirk
You don’t kill off Captain Kirk. That’s Star Trek 101.
Jango And Boba Fett
Star Wars does have a thing for silly death scenes. Building up Boba Fett and Jango Fett as the galaxy’s best bounty hunters, only to have them both die pretty much the silliest deaths in the entire Star Wars saga is such a bad move.
Robert Neville
I Am Legend had many things going for it, but the ending wasn’t one of them. Can someone please explain why Will Smith had to blow himself up instead of doing the rational thing: also escaping and throwing the grenade behind him? We watched this guy choke his dog and felt his pain and struggles, only to have him do a suicide bombing run at the end. No sir, not buying it.
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