Why merely poison someone when you can throw a sword and a chandelier at them first, then poison them? Over the top, goofy, and downright bizarre, these death scenes bring down otherwise fantastic movies.
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00:00Why merely poison someone when you can throw a sword and a chandelier at them first, then
00:04poison them?
00:05Over-the-top, goofy, and downright bizarre, these death scenes bring down otherwise fantastic
00:11movies.
00:12Spoilers ahead for all the movies we talk about.
00:14Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy is spectacular in general, and while The Dark
00:18Knight Rises isn't perfect, it's still a great film.
00:21But there's one step up Nolan makes at the end of the final film, the death of Talia
00:25Al Ghul.
00:26After her vehicle flies off the edge of an overpass, Talia gives one last speech before
00:30she succumbs to her injuries.
00:32It's a bit difficult to buy that Talia is fatally injured from the crash while Jim Gordon
00:36survives with barely a scratch, and he wasn't even wearing a seatbelt, or in a seat at all.
00:41Then Talia conveniently dies the exact moment her villain monologue is over.
00:45And what a death!
00:46Talia dies delicately, fluttering her eyelashes and then tilting her head to the side in a
00:50universal signal for, I've just croaked, as one Redditor wrote.
00:54Damn it, I loved the trilogy, but I forgot how awful her death was.
00:58You knew this was coming.
01:00Jack's notorious death from Titanic.
01:02Don't get us wrong, the acting in that scene is top-notch, but there's really no avoiding
01:06that this moment from Titanic makes no sense.
01:08Jack dies trying to keep Rose afloat, even though there is plenty of room on their makeshift
01:19raft.
01:20Shouldn't that extra space have been enough to keep them both alive?
01:23It's a question that, unlike Jack, never died.
01:25The Mythbusters tackled the problem, and the actors have been plagued with questions about
01:29it for years.
01:30Did you mention it at the time?
01:31Were you like, should we make the door smaller so that…
01:32Like I said, I have no clue.
01:35The director himself tested this theory in the documentary Titanic 25 Years Later with
01:40James Cameron.
01:41He found that, yes, it would have been possible for Jack to join her on the door.
01:44But other factors, such as whether or not their vital organs would still be submerged,
01:48meant that the odds of survival might have been lower for both of them in that scenario.
01:52Cameron concluded,
01:53"...I think his thought process was, I'm not going to do one thing that jeopardizes her,
01:57and that's 100% in character."
01:59In the 2012 film Les Misérables, police inspector Javert has spent years tracking down the thief
02:05Jean Valjean, only to realize that Valjean is actually a decent guy.
02:09Unable to reconcile this discovery with the principles he has believed all his life, Javert
02:14hauls himself off a bridge.
02:16By all rights, it should be an emotional moment, but this scene doesn't quite resonate with
02:20the gravitas that it should.
02:22Some viewers have pointed out that the way Javert hits the water is perhaps a little
02:25too realistic.
02:27Instead of plunging into the river, his body collides with a concrete barrier just below
02:31the water's surface with an audible crunch.
02:33We get that the film is supposed to be gritty, but did it really need to be so graphic?
02:37To add insult to injury, Crowe's singing here isn't that good.
02:40That's one thing almost every critic agrees on.
02:43Crowe's singing isn't up to par with the other cast members.
02:45One YouTuber points out that this is possibly because Crowe was taught how to sing by multiple
02:50vocal coaches, each with their own methodology, so Crowe probably received conflicting advice.
02:55Viewers will inevitably compare his vocal performance to those of Anne Hathaway and
02:59Hugh Jackman, as well as the various actors who have played Javert on stage.
03:03Some audience members might argue that this death scene from Bird Box is hardly the only
03:07questionable moment from the movie, and that's certainly a valid take, but would argue that
03:11the movie doesn't start to really go downhill until the death of Charlie.
