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These sci-fi twists changed everything. Here are 10 shocking movie reveals that absolutely no one saw coming.
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00:00While it's absolutely expected that movie sequels don't just stick to the status quo of the original film,
00:05it can be hugely disappointing for audiences when beloved characters don't return for whatever reason.
00:11For though filmmakers can find sensible ways to temporarily write characters out of their franchise until the actor is able
00:18to return,
00:19sometimes they just kill them off between movies.
00:22And while they're not always bad, it's incredibly easy for filmmakers to piss off their fanbase
00:27by sending characters to their graves so unceremoniously.
00:31With that in mind, WhatCulture here with insulting ways characters were killed off between movies.
00:36Tank dies of his wounds from the first movie, The Matrix Reloaded.
00:40Tank was an immediate fan favourite in the first Matrix movie,
00:44enough that he was quite reasonably expected to return for The Matrix Reloaded.
00:49However, the sequel fleetingly reveals that Tank died between movies
00:53implied to be a result of injuries sustained during his fight with Cypher in the original film,
00:58with new character Link serving as his replacement.
01:01As for why actor Marcus Chong got the boot?
01:04Well, he allegedly had a salary dispute with Warner Brothers and the Wachowskis
01:07while negotiating his role in the sequels,
01:10leading him to make threatening calls to the filmmaker siblings who in turn rescinded their offer to him.
01:15While there's absolutely nothing wrong with the Wachowskis ditching a problematic cast member,
01:19did they have to kill his character too?
01:22Isn't it much nicer to think that Tank's just off elsewhere in Zion?
01:25Newton Hicks, Crash Land, Alien 3.
01:28It wouldn't be a list about characters killed off screen without Newton Hicks from Aliens.
01:33The infamy of these deaths doesn't make them any less frustrating though,
01:37and going into Alien 3 blind and realising that two out of the three survivors of Aliens
01:41had died between sequels, two of the best characters in that movie no less,
01:46is the first sign that the film is going to be disappointing.
01:49The worst thing is though, that their deaths could have meant something in the long run.
01:53Ripley's inability to once again make it home and crashing after defeating the xenomorphs
01:57acts as the tragic crux of the film,
02:00and losing her two closest allies so unceremoniously could have added to that.
02:05However, the abruptness of the revelation,
02:07as well as the ugliness of how they're dispatched,
02:09feels wholly unnecessary at best,
02:12and at worst, undermines the heroic final act of Aliens,
02:15as well as wasting the relationship forged between Ripley and Newt.
02:19It's been over 25 years, but fans still aren't over it.
02:23Emma Frost and the other mutants die during the time skip,
02:26X-Men Days of Future Past.
02:28Look, nobody is going to give January Jones five stars for her performance as diamond-sharp telepath
02:33Emma Frost in X-Men First Class,
02:36but the character was still intriguing enough that she deserved better than this.
02:40Frost ultimately didn't return for sequel Days of Future Past,
02:43where Magneto simply makes a passing mention
02:46that she and several other supporting mutants from First Class
02:49were tortured to death by villain Dr. Bolivar Trask
02:52in the time jump between movies.
02:54Though it's absolutely fair to say that Days of Future Past
02:57already had a colossal cast of characters to juggle
03:00given that it collided two X-Men timelines together,
03:04it's a damn shame that these mutants
03:05couldn't have at least been dispatched on screen in a brief action sequence.
03:09Brody dies of The Fear, Jaws The Revenge.
03:13You don't need me to tell you that the original Jaws is one of the greatest thrillers of all time,
03:18a Steven Spielberg blended great human drama between a cast led by Roy Schneider's Martin Brody
03:24and pant-crapping terror cultivated by a massive, mostly unseen shark.
03:29Of course, being a major blockbuster more than it is a horror movie,
03:32the characters overcome their initial fear of being chomped to death by hundreds of sharp teeth,
03:37head out, blow up the shark, and live happily ever after.
03:41Well, only if you make the smart decision to not watch any of the dreadful sequels, that is.
03:46Getting more and more ridiculous with each movie,
03:48Jaws The Revenge actually picks up with Brody's family
03:51and reveals that after the events of Spielberg's classic,
03:54Martin actually died.
03:56Of fear!
03:57When the shark returns, Brody's son claims his dad died of a regular heart attack,
04:02to which his mother replies,
04:03No, he died from the fear.
04:05The fear of it killed him.
04:07Now, I understand the portency of the fear.
04:09I always think it'll end up killing me after a night of heavy drinking.
04:13But this is fear of a shark that Brody blew up.
04:17Couldn't he have, like, just not gone in the ocean ever again?
