Movie Superhero Villain Deaths

[Acecool]

Why is it that super villains always seem to die at the end of super hero movies? With a few exceptions, such as Loki, most villains are one off movies. If Loki has demonstrated anything, super villains should be captured for reuse in later movies. At least then we might not have villain origin fatigue.

I'm hoping that during the MCU IG, some old villains are resurrected like Ronan and Ultron (if he is destroyed).

[Goggindowner]

Only minor villains have been killed off, really. Stane, Killian, Ronan, Malecath......who else? Loki is still very active, Abomination was captured, Red Skull was lost to time and space but wasn't killed, Thanos is still kicking, Ultron is likely to survive in some fashion (how do you kill something than can move its programming to a new host?), Winter Soldier walked away, Hydra effectively beat SHIELD, Arnim Zola could very easily have survived.

Seems to me the MCU is actually rife with potential villain returns.

[dzub]

Seems to me the MCU is actually rife with potential villain returns.

Crossbones (Brock Rumlow) should return at some point

[Crimson Knight]

Only minor villains have been killed off, really. Stane, Killian, Ronan, Malecath......who else? Loki is still very active, Abomination was captured, Red Skull was lost to time and space but wasn't killed, Thanos is still kicking, Ultron is likely to survive in some fashion (how do you kill something than can move its programming to a new host?), Winter Soldier walked away, Hydra effectively beat SHIELD, Arnim Zola could very easily have survived.

Seems to me the MCU is actually rife with potential villain returns.

Obadiah Stane/Iron Monger.

Ivan Vanko/Whiplash.

Aldrich Killian/Mandarin.

Multiple Extremis soldiers of him, like Coldblood, Firepower etc.

Laufey.

Malekith.

Red Skull: unknown.

Alexander Pierce.

Ronan the Accuser.

Justin Hammer's alive too, along with, as dzub says, Crossbones, plus Trevor 'False Mandarin' Slattery, Nebula etc.

[dzub]

wait they killed Ronan ? ( i could'nt stand the ending of GotG)
that's a waste..they could've used him in the infinity war

[Crimson Knight]

wait they killed Ronan ? ( i could'nt stand the ending of GotG)
that's a waste..they could've used him in the infinity war

Yes, Star-Lord, Rocket Raccoon, Drax and Gamora, all holding hands, with Peter Quill holding the Infinity Stone.

Blew up after the Guardians then directed the destructive power at them.

[Abishai100]

The Penguin suffered a cold demise at the end of Tim Burton's offbeat "Batman Returns" (1992).

If a film-maker chooses to create an atmosphere of story-arc squareness, then he can liberally decide the fate of the super-villain, and the comic book writers are left to re-imagine the overall history of the character in media with creative license.

When you watch Jessica Biel's character being dragged across that abandoned shed by the maniacal and gruesome Leatherface in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (2003), you realize that villains really do require some form of restraint/incarceration/punishment, but yes, sometimes comic book super-villains (i.e., Nuclear Man) are just liberally killed off.

I think a great film that deals with this complicated 'contradictory' creative process is "The Toxic Avenger" (1984) which features a sort of anti-hero who you want to honor but see fade away simultaneously...

[Acecool]

I'm thinking the old batman movies, the villains generally died. Same for the original Superman movies. Spider-man carried on the tradition. X-men didn't kill magneto, but they killed off Toad and Sabertooth in the first movie. They killed off Stryker and lady deathstrike in X-men 2. Deadpool was decapitated in wolverine. Shaw was killed in X-men united.

I'm just saying, the mortality rate for super villains is pretty high. I think keeping villains alive is better.

The MCU is better, mostly because of Loki, but villains are still killed off too often by the end of the movie. I would love to see a movie where the hero makes an extraordinary effort to save the villain.

[hunter_peterson]

I wish that Iron Monger and Whiplash had survived, because they could use a stronger second showing. But the MCU got better about killing the villains when it became apparent the universe was sticking around. I hope we see some of the SHIELD introduced villains on the big screen sometime. Thunderbolts or just as throwaway villains would be nice.

[Kensei]

For the record, here's the rundown on the Nolanverse villains:

Ra's al Ghul- dead.
Zsasz- captured alive.
Carmine Falcone- gone insane in prison.
Joker- captured alive.
Two-Face- dead.
Sal Maroni- dead.
Scarecrow- got away, captured, then got away again.
John Dagget- dead.
Bane- dead.
Talia al Ghul- dead.
Catwoman- reformed, free.

Just for fun, here's also the one on the earlier Batman films:

Joker- dead.
Penguin- dead.
Catwoman- alive and free (apparently endowed supernaturally with nine lives).
Max Schreck- dead.
Riddler- captured alive.
Two-Face- dead.
Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, Bane- all captured alive.

[Acecool]

I wish that Iron Monger and Whiplash had survived, because they could use a stronger second showing. But the MCU got better about killing the villains when it became apparent the universe was sticking around. I hope we see some of the SHIELD introduced villains on the big screen sometime. Thunderbolts or just as throwaway villains would be nice.

How awesome would it have been if Iron Monger and Whiplash had shown up in the Avengers. Just like Loki, there wouldn't have needed to be any back story surrounding them. Audiences would have instantly known that they were bad news.

[Holt]

Interestingly when Iron Man 2 first came out, Mickey Rourke said they deliberately made Whiplash's "death" ambiguous so that he could potentially return in future movies. The original plan was that the self-destruct would be a ruse (we don't see him inside when his armor blows up) and then he'd jump out and attack Tony, only to get shot by War Machine and die. When they decided they might want to bring him back, they cut all that and just went back to the scene of him supposedly self-destructing so that in a sequel, all they'd have to do is say he slipped out of the suit and ran to safety before it blew up.

As for the actual question? Audiences historically like closure. It wasn't until very recently that the concept of a shared superhero movie universe was a real possibility, so nobody worried about keeping the villains alive because as far as they knew, there'd no reason to ever need them to come back, and also they thought showing them defeated and dead would provide a more satisfying ending.