10 Huge Movie Deaths That Totally Fell Flat
1. Ilsa Faust - Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1
With Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 being the first entry into the two-part "finale" to the franchise, it was damn-near guaranteed that a member of Ethan Hunt's (Tom Cruise) spy outfit would die before film's end.
But did it have to be fan favourite femme fatale Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), and did it have to be so damn lame?
At the end of the second act, Ilsa is killed in a swordfight with the movie's human antagonist, Gabriel (Esai Morales), yet given Ilsa's standing in the franchise, it feels strangely empty and lacking in emotion.
Ilsa is quite arguably the series' finest character, and so to kill her off at the end of a relatively by-the-numbers action sequence without any real dramatic weight behind it just felt like a huge misstep.
While it's likely that Ferguson's role was limited due to her filming Apple's sci-fi series Silo, could they not have simply taken her out of commission with an injury?
And even if Ilsa makes a surprise return in Part 2, it'll feel hollow in its own way given that Ilsa's death was already faked-out once at the start of Part One. Stakes are important.
As entertaining as this movie is, Christopher McQuarrie well and truly bungled Ilsa's death, in turn squandering one of the few not-disposable female characters in the franchise to date, while subbing in Grace (Hayley Atwell) as her thinly-veiled substitute.