04:20What was he even worried about?
04:22Sam Witwicky died, somehow.
04:25Transformers The Last Knight.
04:26When Shia LaBeouf decided that three Transformers movies was enough,
04:30Mark Wahlberg was drafted in as the new lead for the fourth film,
04:34Transformers Age of Extinction,
04:36without even a mention made of Sam in that movie.
04:39But for Bay's fifth and final film, Transformers The Last Knight,
04:43the baffling decision was made to low-key reveal that Sam Witwicky was no more.
04:47For some reason.
04:49The sequel reveals a secret society called, wait for it,
04:52The Order of the Witwickans, who have safeguarded the existence of the Transformers on Earth for centuries,
04:59with Sam Witwicky being counted among their number.
05:02But astronomer Sir Edward Burton also declares to the new heroes that he's the last surviving member of the Witwickans,
05:09in turn implying that Sam has died since we last saw him.
05:13It's a bizarre choice, both because there's no explanation for Sam's death,
05:17nor any real stakes-raising reason to make Burton the last of the Witwickans.
05:22It comes off as weirdly mean-spirited,
05:24even if some fans have simply deferred to the belief that Sam has faked his death and is still out
05:29there somewhere.
05:30Alex gets hit by a brick. Final Destination 2.
05:33It might be foolish to get invested in characters from a horror franchise,
05:37as they're about as fragile as me when I visit the comments section.
05:40But few have received a death as throwaway as Final Destination's original hero, Alex.
05:46The original flick is all about Alex and girlfriend Clea finding a way to stop the Grim Reaper coming for
05:51them,
05:52landing on the solution of making it skip them to move on to the next victim.
05:56The sequel, however, reveals what happened to the pair after the original's ambiguous ending,
06:01with Alex dying and Clea surviving by confining herself to a padded psychiatric hospital.
06:07Alex's death is relayed in a news report,
06:09which explains he remained in his own home following the events of the first movie,
06:13eventually being killed by a rogue brick falling on his head in an alley.
06:18In the context of the franchise, being bludgeoned to death by a random brick isn't all that out of place,
06:23but it doesn't really gel with how smart and careful the character had been before that.
06:28It makes the struggle of the first film seem kind of pointless.
06:32Tom Hagen gets brushed under the carpet.
06:34The Godfather Part 3.
06:36Tom Hagen is undoubtedly one of the most memorable, even iconic, characters in The Godfather Saga.
06:42Yet after making prominent appearances in the series' first two films,
06:46Hagen is nowhere to be seen in The Godfather Part 3,
06:49with only a passing mention that Hagen didn't live to see his son Andrew become an ordained Roman Catholic priest.
06:56Absolutely no indication is made as to when or how Tom passed away,
07:01which only compounded the disappointment many felt by the third Godfather movie as a whole.
07:06It stings all the more, given that the reason for Hagen's absence
07:09is simply that the film's producers refused to pay Robert Duvall's requested salary.
07:13He was offered just a fraction of Al Pacino's fee, and so he decided to walk.
07:18As a result, Hagen's role in the series was basically swept under the carpet,
07:23with a single line of dialogue, and BJ Harrison was appointed as the family's new lawyer advisor.
07:29Detective Tapp's fate is revealed in a video game.
07:32Saw 5.
07:33Danny Glover's Detective Tapp is seemingly mortally wounded at the end of the first Saw movie,
07:38but as often is the case with this franchise, nobody is ever really dead unless you actually see it.
07:44Consequently, fans waited for an answer to whether or not Tapp succumbed to his wounds.
07:48Expecting some kind of grand twist.
07:50Then Saw 5 revealed that, yep, Tapp was dead,
07:53with his picture being included in a memorial for victims of Jigsaw's game.
07:58While that's not too insulting, as it's easy to put two and two together
08:02that the characters simply succumbed to being shot,
08:04his true fate was actually revealed in the Saw video game tie-in.
08:08In this release, it's shown that Tapp was taken by Jigsaw after being shot,
08:13and forced into a series of sick games which he escapes and earns his freedom.
08:18But then, in that game's sequel, it's explained Tapp killed himself after escaping.
08:23As a result, Tapp is the only character on this list to not only die between movie sequels,
08:28but video game sequels as well.
08:34Perhaps the biggest bummer about the third Terminator movie was the absence of Sarah Connor,
08:40due to Linda Hamilton understandably feeling that Connor's arc was completed at the end of Terminator 2,
08:45not loving the sequel's script, and being concerned about James Cameron's lack of involvement.
08:50And so, midway through Terminator 3, Rise of the Machines,
08:54Sarah's son John reveals that Sarah died of leukaemia some time prior,
08:59albeit while living long enough to see 1997's Judgment Day pass without incident.
