Have Movies Stopped Killing Their Main Character? A Statistical Analysis
A data-driven investigation of movie hero mortality rates
Intro: Everybody Dies, With Some Exceptions
Everybody dies—with the exception of Steven Seagal. As one of the most bankable action stars of the 1980s, Steven Seagal famously insisted he never lose an on-screen fight, driven by his desire to project an invincible martial arts persona. His commitment to unbeatability greatly limited the storytelling beats of his films, which caused his popularity to decline in the early 1990s.
Sensitive to his declining career prospects, Seagal eventually softened his stance on cinematic mortality, permitting the once unthinkable: his death. Seagal allowed his character to be killed in the 1996 film Executive Decision—though this radical act could not save his career as he soon transitioned to lower-budget productions and direct-to-video films.
Steven Seagal's aversion to on-screen mortality offers an exaggerated microcosm of a broader cinematic trend—which is the problem of invincible protagonists. In a world of franchise retread and cinematic universes, main characters rarely seem to die, thereby limiting a film's narrative stakes—or at least that's my hypothesis before examining the data. Are fewer protagonists actually dying, or is my perception misguided?
So today, we'll explore the rise (or fall) of on-screen mortality, identify which stories are most willing to sacrifice their protagonist, and consider what these trends mean for the future of movies.
Have Movies Stopped Killing Their Main Character?
For this analysis, I trained a large language model to parse through 24,000+ Wikipedia plot summaries and identify whether a movie's protagonist (not the villain) dies by the film's end.
According to our model outputs, protagonist mortality dipped in the 1980s, only to edge upward over the past two decades.
Pretty much everything about this chart defied my expectations. Prior to this analysis, I believed hero invincibility was a modern phenomenon, the product of cinematic universes and never-ending franchise slop. Marvel may thrive on stale plotting devoid of tangible consequences, but that's not representative of all movies.
My next question, inevitably, is why. How was I so wrong? What shifts in 1980s filmmaking made heroes harder to kill—and which modern storytelling trends have led screenwriters to kill their protagonists more often?
The answer to this question hinges on a film's market positioning, shaped primarily by a project's genre and budget. As certain storytelling modes fall in and out of fashion, so do the narrative story beats that accompany these archetypes—such as the fate of our hero. So, which genres and movie budgets are responsible for macro-level changes in protagonist mortality?
Enjoying the article thus far and want more data-centric pop culture content?
How Do Genre and Budget Influence Hero Mortality?
2024's Twisters is a relatively compelling tornado-centric franchise reboot elevated by its charismatic leads, whose decent chemistry makes the film's conclusion all the more puzzling. As our protagonists say their sexually charged goodbyes, the two stare into each other's eyes, lean in close, and do not kiss.
Audiences were dumbfounded by this surprisingly chaste behavior—didn't we pay to see an adventure movie with a prominent romantic subplot? What is a prominent romantic subplot without a kiss to literalize their newfound connection?
At first glance, this controversy seems overwhelmingly trivial. Why does it matter if our leads share a kiss? However, at a deeper level, this collective confusion highlights how genre conventions can shape viewer expectations. Romances typically culminate in a final embrace, action plots require a climactic showdown, and sports films must end with a triumphant victory (either literal or metaphorical).
Deep-rooted genre conventions can also influence the fate of our hero, as certain story archetypes are more inclined to kill off their main character. When we quantify the prevalence of protagonist mortality by genre, we find horror, crime, and drama routinely sacrifice their heroes, whereas comedy, romance, and action seldom do.
I've always been perplexed by the relative invincibility of action heroes. These characters regularly find themselves in the most perilous of cinematic scenarios, and audiences simply accept that Arnold Schwarzenegger can kill 100 anonymous henchmen without so much as a flesh wound. What an odd genre.
Genre is a helpful tool for deconstructing narrative patterns, but I wanted to delve deeper since categories like "drama" and "crime" are quite broad. To examine hero mortality in greater detail, I cross-referenced protagonist outcomes with the online keywords tagged to each film.
According to our movie database tags, a protagonist is more likely to die in stories with supernatural elements, biopic reenactments, crime noir plots, and narratives with sexually transgressive material.
Conversely, our hero is more likely to survive stories involving a romance, espionage plot, young adult novel adaptation, or sporting event.
Perhaps the most revealing tag from this group is the "after credits stinger"—a defining hallmark of superhero cinematic universes. If Samuel L. Jackson graces your film's credit sequence to assemble The Avengers, then your hero is alive and well—their fate preserved indefinitely by Disney's corporate strategy.
This datapoint got me thinking about story outcomes as a product of financial investment. Does a higher budget mean a film is more likely to spare its main character?
Unsurprisingly and quite unambiguously, the answer is yes. As a movie's budget increases, the likelihood of its hero perishing decreases.
Perhaps I've underestimated the cultural significance of films with invincible leads. A24 can release 40 indie tearjerkers where everybody dies—carefully crafting stories for Brooklyn hipsters who want to feel something —but these films will draw fewer collective viewers than one dreadful Justice League movie. While a growing number of small-scale films might sacrifice their protagonist, this trend may not reflect the cultural zeitgeist.
To better understand hero mortality as a reflection of popular taste, I reproduced our analysis using "share of box office" as the key metric. According to our dollar-weighted-hero-mortality metric (DWHM), main character fatalities significantly declined in the 1980s and the last two decades.
