JAWS and 10 badass deaths of the big and small screens!
How can you forget Quint’s death; eaten alive by Bruce at his arguably least realistic? Even in his last moments and so far inside the shark that he’s practically wearing it as a mermaid tail, Quint goes for its eye with the knife he’s holding- which is exactly the advice people are still given today. (Hit the eyes and gills). Still, it’s too late and in eighteen seconds, Quint is dragged under the water.
Here are a few more badass death scenes on the screens. Some are from TV series, some from movies. Some characters are awesome in their own right, others become awesome in their last moments.
Avast, here be spoilers!
Captain Artemis (The 300)
The deaths of 299 of King Leonidas’s army of 300 soldiers could have been one collective entry, but in this movie about a Spartan king who stands against a delusional gold-painted warlord, Captain Artemis’s death stands out and still gets overlooked! We’ve already seen the character in a grief-induced berserker rage, but in the final battle he gets speared through the middle, still takes two enemies down… and then pulls the spear through his own body so that he can get close enough to the person holding it to kill him too!
Thelma and Louise (Thelma and Louise)
Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis play best friends on a road trip. The fun ends with the (deserved) killing of an attacker and the two jump back in the car in a desperate attempt to run away to Mexico. But there’s a catch… Louise won’t go to Texas, which is right in their way. By the end, Thelma and Louise are wanted for murder, robbery, speeding and destroying a vehicle. With the police closing in, they choose to drive off the edge of the Grand Canyon to their deaths rather than surrender.
Danny Hunter (Spooks)
The UK TV series Spooks is about spies in MI5- with undercover operations, cliffhangers, secret identities, torture and deaths you never see coming. When Danny and another agent are held hostage by a terrorist, the negotiator is given thirty seconds to choose which of the two should live. It’s an impossible choice- Danny is his best friend. The other agent is his wife. To save his friend from making that choice, Danny provokes the terrorist into shooting him dead, with a speech that starts with his thoughts on love and ends with ‘fuck you, you death-worshipping fascist’.
Ulric (Black Death)
Sean Bean is a walking spoiler. He’s virtually guaranteed to die in everything he appears in, so he’s mastered the death scene. In Lord of the Rings, his character Boromir makes up for an earlier mistake with an iconic fight to the death… but as we probably all know that, here’s a different badass Sean Bean death (and a warning that this one is GORY.) Ulric is a knight on a mission from god (or technically the bishop), but finds himself out of his depth in the evil village he’s supposed to save from its leader- a necromancer. Just before he is dismembered by being tied to horses running in opposite directions, he not only refuses to renounce his faith, but reveals that he has the plague- dooming the village after his death.
Jean Grey (X-2)
Jean Grey spends the first two X-Men movies feeling less powerful than the other mutants, then starting to lose control of her powers. She is both telepathic (mind reading) and telekinetic (the ability to move objects with her mind.) In X-2, after the good guys break into a secret military testing facility and free the subjects, they find their aircraft (the X-Jet) is damaged and grounded and the nearby dam has burst, unleashing a tidal wave which is on its way to the jet. Jean, who never trusted her own strength before, uses her telekinesis to hold back the water, launch the jet and prevent anyone from stopping her while she uses her telepathy to send a final message to the people she loves. When she breaks the connection, the water crashes over her. (Jean does survive but we don’t know that at the time.)
Angel (The Strain)
We first meet Angel as a washed-up former wrestler aka The Silver Angel, who spends his time watching his own action movies and working as a waiter in a restaurant, but when a virus turns half the population into monsters (known as strigoi), he finds there’s still life in him yet! Angel uses wrestling moves on the strigoi, including his trademark silver crucifix-shaped knuckleduster. When he is ‘stung’ by one, he knows he doesn’t have long before he becomes a strigoi himself, and buys his friend Gus time by fighting them off before being caught in an explosion. It’s as theatrical as any wrestling match - the last thing we see is the flames rising around him and the knuckleduster reflecting the light.
Sasha Williams (The Walking Dead)
Sasha had a lot to deal with in her last season. Her boyfriend* was murdered right in front of her, she was found trying to assassinate his murderer (the formidable Negan) and imprisoned, and yet she still managed to fight off an attacker with her arms tied up! Negan wants to use her to stop the band of friends that she’s loyal to. He intends to deliver her to her friends alive but inside a coffin. Knowing that people turn into walkers (zombies) when they die, Sasha takes an deadly pill inside the coffin, hoping to get close enough to bite Negan when she emerges, dead but reanimated. As she lunges out of the coffin at him, the interruption gives her friends the chance to fight back and it’s the first time we see Negan scared. *Honourable mention - Sasha’s boyfriend Abraham, who after taking a skull-smashing blow to the head from Negan’s now-infamous barbed wire wrapped baseball bat, he still manages to stay upright, throw the ‘peace’ sign to Sasha and insult Negan one more time.
Dana and Marty (The Cabin in the Woods)
The Cabin in the Woods is a horror-comedy about horror cliches, but when the two final characters are at death’s door and offered the chance to sacrifice themselves to save humanity, they unexpectedly decide to give the Lovecraftian gods waiting below them a chance to rule. Knowing they’ll never actually see what happens, the two share a joint as the world disintegrates around them. It might not be so good for humanity but the nonchalant way the two accept their fate makes their death scene badass!
Dr Daisuke Serizawa (Godzilla)
His character arc was so well done that it has been used again and again in later creature features. He’s the 'what have I done?!’ scientist. Serizawa created a weapon so deadly it’s known as ‘The Oxygen Destroyer’. The other characters finally persuade him to let them use it on the rampaging Godzilla, but before he does, he destroys his notes on the weapon and sacrifices himself so that his creation cannot be used again and he cannot be forced to make another.
Morsov (Fury Road)
We don’t have time to get attached to Morsov but his death is the first time we really see what the fanatical ‘warboys’ are all about, and their culture is a big part of the movie! The warboys are the personal army of warriors belonging to leader Immortan Joe, and they have been brought up to believe that the best death is kamikaze style in a blaze of glory. The first time we truly understand what this means is when Morsov dies. While defending a vehicle from enemies, he is speared through the face and neck with a double crossbow. He rises again, cries ‘WITNESS ME’, sprays his mouth with chrome paint and leaps from the back of the vehicle with an explosive spear in each hand, destroying the pursuing vehicle - and himself- in the process.
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