5 Oddly Specific Movie Tropes Hollywood Is Obsessed With Right Now

You know how most movies go. More often than not, the good guy saves the day and the bad guy is killed or incarcerated, and even though there are literally thousands of ways for that scenario to play out, one particular style of death has stood out quite recently: death by cliff!

In Black Panther, villain Erik Killmonger chooses to surrender to T'Challa, but rather than being taken prisoner, opts to die peacefully while resting on the edge of a cliff, overlooking a beautiful Wakandan sunset during his final moments. N'aww.

Then, in the Alicia Vikander-starring Tomb Raider reboot, merc-for-hire Mathias Vogel has his ass beat by Lara right next to a massive drop. She then shoves a contaminated finger down his throat (yum), before booting him off said drop and sending him to a nasty death.

Recently, Mission: Impossible Fallout's August Walker was clinging to a cliff with his bare hands while climbing after super-spy Ethan Hunt, before being caught in the face and dragged to his (bloody) doom by a metal cargo hook.

Then, The Equalizer 2 shook things up a little; baddie Dave York (Pedro Pascal) is stabbed atop a giant tower and kicked down to the ocean below, dying a brutal death at Denzel's hands. It feels very much like the Tomb Raider moment, and both scenes even share a top-down shot that shows the villain plummeting to the ground.

Oh, and Luke Skywalker also died on the edge of a cliff, and while he wasn't the antagonist, he was a bit of an arse for most of the runtime.