09:04Though explaining Sarah's absence without killing her off would admittedly have been extremely difficult,
09:09short of making her MIA,
09:11for one of the greatest heroines in the history of sci-fi and action cinema
09:14to be so unceremoniously offed was a huge disappointment.
09:18In the very least, this was eventually undone by 2019's sixth film, Terminator Dark Fate,
09:24which brought Connor back into the fold as a decades-hardened Terminator hunter.
09:28Hamilton absolutely crushed it as the aged yet still incredibly badass Sarah,
09:33even if the rest of the movie's creative choices weren't quite so popular.
09:37You know the ones.
09:38Peter has a heart attack because his actor wanted to write dialogue,
09:43The Godfather Part 2.
09:44There have been plenty of characters killed off between movies
09:47because an actor pissed off a director, writer, or producer.
09:51Blofeld in Bond might be the biggest example,
09:53where a rift between the performer and the studio resulted in the villain,
09:57played by a buddy double, getting dropped down a chimney.
10:00It is admittedly totally glorious.
10:03Something similar happened on The Godfather Part 2, albeit in a slightly subtler way.
10:08Peter Clemenza is depicted as being one of Don Corleone's oldest friends in the original crime classic,
10:13but he's suspiciously absent in the sequel.
10:16His demise gets a throwaway line,
10:18with it being reported that he suffered a heart attack,
10:20but that it might have been down to foul play.
10:23He's barely mentioned again,
10:25and that's because his swift exit was actually down to a rift between the actor,
10:29Richard Castellano, and Paramount Pictures.
10:32Castellano apparently wanted to write his own dialogue,
10:35and refused to lose weight for the sequel,
10:38which resulted in him butting heads with Francis Ford Coppola
10:41and being shunted from the project completely.
10:44The script was rewritten, and Clemenza was killed off.
10:47Shaw gets tortured to death, Alien Covenant.
10:50Now, Prometheus certainly had its fair share of issues,
10:54but in the very least,
10:55Elizabeth Shaw was a compelling and appealing protagonist
10:58to lead a new trilogy of alien movies,
11:00with the first of Scott's Alien prequels teeing up a sequel
11:03where Shaw and android David would venture to the engineer homeworld.
11:08But perhaps in light of Prometheus' divisive reception,
11:11Scott pivoted and made the follow-up Alien Covenant
11:14far more of an alien movie,
11:16with David being effectively thrust into the protagonist's role instead.
11:20Though Shaw did appear in an online prologue video
11:23released before Covenant hit cinemas,
11:25she has only a brief voice role in the movie proper,
11:29before it's revealed later on
11:30that she was killed and experimented upon by David
11:33prior to the events of the film.
11:35Shaw was a badass character
11:37who deserved better than being mutilated off-screen,
11:39and her splayed innards shown to us after the fact.
11:42At the very least,
11:43she could have shown up for a supporting role in Covenant
11:46and died sacrificing herself to help the new band of heroes.
11:49Every video game hero just... disappears.
11:53Resident Evil The Final Chapter.
11:54Paul W.S. Anderson's Resident Evil franchise
11:57absolutely resents the people who enjoy it.
12:01From movie to movie,
12:02the writers constantly disregard their own continuity,
12:05picking and choosing the parts they need
12:06and taking a big old wee on everything else.
12:09What they hate more than coherent storytelling, though,
12:12is the source material the movies are actually based on,
12:15as iconic video game characters are relegated to two-bit imitations.
12:19All that seems set to change by the end of the fifth film, however.
12:22The finale of that saw hero Alice teaming up with former villain Wesker,
12:26as well as Jill Valentine, Leon S. Kennedy,
12:29and the legendary Ada Wong from the video games,
12:32for a last stand in the White House against the hordes of the incoming undead.
12:36It provided an image and a setup so damn cool
12:40that there was no way, no way,
12:42even Paul W.S. Anderson could dick it up.
12:45Of course, that's exactly what he did,
12:47and the next movie, the final chapter,
12:50picks up in the immediate aftermath of this battle,
12:52where Alice is the only survivor.
12:54It's never explained what actually happened,
12:57and you never get to see the action yourself,
12:59and the video game characters who were finally set up to do something,
13:02anything, were just gone.
13:04Aura Sing was killed by Beckett, apparently.
13:08Solo, A Star Wars Story
13:09Solo, A Star Wars Story contains a moment
13:12that's at once a fan-serving Easter egg
13:15and a crushing revelation in and of itself.
