10 More Great Movie Characters Who Die At The Beginning

Rian Johnson's first Benoit Blanc mystery, Knives Out, immediately put itself on the map as one of the best whodunnit stories in recent years. Among the many, many reasons for its success was the incredible cast of characters, inhabited wonderfully by a choice selection of actors young and old.

Alongside the likes of Daniel Craig's Blanc and Ana de Armas' Marta Cabrera were the wonderfully dysfunctional Thrombys, and at the head was the patriarch of the family, Harlan, played by Christopher Plummer. Though his death kicked off the entire murder mystery, he was present throughout thanks to flashbacks, and managed to be one of the most fascinating characters in the entire film.

Harlan made no shortage of enemies within his own family as he cut his grandson out of his will, took his publishing business out of his son's control, and told his son-in-law he knew he was cheating on his daughter, to name just a few. All this to put everything he owned in the hands of the one person in his life who actually deserved it, his carer and friend Marta. 

Even in the face of death, Harlan comforted Marta (who at the time thought she had poisoned him) and saw the funny side. He even made a note for a potential kill in a novel he could have written, had he not unfortunately met his end at the very beginning.