Why Does Nobody Die Anymore?

Warning: contains spoilers for Star Trek Into Darkness; Iron Man 3; Doctor Who; and Primeval.

I’ve noticed an increasing trend recently in movies and television that is starting to annoy me, and that is how main cast members are no longer being killed off, instead being saved by a random deus ex machina that is undermining everything that comes before it.

Now I appreciate that me criticising movies and television shows involving hyperspeed space travel, a man who builds robotic suits, and a bow-tie-wearing time travel as being unrealistic is possibly a stupid statement, but these shows also need some grounding to keep you involved in the show.

Take some recent examples. When Rory first died in ‘Doctor Who’ it was touching and emotional but, as it kept happening, this effect wore off pretty quickly. We’ve seen in recent films the seemingly inability for writers to kill off cast members. In the trilogy of Spider-man films by Sam Raimi, as one randomly picked example, they were not afraid to kill off key characters to get some emotional impact from them, and this is done in a lot of films, but recently it feels like they don’t bother anymore. In ‘Iron Man 3’ Pepper Potts looked to have died in a fireball, which would have had a huge impact on the character of Tony Stark but, no, she just happened to have been experimented on with the Extremis technology so survived.

In ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ Captain Kirk heroically climbs into the reactor to restart it and save his crew but dies of radiation poisoning because of it, dying in front of colleague and friend Spock. But does he stay dead, thus adding a new element to the series not afraid to turn perceptions on their head? No, he’s saved by Khan’s magic blood that previously brought a Tribble back to life.

Even in this week’s ‘Doctor Who’ closer ‘The Name of the Doctor’ several characters died and were brought back to life, namely Jenny and Clara. Any emotion that would come from these deaths has gone now as you think ‘Oh, they’re dead now, but they’ll be back alive soon’.

This sort of thing isn’t just a modern phenomenon. TV shows have been doing it for years, from ‘it was all a dream’ shower sequences, to Dirty Den walking back into the Queen Vic, but it just feels like recently they’ve been over-doing it, especially when the twists of ‘Iron Man 3’ and ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ felt very similar as if someone has been comparing scripts.

I’m a big fan of Primeval and that’s one show that was never afraid to kill off characters and Nick Cutter’s death scene was all the better for it. They even had the opportunity to quite easily write Stephen back into it after his death in series two, using the cloning technology, but chose to make that a purely superficially visual thing rather than bringing him back as a person.

I’m not saying I want all characters in films and shows to now die; it’s disappointing when a favourite cast member is written out, but I feel we’re becoming desensitized to it, so much so that touching scenes involving characters breathing their last are overshadowed by the nagging voice in the back of your head that they’ll be coming back.

But if scriptwriters insist on doing this then I’d at least expect Bambi 2, where the young deer finds out his mother was alive all along…

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Iron Man 3 [Review]

Having appeared in two initial films and the Marvel-fanboy-geek fest that was The Avengers Robert Downey Jr is back as Tony Stark, master of many suits of iron. In this second sequel Stark finds himself facing up to the evil terrorist the Mandarin but finding his past coming back to haunt him in the shape of another enemy and an extreme technology that gives people the ability to regenerate, appropriately labelled ‘Extremesis’.

Thankfully ‘Iron Man Three’ (as it’s stylised) is far better than the copycat and lacklustre second film in the series and much better than ‘The Avengers’, a film I have gone against the grain about by the fact I didn’t enjoy it, feeling it was more like watching a video game.

It’s also the best use of an Eiffel 65 song in a film yet. Not that there’s much competition.

But, just in the way that Downey Jr shone in that collaboration film, it is also here that he makes the character his own. The script sparkles with humour and there is an interesting enough plot to keep it going. The CGI is very well done and there are some strong action sequences but it’s the lead actor that keeps it going, aided by a well written script that doesn’t dismiss the events of ‘The Avengers’ but shows their immense effect on the man in the iron mask.

But credit should also go to Ben Kingsley as the Mandarin who is the best character in the piece due to a tongue-in-cheek development that emerges half-way through and Kingsley’s ability to play the character up. Gwyneth Paltrow also gets filled out as a character, though a possible emotional conclusion is reversed in a signposted chickening-out moment that the film shouldn’t have done.

The Mandarin aside, there are a few other subtle twists and turns during the two hours that make you question what you are seeing and, though it may seem a cliché, the multitude of suits in the piece are animated with character and add to the moments of humour scattered throughout the piece.

It’s not a perfect film. The ending is a little bit too whizz-bang for its own good, the ‘Iron Patriot’ and the use of the term Extremis put in for name-checks and little else, and overall it lacks the solidness of the original Spider-man films or the re-booted Batman flicks, but its witty script, solid effects and strong plot certainly make this one of the better comic book films. It’s just a shame that it feels out of place in the May schedules with lots of references to Christmas which, even if explained away as ‘A Christmas Carol’ parallel, feel extraneous to the plot and just stand out as odd.

Overall, though, ‘Iron Man Three’ is a fun, well written and composed film that holds your interest for two hours. Not quite as good as the first – by a whisker – but one of the strongest comic book films committed to celluloid. Just don’t bother waiting until the end of the credits for the closing scene; it’s not really worth it.

(6.5/10)

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