Seeing a beloved character die is almost always a sad sight. Sometimes their deaths may serve a greater purpose and add depth to a film, like Iron Man’s sacrifice to save the universe or Wolverine finally being able to rest after a life of tragedy.
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Unfortunately, there are also times when a character’s death just feels pointless or rushed. When a character is killed too early it leaves audiences wondering what could’ve been if they survived even for just a little longer. Hopefully, future filmmakers can avoid having their characters become wasted potential by taking a look at some who were gone way too soon.
5This Is The End: Michael Cera As Himself
This is The Endis a fantastic comedy about Seth Rogen, James Franco, and a few of their actor friends playing exaggerated versions of themselves trying to survive the apocalypse. The beginning features the characters having a party withlots of cameosfrom other famous comedy actors. One of these is a shocking performance from Michael Cera. Known for playing shy, meek, and often good-hearted men, Cera chose to go in a completely different route while playing himself.
He’s shown doing a plethora of drugs, sexually harassing Rihanna, and overall just being a total jerk. This instantly became one of the film’s most hilarious bits because of how different Cera is acting from his usual persona. Unfortunately, once the world starts being engulfed in fire and demons, Cera reaches a painful end by being impaled by a light post. While his death was also funny, it would’ve been great to see him alongside the other cast members throughout the rest of the film.
4Life: Ryan Reynolds as Rory Adams
Lifeis a science fiction movie released in 2017. An obvious homage toAlien, Life is about analien life form trapped alongside crewmembers of a space station. As time goes on the alien grows and evolves as it kills off the crew one by one. Ryan Reynolds received top billing for the film as the engineer Rory.
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During one of the first encounters with the alien, a crew member named Derry is attacked by the alien during an experiment. As his hand is being crushed, Rory jumps in to rescue him. Even though he is successful with the rescue, his foot is grabbed by the alien, and Rory becomes trapped in the room with it. Unfortunately, the alien enters his body and destroys his internal organs, killing him. It’s apparent that the filmmakers were going for shock value here, but it would’ve been nice to get to know Reynold’s character a little better before killing him off so soon.
3Godzilla: Bryan Cranston as Joe Brody
Hollywood decided to reboot theGodzillafranchise for western audiences in 2014. Marketing for the film relied heavily on showing how Bryan Cranston was the human protagonist of the film. Coming right after the finale of Cranston’s acclaimedtelevision dramaBreaking Bad, it’s clear the marketing team wanted to show off Cranston returning to the big screen.
With an incredibly emotional opening scene showing Cranston’s character forced to watch his wife die as a nuclear power plant collapses, fans were more than excited to see Cranston bring his acting chops to this new Godzilla feature. Unfortunately,Cranston’s character is killed about 30 minutes into the filmand the rest of the narrative focuses on his much less interesting son played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson. It’s clear why Cranston himself admitted that killing his character off that early was a “narrative mistake.”
2The Other Guys: Samuel L. Jackson And Dwayne Johnson As Highsmith And Danson
Another incredible early 2010s comedy isThe Other Guysstarring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg as incompetent detectives trying to prove themselves as good policemen. The film opens with Samuel L. Jackson andDwayne “The Rock” Johnsonas two other detectives who are comically good at their jobs. Filled with action movie tropes and typical “cool guy” lingo, their scenes are hilarious meta-comedy about cop movies.
They meet their ends just a few minutes later by attempting to jump off a building because they believed the bushes will cushion the fall. Obviously, their appearance was meant to set up the two protagonists as being the exact opposite of them, however, their scenes were so funny that it could’ve worked to keep them in the film as side characters who appear only to belittle the protagonists. All their deaths really did was make audiences want an actual cop movie with Sam Jackson and The Rock.
1Avengers Age Of Ultron: Aaron Taylor-Johnson As Pietro Maximoff
The Avengers assembled again in 2015to face the fearsome robot known as Ultron. This film introduced two new heroes to the franchise with Wanda Maximoff (aka Scarlet Witch) and her brother Pietro (aka Quicksilver). Pietro was played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson and had super-speed in the film. Unfortunately, both him and Wanda don’t have much to do throughout most of the film due to them being allied with Ultron for some strange reason.
They eventually renounce Ultron’s evil ways and help the Avengers in the final battle. Pietro then sacrifices himself to save Hawkeye from a hail of bullets. His death was supposed to be an emotional loss for the Avengers and a truly traumatic moment for Wanda. But since his screen time was so little in the film, it was hard for audiences to really care about this loss. Also, one would think a man with super-speed would be able to outrun a few bullets right? With how preciseMarvellikes to plan out their universe, they really should’ve put a little more thought into Quicksilver’s arc.
