To recap my closing questions on this topic from Friday’s post: What does character death even mean anymore in the superhero/sci-fi genre? Does it have any meaning? Is it now just a plot device for momentary dramatic effect? How do (or can?) viewers continue to relate to superhuman characters who can’t really die? Will we believe a character’s death is ever really permanent, even if the story writers insist that “this one’s final”?
Big, tough questions. Highly subjective, too. Some people are truly devastated when a favorite character dies, some are sad but ready to move on to the “what now?”, and some may not care too much at all, taking the attitude that, “Hey, it’s fiction, so what’s the big deal?” Myself, I tend to have a range of reactions depending on the particular character, story, and context of character death. I was happy for Buffy at the end of season 5 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, since she got to choose her death and make it a very meaningful way to show her love for her family and friends. Yet, it still hurts a ton watching Coulson (The Avengers, 2012) and Frigga (Thor: The Dark World, 2013) die, even though they do so while fighting for a cause they believe in. Most of the time, I approach character death as a “reality factor” – as an inexplicably, senseless event that opens a window of reality within the fictional world on screen or page. I generally prefer that character death happen in a way that demonstrates the character’s willingness to give their lives for something they deem important, necessary, or worthwhile. In other words, I think heroic sacrifice makes the most meaningful use of character death.
But they all keep coming back to life, darn it! What meaning do I draw from their heroic sacrifice now?
I’ll admit: The first time you see a beloved character alive again, you’re usually just so happy they’re not dead that the lost meaning of heroic sacrifice can go jump off a helicarrier, for all I care. (If, however, the revived character happens to be a villain, the reaction may be more “Noooo! Not you again!” Unless the villain is Loki.) Eventually, though, I think we all have to wonder what copious amounts of character-life-after-character-death does to superhero/sci-fi stories.
For your convenience, I’ve selected some well-known death/sacrifice scenes from recent superhero films to illustrate the kind of scenarios I’m talking about.
1. Steve Rogers takes down the Valkyrie in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011).
2. Compare #1 to this earlier action scene in which Steve and Bucky have no idea what’s about to happen to one of them.
3. And #2 is what makes this scene from Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) such a big reveal.
4. Batman carries the bomb out of Gotham in The Dark Knight Rises (2012).
5. Epilogue sequence (“He’s alive!”) to DKR.
6. Iron Man carries the bomb into space in The Avengers (2012).
7. And because we could definitely use a happy ending to this list, let’s end with Groot’s regeneration, celebrated in arguably the best, most enjoyable Marvel post-credits scene made so far: Dancing Baby Groot (2014).
HEROIC SACRIFICE OR SACRIFICED HEROICS?
When death is a sure, permanent thing, a hero willingly giving their life to save others or defeat evil is a truly wondrous, superheroic event. It’s the event that speaks endless volumes about the nature of being a superhero: doing and giving whatever it takes to ensure humanity’s well being and freedom. It’s difficult to not feel endeared to such a selfless being, since such a character embodies our social ideal of the “truly good” individual, who is good for the sake of being good, not for ulterior motives of personal gain.
Does life-after-death destroy, or at least lessen, this aspect of superheroism? In reviving characters who have been killed off, do we sacrifice the hero’s heroic status? Should there be a limit to returning heroes from the Great Beyond? Perhaps it depends on the particular hero and context, specifically whether the hero knows or not that their death will not be permanent. For instance, Jean Grey (X2: X-Men United, 2003) and Steve Rogers (Captain America: The First Avenger, 2011) do not know that their death events are not the end of their stories. They sacrifice themselves fully believing that this is the end. Jump on over to ABC’s new series Forever, though, and it’s a completely different scenario: Dr. Henry Morgan knows full well that he can’t die, so he’s willing to inject himself with lethal poison and do other “experiments” with death because, hey, he’ll be up and about again soon enough.
