25 Greatest Film Deaths This Century

By 2014, the world’s Web-heads felt they had seen just about everything the Spider-Man cinematic experience had to offer (apart from the damned Sinister Six!). With four films in the can this century, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 director Marc Webb trotting out the Osborns again, there didn’t seem to be many thrills or surprises to hope for. And yet...

While the film itself, which makes Sam Raimi’s mistake of throwing together too many villains, pits Andrew Garfield’s Spidey against Electro (Jamie Foxx), Green Goblin (Dane DeHaan), and The Rhino (Paul Giamatti), many of us are more interested in Peter Parker’s on-off relationship with Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone). This offers a new outlet and possibly a new beginning for the Wall-crawler, as he wrestles with a promise made to Gwen's late father not to involve her in his double life.

This all leads to a genuinely surprising third-act fight in which Gwen dies suddenly. The Goblin and Spidey do battle around a clock tower, and when Gwen finds herself on the wrong end of a snapping web, our hero’s efforts to catch her before she falls don’t quite pan out. Coming way out of left field, Gwen’s fall bottoms out too late, and although she’s got a web line attached, it doesn’t stop her from hitting the ground and cracking like an egg.

For just the sheer balls of offering such a catastrophic surprise to a mainstream audience, this death scene is an all-timer.