| Everybody knows that the end of the movie is when the villain dies/goes to jail/learns his lesson/gets fused with the hero and emerges as a composite intelligence. Or something. In any case, a villain can face any of a number of different fates at the end of a film:
· Villain gets humiliated – This is typical of comedies, in which the villain is more of a belligerent jerk than an actual force of evil. We don’t want to see the guy dead – we just want him to wind up naked in a board meeting, or something. Examples include getting caged with a horny gorilla (Trading Places (1983)), getting trapped in a tango-obsessed gay bar (Police Academy (1984)) or getting one’s clothes sheared off after being run over by a hovercraft in the middle of a golf course (Rumble in the Bronx (1995)).
· Hero kills villain by accident – A hallmark of animated Disney films from the nineties, this ending satisfies the audience’s bloodlust without making the hero into a murderer.
· Hero shoots villain – This straightforward finale has appeared in so many films that many modern filmmakers avoid it on the grounds that it has become quaint and old-fashioned. For a while, it looked like this popular ending was going to be supplanted by the short-lived trend of villain-gets-the-drop-on-hero, only-to-be-shot-unexpectedly-by-hero’s-gun-hating-pacifist-sidekick. Instead, we got almost a full decade of…
· Villain falls from a great height and lands on something sharp and pointy – An industry standard for many years. The villain is also expected to scream during the entire fall. Just what the villain screams is open to variation – the hero’s name is good, as is a bellowed profanity if the film isn’t too classy. A simple "Nooooooo!" remains the most popular scream. It is, however, considered bad form to continue screaming after landing. ("Ouch! This really hurts! I landed on something sharp and pointy! For the love of God, somebody help me!")
· Villain goes to jail – While realistic, this ending, once a mainstay of 1940s film noir, is now considered almost unbearably quaint and is rarely used today. Some films opt to not bother showing the arrest or trial and simply jump straight to a comic shot of the villain entering his cell, and getting leered at by his 300 pound cellmate. This variation is closely related to:
· Villain gives a dismayed look to the camera as the frame freezes – Nothing says "comedy" like a bad guy giving a bug-eyed gulp in our direction, while a slide-whistle underscores his discomfiture.
· Villain gets eaten by his own pet – A trademark of vintage monster films, this fate is almost exclusively reserved for mad scientists. The great Bela Lugosi specialized in this particular brand of villain comeuppance, wrestling with a rubber octopus in Bride of the Monster (1955) and with a man in an orangutan costume in The Ape Man (1943).
· Villain gets engulfed in magma – Audiences see this as a pretty nasty way to go, so it is typically reserved for Nazis (She Demons (1958)) and killer robots from the future (Terminator 2 (1991)). Oddly enough, good guys die this way as often as villains do.
· Villain survives, only to be killed off in the sequel – See Aladdin 2: The Return of Jafar (1994).
· Villain dies, comes back in sequel, and dies again – Jason Voorhees, I’m looking in your direction.
· Villain dies, comes back in sequel, and his death is never mentioned again – This happened to Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Herbert Lom) from the Pink Panther films. Dreyfus was such a delightful and popular character that his disintegration at the end of The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) was completely ignored by all subsequent sequels. After all, what good is a bumbling French police inspector without a twitchy, insane boss to play off?
· Hero tries unsuccessfully to save villain’s life – The hero will try to pull the villain up from the precipice, while the villain yells insults, and/or greedily tries to reach the Priceless Artifact. See Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).
· Locomotive Noggin Bonkers – When wrestling with the hero on the top of a speeding train, the villain will always fail to duck just as the car goes into a tunnel. Clunk! |
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