Film deaths that genuinely upset you

[Glebe]

Spoiler alert

Ratso's death in Midnight Cowboy makes for one of the saddest movie endings ever. A real tear-jerker.

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[Cerys]

Oh, man, I forgot about that one.

[Desi Dubs Dallas]

 Another animated one, Boxers death in Animal Farm

[Buelligan]

Yes, that Midnight Cowboy one was awful.

[phantom_power]

In Bruges, and to a lesser extent Seven Psychopaths, is quite affecting in its death scene(s)

[Steve Lampkins]

Midnight Cowboy spoiler

Good job I don't care about this, as this was a terrible use of the spoiler tag. :)

Spoilers can be funny though. Sometimes it can be a spoiler just to know that someone dies in something.

[clingfilm portent]

Pissed myself at Midnight Cowboy.

[QDRPHNC]

I've been saving the last few episodes of the Sopranos for years.  This made me laugh.

You haven't watched them? Damn, I wish I could go back and watch the final few episodes again for the first time.

[QDRPHNC]

The horse in The Neverending Story.

There aren't enough truly sad/scary movies for kids any more. I thought Pan's Labyrinth would've made a fantastic kids movie with about 10 minutes of gore and violence removed.

[Brundle-Fly]

Thunderbolt & Lightfoot.

The rare occasion a Clint Eastwood movie shows

Spoiler alert

the consequence of a punch to the head

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[Noodle Lizard]

Spoiler alert

Ratso's death in Midnight Cowboy makes for one of the saddest movie endings ever. A real tear-jerker.

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I was quite young when I first saw it and assumed he'd died of passive smoking because of Jon Voight lighting up just a few seconds beforehand.

I wasn't very bright at that age (but now I'm super smart).

[Buelligan]

Thunderbolt & Lightfoot.

OH YES, that made me weep a tiny bit.

You haven't watched them? Damn, I wish I could go back and watch the final few episodes again for the first time.

I also did this with Reservoir Dogs.  Sweet Jesus, I wish I hadn't, there was just too much build up, when I finally ripped open the cellophane and slipped it into the drive, PF, JB and KB had all flowed under the bridge and it was all a bit meh.  What a waste!

[Barberism]

Ultra Magnus.

Spoiler alert

He got better though :)

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[Marty McFly]

The horse in The Neverending Story.

But

Spoiler alert

he comes back at the end!

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[QDRPHNC]

But

Spoiler alert

he comes back at the end!

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But I didn't know that at the time, did I?

[Nobody Soup]

the orphanage.

Spoiler alert

you don't see the death but the way it's revealed and the graphic nature of the corpse with it's eyes sunken in from starvation is just hideous.

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I doubt it's necessary to spoiler tag bladerunner, and it probably is not the saddest death I can think of but he does send himself off with the best monologue ever which makes you feel a bit weepy.

for contrast, death I care least about was the stupid women who wore white in the matrix, the whole film that hacked me off. like they downloaded the wardrobe and she saw everyone wore black and she thought "I'll wear white, it will be MY thing, and you all have to keep on wearing black." I was glad when she died.

[Desi Dubs Dallas]

3 obvious choices

Spoiler alert

Vincent Cassels

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Death in La Haine

and

Spoiler alert

Grace

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in once were warriors

oh yeah and

Spoiler alert

Brooks Was Here

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in Shawshank

[Kane Jones]

Spoiler alert

Brooks Was Here

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in Shawshank

This is terribly sad, but Tommy's death is far more tragic to me. Tommy's story had potential and hope - and his future had real signs of redemption, possibly even success. To have that snatched away from him like that in such a ruthless and cold blooded way is really heartbreaking. But, yeah - the Brooks thing really pulls at the heart strings.

[Cerys]

The film adaptation wimped out, but the death of

Spoiler alert

Tad

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in

Spoiler alert

Cujo

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.  It's the whole 'hey, the danger is over and they survived!  Didn't they?  Hello?  Hello?!

[Glebe]

The film adaptation wimped out, but the death of

Spoiler alert

Tad

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in

Spoiler alert

Cujo

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.  It's the whole 'hey, the danger is over and they survived!  Didn't they?  Hello?  Hello?!

Yeah, that was a sad one.

[Black Ship]

Mufasa. Everytime.

[phantom_power]

I was quite cut up by one of the deaths in The Raid. I will let you guess which one

[Steve Lampkins]

terrible use of the spoiler tag.

Argh, now Cerys is at it. And hangthebuggers in the other thread. Is this a wind up????



^{Winky face and so forth.}

[Inaniloquent]

For some reason I was really upset by

Spoiler alert

Dylan Moran

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getting munched in Shaun of the Dead. He just gets torn apart. I don't even know why; he's not very nice and I wasn't affected as much by poor

Spoiler alert

Penelope Wilton

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getting shot in the face. I found it extremely traumatising, to the point that it puts me off watching it again. I'm an idiot.

