Always keep your pencil well sharpened.
Books and films have their wonderful, intense moments: the long-awaited kiss, the revelation of the hero’s true calling, the power of friendship which overcomes insurmountable difficulties.
But we all know the scene we all secretly wait for, the one that gives us the most satisfaction. No, it isn’t the solution of the mystery.
It’s when the bad guy croaks their last.
Yes, the villain’s final moment is one of the most important ones, and one which must be served properly. Yes. It is not only required for the villain to die. How they die is also very, very important. A badly scripted demise will leave the reader deeply dissatisfied and, in addition, will not do the villain proper justice. Imagine, for example, Darth Vader choking on a chicken bone during lunch break. That would be awful, especially for the Death Star Chef, I suppose. But also for Vader.
A great villain deserves a great, memorable death. Here are some of the most interesting and fulfilling ways famous baddies have gone to take a dirt nap.
- 1 GONE WITH A BANG (or a splat)
The most satisfying death is the one that leaves a mark. A nice crater for example, or at least a sizeable dent in the sidewalk, like good ol’ Hans in “Die Hard”. The look on his face as he plummets, panic-stricken, to his gruesome and absolutely well-deserved death, is the best part of the whole film.
The fundamental idea is to make the end of the villain final. They’re dead, loud and clear. Especially, loud.
Sauron’s annihilation at the end of “The Lord of the Rings” is a perfect example of this spectacular kind of demise.
On a smaller scale, but still poppin’, we might mention the passing, or rather the zapping away of Bellatrix Lestrange, in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”. The death eater carks it when she is disintegrated by a spell, giving us a nice, enjoyable moment of killer magic as well as revealing how Molly Weasley kicks wizard ass.
- 2 BACKFIRED TO HELL
On par with Gone with a Bang above, we can’t suppress that jolt of joy when the villain’s end, no matter how horrific, is brought about by their own evil and treacherous ways. Karmic Death gifts the reader with memorable wipe-outs of characters who fully and completely get what they deserve, and the punishment they wish to inflict on the hero bounces back and kills them instead. Vincent Crabbe – a minor minion of evil, true, but still a very real threat to Harry Potter’s existence – gets a hefty dose his own fiendfyre magic and, in the end, is the only victim. HA!
Another cutting-edge example of boomerang justice is the Green Goblin who gets impaled by his own flyer as it returns back to him as a…uh…boomerang.
My favorite example of Karmic Death? Those Nasty Nazis in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” who spare no villainous act to get a hold on the Ark of the Covenant, only to be turned into Human Marshmallows when they unleash the Wrath of God unto themselves because it is apparently a deadly sin to look at phantom boobs. What’s your favorite Karmic Death?
-Joffrey Baratheon
- SLOW AND PAINFUL
The moment comes, from time to time, when you just come across that villain who is just so despicable that – to put it simply – death’s too good for them. You end up cheering at each strangled gurgle as Joffrey Baratheon kicks the oxygen habit. After all the pain and suffering he’s caused to the characters we love, a Gone with a Bang death just doesn’t cut it. Voldemort is one of the first examples that comes to mind. He pesters Harry and goes on killing his friends for seven bloody books. When Harry finally decides to make the unmentionable bastard pay, he takes the long route and starts hacking at his soul.
Piece by piece.
And finally, Harry uses his adversary’s own wand, as if to say “I’m a better wizard too, dumbass”, before dealing the death-blow which shreds Voldemort into oblivion. Flake by painful flake.
a hedgehog
- THE REDEEMED VILLAIN
There are cases in which the reader might get sick and tired of all the vengeance, and piling death onto death in a senseless game of Murder Tetris. An equally satisfying end to the villain is the unexpected redemption. Or even the discovery that the villain isn’t a villain after all, like the odious Snape, who turns out he’d been on Harry’s team all along.
Another redeemed villain is Boromir, who doubtfully joins the Fellowship with the intention of using the One Ring to defend Gondor and ends up being corrupted by the power of the Dark Lord. His final moment of repentance and ultimate sacrifice reminds us that sometimes evil is just the result of misguided good intent, and that the corruption of evil is not invincible.
Perhaps the most complete redemption is Darth Vader’s who, still not gratified after dropping one of the most memorable plot twists in cinematic history, tosses the emperor out like yesterday’s news. Then he dies, because, seriously, screw that guy.
- TOO DUMB TO LIVE
This last group is dedicated to those villains who have such a basic lack of rational thinking that even Karma doesn’t want to have anything to do with them. We feel instant relief when their evil, malevolent intentions are thwarted by their own innate idiocy which shoves their villainous asses right at the edge of extinction, where they inevitably go on and do the worst possible thing, and die a stupid, but much deserved, death. Programmer Nedry from “Jurassic Park”, for instance, turns his petty resentment towards his boss into a major disaster, and then, in his dishonest attempt to sell embryos to the competition, has a very educational moment where he discovers that the apparently harmless Dilophosaurus has eye-burning spit and lots of friends with a voracious appetite. Stupid villains are my faves. They’re the ones who are not killed by their own evil plan but rather the lack thereof. The aliens from “Signs” are so astoundingly dull the one planet they decide to invade is 71% covered in water which is for them, deadly. Karma, presumably, is watching from the sidelines, eating popcorn.
Know of any other fun ways in which famous villains pegged out and started pushing up daisies? Let me know!
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