10 Movie Characters Who Died Breaking Their Own Rules

8. Rory Adams - Life

Life Ryan Reynolds Death
Columbia Pictures

The Rule: Don't break quarantine. Ever.

Daniel Espinosa's sci-fi horror Life is an intriguing yet deeply frustrating film, largely due to the characters' willingess to enthusastically grab the idiot ball and run with it.

This is felt no more palpably than through the character of engineer Rory Adams (Ryan Reynolds), who flouts basic quarantine procedure in an attempt to save his colleague Hugh (Ariyon Bakare) from being attacked by the alien entity known as Calvin.

And while Rory does indeed get Hugh to safety, it's at the expense of his own life. But worse than that, in death Rory provides crucial nourishment to Calvin, which devours his insides, allowing it to grow larger and effectively continue its rampage for the rest of the movie.

This rampage includes the deaths of most of the crew and allows Calvin to eventually make it to Earth, where the film ends with the implication that Calvin is going to continue to feed and grow larger.

Though Life does feature a frequently exasperated quarantine officer, Dr. Miranda North (Rebecca Ferguson), it goes without saying that Rory would've been fully briefed on quarantine procedure before the mission began.

Furthermore, given the rigorous psychological testing anyone sent on this life-seeking mission would be put through, it's a major betrayal of not only scientific protocol but also human behaviour that Rory let his emotions overcome the cold, hard logic of leaving Calvin sealed in isolation.

At least in Ridley Scott's Alien, the quarantine is overridden by malevolent android Ash (Ian Holm), a double agent with a secret vested interest in keeping the alien alive, yet here it's just hyper-emotional idiocy at work.

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Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.