Everybody Dies

[Rii]

Spoilers for the 2009 Spanish film Cell 211 follow.

I recently had the opportunity to see the aforementioned film, in which a neophyte prison guard has his preliminary tour of the facility cut short by a riot and winds up trapped behind enemy lines and forced to pass himself off as a prisoner.

The film is notable for several reasons - not least of all because the inmates appear to have some legitimate grievances - but for the purposes of this thread I'm focussed on the fact that all of the sympathetic characters in the film die (which isn't to say that all who die are sympathetic characters). Indeed, the only notable character to survive is a right bastard. Now, lots of films kill the main protagonist, but there's usually someone left around to mourn their passing, and more often than not they manage to succeed in their mission or get the bad guy first. Not so here.

So I call upon the denizens of TrekBBS to lend me their fimic experience: what are some other films that pull this sort of thing?

 

[Caliburn24]

Mirror universe Doctor Who!

But seriously, the only one off the top of my head is Alien 3, since Ripley is the only character I liked in that film. Also since they manage to clone her and produce more aliens in the next movie it could be argued that her sacrifice was somewhat in vain.

 

[Marc]

There's a film called 619 Squadron that starred David McCallum which a group of Mosquitoes have to take out a German base in cove and pretty much everyone (i.e all the main characters) is shot down or crashes.

At the end two senior officers are on the airfield surrounded by the empty stands where the aircraft would of parked talking about the losses and sacrifices etc and the last line of the film is "we can always get another squadron".

It's a pretty crap film and to think they actually destoryed airworthy Mosquitoes in the filming of it.

 

[Marc]

Mirror universe Doctor Who!

But seriously, the only one off the top of my head is Alien 3, since Ripley is the only character I liked in that film. Also since they manage to clone her and produce more aliens in the next movie it could be argued that her sacrifice was somewhat in vain.

WEll there was the Tom Baker story "Horror Of Fang Rock" where only the Doctor and Leela survive.

Then there's a certain BBC sci-fi series with a certain final episode.....

 

[Rii]

Another just occurred to me: Lilya 4-ever. But then when a film opens to Rammstein, well, all bets are off.

But seriously, the only one off the top of my head is Alien 3, since Ripley is the only character I liked in that film.

Oh yes. Also Dillon, Bishop and that Doctor fellow.

 

[Christopher]

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, maybe?

(Hard to do this discussion without everything being a spoiler...)

 

[Haggis and tatties]

The Great Escape comes to mind.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

The people who survived on Lost are not the ones I would have chosen as being more deserving than the far greater number who died at various points along the way. Two of the very small number of survivors were characters I would have bet large amounts of money would die in the finale and their survival violates some kind of Law of TV Writing.

But I should have expected this. The Lost writers signalled from the start that they knew all the tropes and were out to subvert them.

And of course you could rightfully argue that

Spoiler: Lost finale

everyone was dead by the end of the show.

In contrast, I was really rooting for everyone to die on BSG. There were a few whoah moments about who lives and who dies but overall, it was more predictable and less apocalyptic than I would have preferred. (I think the producers even commented on fan bloodthirstiness in comments they read before the finale advocating a high body count, and they seemed to be a bit appalled by us. )

If a show is ending, go ahead and take a scythe to the characters. Why the frak not?

Jumping over to movies, Drag Me to Hell didn't balk at doing exactly that to the main character, even though I guess she was reasonably sympathetic (though when she killed the kitten, I started rooting for the evil gypsy granny to win.)

 

[Caliburn24]

Only some of the characters get recaptured in The Great Escape, and of those only some of them get executed. Plus as explained by Big X, the objective was to tie up German manpower hunting escaped POWs, which it succeeded in doing.

I wouldn't call it a total downer of an ending exactly.

Having read the book makes me biased though, because some of that stuff is left out of the movie.

 

[Count Zero]

Spoilers for old stuff ahead!


As far as TV series are concerned, I'd say that Blake's 7 fits the bill perfectly.

There are many movies with unhappy endings, but if the criterion is that everybody dies I'll have to think about it some more. Usually, one of the protagonists at least survives in a way. The only movie that comes to mind is Le Salaire de la peur.

 

[Goliath]

I'm surprised that nobody has yet mentioned The Wild Bunch.

Pretty much everybody dies in Get Carter as well, along with Bonnie & Clyde.

There's also Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry.

And more recently...

Spoiler: ...everybody dying more recently

...Reservoir Dogs and The Departed.

In addition, everybody seems to die in a number of recent horror films, including REC (and its American remake, Quarantine), The Blair Witch Project, Outpost, Dead Snow and The Descent.

Plus, IIRC, while Sarah Michelle Gellar's character doesn't quite die at the end of American remake of The Grudge, there was nobody left alive at the end of the original.

 

[Canadave]

It doesn't quite fit, but the end of Das Boot comes close. After struggling to survive so much, they finally return safely to La Rochelle, only to be bombed by British planes minutes after disembarking, with the captain killed and U-96 sunk at her berth. Really a downer ending, for sure.

 

[scotpens]

Dr. Strangelove and Beneath the Planet of the Apes.

Everybody, I mean EVERYBODY dies!

Within a somewhat more limited scope, IIRC, just about everyone is dead at the end of Night Moves (1975), starring Gene Hackman, Jennifer Warren, and a very young (and naked) Melanie Griffith.

 

[Caliburn24]

I think Glory fits the criteria, since every major character dies at the end of the movie and the fort is never taken.

Sure, it could be argued that the example of the 54th inspired the formation of more African American regiments which helped win the Civil War.

Or, looked at from a different angle, it can be terribly depressing in that it took the better part of a hundred years for the US Army to become racially integrated after that horrible sacrifice.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Miracle Mile

 

[wildstar]

Uh, wouldn't putting the spoiler for a movie as your topic title negate the warning in the message of "spoilers for...".

But anyway, Blackadder did this in the last episode of most of their seasons. The last one for sure.