Most of the “good” ones have already been mentioned, but here’s some that got to me that haven’t:
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, when theEnterprise goes down in flames, it just kills me. Picard’s Enterprise blew up hundreds of times, but Kirk’s? Never! (At least not until then )
Natural Born Killers, when Rodney Dangerfield gets it in the fish tank. The look on his face is just so surreal, as if to say, “Well, here it comes, you always knew you’d go out like this.”
1984, when Winston Smith has the vision of Julia being killed in his arms in the field.
Graveyard Shift Brad Dourif’s death struck me as the most utterly, pointless, waste of a good actor I have ever seen.
The death scene that always gets me was Chewbacca’s finale in the abysmally terrible book Vector Prime. He sacrifices himself to save his best friend’s son, and then a moon falls on him. The scene describes him, his body broken and battered from the roiling storms and earthquakes associated with a moonfall, climbing on top of a pile of debris and holding his fist and roaring in defiance as the moon tore through the atmosphere.
I dont like deaths where there rather pointless or a lot of them happen as a way to make room for new characters or the writer has run out of plot and one major character has to die in a book (belevia plain all her books , gary jennings spangle series where so many people die that almost none of the original circus crew is there at the end of the book )…
the recent trend in female crime novels ie patricia cornwell perri o shaungessey ect that if the main female character finds a lover they die either in the same book or somewhere in the series so they can prove how tough their character is…
You dont end up moved you think " what a waste or what thas the point of that ? "
Although thw worst case for this is a fiiction spin off of a rpg called shadowrun ( I know its not high literature but even for this type of series this was bad )
I forget the title but the main character displayed on the book cover and on thebook description dies in the third chapter right after they spend about 40 pages building him up
A group of people was hiding from the North Koreans, including Hawkeye and a woman with a crying baby. When Hawkeye told the woman to stop the baby’s crying, she smothered it to death. At first, Hawkeye remembered the incident with the woman having a noisy chicken.
The death of Walt Garp (the boy) in Gary is so sad. Now I have to read Owen Meany, despite the spoiler.
The death of Lara, the female lead, in Dr. Zhivago is sad, especially because it shows the total dehumanization of the Soviet system: A nameless number on a list that afterwards got misplaced.
I can’t remember their names, but their deaths will remain with me forever. The white woman and her black ranch hand/lover at the end of the book North Dallas Forty, murdered in bed by the total asshat, who actually gets away with it, just pissed me off to no end.
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*Originally posted by PunditLisa *
The wolf in Dances with Wolves.
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And the cane from Citizen Kane.
Sorry, just had to throw a Simpson Quote in there:)
Actually, Maude Flander’s death was a little disturbing when you think about the randomness.
Hey, that’s how that one guy in Black Hawk Down died. Not to mention that guy who accidently shot himself in the leg inBand of Brothers.
I remember that show! I seem to recall another main character getting killed in a loud and grotesque manner when the blast wave from a multi-megaton explosion overtook his fighter.
“Whoever the girl was in the nightmare movie (Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, I don’t know) who gets strangled in the car.”
That would be Halloween. I remember that one. Scary…the one that was worse was the one where a girl gets strangled with a telephone cord while calling her friend and her friend thought it was a prank call.
“I seem to recall another main character getting killed in a loud and grotesque manner when the blast wave from a multi-megaton explosion overtook his fighter.”
Was that the one that left his steak at the bar? The chubby one? What a shocking and sad demise he met.
For me, among the worse deaths has to be of the Vietnamese girl in Casualties of War.
<spoiler> First she’s kidnapped, then raped five times. She’s then stabbed about six times before getting shot screaming off a bridge. </spoiler>
Muriel’s mother in Muriel’s Wedding. Her life was so hopeless that the best thing she could do was to kill herself, so that people would take pity on her husband. And the reason her husband’s life was fucked up was all because of Muriel emptying their bank account. She never even got to the reception at the wedding. Such utter desolation really got to me - and yet people call it a feelgood movie!
'nother one: the opening scene from the movie The Believers, when the mom gets electrocuted by the coffee machine while her husband and son watch. Even after all these years, just thinking about it makes my stomach drop like I’m on a roller-coaster.
I hate it when you can’t remember the character’s name, but one of the big ones for me in books is when the dog dies in [Boy’s Life**. It’s not so much the dog’s death, but the fact the boy wishes Death away and spends several weeks with a dog that’s not dead, but is still rotting. The whole ordeal of his dog being this, well, zombie, still alive and yet so much different and personality wise, devoid of live, all with the exception of the time when the ghost of the kid who died ten years ago comes to visit him at night. Being a big dog lover, the premise that I would be absolutely horrified if my dog were hit by a truck and the knowledge that I’d want to do anything to save him really connected with me. Then there’s the whole “Letting him go” stage that comes later. Cory wanted his dog more than anything, but when it came to his dog’s happiness and well being, he had to let him go. Giving your dog up to a ghost is something I hope I never have to do, but it was a really powerful scene. I’ve done a butchery of telling it, so you should just read the book yourself.
Scotta’s death in Bard. It just really caught me off guard. The description of Eber cradling her body and trying to hold her head in place was a really powerful image. With all the description of her fighting prowess and her having trained so many warriors, for her death to come about so soon after arrival, especially when her clan needed her most, was really hard hit and left a big impression.
Max’s brother’s death in Robotech. And Sven’s death in Voltron (the original pilot of the blue lion). Someone told me a while back that he didn’t actually die according to the later series, but I was six when I first saw it, and I remember that he died, so there.
Don’t think it was that grotesque. IIRC (Will have to dig out the DVDs and rewatch the Macross Saga), all we saw of it was the blast behind him and Max crossing himself. I’m assuming, of course, that you’re referring to Ben Dixon’s death, when the SDF-1’s Pin-Point shield system overloaded. That was pretty freaky, too, since it was his own people’s screwup that killed him. OTOH, it was too obvious, even to 7-year-old me that he was going to buy the farm, when they played up his last meal and how he’d get back to it, for it to have all that much of an effect.
Liked how the Zentraedi reacted to it, though. ‘They’ll even kill their own men! Run away!’ (Paraphrased, of course.)
(The deaths in Robotech really weren’t that graphic, though they were really nicely done (in all respects.) - Mostly. Didn’t care enough about Zor Prime to really be effected by his sacrifice (although its backfiring made me O_O).)
The car theif that Ed Norton kills in American History X. When he tells him to put his teeth on the curb, I can feel the concrete on my own teeth! Happens to me just thinking about it!
Nobody’s mentioned ** The Green Mile **? Great Stephen King book and movie, where Paul Edgecombe tells how most of the characters would die. Good touch for a Death Row warden who lives over 100 years.
I cheered when Percy shot Bill, but John Coffey’s execution was so sad. He hadn’t done anything but healed people, and he ends up in the electric chair. I think if Paul had shown a little more faith and allowed John to escape, John would have survived and saved Paul’s wife Jan in the bus wreck.
Movie - have to agree with Saving Private Ryan, and Roy in Bladerunner
Book - there is a short story by Ernest Hemingway (considered one of his finest) call The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber that literally blew me back in my seat. I remember exactly where I was when I was reading it and just going “oh, shit!”. Can’t give anything away, but worth reading, and you get “I read literature” points, too!
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