The five most surprising villain deaths in cinema history
Movies are often only as good as their villains. The antagonist that all too often puts the stories we love into motion and shows us the true depths of what those who aim to do bad are capable of.
This dichotomy of good and evil drives so many of our favourite Hollywood blockbusters to enjoyable ends. It’s a tale as old as time and has been routinely revamped, reshaped, and redistributed across a range of styles and genres. Hero versus villain will always be a central part of cinema.
While it might seem like the hero is the ultimate draw, without a suitable adversary, the very notion of the white-hatted gunslinger is pointless. They would simply be walking around the plains, declaring themselves morally superior. Villains are essential to our enjoyment.
Whether they escape to return for a sequel, meet a grizzly, explosive end or go out falling from a height (this happens more than you’d think), the way our heroes overcome their enemies is often well-earned or some of the more iconic moments on film. But what of the ones we don’t see coming?
The most surprising villain deaths in cinema:
The Emperor – Return of The Jedi (George Lucas, 1983)
It’s hard to imagine a world where the twists and shocks of the original Star Wars trilogy aren’t seared into popular culture, but in the early 1980s, when George Lucas released his (at the time) final instalment of the epic space opera, the last minute return to the light of Darth Vader to bring an end to the puppeteering Emperor Palpatine was a surprising end for the ultimate dark side villain, that only with the retroactive addition of the prequel films seems inevitable.
Being only mentioned in the initial 1977 film and used sparingly via hologram in the following The Empire Strikes Back, finally seeing the Emperor on screen did not disappoint, with the sinister dark lord solidifying himself as an iconic movie villain. In spite of the classic fantasy heroics of the Rebellion and our protagonists, it’s ultimately the main villain of Star Wars who ends the conflict, with the aid of a long fall down a reactor shaft, in a twist that fulfils the prediction of Luke Skywalker – “There’s still good in him, I know it”.
The Joker – Batman (Tim Burton, 1989)
Arguably the first film in the comic book domination of cinema, Tim Burton’s Batman saw the superhero genre taken seriously, with the casting of one of Hollywood’s most compelling character actors, Jack Nicholson, to take on the role of the clown prince of crime, seen as a formidable villain for the first time in live action.
Nicholson’s Joker is disfigured, manic and sinister – a distinct difference from the previously gleeful outing seen in the 1960s when Cesar Romero famously wore white face paint over his moustache. Whereas in the comics, Batman’s arch nemesis would always escape in the nick of time, inevitably returning and causing more chaos, Batman ‘89 would show just how serious it took itself by doing away with the convenient getaways and giving the iconic villain a true death, plummeting to his demise via the use of a grappling-rope and gargoyle combination.
Eli Sunday – There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)
Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic historical drama set in the late 1800s sees a number of standout performances, notably from multi-Oscar-touting Daniel Day-Lewis and two distinct characters from Paul Dano, in the form of the Sunday brothers, Paul and Eli. Despite being a film filled with flawed people and a ‘hero’ being hard to identify, Eli Sunday’s role is certainly one that sits firmly in the antagonist camp.
Eli is a greed-driven and selfish man, using his position as a man of God to get himself power and money and driving Day-Lewis’ Daniel Plainview to admit to abandoning his son in one of the film’s most iconic scenes. At the film’s climax, we see Eli meet his brutal end at the hands of Plainview and a bowling pin. A scene that begins as darkly playful, it ends with a sudden and hard-hitting death that solidifies Plainview as a villain in his own right.
Norman Stansfield – Léon: The Professional (Luc Besson, 1994)
Gary Oldman’s portrayal of a corrupt DEA agent in the 1994 action-thriller Léon: The Professional is just one part of what makes the film such a cult classic. Along with a debut from a young Natalie Portman and a strong leading performance from Jean Reno, Oldman’s simmering, unpredictable Norman Stansfield brings the feverish desperation of the film to the fore and delivers some of the film’s more iconic lines. “I haven’t got time for this Mickey Mouse bullshit!” is just one such delivery that has secured Stansfield (and Oldman) a spot on many lists of iconic movie villains and noted psychopaths.
The explosive demise Stansfield meets at the hands (or grenade) of Léon is as surprising as it is satisfying. Despite losing our titular hitman in the process, seeing Norman’s grim determination to continue his corrupt operation come to such a swift and final end is a fitting death for a performance that still captures audiences 30 years on.
Roy Batty – Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)
“All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain. Time to die”. The immortal final words of the main antagonist in Ridley Scott’s defining sci-fi noir, Blade Runner. Famously, the final line of the 42-word monologue given by Rutger Hower in the film’s final act was added by the actor himself, altering the script to give us what is often regarded as one of the most impressive death scenes in modern cinema.
The surprising aspect of Roy Batty’s final scene isn’t that he dies; it’s that he chooses in his final moments to save our protagonist, Harrison Ford’s Rick Deckard, and instead, embracing the limited lifespan that Replicants are subject to, and not going out in a blaze of glory, but a quiet moment of contemplation. It’s a moment that is strangely human. We spend the film following our detective hunting down this supposed facsimile of ‘real’ people and showing that those who want to control them are perhaps less human than the Replicants. Eldon Tyrell, the man behind the corporation responsible for Replicants, appears to us in his pyramid above the rest of grimy, future LA, he is off-putting and austere, gleeful that he is able to fool Deckard and his Replicant detecting tests.
Roy Batty, we see fighting for those he holds dear, down in the grit and the real world, and in the end, gives us a moment of true humanity, despite being told throughout that he is less than. A man wanting to live on his own terms decides to die on them too, rather than allow his fate to be decided by those who would have subjugated him to “things you wouldn’t believe’”
