10 Movie Characters That Suffered Unnecessarily Cruel Fates

So my old pal Jimmy Bond got hitched. Who’d have thought it? He’s finally been tamed by an incredible woman and she’s made an honest man out of him. Good for you. Well done. Pats on backs all round.

“You have given me a wedding present,” says Tracy to her husband just minutes after being wed. “The best I could have. A future.” Ah. Alarm bells ring. No movie character ever sets up such an opportunity for irony without a payoff. Sure enough, along come Blofeld and Irma Blunt with a machine gun and that’s the end of Mrs. Bond. A poignant, heart-wrenching, and well-acted final scene that had all the potential to feed the hero’s character growth over the ensuing series.

Instead, right from the get-go of the next film, we were treated to the same old Bond; bawdy quips, incurable womanising, and buffoonish campery. The cold-blooded murder of the only woman Bond had ever truly loved could have been a springboard for the growth of 007 into the troubled, desolate man hell-bent on revenge depicted in Ian Fleming’s source material.

Sadly, though, the producers - and perhaps audiences too - had other ideas. Within the confines of this single film the scene is dramatically very effective and George Lazenby and Diana Rigg's performances quite moving, but in an overall context the murder had little visible impact on James Bond, rendering Tracy’s untimely death inconsequential.