# When the kid dies in a movie
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-the-kid-dies-in-a-movie/961127
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Tags:** movies
**Created:** [March 15, 2022, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-the-kid-dies-in-a-movie/961127 "2022-03-15T18:26:18Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2022, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-the-kid-dies-in-a-movie/961127/1 "2022-03-15T18:26:18Z")
Recently I was watching again a movie on TCM title _Westward the Women_. For it’s time it was fairly gritty. It’s a drama about a wagon train of women traveling to California to marry. Before they start the guy who organizes the journey tells them “By the time this is over one in three of you will be dead.”
One woman is a widow with a young son, he looks to be about ten. The kid dies when a gun misfires. That surprised me the first time I saw it.
This reminded me of how in movies with an elelment of danger the kid or kids almost always survive, often when an adult sacrifices themself to save them. But I do remember in the remake of _The Blob_ how a kid is eaten by the blob. And in _The Mist_ a guy shoots his own young son, to save him from what he thinks will be a worse death at the fangs(or whatever) of the mysterious monsters.
I know there are others, but I’m having a hard time remembering them.
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### Author:  [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2022, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-the-kid-dies-in-a-movie/961127/2 "2022-03-15T18:37:36Z")
In the Mia Sorvino 1990s-icky genre horror flick [Mimic,](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimic_(film)) there was a group of kids who I thought were there to fill the standard “Baker Street Irregulars” trope, but got eaten by bugs.
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### Author:  [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2022, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-the-kid-dies-in-a-movie/961127/3 "2022-03-15T18:40:28Z")
I can only think of a movie where the kid should have died if the movie had followed the book, but didn’t: **Cujo**
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### Author:  [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2022, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-the-kid-dies-in-a-movie/961127/4 "2022-03-15T18:47:05Z")
In _Hook_, Rufio, the leader of the Lost Boys, is killed by Captain Hook. I believe Robin Williams’s (grown now) Peter Pan takes revenge.
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### Author:  [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2022, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-the-kid-dies-in-a-movie/961127/5 "2022-03-15T18:49:05Z")
And a _lot_ of kids die in _The Hunger Games_ series, including, tragically, Rue and Prim.
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2022, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-the-kid-dies-in-a-movie/961127/6 "2022-03-15T18:50:05Z")
Don’t forget Pet Sematary. I never will.
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### Author:  [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2022, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-the-kid-dies-in-a-movie/961127/7 "2022-03-15T18:50:30Z")
True, but in that one we expected most to die.
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### Author:  [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2022, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-the-kid-dies-in-a-movie/961127/8 "2022-03-15T18:50:35Z")
> [@Dung\_Beetle](#):
>
> Don’t forget Pet Sematary. I never will.
Well, sometimes dead is better.
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### Author:  [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2022, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-the-kid-dies-in-a-movie/961127/9 "2022-03-15T18:50:56Z")
Multiple kids die in IT, including in the very first scene. Of course, pretty much all the significant characters in that film are kids, and it’s Stephen King, so…
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2022, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-the-kid-dies-in-a-movie/961127/10 "2022-03-15T18:51:48Z")
I can’t believe I set that up for you so perfectly. Well done, sir!
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### Author:  [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2022, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-the-kid-dies-in-a-movie/961127/11 "2022-03-15T18:59:19Z")
In _[The Cowboys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cowboys)_, a 1972 John Wayne movie, one of the boys dies.
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### Author:  [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2022, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-the-kid-dies-in-a-movie/961127/12 "2022-03-15T19:13:59Z")
I’d forgotten that one! Liked the movie very much.
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### Author:  [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2022, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-the-kid-dies-in-a-movie/961127/13 "2022-03-15T19:18:35Z")
In the original _Frankenstein_ movie, Frankie accidentally kills a little girl.
In _The World According to Garp_, his son dies when an enraged Garp (Robin Williams) violently rams the car in which his wife is fellating her lover. Very Sad, but it does lead to a great line when Roberta Muldoon (John Lithgow in an Oscar-nominated performance) says of Garp’s wife’s lover,
> I mean, I had mine removed surgically under general anesthesia. But to have it bitten off in a Buick!
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### Author:  [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2022, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-the-kid-dies-in-a-movie/961127/14 "2022-03-15T19:24:16Z")
In the Star Wars prequel _Revenge of the Sith_, Anakin’s heel turn into becoming Darth Vader is punctuated when, in the course of leading an assault by clone troopers on the Jedi Temple, he walks into the Jedi Council chamber, where a group of “younglings” (pre-teen Jedi trainees) has taken refuge, and he ignites his lightsaber. The scene cuts at that point, but it’s clearly meant to show that Anakin killed all of the kids.
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBbQg8r8tdc)
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### Author:  [@chela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chela)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2022, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-the-kid-dies-in-a-movie/961127/15 "2022-03-15T19:30:20Z")
How did he die? I remember a scene from a western where a young boy got tangled in the reins of his horse or maybe it was a buggy accident and his body was dragged through the dust and brush and he was dead. Made an impact on me as a little kid.
I’ve never been able to figure which movie it happened in.
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### Author:  [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2022, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-the-kid-dies-in-a-movie/961127/16 "2022-03-15T19:32:46Z")
In _The Cowboys_, one of the boys fell off a horse in the middle of the herd and is trampled to death. I saw the movie as a kid and imagined how gory it would have been.
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### Author:  [@chela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chela)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2022, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-the-kid-dies-in-a-movie/961127/17 "2022-03-15T19:40:10Z")
I’ll have to find and watch it, that mayI’ve been the scene I’m thinking of.
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### Author:  [@Akaj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Akaj)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2022, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-the-kid-dies-in-a-movie/961127/18 "2022-03-15T19:41:54Z")
In _Bless the Beasts and Children,_ Cotton gets fatally shot while he’s freeing the bison. I was about the character’s age when I first saw it and thought it was the epitome of tragedy. 🤦♂️ 🤣
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### Author:  [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2022, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-the-kid-dies-in-a-movie/961127/19 "2022-03-15T19:46:00Z")
El Orfanato (The Orphanage)
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### Author:  [@Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tired_and_Cranky)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2022, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-the-kid-dies-in-a-movie/961127/20 "2022-03-15T19:49:11Z")
Nobody remembers My Girl? A coming of age story about two kids growing up and into their romantic feelings. Scratch that. Just one kid.
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