Movies in which the brutal, onscreen death of the villain is roundly celebrated [spoilers]

Cafe Society
1

Let me clarify:
Often, the deaths of the villains in the movies is not very tragic or graphic. For example, Jack Nicholson’s death in the Shining is him just freezing to death (spoiler) and the death of Darth Vader is his slow death with Luke (spoiler).

However, besides Inglourious Basterds and Death Proof (which are both QT films, lol), many films don’t show the villain being brutally and graphically murdered to the cheer or excitement of the audience. It must be really hard to craft someone so villainous that their brutal death is met with excitement.

Anyway, can you guys think of any other films that feature this?

2

Well, it’s not the main villain, but the first three Indiana Jones movies show someone beating the crap out of Indy, then suffering a brutal & graphic (for PG-13 at least death) -

German aircraft mechanic eats a propeller

Indian bodyguard gets crushed by huge stone rollers

German soldier gets run over by a tank.

3

99% of the action movies made over the past 30 years?

4

In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Toht’s face melted and Belloq’s head exploded. As I recall those moments got big audience reactions.

And who didn’t cheer Die Hard’s Hans Gruber falling to his death while John McClane quipped “Yippie-Ki-Yay, Motherfucker”?

5

“Ding, dong, the witch is dead?”

6

Sure there are a lot that are tragic and even sad, but they just seem expected, you know? While I agree with the Die Hard one and the Indy one to an extent, not all on-screen deaths of villains are that way. Loki’s death in Avengers, or anyone’s death in the latest SpiderMan, or even Javiar Bardem’s death in the latest Skyfall were all stoic, serious deaths.

There’s something about the inherent sence of hilarity and irony that comes from a group of three girls chasing Kurt Russell back down and beating the crap out of him, or Brad Pitt carving a swastika into Hans Landa’s head that you don’t get from your run-of-the-mill action feature.

7

Though it perhaps should be obvious, I went ahead and added [spoilers] to the thread title for the benefit of those who wish to avoid spoilers for recent movies.

Ellen Cherry

8

Loki didn’t die in the Avengers, you know. He did, however, undergo a beating that would have killed a mortal man, and in my movie theater at least, said beating was met with the cheers and *extreme *excitement of the audience.

9

smacks head

duh…I forgot about the screen where Hulk throws him around like a rag doll.

10

Let’s go over some of the most popular action movies of recent decades:

Die Hard - bad guy falls out of window
Die Hard 2 - bad guys’ plane blown up.
Lethal Weapon - bad guy shot
Lethal Weapon 2 - bad guy shot through credentials
Terminator - bad guy crushed
Terminator 2 - bad guy melted
Aliens - bad guy thrown out of airlock
True Lies - bad guy strapped to missile and shot at other bad guys
Speed - bad guy decapitated by subway sign
Independence Day - bad guys blow up by crazy Vietnam vet in fighter jet
Matrix - good guy jumps into bad guy’s body and blows him up from the inside.
Indiana Jones 1/2/3 - bad guy killed by deity.

Need I go on? All of these deaths were widely seen as worthy of celebration.

11

One that surprised me was the death of Hopper in A Bug’s Life. He was eaten alive, which is a pretty brutal death for a children’s movie.

12

Pixar can be brutal at times. Remember, one of its major villains was killed by being sucked into a jet engine.

13

Hans Landa didn’t die on screen, and there’s no reason to believe that he did die. Brad Pitt carved the swastika into his head so he COULD go through life with a swastika scar for everyone on Nantucket to see. And we know from previous scenes that others survived the swastika treatment.

14

In fairness, Kurt Russell didn’t either.

I don’t know, though. It just seems like there is a huge difference between tormenting the person, like QT did in Death Proof and Inglorious, and receiving pleasure from that than a simple gunshot or falling out of a window. Celebrating a human being literally getting a swastika CARVED into their head? It takes a decent script to make me believe someone is that evil to deserve it.

15

He was a Nazi, wasn’t he? I don’t need a good script to celebrate a Nazi being maimed. Or any script, for that matter.

16

“My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son. Husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.”

tl;dr

“Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

17

Arguably, Vader is no longer a villain at this point - he is the Jedi Knight Anakin fighting against the Dark Side that enslaved him for so long.

18

You didn’t feel Inglorious Basterds meets that standard? It’s hard to imagine a more cruel, soulless excuse for a human being than Hans Landa, and the fact that he’s so smug and superior all the time only serves to hate him more. He goes around France killing Jews (which he doesn’t even particularly hate) and when the tide of battle shifts, he turns around and pretends he was fighting the Nazis all along? That’s pretty disgusting, if you ask me, and he got what he deserved.

19

The shark blowing up in Jaws was met with thunderous applause when I saw it in a theater as a youngster.

20

Surely the Inglourious Basterds death to cheer for was machine gunning Hilter in the face? Brutal and graphic and surely worth a cheer.