Which action movie franchise has the highest kill count?
No self-respecting action movie hero can make it through an entire franchise without racking up a sky-high body count, and that even includes iconic characters who barely did any damage at all in their first outings.
John Rambo immediately springs to mind, with Sylvester Stallone only being responsible for one death in First Blood, and that comes entirely by accident when he throws a rock at a helicopter, and the gunman riding shotgun ends up plummeting to his death. Fast forward 37 years and four sequels, though, and his cumulative kill count is well into the hundreds.
It doesn’t have to be restricted to a series of films, either, with John Woo’s Hard Boiled setting a record for the most on-screen deaths in an actioner by dropping 307 bodies from beginning to end. That’s an impressive number for a single feature, but a mere drop in the ocean compared to the saga that’s shuffled a quite frankly ridiculous number of people off their mortal coil.
As befitting a property that was designed for the sole purpose of gathering together as many action icons as humanly possible and having them blast their way through a succession of small armies, no other franchise in the history of the moving image has laid waste to as many human lives as The Expendables.
That hardly comes as a surprise considering the four instalments to date have roped in Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Steve Austin, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Chuck Norris, Mel Gibson, Antonio Banderas, Wesley Snipes, Terry Crews, Harrison Ford, and Iko Uwais across the quartet of gun-toting adventures, and those are just the biggest names.
The opener has a kill count of 221, which more than doubled to 489 for the sequel, and hovered around the 338 mark for the third chapter before dropping back down a more respectable 284 in the dismal Expend4bles. At the very least, then, the titular team have conspired to be involved in well over 1,300 deaths, which covers everything from political dictators and interchangeable henchmen to innocent bystanders and even several of their own number.
In terms of individuals, Statham’s Lee Christmas is the number one death dealer among the group, having dispatched his bespoke brand of justice upon 280 foes, with Stallone sitting out the majority of the fourth movie’s running time, allowing his erstwhile successor as leader of the troupe to race into the lead.
It’s obvious to say that an IP built exclusively to give the genre’s ageing stars of yesteryear another stint in the bullet-riddled spotlight has yielded more casualties than any other action franchise ever, but that doesn’t mean upwards of 1,300 kills isn’t a ludicrous volume of carnage to be unleashed across what runs to less than four hours of cinema.