Now, Henry Morgan is not a superhero, so I’m making a kind of fuzzy comparison here. But the point is, characters who believe in the permanence of death can make the ultimate heroic sacrifice, come back to life somehow, and not look any the worse for it in the average viewer’s eyes. A character who makes such a sacrifice, however, knowing that they will survive and/or be supernaturally revived is at risk of casting viewer suspicion upon themselves. Viewers may start asking some tricky questions of these so-called (super)heroes. Do they really mean it when they sacrifice themselves? Are they really that good deep down? Or is their sacrifice somehow less because it doesn’t have the same moral significance as it does for a character who believes they are giving up their life? Heroic characters who make a life sacrifice knowing that it isn’t the end risk appearing as show-offs, false heroes simply reveling in their superhuman power by giving death the metaphorical finger. For a death-defying heroic character to continue being relatable for viewers, they have to believe in the power and permanence of death as strongly as we mortal viewers do.
Found on Pinterest – a defining moment in Captain America’s storyline, when the pre-super-soldier Steve jumps on a grenade to protect his fellow SSR members.
LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION…DEATH?
So, death as plot device: let’s talk Serenity (2005), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), and Guardians of the Galaxy. When Wash (Alan Tudyk) dies near the end of Serenity – an event for which many Firefly fans still have not forgiven Joss Whedon – his death appears to be without reason, except to inject that “reality factor” into the film’s climactic scene. Wash doesn’t die fighting, protecting a loved one, or standing up for something he believes in; he’s just successfully crash-landed Serenity and happens to be sitting in the wrong place when the Reavers catch up to Serenity and her crew. A similar event happens in the Dollhouse series finale, when Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett) happens to stand up at the wrong moment during a gunfight – although Paul at least does die protecting a fallen comrade. (Which I believe makes a lot of sense for his character, though his death is one of the most painful character deaths I recall in my viewing experience.) A lot of viewers may find “pointless” character deaths to be a flaw in the fictional story. One argument in this direction is that fiction is not reality, and we as consumers of fiction know this – that’s why we choose to spend time in the fictional world! – so the “reality factor” is more disturbing to our experience of the story than it is useful to our understanding of the plot. Put more simply, why does death have to crash our fictional feel-good party uninvited? The “reality factor” has its uses in moving stories forward, but there are limits – killing off characters right and left (welcome to Westeros!), especially in a short amount of time, is a sure way to risk alienating audiences.
An example of character death from The Dark Knight Rises ties back to the issue of heroes knowing about their un-death when they commit a self-sacrificing act. The first time through DKR, we don’t know that Bruce (Christian Bale) isn’t dead following the nuclear explosion over Gotham Bay – and we don’t know that Bruce has fixed the Bat’s autopilot and knows he won’t die. All well and good – so when we and Alfred (Michael Caine) see Bruce with Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) in the epilogue sequence, the realization is a case of that first-time feel-good moment: “He’s alive! He made it!” When rewatching the film, however, I’ve noticed that the entire bomb sequence feels different: now I know that Bruce has fixed the autopilot; now I know he’ll be able to finally live his own life after leaving the Batman persona behind. And that’s great – I’m certainly not going to condemn Bruce, or any superhero character, for wanting to leave their superhero persona behind and take advantage of having their own chance at life. (Because a superhero’s “life” is not really life as we average human beings want to live it.) What I am pointing out is the change that this knowledge of Bruce’s secret plan creates in viewers’ experience and interpretation of DKR’s conclusion and Bruce as a heroic character. The “big reveal” of Bruce being alive only works once, which is an important thing to take into account in an age where fans will rewatch this film again and again and again. The film’s impact literally changes from one viewing to the next (bear with me, film studies folks – I know you know this already).
On to that most lighthearted of superhero films, Guardians of the Galaxy. Making fun of death-as-plot-device, now that’s a great way to go! Star Lord (Chris Pratt) saving Gamora (Zoe Saldana) outside of Knowhere works as a double-play on the tropes of hero sacrifice and male-hero-rescuing-beloved-female. Although as a superhero Gamora is willing to die trying to keep the Infinity Stone from falling into Ronan’s (Lee Pace) hands, Star Lord’s equal readiness to jump into space to save her (risking his own life in the process) suggests how difficult it is these days for any superhero to be willing to die trying and actually die. Moments later, after another character has rescued Gamora and Star Lord, Star Lord basically says the equivalent of, “That was so heroic of me to save you like that!” Gamora rolls her eyes, obviously thinking something along the lines of, “I’m glad you’re fine too, you big idiot.” Death as plot device is at work in this scene, but neither writers nor characters let the device get away with itself.
