News

Jun 17, 2023

The 10 Silliest Action Movie Deaths of All Time

Somebody always has to die in an action movie. Sometimes it's one of the good guys, but most of the time it's a bad guy. And sometimes it's very funny. A character dying in an action movie is just

Somebody always has to die in an action movie. Sometimes it's one of the good guys, but most of the time it's a bad guy. And sometimes it's very funny.

A character dying in an action movie is just part of the formula. You can't have a genre with heavy gunfire, explosions, and antagonists who are out to do harm and not expect casualties. Most of the time, the death of a character comes with drama. If it's a sympathetic character being killed off, it can pull at your heartstrings. Even a villain's death can make a viewer feel empathy for his downfall. But sometimes, an on-screen death can make you laugh out loud due to the utter silliness of how the death is presented.

You can surf the internet and find funny death scenes from big blockbusters to low-budget martial arts movies. There are plenty of YouTube videos called Worst Fight Scene Ever that end with an utterly hilarious death and a cheesy one-liner as the icing on the cake. But the ones on this list are the cream of the crop in terms of the silliest action movie deaths of all time.

The debate over whom the best Joker is in the Batman universe will go on and on till the end of time. But nobody can take away anything from Jack Nicholson's effort, as he was the first to have to deliver a more sinister side to Gotham City's clown prince of crime. He felt at home in Tim Burton's vision for the film. You never knew when he was going to strike, and when he did, he did it with a smile on his face. Taking a trope used in the comics as well as by any clown at a circus. The Joker takes charge of the criminal underworld of Gotham by walking up to the head of the table at a mafia sit-down and shaking hands with the man at the head of the table.

It turns out he has on a hand buzzer that electrocutes and fries the man. Jack Nicholson delivered what feels like improvised comedic lines like "A little hot under the collar" and "Gotta live one here" while he performed the heinous act. He ends the scene having a good sinister laugh with the burnt corpse, and walks away laughing hysterically at himself.

Related: Tim Burtons Batman Gets a Modern Day Trailer

Shoot Em Up is a mid-2000s action film that doesn't get the love that it should. It's self-aware at times and doesn't take itself too seriously. Case in point: Clive Owen kills a guy by stabbing him in the head with a carrot. One of Owen's character traits is that he is constantly eating carrots. In a scene made to help his violent likability, Owens assists a pregnant woman being stalked by a man with murder on his mind.

He saves her by shoving a carrot into the man's throat and punching it further in and out of the back of his head. He wraps up the altercation with the fitting line, "Eat your vegetables".

Probably one of the more simplistic deaths on this list, but one of the most well-earned bad guy kills of all time. Lethal Weapon 2 pits Riggs and Murtaugh against a group of South African diplomats who use their "diplomatic immunity" for criminal activities. The climax of the film takes place on a docked ship in the middle of the night. Just after, Riggs got into a brutal fight with the character, Pieter Vorestedt (Derrick O'Connor), and dropped a shipping container on him, crushing him flat. The two cops encounter the film's big bad, Arjen Rudd, played brilliantly by Joss Ackland. You have hated this guy the whole film. He shoots Riggs twice, not killing him but wounding him.

He holds his wallet up with his ID, yelling "Diplomatic Immunity". Murtaugh loosens up, aims, and fires, hitting Rudd in the head and killing him instantly. Danny Glover then delivers the line, "Just been revoked". The kill still gets a laugh and a sense of joy to this day.

Related: Every Lethal Weapon Movie, Ranked

The marketing for Deep Blue Sea made it look like Samuel L. Jackson was one of the stars of the film. Yet, once you watch it, you realize he was just the most known actor in it, but he wasn't given top billing. That should've been a warning sign. He was red-hot at the time, with one roll after another (and still is to this day). So when Samuel L. Jackson gets eaten by a shark at the halfway point of the film during a monologue to the rest of the cast, it definitely catches audiences by surprise.

