Example: “The last to go will see the others go before her,” cackles Margaret Hamilton (as the WW of the W)
Well, there’s your problem, Cal. Here and in the Odysseus example, you care about the fate of the crew. They don’t matter, nobody matters but the protagonist. You can kill off a million nobodies to make a point, but if the protagonist gets a hangnail … that MATTERS!
There was the animated version of Spawn. At one point Spawn fries this guy’s brain, leaving him a gibbering wreck. He tries to shoot himself with an empty pistol, then begs Spawn to kill him. Spawn replies : “No. I’m going to let you live . . . longer than you want to.”
You’re forgetting the pseudo-medieval, pseudo-Christian backdrop of the film. The woman IS delivered: she gets to go to Heaven. Prospero IS punished: he goes to Hell. Pleasure and pain in this world are sideshows. It’s where you spend Eternity that matters.
Similarly, the Ancient Mariner’s shipmates all got to shuffle off this mortal coil, and go on to bigger and better things, while the Mariner is still stuck in this world doing penance.
{highjack} OK, the Black Death must be bubonic plague.
The Red Death is…Smallpox? Scarlet Fever?
The Yellow Death is…Typhoid? Cholera?
Does anyone know what the various colors represent?{/highjack}