10 Movie Characters Destroyed By The Fourth Wall

3. Elena Sánchez - Savages

If every other movie on this pulled an entertaining fourth wall-breaking trick out of the bag, Oliver Stone's 2012 crime thriller Savages went totally the opposite way.

At the end of the movie, the movie's protagonists Chon (Taylor Kitsch), Ben (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and Ophelia (Blake Lively) appear to die in a drug-induced suicide pact, while villainous cartel leader Elena Sánchez (Salma Hayek) is shot dead by her turncoat enforcer Lado (Benicio del Toro).

But quite infuriatingly, the movie then reveals this all to be Ophelia's imagination, after which it rewinds itself several minutes, giving the principal characters a second chance at playing things out.

And this time, not only do the heroes survive, but Elena also lives...only to be arrested and imprisoned for 30 years, more or less the rest of her natural life.

For a criminal of Elena's repute, it's pretty clear she would've rather taken death than imprisonment, especially as the ending implies that a new cartel is created by Lado without her involvement.

Elena was effectively damned either way, but her ultimate fate was a good deal more punishing than the quick death depicted in Ophelia's vision.