# Movies where the villain executes one of his henchmen **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 11, 2005, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-the-villain-executes-one-of-his-henchmen/312084 "2005-07-11T23:52:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![UrbanChic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/9dc877/32.png) [@UrbanChic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UrbanChic)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-the-villain-executes-one-of-his-henchmen/312084/41 "2005-07-13T02:27:57Z")
I think _New Jack City_ qualifies for this thread. All I can remember is some dude on his knees asking someone if he was his brother’s keeper before he gets tapped in the head. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-the-villain-executes-one-of-his-henchmen/312084/42 "2005-07-13T02:36:43Z")
Not **quite** what the thread is asking for, but it fits the spirit in that it shows the villain’s badassedness. The Usual Suspects: A tale is told of how hardcore Keyser Soze is, to the point where some of his enemies hold his wife and kids to threaten Soze. Soze **kills his wife and kids** in front of them to prove how that sort of stuff doesn’t work on him as blackmail, and then lets one of his enemies escape to spread the tale. ---
**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-the-villain-executes-one-of-his-henchmen/312084/43 "2005-07-13T03:15:13Z")
> [@BurnMeUp](#): > > Desperado - Bucho shoots one of his henchmen to demonstrate how easy it is to kill someone (because no one can seem to kill El Mariachi) _Paraphrasing_ "It’s not hard. You go around town, and if you see someone you don’t know, you kill him. See that guy?_Points at a random goon_ I don’t know him. Look, he has a gun."_Shoots him_ ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-the-villain-executes-one-of-his-henchmen/312084/44 "2005-07-13T03:39:30Z")
> [@Little Nemo](#): > > In _Conan the Barbarian_, James Earl Jones’ character has one of his followers kill herself just to impress Conan with how loyal they are. Nope. Thulsa has just told Conan the Riddle Of Steel- “What is stronger than steel?”. He tells the woman to jump “Come to me, my child.” in order to demonstrate the answer ‘Flesh is stronger than steel.’ ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-the-villain-executes-one-of-his-henchmen/312084/45 "2005-07-13T04:55:39Z")
> [@Ferret Herder](#): > > The Usual Suspects: A tale is told of how hardcore Keyser Soze is, to the point where some of his enemies hold his wife and kids to threaten Soze. Soze **kills his wife and kids** in front of them to prove how that sort of stuff doesn’t work on him as blackmail, and then lets one of his enemies escape to spread the tale. And if we add in Gabriel Byrne’s crew as henchmen (…they are working for him), we can note that he wacks all of them too. Plus the former henchman who had ratted him out… ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-the-villain-executes-one-of-his-henchmen/312084/46 "2005-07-13T11:50:14Z")
General Ouromov in Goldeneye. Quite early on in the film (in that 5 odd minute part of every Bond film) he dispatches a soldier under his command who had just fired a shot at some gas canisters Bond is hiding behind. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-the-villain-executes-one-of-his-henchmen/312084/47 "2005-07-13T12:07:59Z")
> [@](#): > > Quote: > Originally Posted by Little Nemo > In Conan the Barbarian, James Earl Jones’ character has one of his followers kill herself just to impress Conan with how loyal they are. > > Nope. Thulsa has just told Conan the Riddle Of Steel- “What is stronger than steel?”. He tells the woman to jump “Come to me, my child.” in order to demonstrate the answer ‘Flesh is stronger than steel.’ Maybe Thulsa Doom didn’t do it, but Sidney Poitier’s character did in the Viking/Muslim epic **The Long Ships** : [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057259/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057259/) (Yep, there _was_ one before The 13th Warrior) The idea of a powerful ruler having one or more of his underlings kill himself to demonstrate loyalty has a long history, going back to the medieval days if not earlier. This whole idea of The Bad Guy killing an underling is a fine and cheap way of demonstrating that The Bad Guy is, well, bad, that he has no respect for human life, and implying that if he can kill someone faithful to him, imagine what he’ll do to the hero opposing him. It’s been overdone. It’s even in kid’s cartoons (Rattigan offs one of his drunken followers in Disney’s **The Great Mouse Detective**. It’s such a cliche that fun was made of it in the 1960s. In one episode of **The Man from U.N.C.L.E.** Napoleon Solo tries to “turn” a T.H.R.U.S.H. employee who’sd about to be executed at his own retirement dinner by letting him in on that secret. (Do S.P.E.C.T.R.E. henchmenm have retiremernt dinners? Do they have unions?) ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-the-villain-executes-one-of-his-henchmen/312084/48 "2005-07-13T15:00:05Z")
