Warning: this article contains spoilers.
It wasn’t hard to piss off Annie Wilkes. Things that annoyed Misery’s psychotic bookworm included, but were not limited to: swearing, bad parking etiquette and people she’d kidnapped wanting to leave. But arguably her most understandable grievance was with far-fetched plotting.
In one memorable moment of Oscar-winning outrage, she took aim at characters coming back to life and the outlandish mechanics that are used to explain how this could happen (“He didn’t get out of the cockadoodie car!”). It’s therefore unlikely that Annie was a fan of soaps. She would have got in a lather over the return of Bobby Ewing, casually taking a shower despite being dead, and would have started wielding a sledgehammer as Harold Bishop returned to Madge even though he was lost at sea.
But unlikely resurrections, as ridiculed as they may be, have persisted, and not just on the small screen. Last week, Taron Egerton tweeted a teaser poster for Kingsman 2 that suggests Colin Firth’s character will be making a miraculous recovery from a bullet to the head, while we’ve also just seen Charlize Theron’s Evil Queen survive her death by becoming part of a magic mirror in The Huntsman: Winter’s War.
Expecting clear logic and rationality from films that have tie-ins with soft drink brands is a somewhat fruitless pursuit, but it’s still disappointing, given the teams of writers who often work on franchise films, to see so-called cheats taking place. As Annie screamed: “This isn’t fair!” It’s having your cake and eating it on a grand scale.
The death of a major character can be beneficial for a number of reasons. Firstly, if it’s a villain then we, as an audience, receive some catharsis. Justice has been served and the plot can finally reach a satisfying conclusion. In Snow White and the Huntsman, the only way the fairytale could end was with our pale-skinned heroine killing the story’s antagonist.
Secondly, an untimely death taps into our love of surprise. The recent success of 10 Cloverfield Lane showed yet again that the promise of the unknown is a juicy enough prospect to get us into cinemas, while on the small screen, Game of Thrones continues to make headlines with its ruthless disposal of key stars. A shock death, teased in reviews and marketing, is tantalising, and has us oscillating between our hatred for spoilers and desperate need for answers.
Thirdly, and most plainly, a demise correlates with an actor’s wish to leave a franchise. A grisly death rather than a sly offscreen exit is a more dramatic ending, and just last year it was Harrison Ford’s own suggestion that Han Solo should make his final appearance in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (although rumours persist that he might also be returning).
The need to resurrect, on the other hand, is often down to a far more simplistic explanation: money. The surprising box-office success of Kingsman ($414m worldwide) has meant that a sequel became an inevitability, but the death of Colin Firth’s character left the franchise lacking. While Eddie the Eagle’s domestic numbers might have helped to further Taron Egerton’s star status, he’s still not enough of a name to hinge an entire blockbuster on. Producers have already added Julianne Moore and Halle Berry to the cast, but Firth remains the face that most associate with the Kingsman brand. The suggestion he is now returning is illogical but not that surprising.
Exactly how he’ll rise from the ashes is the difficulty though. The same problem has kept Wanted 2 firmly in development hell. Wanted was another graphic novel adaptation that became a surprise hit ($341m worldwide). A sequel became a priority, yet the death of Angelina Jolie’s character in the first film meant they were missing their biggest star. Jolie has been rather upfront about her thoughts on coming back (“They were [trying to bring me back] but I kind of feel like if I die in a movie, I should die actually,” she told Coming Soon) but Universal are reportedly still trying to tempt her. Again, if a star such as Jolie were to join a film struggling for a green light, it would make a major difference.
Last month’s critically reviled Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice ended with a clear winner, as Superman finished the story in a coffin. But in a final frame that will have surprised no one because, d’uh, Superman, it was revealed he would be flying in for more adventures. He’s not the only franchise star, though, who has died and been resurrected within the same film. In one of the finer Marvel offerings, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Nick Fury’s shock death was made far less shocking when he arrived back with an a-vengeance before the credits rolled.
Explaining how Superman – an alien with the word “Super” in his name – and perhaps even Nick Fury could survive death isn’t perhaps much of a stretch, but screenwriters have struggled when trying to explain how non-superheroes have achieved the same. The most heinous example of this occurred in Halloween: Resurrection. The previous film, the sharp and effective Halloween H20, ended with a fierce thrill. After years of torment, Laurie Strode finally killed Michael Myers by chopping off his head. It was brutal and, more importantly, final. But four years later, in one of the dumbest and most contrived plot twists ever conceived, we discovered that she had merely killed a paramedic dressed up as Myers. Even for a series like Halloween, this was a step too far.
Placing commercial needs over, you know, not cheating audiences is depressingly inevitable but infuriating nonetheless. It makes franchise films even harder to trust and respect, with their narratives opening up to soapy revelations that bend laws of nature to make a quick buck.
Regardless, audiences will still come out in force for Kingsman 2, especially if Firth does make a grand return from the dead. Meanwhile, I’ll be screaming to anyone who will listen that he couldn’t have survived a bullet to his cockadoodie head.
