Top 5 Comic Book Movie Deaths

MTV put a list like this together and I felt obligated to reply with my own take on the matter. Especially since all of theirs were completely lame. FYI, there are massive spoilers ahead so make sure you know what you are doing before you read this list.

5. Every Evil Ex-Boyfriend (Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World)

It’s not the way they die that is awesome, although being cut in half by a flaming sword is pretty epic. It’s what happens the moment they die. Every boyfriend in the film fights and loses to Scott Pilgrim and in that final moment, when Mr. Pilgrim gives the final blow, their bodies burst into increasing amounts of loose change ready to be used at your local arcade.

4. Fox (Wanted)

I know this movie defies all laws of physics with their twisting bullet shots and their ability to shoot someone in a crowded city from 10 miles away, but once you get past the impossibility of it all the movie becomes pretty wicked. And there is not death more wicked in this film than in the final climatic moment when the evil mystery behind the Fraternity is revealed and Fox, played by Angelina Jolie, knows what she has to do to make it right. She pulls off the craziest twisted shot of all, a complete 360 degree angle gun shot that kills every assassin in the circle with her including herself.

3. King Leonidas (300)

There a lot of deaths in this movie to pick from. A lot. But the best one, no questions asked, is the dramatic end to the life of the beloved king of the Spartans, Leonidas, played by Gerald Butler. After fighting off armies of Persian soldiers the 300 Spartans lead by Leonidas finally succumb to the numbers after a betrayal by the rejected hunchback and what does it take to bring Leonidas down? A volley of arrows so thick and so massive that it completely blacks out the sun, leaving Leonidas pinned to the ground below him. And what are his last words? “My queen! My wife, my love…”

2. Rorschach (Watchmen)

After learning of Ozymandias’ plan to unite the world behind the common enemy of Dr. Manhattan and then on top that Dr. Manhattan agreeing to the ruse, Rorschach decides that due to his inability to live a lie, even for “the greater good”, that he can’t live in this world anymore. So he goads Dr. Manhattan into ending it for him who does it in a way that he knew only Dr. Manhattan could, vaporizing every molecule of him so that the only thing left of his body are some splashes of blood that leave marks on the arctic snow that resemble his namesake, a Rorschach test.

1. Professor Charles Xavier (X-Men: The Last Stand)

There are so many things wrong to this movie that I couldn’t even begin to make a list describing them. But one thing that the makers did right was send Prof. X off in the most epic way possible. After confronting Phoenix at her childhood home in hopes of convincing her to come back to the mansion with him, Charles loses his control over Jean’s anger which pushes her into a serious state of fury. Jean literally lifts the house and everything in it into the air, pulls Charles from his wheelchair till he is helplessly hovering in front of her, and with one final thought telekinetically dismantles Charles atom by atom and scatters him to the wind as though he were made of sand. All that is left is an empty wheelchair and a lot of stunned X-Men fans in the audience.

Bonus “I Can’t Believe They Did This” Death: Darwin (X-Men: First Class)

Let’s say that you decide to include a character in your comic book movie that has the mutant ability to supernaturally adapt and evolve his body in order to survive literally anything. Now, wouldn’t you think it would be safe to say that you probably shouldn’t kill that guy right off the bat in your story? That’s not what the writers of X-Men: First Class thought. In the young teams first encounter with the villain Sebastian Shaw the unthinkable happens when Darwin decides to willingly swallow a ball of energy from Shaw that apparently kills him almost instantaneously. Why? Apparently just to screw with all the die hard X-Men comic fans in the audience, that’s why!