The second one did. The original did not.
But would it be as shocking if we expected it?
Mal had shown himself to be an honorable man (albeit a crook) by the rest of his actions in that story, and we don’t expect honorable men to make use of the practical villain disposal method that he does with Crow.
So while yes, we love Mal, I wonder whether this flawed hero archetype would play as well if we did not have a pre-existing expectation that heroes shouldn’t be “practical”.
Course, this goes right alongside the whole “I can’t kill him or I’ll be just like him!” tiresome speech.
I don’t know, I was reading Spawn when I was like 10 or 11. That’s some pretty grisly stuff, and it also has a lot of sex for a superhero comic.
Indiana Jones, in the market, with the gun.
Of course, this trope leads to some weird contradictions, like when the Big Bad explains that anger and killing will turn someone permanently to the dark side. But our hero protagonist has been merrily slaughtering minons by the bushelful, and killing those guys didn’t darkify him.
And this happens all the time. The hero slaughters dozens of henchmen, only to refuse to kill the big bad until the big bad pulls that knife from behind his back and/or falls from a great height. If killing was such a big deal, what about those minions? They didn’t even have dental!
And then there’s every Highlander movie ever made.
Someone always loses their head in the end.
Of course, they just dig up (literally) some other, nastier, bad guy for the sequel.
ETA: There can be only one. More or less.
The very first time I saw that scene, I was rolling my eyes during Crow’s speech, because I just *knew * that Mal, being the hero, would let him go. The hero always does.
I liked the show before that scene. I loved it after.
Heh, along those lines, I loved Batman’s solution to that in Batman Begins:
[SPOILER]“I’m not going to kill you. That doesn’t mean I have to save you.”
escapes from the runaway monorail, leaving Ducard to die in a firey train wreck[/SPOILER]
Jon Shannow anyone?
I would love to see those books in film form (or maybe not, they’d probably gt butchered)
If you do wrong in Shannows line of sight, you’ll be eating a bullet post haste.
See, the minions, being cannon fodder, are always running toward our hero, and so can not be shot in the back.
But anyone who is really bothered by noble heroes should curl up with the Iliad. Or the Odyssey.
A bigger bunch of whining, egotistical, deceitful, and/or generally untrustworthy and unworthy bunch of thugs you will not find in South Central L.A.
During WW2, it was perfectly ok to show comicbook heros cheerfully machine-gunning Nazis and Japs by the hundreds. Of course common Axis soldiers probably count as Disposable Mooks, but I don’t think any of the ringleaders were ever shown any particular mercy. IIRC, villains like Red Skull and Wotan simply were very good at getting away.