Oh God, yes. I've never rewatched it even though I like the film because of this scene. I thought it was because I'm not really into violent films (they've gone too far for me) and thus haven't seen any torture porn or what have you, so I just assumed I was being a wuss about the Dylan Moran scene - yet, I think it's more that it was played for laughs and yet still very graphic.

Loads of deaths in Game of Thrones, the ones that had me a tiny bit were

Spoiler alert

Sean Bean, Luwin, Jory Cassel (the eye, ouch!) and that poor butcher kid Joffrey had done

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. Oh, and when he kills the

Spoiler alert

pet wolf

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, boo.

I feel I want to rewatch it before season 3, but I do not want to watch

Spoiler alert

Theon killing Ser Roderick

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again. Even the

Spoiler alert

tarred boys

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I could handle, but not the

Spoiler alert

botch job

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again.

I found the

Spoiler alert

death in My Girl

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to be quite shocking - I was only a kid so I didn't see it coming. One minute it's all cutesy poo 10 year olds kissing by the water one summer, the next one is

Spoiler alert

killed by a bee swarm

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and instead of fading out the movie quietly and calmly, they

Spoiler alert

have the girl crying and shouting for him at the funeral by his open coffin.

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It had sort of passed me by throughout the film that her father was an undertaker so she'd had this fairly businesslike or clinical feeling about death, which was undone by the end. Ultimately, yeah, it's a film about death.

No one ever wants to talk about the

Spoiler alert

death of Frodo

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at the end of Lord of the Rings. Look, let's be honest, the boats to the Grey Havens is all very 'going to heaven' isn't it, ergo, to go is to

Spoiler alert

die. To voluntarily go is to commit suicide because he can no longer cope with the loss of the ring and the damage it's done. It's a lot more pleasant than a shot of his Hobbit feet dangling in the doorway of Bag End, true, but I still found it one of the saddest deaths of all - to be defeated mentally and unable to ever feel joy or ever recover, and so take ones' life, was sadder than Boromir's and Théoden's.

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But any time I express this view people look at me blankly and go "Er, no, the boats just go to the Grey Havens" like Elrond was just taking him on a quick pleasure ride for a bit to chill out.

[Treguard of Dunshelm]

But any time I express this view people look at me blankly and go "Er, no, the boats just go to the Grey Havens" like Elrond was just taking him on a quick pleasure ride for a bit to chill out.

They're sailing from the Grey Havens to Valinor, the realm of the Ainur (gods, essentially), also known as the Undying Lands, so no, not dead. There are elves living there, also IIRC some elves and Gandalf accompany Bilbo and Frodo.

It does sound a lot like a metaphor for death, granted, but residence in Valinor and being dead are very different things.

[Sam]

Road To Perdition...Not a great film

I'd argue it's a very good film in itself, but also that the cinematography and music catapult it into one of my favourite films ever. It's objectively one of the best photographed films ever made, the performances are all solid, (Paul) Newman in particular, the score is (Thomas) Newman's best. From a craft perspective it's stunning and easily Mendes's best film. It's bizarrely underrated, even by people who like it.

[mothman]

The Mist.

Spoiler alert

The ending. It made me so angry. I loved the original novella, which, while leaving the characters in a possibly hopeless situation, did have an optimistic note - they do have hope. It would have been quite challenging to end the film on such an ambiguous note, but it's almost like they felt they couldn't so just settled for more horror (I'm sure there have been other horror films that ended ambiguously but I can't think of any... Open Water 2?). It just seems to me that these days few horror films are scary, they're jusy nihilistic and depressing.

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[non capisco]

I also did this with Reservoir Dogs.  Sweet Jesus, I wish I hadn't, there was just too much build up, when I finally ripped open the cellophane and slipped it into the drive, PF, JB and KB had all flowed under the bridge and it was all a bit meh.  What a waste!

I recently rewatched 'Reservoir Dogs' for the first time since it came out and I hadn't realised what a stinker of a performance Tim Roth gives in it. See also: Brad Pitt in 'Seven'. "Come ahhhhhhn, what's in the bahhhhhhx?"

[Cohaagen]

My god yes. When he's rolling around in the back of the car he sounds like fucking Ren.

"Harvey Keitel, you eeeediot!"

[non capisco]

'Reservoir Dogs' is the only film Quentin Tarantino's been in where he's not the worst actor. I might even go out on a limb and say Tarantino's Australian accent in 'Django Unchained' is only the second worst accent in a Tarantino film, at least he only gets about three lines and isn't a key character. Tim Roth's American accent in 'Reservoir Dogs' is about on a par with Dexter Fletcher's in 'Press Gang'. No, worse.