Test audiences for the film were shaken up at seeing him die so soon. What his death actually does is create a sense of dread for the rest of the characters, because if you're going to kill Sam Jackson early in a movie, anyone else is fair game. Jackson has gone on record saying he hated his monologue prior to his on-screen demise. It's odd seeing a shark eat Samuel L. Jackson; you can't help but laugh. Even Dave Chappelle would go on to point it out for a bit on Chappelle Show a few years later. The sketch would consist of him playing Jackson and promoting Samuel L. Jackson Beer. "Deep Blue Sea? They ate me. A f***ing shark ate me," Chappelle would yell.

Jurassic Park is known for a lot of great things. It was a film that changed the game in terms of computer-generated effects (which still hold up today). It was a spectacle that elevated the way we look at movies. But it also had some wild kills in it. One of which is Martin Ferrero, who plays a character by the name of Donald Gennaro.

The slick and slimy lawyer runs off into an outhouse, leaving the kids he's with to potentially become prey to the escaped T-Rex. Gennaro's hiding spot is demolished by the dinosaur, and the two have a brief staredown before the T-Rex snatches him up and eats him.

Related: Every Jurassic Park Movie Ranked by Box Office Gross

Pulp Fiction is loaded with a brilliant blend of comedy and violence that only Quentin Tarantino can achieve. One scene in particular that emphasizes this is the fate of the small but standout character, Marvin. We meet Marvin early in the film when he assists Jules and Vincent with handing over the mysterious briefcase to them.

Later in the film, we meet back up with them after their initial altercation. Vincent, Jules, and Marvin are driving around Los Angeles in Jules' car. Vincent turns around and asks Marvin something with the gun ever so subtly pointed at him, and after a few sentences, his gun goes off and shoots Marvin in the face.

A lot of movies represent the 1980s in a nutshell really well. Commando is one of those films. It's not Arnold Schwarzenegger's best film, but it might be his most entertaining. Commando pits Schwarzenegger as John Matrix against Bennett (Vernon Wells). Matrix must rescue his daughter from Bennett and a Latin American dictator (Dan Dedaya). The film's final fight between the two happens in what seems to be an underground boiler room of sorts.

As the fight reaches its climax, Matrix manages to rip a large, steaming hot pipe off the wall and sling it like a javelin at Bennett. It impales him, and then Arnold ends the scene by saying the famous line, "Let off some steam, Bennett."

The first installment in the Rambo franchise makes for a quality drama about a Vietnam veteran who has to make drastic choices when his back is against the wall. In the years that would follow, the sequels would fit the mold of the big muscle action movies of the era. Rambo: First Blood Part II, would have some insane shootouts and set pieces.

In one scene, John Rambo and his trusty bow and arrow are in a duel with a machine gun-wielding henchmen. Rambo takes heavy fire from the man, but there's just one thing: he's carrying explosive arrows to fire back at him. Rambo steadies his aim and launches it at the man, once it hits its target, the henchman explodes into hundreds of pieces.

Director Paul Verhoeven turns the dial-up high with violence in the original Robocop. The death of gang member Emil (Paul McCrane) is grotesque and disgusting, and yet you can't look away. In 1987, this had to be a movie moment that made people squeal in their seats, followed by a laugh. When Emil crashes into a vat of toxic waste, he gets out of the car to seek help.

Due to the toxic waste all over him, his body completely morphs into a disfigured creature-like image that is imprinted in genre movie fans' minds forever. As he looks for help, one of his criminal colleagues sees him and decides to spare him his suffering. He runs him over with a car, and he breaks apart into a bloody and slimy mess all over the windshield.

Related: Robocop Movie and TV Series Now in the Works at Amazon

Through all the interesting ways people have died on this list, The swordsman scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark has to be the best one due to the execution of it on screen and the story behind it. The original plan for this scene was to have Indy get into a fight with the man, but Harrison Ford was apparently under the weather that day. Ford suggested just shooting the guy.

The actor who played the swordsman had apparently been training for the fight for many weeks and was a skilled pro at handling these kinds of weapons. Spielberg just told him he was going to stand there and get shot. The rest is Hollywood history. It's a moment that stands out in the entire franchise and solidifies Indiana Jones as one of the greatest protagonists of all time.