03:15In this scene, the heroes are holed up inside a supermarket to escape the mysterious creatures
03:19that convince anybody who sees them to kill themselves.
03:22A store worker named Fishfinger tries to force his way out of the back room, begging the
03:26heroes to behold the creatures and all their beauty.
03:29As it becomes increasingly clear that the rest of the group can't hold him back, Charlie
03:33makes an off-the-cuff decision to sacrifice himself.
03:41It's supposed to be heroic, we guess, but it's completely pointless.
03:45Surely there were dozens of ways to get that door closed without Charlie sacrificing himself.
03:49A well-placed kick would have forced Fishfinger to retreat, John Malkovich has a shotgun,
03:53and he's not even helping the others hold the door back.
03:56From dusk till dawn starts out promising, with brothers Seth and Richie on the run from
04:00the law.
04:01Many viewers immediately fall in love with this pair of bickering antiheroes.
04:05Even when the two brothers massacre everyone in a store, you can't help but go along with
04:09George Clooney's charisma, and to an extent, that goodwill carries over to Quentin Tarantino's
04:14Richie.
04:15At least, that is, until Richie pressures their hostage Gloria to sit on the bed next
04:18to him.
04:19In the next scene, Gloria is dead, and Richie is completely nonchalant about everything.
04:24His brother is rightfully horrified.
04:25In this moment, Richie goes from being a socially awkward, albeit trigger-happy weirdo, to a
04:34complete psycho, which would be fine for the purposes of the story, if we weren't all so
04:38supposed to care about him when he dies a violent death later in the movie.
04:42Richie's death is supposed to be one of Seth's crucial motivations for the rest of the movie,
04:46but this is undermined by the fact that viewers will likely feel relieved that Richie is gone.
04:51Whether it's the ghost from Beetlejuice, or the Corpse Bride in Corpse Bride, Tim Burton
04:55can always manage to make the morbid seem cute.
05:04Except, of course, when it stops being cute.
05:06When Burton directed Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, he adapted this dark
05:11Broadway musical with appropriate heaviness.
05:13However, there is one moment in the film that may have gone too far.
05:16The death of Mrs. Lovett.
05:18On the stage, Mrs. Lovett's death is definitely dark, but not usually graphic, but Burton
05:22takes full advantage of the cinematic medium to show Todd hurling Mrs. Lovett into the
05:26furnace.
05:27Rather than cutting away, the camera hovers unflinchingly on Mrs. Lovett as she writhes
05:31in agony.
05:32Does it ruin the movie?
05:33Eh, not totally.
05:35Before this, we've seen dozens of mutilated bodies dumped in the basement below.
05:39We've witnessed the hero unwittingly slit his wife's throat.
05:42We know the pies are people, but even in such a bleak and gory movie, this is one horror
05:47too many.
05:48The whole sequence is gratuitous and bound to make even the most stoic viewers squeamish.
05:53Most adaptations of Shakespeare add their own spin-on events to distinguish themselves
05:56from previous adaptations of the play.
05:58But despite having a Rotten Tomatoes score of well over 90%, the 1996 film Hamlet contains
06:04one death scene that is too hilarious to take seriously.
06:07In the original play, the stage directions simply say that Hamlet stabs Claudius with
06:11a poisoned sword, and forces him to drink the poison that was intended for Hamlet.
06:15Pretty straightforward, right?
06:16Not to be outdone, director and star Kenneth Branagh gives Claudius a more extravagant
06:21death.
06:22Or three, to be exact.
06:23First, he holds a saber across the room, pinning Claudius to his throne.
06:27Then for good measure, Hamlet sends the chandelier crashing down on the king.
06:30Then he gets around to force-feeding Claudius the lethal poison.
06:34Any one of these would have made a fitting death for King Claudius, but all three at
06:37once takes it a little too close to Monty Python territory.
06:40The film adaptation of Cloud Atlas was met with a mixed response.