Put simply, films that successfully draw audiences to theaters are increasingly reluctant to kill off their heroes. This development stems from several Hollywood trends:
The Emergence of the Hollywood Blockbuster: The 1980s saw a surge in Hollywood blockbusters driven by high-concept storytelling, big-budget special effects, franchise-friendly heroes, and strategic mass-marketing campaigns. Instead of waiting for unexpected hits like Jaws or The Godfather, studios began actively engineering films to achieve massive box office, like Top Gun, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Superman, and Batman. These higher-budget productions typically targeted a wider age range. Unfortunately, a common sentiment is that younger viewers may be averse to on-screen depictions of death, so this subject matter is often omitted.
The Rise of the Lone Man (or Woman) Action Movie: The 1980s saw numerous blockbusters centered on the exploits of seemingly invincible action heroes: Commando, Die Hard, Rambo, Bloodsport, and Conan the Barbarian. These films starred larger-than-life actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris, and Steven Seagal, and saw their preternaturally gifted heroes take on entire armies with relative ease. The success of Schwarzenegger and Stallone, coupled with the rise of modern Hollywood action films, contributed to a decline in hero mortality during the 1980s.
The Box Office Dominance of Franchises and Superheroes: The 2010s and 2020s have been dominated by superheroes and franchises. Every story is part of a greater whole, meaning the stakes of any one film must remain low to avoid jeopardizing the franchise. I'm consistently surprised by the popularity of Marvel films given their limited range of story outcomes. Perhaps this narrative stagnation has given rise to genuine "superhero fatigue," yet I expect these films to maintain their box office dominance for the foreseeable future—precisely because of their predictability. These movies are comforting—you know exactly what you're going to get—and that's not to be underestimated. People enjoy familiarity more than they're willing to admit.
Final Thoughts: How Marvel Failed the Marshmallow Test
In 2019, Marvel failed the marshmallow test and effectively diminished the long-term prospects of its vaunted cinematic universe.
For those unfamiliar, the marshmallow test is a psychological experiment from the 1970s where children choose between receiving one marshmallow immediately or waiting a short period to get two marshmallows—thus measuring a child's ability to delay gratification. Children who waited to receive a second marshmallow typically went on to have better life outcomes, such as greater academic achievement and healthier lifestyle. So, how did Marvel fail the marshmallow test and prove themselves incapable of delayed gratification?
In 2019, Marvel was preparing to release Avengers: Endgame after killing off half its superhero cast in Avengers: Infinity War. I know I just spoiled Infinity War, but this movie has been out for almost ten years and is one of the most widely seen entertainment products in human history—so this one's on you. Seeing Spider-Man and Black Panther disintegrate only minutes before Infinity War's end credits was a truly audacious storytelling choice and thus generated renewed enthusiasm for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Apparently, anything was possible.
In Endgame, these characters were subsequently resurrected in an incredible act of event filmmaking, as every superhero in the MCU assembled for one final battle. When this mass resurrection occurred, theatergoers lost their minds, cheering as Spider-Man and Black Panther were reanimated—reborn by multiversal story logic and magical infinity stones (which the audience simply accepted). In the short term, this was awesome. Long term, however, this maneuver demonstrated the triviality of meaningful story developments in the MCU. If dramatic narrative beats could be erased by multiverses and all-powerful stones, then what's the significance of any single event? If these characters are never truly in peril, why should we care?
Marvel had maximized entertainment value in the short term to the detriment of long-term engagement. They received one very valuable marshmallow instead of several slightly less valuable marshmallows (and thus, my metaphor is complete).
Most movies follow a predictable story structure: three acts, an obstacle to overcome, and ultimately, some form of triumph (literal or metaphorical). Thus, the screenwriter's job is to convince us that we're seeing something fresh while adhering to a time-tested storytelling formula. It must remain plausible that a main character could die—even if we doubt this will happen—requiring at least the illusion of genuine peril. If a main character can be "yada-yada-ed" back to life with some intergalactic stones, then the illusion is broken. We grow painfully aware that we're seeing the same old slop.
In life, everybody dies. In art, some people die—with the exception of muscle-bound action heroes, multiversal superbeings, affable rom-com leads, and, of course, Steven Seagal.
Struggling With a Data Problem? Stat Significant Can Help!
Having trouble extracting insights from your data? Need assistance on a data or research project? Well, you’re in luck because Stat Significant offers data consulting services and can help with:
Insights: Unlock actionable insights from your data with customized analyses that drive strategic growth and help you make informed decisions.
Dashboard-Building: Transform your data into clear, compelling dashboards that deliver real-time insights.
Data Architecture: Make your existing data usable through extraction, cleaning, transformation, and the creation of data pipelines.
Want to chat? Drop me an email at daniel@statsignificant.com, connect with me on LinkedIn, reply to this email, or book a free data consultation at the link below.
Want to chat about data and statistics? Have an interesting data project? Looking to produce data-centric editorial content? Email daniel@statsignificant.com
While not a feature movie, "Game of Thrones" has to be considered in this context. It subverted convention by repeatedly killing off key, even lead, characters. GOT conditioned audiences almost to expect this. "Walking Dead" similarly killed off a lot of beloved lead characters. How audiences process this may be driven in part by psychological differences between generations. I know that my friends who loved GOT have no time for Star Trek, which they view as sappy and sentimental and completely unrealistic. (I love both, but that's me.)
A great read! Sometimes I wonder if this safe mode of storytelling will lead to viewers struggling to process grief. We must suspend our disbelief so often for instant gratification instead of being made to reflect on the consequences of the characters' actions. No wonder many of us feel like we can't live up to our own potential.