> [@](#): > > In Conan the Barbarian, James Earl Jones’ character has one of his followers kill herself just to impress Conan with how loyal they are. > [@](#): > > Nope. Thulsa has just told Conan the Riddle Of Steel- “What is stronger than steel?”. He tells the woman to jump “Come to me, my child.” in order to demonstrate the answer ‘Flesh is stronger than steel.’ Ummm, yeah, isn’t that what I said? Thulsa Doom told one of his followers to jump off a cliff and she did. The whole “flesh and steel” thing was Thulsa Doom mocking Conan. He said that he used to be a warrior, like Conan still is, and thought that he was powerful because of his personal fighting ability (steel). But then he realized that real power comes from being able to command other people to do your fighting for you. So even though he’s personally unarmed (flesh) he’s much stronger than Conan because he’s got an army of followers. And then he has one of his followers step off a hundred foot cliff to demonstrate how his followers will do anything he says. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-the-villain-executes-one-of-his-henchmen/312084/49 "2005-07-13T20:02:23Z")
Hopper (_A Bug’s Life_) buries two of his cohorts in hundreds of nuts to demonstrate that one can be defeated by the collective effort of numerous smaller opponents, i.e. the ants that the grasshoppers have been subjugating for some time. Actually, that whole scene of the grasshoppers lounging in their (Mexican?) digs is unnecessary and should have been cut. It doesn’t really add anything to the movie. ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-the-villain-executes-one-of-his-henchmen/312084/50 "2005-07-13T20:25:43Z")
> [@Bryan Ekers](#): > > Actually, that whole scene of the grasshoppers lounging in their (Mexican?) digs is unnecessary and should have been cut. It doesn’t really add anything to the movie. I’m convinced the whole scene was simply structured to work in the joke about the PuPu Platter. Kinda like the unnecessary scene in _Jurassic Park_ where Ellie looks through the droppings of the Triceratops - serves no purpose other than it lets Malcom say “that is one big pile of shit.” ---
**Author:** ![KGS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/90ced4/32.png) [@KGS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KGS)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2005, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-the-villain-executes-one-of-his-henchmen/312084/51 "2005-07-14T02:05:39Z")
How about _heroes_ who intentionally kill one of their henchmen, in order to get at the bad guys? There’s remarkably few, the only one I can think of is the tv show “24”, where (Season Three spoiler): Jack Bauer kills the head of CTU as a demand of the terrorist, who threatens to release the supervirus if Jack doesn’t comply. And of course there’s _Goodfellas, The Godfather, The Sopranos_, and many other gangster films…except some people consider them villains instead of heroes, I guess. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Enola\_Straight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dec6dc/32.png) [@Enola\_Straight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Straight)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2005, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-the-villain-executes-one-of-his-henchmen/312084/52 "2005-07-14T02:17:56Z")
In the Wesley Snipes action flick Passenger 57, the Bad Guy Boss shoots one of his henchmen after failing to kill Snipes…calling him “Incompetent.” ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2005, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-the-villain-executes-one-of-his-henchmen/312084/53 "2005-07-14T19:54:41Z")
> [@](#): > > by Laughing Lagomorph > Help me out here, it has been years since I read Macbeth or saw it performed (really)…are you referring to Banquo? Because I am not sure I would consider him Macbeth’s henchman…he isn’t in on the plot, is he? Neither Banquo nor MacDuff were particularly enthusiastic followers, but MacBeth had been formally crowned as king, and they would have sworn fealty to him at the coronation ceremony. I think he at least threatens to kill the flunky who informs him that Birnham Wood has come to Dunsinane. _Richard III_ is a better example. Drowning his brother in a barrel of wine, and turning against Buckingham almost the moment he is crowned. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-the-villain-executes-one-of-his-henchmen/312084.md?page=2)