Death is a part of life. It is inevitable. It's something we can never escape, no matter what Ray Kurzweil tries to tell you. It's even more inevitable, however, if you're in a Hollywood action movie. In fact it wouldn't be an action movie if there weren't at least a few deaths over the course of their ninety-minute run times, would they? Those would be inaction movies. Otherwise known as art house films. And you don't get nearly as many explosions, banging soundtracks and shots of rippling muscles in art house films. That's why they get relegated to art houses, instead of the glimmering multiplex! There's something of a double-standard in the Hollywood action hero, however, an issue which has plagued the traditional adventuring protagonist for decades. It's something that was principal in the creation of Doctor Who, which set him apart from pretty much every other on screen "hero" of the era: he didn't kill. He didn't like killing. And he proved that, time and again, killing wasn't necessary. Killing was what the bad guys do. Indeed, most action films dangle the threat of a villain murdering lots of people as the reason the heroes have to go after them in the first place. To kill them before they kill anyone else. Discussions of eye-for-an-eye morality to the side for the time being, let's just take it as read that sometimes a villain has to die in order to save the day. That's fair one death to save the lives of hundreds, thousands or even millions of innocents. Sometimes, though, our protagonists go further than that. Sometimes, in their pursuit of the bad guys, they end up killing way more people than the antagonists even got close to. So really, who are the real bad guys in this context? How about you read through our list of ten movie heroes who killed more than the villains and decided for yourself...
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