13:18You might not know the name Aura Sing,
13:20but you'll certainly recognize the distinctively attired bounty hunter
13:24with deathly pallid skin and striking red hair,
13:27briefly glimpsed during the Phantom Menace's Tatooine pod racing sequence.
13:31Despite her brief appearance,
13:33her unique design struck a chord with fans
13:35who desperately wanted to know more about her.
13:38Many years later,
13:39Sing was featured in a handful of episodes
13:41of animated series Star Wars The Clone Wars
13:43as voiced by Jamie King,
13:46but that was the last we saw of her.
13:48However, Sing's speculated about fate
13:50was finally sewn in to Solo
13:52when Lando Calrissian mentioned that Tobias Beckett killed her,
13:57to which Beckett replied,
13:58pushed her, pretty sure the fool killed her.
14:01While on one hand it was neat to hear Sing's name mentioned
14:03in a major Star Wars movie,
14:05that it was only to announce her death
14:07was a crying shame.
14:09Dawn kills herself, palindromes.
14:11Welcome to the Dollhouse is as extreme
14:13as indie black comedy gets.
14:15The cult classic focuses on Dawn,
14:17a shy, bully preteen
14:19whose terrible family life is made much worse
14:21by her school life.
14:23Her existence is, as it's repeatedly stated,
14:25all around terrible.
14:26But buried within the film's cynical view of the world
14:29is the promise that things will get better for Dawn
14:31as she moves into high school
14:33and then later college.
14:34That's the optimistic dream the film ends on.
14:37Well, as optimistic as Welcome to the Dollhouse
14:39can get anyway,
14:40leaving fans to ponder how Dawn's adulthood
14:42would turn out.
14:44Flash forward nine years
14:45and fans had to wonder no more,
14:47as the spiritual sequel, Palindromes,
14:49opens on her funeral.
14:51It turns out, after school,
14:53Dawn went to college,
14:54put on weight, got pregnant,
14:55and then killed herself.
14:56It's the kind of resolution that was perhaps inevitable
14:59for someone in this particularly bleak world,
15:02but it felt like a needlessly nasty end,
15:04extinguishing any of the hope found in the original movie.
15:07The writer and director of both movies
15:09apparently realized this as well,
15:11and again ten years later,
15:13brought Dawn back in Wiener Dog,
15:15with her apparent demise never being explained.
15:17Donna dies randomly because Meryl Streep wanted out.
15:21Mamma Mia, Here We Go Again.
15:22The Mamma Mia sequel is perhaps the only film in history
15:26to actively shove Meryl Streep to the periphery
15:29and decide it needed less of her.
15:31Well, sort of.
15:32When a sequel to the hit ABBA-themed musical rom-com
15:35was announced,
15:36many were naturally excited to see the Oscar-winning legend
15:39back among the main cast.
15:41Yet, as Streep proved to be strangely absent
15:43from the film's marketing materials,
15:45they became understandably suspicious.
15:47And as it turned out,
15:49that's because Streep's character Donna
15:50died of an unspecified cause
15:52prior to the events of Mamma Mia, Here We Go Again.
15:56Basically, the film pulls a Godfather part two
15:58and spends much of its runtime
15:59on decades prior flashbacks
16:01with the part of a younger Donna played by Lily James.
16:04Donna's death was a bit of an unnecessary bummer,
16:07all things considered,
16:08and the fact that we don't learn precisely what happened to her
16:11didn't help at all.
16:12The reason for killing her off between films
16:14was apparently due to Streep's unwillingness
16:16to return for a major role in the sequel,
16:19and in the words of producer Judy Kramer,
16:21her desire to
16:22leave this to the younger ones.
16:24As if to prove to audiences
16:26she didn't completely know part of the project, though,
16:28Streep does appear briefly at the end of the film,
16:31showing up as a ghost
16:32during the christening of her daughter Sophie's son.
16:35Yet, given that Streep's name and face
16:37were still featured prominently on the movie's posters,
16:40it felt like a bit of a crass bait and switch.
16:42Everyone Explodes!
16:43G.I. Joe Retaliation.
16:45Sometimes a sequel gets made
16:47and you just have no idea why.
16:49G.I. Joe Rise of the Cobra
16:51at best was a complete misfire
16:53and at worst,
16:54completely embarrassing for everyone involved,
16:56especially actor Channing Tatum,
16:58who quickly became a bona fide movie star
17:00following the picture's release.
17:02Paramount pushed ahead with a sequel anyway, though,
17:05subtitled Retaliation,
17:06bringing Tatum back
17:07but dropping pretty much the rest of the cast
17:09from the original,
17:10including Marlon Wayans' ripcord.
