MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

8 Tony Stark’s Sacrifice

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

Avengers: Endgame became iconic for various reasons: the epic action sequences, the Avengers fighting together once more, Captain American grabbing Thor’s hammer, etc. There is one scene that rules them all, though, and that’s Tony Stark’s death. The whole movie theater held their breath when they realized what would happen — Tony (Robert Downey Jr.) would sacrifice himself to stop Thanos. In the scene where Tony is dying, when Peter Parker (Tom Holland) and Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow) approach him, the heartbreak is palpable, because the audience would have to say goodbye to this character, after following his journey for years. Watching this after seeing a retired Tony with a family only enhances how sad and difficult it was for the great Iron Man to sacrifice himself. But he did what a true superhero would do, and he was nothing short of that.

7 Mufasa’s Fall

     Buena Vista Pictures

The loss that traumatized every kid who watched the Disney movie classic, The Lion King, means that it just had to be on this list. A mixture of disbelief and anger arises when Scar kills his brother Mufasa; later, Simba finds him and begs his father to wake up, making everyone teary-eyed just by thinking about it. The early emotional peak and the reason Simba becomes who he is, his father’s death is probably one of the saddest moments in a children’s movie — and Disney has a lot of those.

6 The Fake German

     Visiona Romantica

Quentin Tarantino has incredible deaths scenes in every movie he writes and directs. However, Archi Hicox’s (Michal Fassbender) death (and all the people in the bar with him) in Inglourious Basterds condenses everything that makes Tarantino so iconic. The scene is long, with a lot of dialogue, dark humor, blood, and so much tension that viewers don’t fully breathe until the shootings are over. The unpredictability of this scene, as in most of Tarantino’s best scenes, is what makes it impossible to stop watching.

5 An Alien’s Birth

     20th Century Fox

Alien changed what the viewer should expect from two genres of movies: horror and sci-fi. The anticipation and anxiety of seeing Kane getting worse to the climax of the alien exploding from his chest is a scene too good to be watched only once. Not only is it beautifully shot, but it’s also the moment of no return for the characters; they can’t go back, and they can’t get out. The tension only increases after the alien comes out of his body and kills him in this most gruesome of ways — making the audience sit on the edge of their seats for the rest of the movie, unsure of what to expect.

4 For Mathilda

     Gaumont Buena Vista International

Natalie Portman’s first movie when she was only 12 years old, Léon: The Professional, is a sensible story of two characters that have nothing alike, but that soon mean the world to each other. The death of the hired assassin, Léon (Jean Reno), who didn’t like Mathilda (at first) but quickly became extremely attached to her, is incredibly sad. Doing what a father would do for his child, he sacrifices himself to save Mathilda. It is a brilliant and action-filled sequence, but the sadness quickly overtakes the scene. The sense that the world simply is not fair erupts after the grenade goes off, and we see Mathilda alone, once again.

3 Say Hello To My Little Friend

     Universal Pictures

Al Pacino is known for iconic roles and films, and the 1983 remake of the 1932 movie, Scarface, had to be high on this list. The movie is getting another remake by the Cohen brothers. In the scene with one of the most famous lines in cinema history, Tony Montana shouts “say hello to my little friend,” and dies amongst one of the greatest, bloodiest shootouts in movie history. He doesn’t go down after being shot once, only after multiple bullets hit him in an epic death scene. Montana falling into the pool, his blood mixing with water, is something that was bound to happen in his inexorable march toward a major crime lord, but it still erupts a lot of mixed feelings for this character who was the villain of his own story.

2 A Daughter Pays For Her Father’s Sins

     Paramount Pictures

Francis Ford Coppola’s most famous movie trilogy, The Godfather, is a series of cinematic masterpieces. There are a lot of creative deaths throughout the three films, but there is one in The Godfather III that encapsulates everything the story was about: when Don Corleone’s (Al Pacino) daughter (Sofia Coppola) is shot in the staircase. In a movie about family and how power can corrupt someone: there is no more bittersweet ending than this one. The scene with the fabled mafia boss, having to hold his daughter while she dies in his arms for a bullet meant for him, shows that the stakes of his life choices are finally too high. For one of the final scenes in a story about violence and family, there was no other way to end it than with blood.

1 Death At The Bates Motel

Probably one of the most iconic scenes in movie history is when Marion (Janet Leigh) shockingly dies in the shower at the Bates Motel. This sequence is arguably the greatest death scene in movie history. The groundbreaking editing, the Bernard Herrmann soundtrack, the choice to kill off the headlining actor halfway through the film, and the close shots of Marion’s face in horror with her blood staining the bathroom walls make this scene technically (and plot-wise) perfect. It doesn’t matter that the movie is in black and white (which creates a contrast that helps the blood stand out); it actually enhances the horror, because audiences are still so hypnotized by the story that they don’t need to see red blood to squirm in their seats. Alfred Hitchock changed filmmaking forever, and Psycho is one of the main reasons his name will always be mentioned when talking about cinema history.