House of Eratosthenes

In 1982, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan came out in theaters and shocked everybody when Spock sacrificed himself to restore warp drive in the Enterprise, saving everyone aboard from the exploding Genesis device. It was the most shocking demise of a central character since Old Yeller.

The following year, Anakin Skywalker, a.k.a. Darth Vader, laid down his life to save his son in Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi. Gotta tie up those loose ends.

And then Mayday sacrificed herself in A View To A Kill. Sybok sacrificed himself in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Miles Dawson blew himself up in Terminator II: Judgment Day. Dillon and Ripley offed themselves in Alien 3. Léon, the Professional, blew himself up in Léon: The Professional. Russell Casse famously yelled out “Hello, boys! I’m back!” and blew himself up in Independence Day to save the world. Jack Dawson sank like a stone to save Rose in Titanic. Harry Stamper blew himself up to save the world in Armageddon. Don Diego de la Vega received a mortal wound, sometime somewhere…? In The Mask Of Zorro. Jericho Kane sacrificed himself to save the world in End of Days. Qui-Gon Jinn received a mortal wound in Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace and Maximus received a mortal wound in Gladiator. Also, Maximus received permission from a female to go ahead and die…how touching. Hawk Hawkins sacrificed himself to send the deadly nuclear warheads into deep space in Space Cowboys.

Data replicated Spock’s feat, blowing himself up to save the Enterprise and Earth as well in Star Trek X: Nemesis. Jean Grey buried herself under a lethal mass of water so the X-Men could get away in X-Men 2: X-Men United. The titular Bill did was he was titularly supposed to do, in Kill Bill Vol. 2, and momma and child lived happily ever after without the dumb ol’ dad. Tarantino repeated this momma plus child minus dad formula in Planet Terror with the death of El Wray. Neville blew himself up to kill the zombies in I Am Legend. Walt Kowalski got himself all shot up with machine gun fire to send the murderous gang members to prison in Gran Torino. Rorschach said “do it” to Doctor Manhattan, who then obliged, obliterating him in Watchmen. Flynn sacrificed himself to take out Clu in Tron: Legacy. Captain America took down the plane in Captain America: The First Avenger. Ella blew herself up to take out the aliens in Cowboys and Aliens. Batman seemingly atomized himself hauling the nuclear bomb out of Gotham in the Batwing in The Dark Knight Rises.

Superman: The Man of Steel offered a triple play of white males sacrificing themselves for the greater good: Colonel Hardy, Emil Hamilton and Jonathan “Pa” Kent. Groot sacrificed himself to save his fellow Guardians in Guardians of the Galaxy. Nux sacrificed himself in Mad Max: Fury Road. Pietra Maximoff used his body as a shield to save a small child along with Clint Barton in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Superman offed himself to save all of humanity, lancing Doomsday with a Kryptonite spear in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Barbossa allowed himself to be consumed by the ocean to save his daughter, and others, in Pirates of the Caribean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. Yondu froze himself to death to save Peter Quill in Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2. Steve Trevor blew himself up to destroy the poison gas bombs in Wonder Woman. Merlin blew himself up to save his fellow Kingsmen in Kingsman: The Golden Circle. Silas Stone sacrificed himself so that his son, Victor, could track down the Mother Box and save humanity in Justice League: Snyder Cut…and, presumably, in the theatrical cut as well, we just weren’t able to see it happen. Some guy named Toshi and some guy named Heller sacrificed themselves in The Meg. Vice Admiral Holdo engaged hyperdrive at point blank range, a suicide move, in Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi, and then later on Luke Skywalker did a cool thing with Force projection and then…just kinda vanished just because. Natasha Romanov sacrificed herself for the Soul Stone in Avengers: Endgame and then later on Tony Stark did himself in with The Snap. He, like Maximus, received permission to die from a female, how sweet. Granting permission to die. Just makes your heart melt.

And then…spoilers, those who have not yet see No Time To Die might want to skip this…highlight to read…James Bond blew himself up by engaging the blow-up-bad-guy’s-base trope one more time, but skipping the escape-with-moments-to-spare trope, because his body was irreversibly infected with nanobots that would have killed his estranged wife and daughter if he ever came in contact with them again.