17:12Tatum reportedly wanted nothing less
17:15than to return for the sequel
17:16but was contractually obligated to.
17:19Fortunately for him,
17:20he's killed off quickly in the opening,
17:21as an airstrike takes out
17:23all the original G.I. Joe members,
17:25making it clear that he was only brought back
17:27for 10 minutes
17:28so Paramount could use his stupid sexy face
17:30to con people into paying for a sequel
17:33they didn't really want to see.
17:35It's the rest of the cast
17:36that pulled the shot a straw, though.
17:37The studio obviously didn't want to pay
17:40for the actors to return
17:41just to give them a dignified demise,
17:43presumably as they couldn't capitalise
17:45on their image like they could Tatum's,
17:47and instead just implied
17:49that they also died in the explosion.
17:51Becky dies in a car accident while pregnant.
17:54Clerks 3.
17:55Clerks 2 seemingly arrived
17:56at a pretty sunny ending for Dante,
17:59who ends up proposing
18:00to his pregnant girlfriend Becky.
18:02Clerks 3 picks up 15 years later
18:04with the utterly brutal gut punch of a revelation
18:07that, shortly after the events
18:09of the previous movie,
18:10Becky and her unborn child
18:12were killed by a drunk driver.
18:14It kicks the threequel off
18:15on an absolutely heart-wrenching note,
18:18and left many frustrated
18:19at how aggressively it undid Clerks 2's ending.
18:22Though Kevin Smith clearly used Clerks 3
18:24to reckon with his own feelings about death
18:26following his near-fatal 2018 heart attack,
18:29killing Becky rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way.
18:32While it's highly likely that money
18:33or scheduling issues prevented Rosario Dawson
18:36from having a starring role,
18:38there had to be a better way
18:39to nudge her out of the frame
18:41than killing her off so cruelly.
18:43Off on a road trip, perhaps?
18:45Stephen Hiller gets blown up
18:47because Will Smith bailed.
18:49Independence Day Resurgence.
18:50One of the many, many, many, many, many
18:53modern-day soft reboots
18:54that completely forgets
18:56why people loved the original
18:57in the first place.
18:58Independence Day Resurgence
19:00completely pushes the cast
19:01of the first movie to the sidelines
19:03in favour of a far blander,
19:05younger generation of heroes
19:06designed to attract a whole new audience.
19:09One of these wet blankets
19:10is the son of Will Smith's Steve Hiller,
19:13who sadly didn't return for the sequel.
19:15Though the producers and director Roland Emmerich
19:17apparently wanted Will Smith back,
19:19he had to choose between
19:20the Independence Day sequel
19:21and Suicide Squad.
19:23In fairness, that's kind of a no-win scenario,
19:25but ultimately he went to work on the DC film,
19:28and as a result,
19:29the writers just killed him off.
19:31In fact, no,
19:31not only did they just kill him off,
19:33but they did it in the lamest way ever,
19:35having Hiller die in a random explosion
19:37after some alien tech he's working on malfunctions,
19:40which is then reported on the news.
19:43The fact that he did receive the script for the sequel
19:45suggests he originally had a pretty major part,
19:48which wasn't only cut out when he said no,
19:50but was changed so that his character
19:52was outright dead.
19:53Mutt dies in the Vietnam War,
19:56Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
19:58It would seem that Transformers
19:59wasn't the only franchise
20:00to kick Shia LaBeouf to the curb,
20:03as the fifth and purportedly final
20:04Indiana Jones movie
20:05also dispensed with one of his characters.
20:08Now, to be completely fair,
20:10Indiana Jones' son, Mutt Williams,
20:12wasn't exactly a fan-favorite character
20:14in the fourth film,
20:15Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,
20:18but it's not like LaBeouf was working
20:19with A-plus material either.
20:21All the same,
20:23between the overwhelmingly negative response to Mutt,
20:25especially the implication
20:27that he could take up Indy's mantle one day,
20:29and LaBeouf's space of personal issues,
20:32the decision was made to keep the character
20:33entirely out of the recent Indiana Jones
20:36and the Dial of Destiny.
20:37But rather than simply forget about Mutt
20:39or devote a single line to explaining his absence,
20:42the sequel reveals that Mutt died in the Vietnam War,
20:45leaving Indy a depressed alcoholic shell
20:47of his former self,
20:48who even his wife Marion
20:50can't stand to be around anymore.
20:52While you can argue that the film uses Mutt's death
20:55to deepen Indy's characterisation,
20:57were any Indiana Jones fans really pining
21:00to see the whip-cracking hero
21:02depicted as a boozy, guilt-rat mope?
21:04So let's look up.
21:04So,
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