I kinda hate the standard “Villain Comes Back for a Second Death” convention in Horror/Suspense/Super Hero movies.
Every once in a while, they’ll clearly show the audience that the villain isn’t dead, that the Hero has mistakenly let his guard down- this is fine with me. Too often, though, it’s a total cheat- and it’s not even an effective cheat anymore because we’ve come to expect it. In almost all instances, the first death is better done anyway.
In the Iron Man 3 thread it’s being discussed. Since this isn’t an Iron Man 3 Thread, I’ll mention it under a Spoiler Tag (Is it being discussed as yet another horrible example of this convention? OR Is it being discussed for so cleverly avoiding this convention in a satisfying way? I’ll leave that unanswered out of the Spoiler Box for anyone who hasn’t seen it).[SPOILER]I was struck by how quickly I completely forgot what the final death blow for Killian ended up being. I remember the First Death- that was when Stark trapped Killian in a suit then self destructed the suit. But then when Pepper shows up, Killian attacks again. Pepper dons one of the gloves from a suit, throws out a few blasts, and somehow succeeds where the First Death failed.
In the Thread, Push You Down gave what I think is the best fanwank to explain it: that Killian’s “health bar was really high before the exploding suit and that lowered it immensely (let’s say he was at 90% and then the suit took him down to 10%). Extremis was repairing the damage but then then Pepper threw/shot or whatever (I can’t rember) and that lowered his bar to zero.”
That’s about as good a description as I can think of. Still, I wish it wasn’t necessary. The exploding suit death should have been the real death.
While we’re under an Iron Man Spoiler Tag, I’ll mention that I hated the Second Death for the first Iron Man movie too!
When Tony leads Obadiah on a high altitude chase to get Obadiah’s suit to ice up (a problem which Tony already faced and figured out how to remedy), I thought that was a great death blow! The hero used his smarts, and he used a technique that had been effectively foreshadowed.
Yes, the movies have been inconsistent in showing just how protected the pilot of the suit is (especially from falls/crashes), but even in the suit that fall from that height should have killed Obadiah. I hated that he came back to say “boo!” and I hated that they felt the need to get all explodey on the roof for a final final showdown.[/SPOILER]
Are there any examples of the villain coming back for a second death where it is actually well done and effective?