10 Movie Deaths No-One Was Ready For

3. Lt. Col. Austin Travis - Executive Decision

If you put Steven Seagal in a movie, you're saying something to your audience. You're saying that this character right here is such a badass that we had to go and get Steven Seagal to play him. You're setting up expectations of greatness that fits completely with the mythology the actor has worked so hard on building for himself throughout his career.

What you don't expect as an audience watching a Seagal movie is for him to be killed off pretty much in the first act.

The trailer for Executive Decision - a horribly underrated mid-90s actioner from the period where everyone was terrified of plane hijacking - suggested that it would be a fairly traditional action duo team-up starring Seagal and Kurt Russell as the leads. They'd team up, flex muscles, beat-down bad guys and save the day.

And then, completely out of nowhere, Seagal's Travis subverts all expectations by sacrificing himself to save the rest of the team sent on board a hijacked flight ferrying a dirty bomb. It's not the most emotionally impactful death, but as shocks go, it was huge.