The real top five causes of major character death in mainstream superhero comics:
Marketing stunt where it's clear that the writers put a lot more effort into figuring out how they're going to bring them back once they've milked all the drama they can out of their death than they did into figuring out how to kill them off in the first place
Publisher convinced themselves that the best way to establish credentials for their latest villain-of-the-week was to have them randomly murder a popular character, having failed to learn from experience that this literally never works
Big-name writer decided to end their tenure on the character's title by breaking their toys on the way out, thus ensuring that they have the final word on the character's development, and in their hubris they believe they're influential enough that it will stick (hint: it won't)
New editor with nostalgic brain rot wanted to reset the status quo to how they remember it being when they were a kid, and the easiest way to do that was to kill off every character introduced more recently than 1987
when i have a crush i dont kick my feet or twirl my hair instead i am in my kitchen at 3am pacing in circles with my hands clasped behind my back like a middle-aged divorced detective haunted by a cold case he just cant crack
I have an end-of-life patient to whom I spoke today. She burst out laughing and said, "It was all such fun. I just had so much fun." I wish this for everyone. I wish that we each would meet death laughing, with little regret and even less fear.
an acquaintance told me i had the subtle guardedness of someone who “learned social skills the hard way” and i’d honestly have much preferred they took out a gun and shot me
a writing trope I'll never get tired of is when a character says something that is Very Unhelpful and the dialog tag is something like "added helpfully."
In light of the sad news about Bernard Hill, I feel like we should take a moment to really appreciate the acting performances in the LOTR trilogy. The fact that none of the cast got Academy Awards is well-known and I think even now the sheer visual spectacle of the trilogy can overshadow everything else, but the performances were SO crucial to what made the films great.
It’s easy to take the success of the movies for granted now, but that was never a guarantee. Aside from the practical aspects of portraying such an epic fantasy onscreen, the series is peppered with dialogue that is fine on the page but unbelievably difficult to deliver. As Harrison Ford famously remarked to George Lucas re Star Wars “You can write this stuff, but you can’t say it.”
From Gandalf’s “To the Bridge of Khazad-Dum!” to Elrond’s “It must be cast back into the fiery chasm from whence it came!” it would be so easy for the whole thing to collapse into farce. The only reason it doesn’t, is because of the talent and conviction of the actors.
Bernard Hill was tasked with one of the most objectively ridiculous lines in the entire trilogy. “The horn of Helm Hammerhand shall sound in the deep one last time!” And he delivered. BOY, did he deliver. He gave it all the gravitas and emotional weight of Shakespeare, he made it truly rousing instead of ridiculous, he took the audience with him to that moment, that place, right into Middle Earth with its people and its history, and made it REAL.
And for that, I thank and salute him. RIP, sir. Go now to the halls of your fathers. You earned it.