Did you feel cheated when Jack slid beneath the icy waters of the North Atlantic after rescuing Rose? Did Marion Crane deserve better? Was the ultimate fate of General Zod totally, completely, utterly, desirably avoidable and absolutely unnecessary, despite what Man of Steel screenwriter David Goyer might say? (I say: Not an impossible situation. Not an impossible choice.)
What about King Kong? Dino said, “When the monkey die, people gonna cry”—would you have wanted a different ending? Which movie character truly deserved a different outcome?
Here’s Movie Irv with his answer:
Towards the end of Clint Eastwood’s brilliant Unforgiven, there’s a great line: We’ve all got it comin’, kid. But maybe, in at least one film, you felt like the death of a film character was the wrong choice to make, and the character’s death was undeserved, even within the framework of the story; maybe you just hated to see the actor or actress playing that character “die” before your eyes.
Let’s also look to the Eastwood classic White Hunter, Black Heart, where Jeff Fahey, playing the screenwriter of The African Queen, tells John Huston (played by Clint) that the Bogart and Hepburn characters deserve to live at the end of their story, and that insisting upon that makes him a “swell God” who controls the lives of his characters from on high.
Here’s your chance to be a swell God: What dearly departed silver screen character do you “save”?