Also in Guardians, Groot’s (voiced by Vin Diesel) heroic sacrifice is altered by his regeneration as Baby Groot. Even though Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper) mourns Groot as though he’s really gone, keeping a fragment of Groot in a pot apparently out of sentiment, we should have seen Baby Groot coming. (In fact, only Rocket seems truly surprised in the final scene when Baby Groot “awakens” – this revival scene isn’t treated as dramatically as is usual concerning characters returning to life.) Groot is, after all, a tree, so it’s absolutely biologically believable that Groot will regenerate from the clippings of his former body. (Wait, does that mean there are as many Baby Groots as fragments of Groot out there? Is there a secret Space-Ent army of “We are Groot”?) In Groot’s case, as with our favorite time-traveling Doctor, life-after-death is built into the character as a superhuman ability – so, does death-and-regeneration even count as an example of death-as-plot-device for them? I’m honestly not sure; you tell me. (No, seriously, write a comment!)
Found on Pinterest – a real-life reenactment of the Guardians finale?
I WANT TO BELIEVE…OR DO I?
Now that we can pretty much expect sci-fi/superhero character death to be just another event on the way to…wherever we’re going, if not towards a final end…will we ever be able to accept a permanent character death? One example of this floating around in cyberspace right now is Steve Rogers’ fate, now that Chris Evans’ contract with Marvel is nearing completion. I and others are dreading the possibility of Steve being killed in an upcoming film, since such an event did occur in the comics. My roommate and I, in fact, have been talking about this a lot lately: she believes Marvel may totally kill Steve, while I keep hoping they’ll pull out a variation on the Nomad storyline and simply have Steve retire from the Captain America persona. Neither my roommate nor I want to “live” in an MCU without Steve Rogers being alive somewhere in said ‘verse. But, even if Steve does die, will we as viewers take Marvel’s word for it? I vote no, simply because a) Dr. Erskine’s formula has already proven its worth in keeping Steve alive in perfect super-soldier condition; and b) Steve is too strong and smart a superhero to simply die because, oops!, Thanos threw a chunk of asteroid at him. For me, it’s going to take a really, really massive and unavoidable event to make Steve’s, or any superhero’s, death believable. The whole point of superheroes is that they’re hard to get rid of! Otherwise, what use would they be to humanity?
If a character like Coulson, who has no superpowers (except, perhaps, babysitting Tony Stark), can make it back from the dead, Steve and his fellow superhumans can definitely make it back, too. And even if, in general, writers carry out superhero character death in a fully believable, it-makes-sense-for-this-character-to-die-in-this-way event, who’s to stop them later on from devising at least a semi-plausible way to bring the character back to life?
On another note regarding (im)permanent character death, if Moriarty really is still alive in Sherlock, I think Death is officially out of a job. He should at least be fired or something, right?
The Headless Horseman of Fox’s Sleepy Hollow, also known as the Horseman of Death. Source: http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_super/11111/111112612/3462726-7051038215-8ad58.jpg
Death and his granddaughter Susan in the film adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather. Source: http://tansyrr.com/tansywp/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/tumblr_lwzn9bW5ui1qm4akto1_500-199×300.jpg
Death in Supernatural (that bright thing he’s holding is Sam Winchester’s soul). Don’t expect to hold onto it for too long, Death! Source: http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130423050525/supernatural/images/e/ea/Death_holds_Sams_soul3.jpg
On Friday: Possibly no post – we’ll see how busy this week turns out to be. If I do post on Friday, I’ll check in on some more TV season premieres and new episodes. If not, back on Monday 10/6!
Time Lords, Superheroes, and Brave New Worlds 
