10 Unlucky Movie Characters Who Didn't Deserve To Die

Plot advancement doesn't care about collateral damage.

Terminator 2 Todd
TriStar Pictures

There are few things in cinema that beat how good it is to see the bad guy blown to smithereens, or how tearful it was to see a hero sacrifice themselves for the greater good. But when it comes to those ancillary figures in between, there isn't really a word to describe the emotion we feel.

In the universe of a film, collateral damage can often be shrugged off or just downright ignored. Just your random everyday folk doing their job, wandering the street or going to a pub. Unless they're a hardcore hero or a menacing baddie, their death in a movie universe is going to get swept under the rug faster than Mary Poppins' cleaning secrets.

Unless the character physically serves purpose to the story, they aren't even given a second thought as far as the protagonists are aware. Ships being blown up in spacehip dogfights, towns being trampled by Godzilla-sized monsters and even half the universe being Thanos-snapped away can play second fiddle to more isolated and individual deaths.

One-off kills of unfortunate people just being in the wrong place at the wrong time reek of venomous chaos, and while we rank the best villain deaths or heroic sacrifices, we don't give much thought to the people in between. Until now, that is...

10. Harry Potter & The Goblet Of Fire - Frank Bryce

Terminator 2 Todd
Warner Bros

In both the films and the books, the one continuous flaw that has been raised about the Harry Potter universe is how its story never seemed to trickle into the Muggle world.

Despite the risk that a super-powerful fascist is planning to conquer the world through means of murdering children, muggle intervention is strangely lacking throughout the series. Imagine the surprise when in film (and book) number four, a Muggle by the name of Frank Bryce stumbles across a giant snake, a cloaked demon-baby and an unhinged David Tennant.

In the film’s opening scene we are treated to an unfortunate muggle encountering magic for the first time and immediately being discovered and disposed of. The books cast more backstory onto poor Frank Bryce, but in the films we are given no initial context as to who this man is other than he was a caretaker who overheard a plot to kill a young boy.

What’s worse is in a world filled with mind-tricking potions and spells, he’s not even given the opportunity to “forget” what he heard. Instead he’s blasted with a killing curse and swallowed by Nagini.

 
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I overthink a lot of things. Will talk about pretty much anything for a great length of time. I'm obsessed with General Slocum from the 2002 Spider-Man film. I have questions that were never answered in that entire trilogy!