06:50Although detractors of the film consider it indulgent, and its defenders insist that the
06:54film is an underrated gem, most folks agree that Cloud Atlas is meant to be a serious
06:59drama.
07:00But the scene with Dermot Hoggins and Felix Finch does a complete 180 on the tone.
07:03As Hoggins, Tom Hanks gives a performance that is not subtle in the least.
07:07The author pouts about a negative review Finch wrote about his book, before grabbing
07:10the critic and hurling him off the roof.
07:12You can't help but laugh at the whole scenario.
07:14Maybe it's the way Hoggins bangs two food trays together to get everyone's attention,
07:18and then clumsily tosses them aside, like a child that's gotten bored with his toys.
07:22Maybe it's the way the film goes out of its way to show Finch falling.
07:25Or maybe it's the way that Timothy Cavendish narrates the event as if he's merely describing
07:29an amusing party trick.
07:31If I'm honest, I admit that the obvious emotions like shock and horror flew as Finch had, here
07:37and gone.
07:38Whatever the reason, viewers on Reddit felt the scene was too silly, and seemed out of
07:41place in the otherwise serious film.
07:43One Redditor argued this over-the-top performance was especially disappointing, coming from
07:47such a talented actor.
07:49The chain of events from Cruella that shape Estella into the villainous Cruella begins
07:53with the death of Catherine, who is later revealed to be Estella's adoptive mother.
07:57The Baroness' pet Dalmatians charge towards Catherine, who stands petrified until the
08:01dogs knock her off the edge of a cliff.
08:03This ridiculous scenario was immediately ridiculed with countless memes.
08:07It's supposed to be a tragic moment that transforms Estella, but it's impossible to take this
08:11scene seriously.
08:12Viewers don't even need to watch Estella's mother die to empathize with the misunderstood
08:15heroine.
08:16It's really just a contrived way to give Cruella a tragic backstory, especially since the movie
08:20already had plenty of reasons to explain how Cruella became so cruel.
08:25After all, Estella realizes later in the movie that she takes after her birth mother,
08:28the Baroness.
08:29The film suggests that Estella has always had a little bit of that madness inside of
08:33her, and her mother's death was simply an excuse to unleash it.
08:36What's even worse is that fans have easily been able to come up with more convincing
08:39backstories.
08:40For instance, one ex-user wrote,
08:41A more compelling Cruella origin story would have been if her mother had a pair of Dalmatians
08:45that she loved and spoiled and pampered, but she never wanted a child, so all of the affection
08:50went to the dogs."
08:51See?
08:52That wasn't hard!
08:53There's no more emotional foundation than having a pack of CGI dogs scare your mom off
08:57a cliff.
08:58Denethor's death in The Lord of the Rings Return of the King 100% completely ruins the
09:03movie.
09:04Okay, yeah, let's backtrack on that slightly.
09:11It in no way ruins the movie, but it's a little over the top, so let's talk about it.
09:16The whole thing starts out as a deeply emotional scene, in which Denethor, believing his son
09:19Faramir is dead, tries to burn himself alive on his son's funeral pyre.
09:24Gandalf and Bibin say Faramir at the last minute, and Denethor, engulfed in flames and
09:29too late realizing his folly, howls himself off one of Minas Tirith's many ramparts.
09:33It looks great, until you stop to think about it a little, as one Redditor said.
09:37Yeah, if he was trying to die to stop the pain, he should've just turned left and aimed
09:41for the shorter distance to the edge.
09:43Then there's Gandalf's reaction.
09:44Rather than lifting a finger to help the man who's burning to death, Gandalf is pretty
09:48cool about it.
09:49So passes Denethor, son of Excellion.
09:53Fair enough, but again, Denethor still has quite a jog ahead of him when he says that.
09:57He could definitely have chased him down and tried to put out the flames.
10:00Even Peter Jackson mentioned in the audio commentary that the scene was sort of ridiculous,
10:04but he kept it because it looked cool.