To say that a pattern has emerged would be understating the issue. Those who are sufficiently interested to track the years by what I’ve listed above, will notice there’s been an acceleration; the self-sacrifice started out as a rarity, and nowadays it’s a rarity if it isn’t there. To say I find it offensive, as a straight white male, would be engaging in a falsehood. I was never offended by it. I skipped straight from blithely ignoring the pattern, failing to notice that what in my childhood was an exception had now become a rule — to — pure and sincere boredom. Yesterday, Saturday, I was staying home enjoying a marathon streaming session with Mrs. Freeberg and it came time to pick the third movie. Noticing the previous two movies (I shall not say what they were) were just build-ups to dumb-noble-sacrifices from straight-white-males, I made the request that we find something that doesn’t have that.

It’s not a matter of offense. And it really isn’t purely a matter of boredom. A lot of these movies, when they have a dumb-noble-sacrifice from a straight-white-male at the end — all that comes before that, is relegated to being merely a lead-up to that. Well, that’s a solid block of at least two hours. Movies used to be a hodge-podge of beautiful things, and genuine surprises, non-tropey ones. They were a delight. You never knew what you were gonna get. Now you kinda do. Some hackneyed noble sacrifice, usually, and invariably from a straight white male. The observation I’m making here is about shifting norms. A sort of death-worship has crept in and gone mainstream.

I imagine I should be more concerned about the suicide rate among white boys. I really don’t know how that shakes out over time. I wouldn’t be surprised if suicide is as high, or higher, in non-whites, but males have been leading the suicide statistics for awhile. It’s the worldview that really concerns me the most, whether it leads to suicide or not. It’s the unwritten rule. Save the world, fornicate like a happy tomcat over it, live to fight another day, leave the audience wondering what exciting adventure you’re going to have next — it seems, now, that that just can’t happen. Someone’s banned it. It’s slightly less intrusive than banning happy endings altogether.

The idea of younger generations filing into movie theaters conditioned to ask themselves: “I wonder who’s going to off himself?” is troubling. Back in my day, we used to wonder what to wonder. Death worship of some kind might happen, but so could anything else. It was a real smorgasbord, if the movie was any good. A real grab bag.

The concept of remembering the sacrifice is a solid swing-and-a-miss. There’s always some subtext about the importance of remembering the fallen. Seems the build-up is always there, and the payoff never is. The other cast members, and the audience, will make darn good & sure to celebrate the life of the decedent, and never, ever forget them and the sacrifice they made. For about ten, fifteen minutes. After which, they’ll be replaced by a more diverse cast, and never mentioned again.

Well, if you’re a Christian, you belong to a religion that does not, and cannot, see martyrdom as something trivial. That’s another concern we should have. It’s being trivialized. When Spock did it, it was sacred. Now it’s like an empty box to be checked as the script makes its way through various drafts.

Some of this has to do with natural attrition. Actors get tired of roles, and part of a writer’s job is to find some coherent believable way to make the necessary cast change happen. Where it’s the white males biting the bullet, oftentimes it’s a planned scrubbing. This is why the “we’ll always remember your sacrifice forever and ever for the next five minutes” bait-and-switch comes to pass. The remembrance is what’s promised, but the forgetfulness is what’s planned. That’s the real social norm that is crystallizing before our eyes: The scrubbing of people, from existence and from remembrance. More often than not, because of their sex and their skin color.

We’re paying for creativity and we’re not getting it. The field of available plot elements should be expanding over time, and instead it’s being narrowed, sharpened like a pencil. Central characters, particularly white male central characters, off themselves simply because the scriptwriters don’t know any other way to do it anymore, and maybe the audience doesn’t know how to watch anything else anymore. Perhaps the mindset now is one of all-or-nothing: The thing you’re doing is so much bigger and more important than you are — and we require a suicide to make it obvious, this being a movie & all — or else, it’s not worth anything at all, and why are we bothering to watch? So there’s an expansive middle ground between the two extremes that’s gone missing. That’s very rarely any kind of good thing.

I think it’s an outgrowth of their commitment to mediocrity. If a hero survived his moment of heroism, that would prove heroism is a thing that can exist in the real world. Think of the opposite case, which you never see anymore: the former hero coming to grips with ordinary life. Al Bundy, scoring four touchdowns in one game. Played for laughs, but poignant – high school football is silly and meaningless, but in that context he really WAS a hero. He was touched by fire.

And now he’s just a guy… but he was a hero once, and so anyone can be one. In the SJWs’ world, no one can *really* be a hero, because everyone must be as wimpy and pathetic as they are. So if dramatic conventions require a moment of heroism, the hero must die in it.
- Severian | 10/24/2021 @ 14:20

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Dumb Movie Noble SacrificesSunday, October 24th, 2021

Dumb Movie Noble Sacrifices
Sunday, October 24th, 2021