5 Over-The-Top Villain Deaths That Scream Unnecessary Drama
A memorable death of a villain often serves as the cherry on top of a great movie, but these five took it a step further.
A good and memorable villain deserves to go out with a bang, but sometimes filmmakers get a little carried away with how they kill off their bad guys.
So here are five movie villains who met their end in a rather over-the-top way that may have been a bit too much.
Alec Trevelyan — GoldenEye (1995)
Sean Bean is notorious for dying on the big screen, but the way he kicked the bucket in this 1995 James Bond movie starring Pierce Brosnan as 007 is definitely one of the most memorable in the actor's entire career.
After a fight with James on a satellite dish, his ex-MI6 agent Alec Trevelyan falls from a great height and survives only to be crushed by a burning antenna falling on him.
Vic Deakins — Broken Arrow (1996)
In this 1996 action film, U.S. Air Force Captain Riley Hale, portrayed by Christian Slater, goes up against his ex-colleague and friend Major Vic "Deak" Deakins, played by John Travolta, who has gone rogue and stolen a nuclear warhead.
It all culminates in a final battle on a train in which Deak is impaled by a deactivated warhead, flies into a stack of oil barrels and explodes, which feels a bit like overkill.
Lord Cutler Beckett — Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)
Lord Beckett had been causing problems for our characters since the second movie in the franchise, Dead Man's Chest, and although he was killed off in the next film, it was quite memorable.
With his ship being decimated on both sides, Beckett walked down the stairs in the midst of the ensuing chaos, was engulfed in flames, and then his body fell into the trading company flag in the water, giving us one of the most overly dramatic villain deaths in movie history.
Salim Abu Aziz — True Lies (1994)
Well, they sure knew how to make over-the-top villain deaths in the 90s, as this cult classic starring Arnold Schwarzenegger is another example from that era of cinema.
During the final battle, terrorist leader Salim Abu Aziz is accidentally attached to the missile of a jet plane and then launched directly at a helicopter full of his subordinates.
The Manson Family — Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
It was hard to choose between this scene and the finale of Inglourious Basterds, but the way Brad Pitt's Cliff Booth and Leonardo DiCaprio 's Rick Dalton confront the invading members of the Manson Family is a bit more creative and hilariously exaggerated.
What begins with brutal beatings and dog bites ends spectacularly when Rick brings out his flamethrower mentioned earlier in the movie.