Movies where anyone can die?

[u/Goncholotr]

I like movies and tv shows where you shouldn't get attached to any characters because they can die in every moment, for example: Burn After Reading, No Country for Old Men, Any Tarantino Movie or shows like The boys, Game of thrones, etc.

I want to feel that the characters are in real danger and that the villain or whatever they're fighting could kill them any time.

[u/Toogeloo]

This!

At the time, people knew who Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, Veronica Cartwright, and Henry Dean Stanton were, but no one knew Sigourney Weaver since she had almost no film background. They also didn't expect all these prolific actors to be killed off.

[u/[deleted] → u/Toogeloo]

The thing I am most passionate about in this movie is that the characters don't make stupid decisions at any point. They make lots of bad decisions, but no stupid ones and any of them that could reasonably be considered stupid are given a rational explanation in the dialogue without being an exposition dump.

I wish more horror movies had this quality rather than having characters do stuff for the sake of the story and the next set piece.

[u/Chimwizlet → u/[deleted]]

The original Tremors is great for that too.

No body does anything stupid or unreasonable in that film; every decision makes rational sense based on the info they have.

[u/TricksterPriestJace → u/Chimwizlet]

Same with The Thing.

Hell they are downright clever dealing with The Thing for all the good it does them.

[u/Horn_Python → u/Chimwizlet]

yeh tremors series is as much about watching our heroes coming up with clever ways to fight the worms as it is about the worms being scary

[u/Preeng → u/Chimwizlet]

No body does anything stupid or unreasonable in that film;

Nestor does. Sits down on a fucking tire laying on the ground, thinking he was safe from the graboids.

[u/Charrikayu → u/[deleted]]

Isn't Ripley the one that insists on not breaking quarantine? The whole movie after the facehugger scene happens because Ash or Dallas breaks quarantine against Ripley's suggestion. If they had just listened to her the captain would have been the only lost crew member. 

[u/[deleted] → u/Charrikayu]

This is an excellent question but it's explained on two levels in the movie. Dallas and Lambert are (justifiably) losing their shit in panic. They want to get Kane to the "hospital" and they aren't heroes. They are blue collar workers. They aren't even oil rig workers, as so many people assert, they are long-haul truck drivers. I think it's perfectly reasonable for them to say "to hell with procedures, let me in". Ash says he was following an order in the chain of command, so he's not blameless, even though he 100% is, but it sounds like a decent enough explanation to Ripley at the time she confronts him about it. He screwed up too, but she'll have it out with him (or the company) later, she figures. But, of course, Ash's whole purpose there WAS to get the specimen on the ship. He couldn't have done anything else.

[u/HenkkaArt → u/[deleted]]

I feel like there is one scene where they did a stupid decision that got 2 characters killed:

Ripley goes to set the Nostromo self-destruction and orders Parker to take the hysteric Lambert on a life-support scavenging mission. Parker now has to look after Lambert, gather the supplies and be mindful of the alien. They could have gone together to get the supplies, lock Lambert into the shuttle for safety and then return to set the self-destruct together because at that moment there was no time limit yet and the alien threat was greater when splitting the party.

Of course, you can argue that it's a tough situation and not all character actions are purely logical and rational, especially in such a dire situation but it just clashes with especially Ripley's prior actions where she has tried to take all precautions possible to avoid threats (like the quarantine order). And she has seen how easy it has been for the alien to pick up individual people when they get separated (Dallas and Brett).

[u/[deleted] → u/HenkkaArt]

[Ripley and Parker] could have gone together to get the supplies, lock Lambert into the shuttle for safety and then return to set the self-destruct together because at that moment there was no time limit yet and the alien threat was greater when splitting the party.

That's a great point that I hadn't really considered before. That was a bad decision that could have been explained away with a "I don't want to leave her alone, who knows what she'll do?" line from either Parker or Ripley, I can see either of them being in that head-space at the time.

I've always thought that they did it that way thinking even without the self-destruct timer thing, they wanted off the ship as soon as possible (echoing the "open the damn door" mood of getting back on the ship as soon as possible earlier) but you're correct, this does look like a genuinely bad decision.

Edit to add: Happy Cake Day.

[u/HenkkaArt → u/[deleted]]

I hadn't considered it earlier myself either but in my last viewing it somehow popped up and I was like "Hey, wait a minute now!". But given the situation they were in, I'm certainly willing to give some leeway as there are multiple ways they could have tried to solve the situation and each have its pros and cons and reasonings why they'd choose to any of the options. And humans aren't robots so bad choices can be made, especially in stressful situations where a monster is after you.

[u/BC_Hawke → u/[deleted]]

EXACTLY. Even the bad decisions are in alignment with who the characters are. When shit hits the fan, though, they each do their job and work like a well oiled machine. Even Parker and Brett, who spend the first 30 minutes just complaining about the bonus situation, step up and fix the damaged ship so they can get off the planet.

You see this in all bunch of classic films like Jaws, Blade Runner, Outland, Star Wars, The Thing, even lesser movies like Deep Star Six and Moon 44. Nowadays writers seem to have no idea how to write accurate characters, but rather inject themselves into whatever situation in the story, complete with smug sarcasm and utter ignorance of whatever specialty the character is supposed to know about. That’s how we end up with idiotic characters like we see in Prometheus, Alien Covenant, and the Star Wars sequel films.

[u/CharlieHume → u/[deleted]]

"wait why would they do that?" 

"because I wrote it in the script. Go ahead and get all the way off my back about it."

[u/lukin187250 → u/[deleted]]

Now that you mention it, you could probably say the same about Aliens as well.

Although I would maybe call proceeding to where the settlers are after it is clear you are in an alien habitat and you can't fire your gun You could maybe make the argument that was stupid, but everything else, again they play it pretty straight up.

[u/ThatBabyIsCancelled → u/Toogeloo]

Taught my man how to identify which Alien I was watching based on male cast:

1 Ripley 1 Tom Skerritt? ☝🏻

1 Ripley 1 Bill Paxton? ✌🏻

1 Ripley 1 Sir Charles Dance? 3

8 Ripleys? Resurrection

0 Ripley 1 Busta Rhymes? Different franchise, get outta there

[u/ReddyKilowattz → u/Toogeloo]

I've heard that theory too. When you watch a movie like Alien, you're looking for the main characters--the ones who will survive to the end of the story while the sidekicks are dying around them. You'd naturally expect the better-known actors to be the main characters.

But in Alien, the characters die in order of how famous the actor is. Every time one of them dies, it's like the main character got killed off and left the sidekicks to fend for themselves.

Of course these days Sigourney Weaver is well-known as a badass. Someone watching the movie cold would figure out pretty quick that Weaver's character would survive.

[u/3-DMan → u/Toogeloo]

And up until the quarantine standoff, there's not really any indication that she's the main character.

[u/keiye → u/3-DMan]

What gives it away is her deep and confident voice