Have you ever heard people wondering why certain characters had to die in a movie? Some folks gripe about it, others are genuinely sad, and some are even angry about it since the characters they enjoyed the most are those that kicked the bucket in one way or another. But like it or not, there’s a reason for it, as not everyone is bound to make it to the end, at least not unmarked if they do. Some stories kill off their characters in ways that are abrupt, unsettling, and even disturbing, while others find ways to justify the characters they do take out within the story. Does anyone remember why the terminator had to dunk himself in a molten metal bath at the end of T2? If not for all the damage he took it would appear that he could have stuck around and been a father figure to John Connor, right? Yeah, probably not, since that part of the canon didn’t come along until Dark Fate, when everything was mucked up to hell and gone for one reason or another.
Letting characters die advances the plot.
As a story moves along, it will need to change and adapt to its own twists and turns as things continue to happen. Keeping every character around until the end of the story doesn’t make a lot of sense depending on the story. Sure, if your characters are planning on having a nice little picnic and aren’t going to be doing anything too dangerous then it’s possible that they’ll all be breathing by the time the credits roll. But the average movie will experience loss of some sort unless it’s crafted to see everyone reach the end without any fatalities. So why bother killing anyone at all if the story can be crafted in such a manner, right? That kind of fun, inspirational, Hallmark story might make a lot of people swoon and get a warm feeling that sustains them, but many people want something different, no matter if they have to compromise and lose certain characters. It pushes the story forward because it gives people something else to deal with that they weren’t fully expecting.
Even deaths that are expected can be jarring.
Let’s say that you’re watching a war movie and know that there’s a good chance that one guy or another that you’ve started to like is bound to get killed. Most viewers will realize it’s going to happen, but a good percentage of them will still react in an emotional manner when one of their favorite characters dies. There is a rhyme and a reason for why certain characters die, and sometimes it has to do with their attitude and the actions they perform in a movie. For instance, cocky individuals tend to die because they’re not careful enough, and heroic characters are often killed because they charge in and aren’t quite as tough as they thought they were. There is a large number of reasons why characters are killed off in a movie, and the fact is that the ones who don’t are usually those who are being built up and given a reputation for being the tough individuals that can power their way through just about anything. These are the Jason Statham types, the Steven Seagal types, and so on.
Realism is needed in a lot of stories, otherwise, they make little to no sense.
In some movies, it’s been easy to see how characters are saved in the nick of time by one miracle or another that would rarely if ever, happen in real life. Roman Pearce from The Fast and the Furious franchise is one such individual since the guy has more lives than a cat and has the most amazing luck of any sidekick that’s been developed in modern cinematic history. He survives encounters that by all rights should be the end of him, and comes out virtually unscathed in the process. Like many other characters, his luck should have run out a long time ago, but the story apparently needs him, which is why he’s still around. This is, unfortunately, why the FF franchise is kind of a brainless action series at this time since no matter how complicated it tries to get, the lack of any meaningful deaths is causing the patience of many to wear thin.
No one actually wants to see characters die, but it does improve the story at times.
You can’t keep everyone around forever. One way or another, characters will need to die at some point to keep the fans entertained. It sounds morbid to say that in such a manner, but the truth is that fans do enjoy realism in the movies no matter that we go to see something amazing and unrealistic. There’s still a desire to see a movie conform to the world we know, even as it defies the natural laws that the rest of us have to abide by. Killing off a character in a movie or TV show isn’t an act of malice most times, it’s simply a way to move the story forward.