Death is the true final frontier… in reality, there is no way to avoid it.  We’re all building up to our inevitable death scene at some point in the future.  But in the world of movies, characters can not only skirt death and return after the funeral, they can have one of the coolest and most memorable deaths ever imagined. There is no better scene than a death scene and actors often will take on a role knowing that their character will die on screen.  Sometimes a death scene is Oscar bait and sometimes it’s to get out of doing a sequel.  Harrison Ford famously wanted Han Solo to die in the “final” film in the Star Wars series, but George Lucas refused.  Too bad.  A badass like Han Solo going down would have been memorable indeed.

The Best Five…
Here’s a round up of five of the most gut-wrenching, tear-jerking, awesometacular best movie death scenes…

5. Exploding Head from Dawn of the Dead
Sure, this dope had about a half second of screen time before he was blown away and maybe it was human or zombie but we’ll never know because the officer responsible had such an itchy trigger finger.  One important fact remains: that exploding head from the original 1978 version of Dawn of the Dead changed everything.  It meant that you could show heads blowing up in movies. David Cronenberg would have never been able to make Scanners without George Romero giving this gift to the world of film and altering the course of cinematic history.

4. Spock* from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn
Not only did Spock (Leonard Nimoy) save the starship Enterprise and provide a tearful farewell, he out-acted William Shatner. (Honorable mention must go to Ricardo Montalban as Kahn… in the face of death he was bloody and hobbled yet still spitting in the face of Kirk.)
* Fortunately or unfortunately, Spock also had time to save the essence of his brain within McCoy’s gray matter hard drive so that he could return in the very next movie in which the title kind of gives everything away: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.  No one really dies in the world of science fiction.

3. Sonny Corleone from The Godfather
You would never expect a mafia crime lord like Sonny (James Caan) to go out without a fight.  And even though he was not armed, Sonny stood there and took machine gun fire like a man.  The Don would be proud.

2. Indiana Jones Three-way Tie!
Steven Spielberg films have always had particularly good death scenes with Jaws providing Quint a shocking end inside the mouth of that wretched shark.  But the trio of baddies from Raiders of the Lost Ark go out in a blaze of glory in which one melts, one bursts into flames and another explodes.  It’s extremely difficult to top a threesome ending with flaming, oozing and blowing up.

1. Taylor from Beneath the Planet of the Apes
In Beneath the Planet of the Apes, astronaut from the past Taylor (Charlton Heston) brings it to this upside down world of the apes.  Riddled with machine gun fire, Taylor gives the middle finger to the world by detonating a nuclear device that blows up the entire earth killing everyone.  And in case you didn’t catch it, the film closes with voiceover narrated by Orson Welles himself informing the audience that this world has come to an end.  Brutal.

The Worst Five…
There’s nothing worse than dying except for failing to die well.  There are no “do-overs” when it comes to death.  Here’s a round-up of five of the lamest, weakest, most disappointing, just simply the worst death scenes in movie history…

5. James T. Kirk from Star Trek: Generations
The very first film from the Next Generation Star Trek crew was supposed to be a smooth transition original series crew.  Kirk does his best to kick some ass, but is defeated by falling off some bridge or something?  Laying on the ground, Kirk utters these memorable final words, “It was fun.”  Not really.  Hey new Kirk, Chris Pine, we’re counting on you to die cooler when it’s your turn!

4. T-800 from Terminator 2: Judgment Day
After winning the day and defeating the T-1000, the T-800 version of Arnold commits suicide by lowering himself into a vat of molten metal.  And this final act of self-sacrifice is punctuated by Arnold giving a thumbs up. A thumbs up? Really? Roger Ebert must not have been pleased.

3. Leo from Titanic
Okay, it’s not that Leonardo DiCaprio’s character from Titanic dies, every man who saw that movie wanted to see him die, it’s that it happens in such an uneventful way.  Rose (Kate Winslet) wakes up to find him frozen to death.  Would it have been too much to ask to see him freeze to death in real time with a final satisfying death rattle?

2. Star Wars Three-way Tie!
Boba Fett and Yoda and the Emperor are among the most powerful characters in all of Star Wars.  And they all die in horribly disappointing ways in Return of the Jedi.  Let’s see, Boba falls into a Sarlacc pit, the Emperor is thrown down a bottomless Death Star chasm by Vader and Yoda is so old that he just fades away.  Proving that in the world of Star Wars, the cause of death is usually from old age, falling into a bottomless chasm or an explosion if you happen to be one of the nameless drones working on one of the Death Stars.  Tough break workers.

1. Dumbledore from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
It should not be considered a spoiler to learn that Dumbledore “dies” at the end of the latest Harry Potter movie.  (Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock or not been using the internet, Dumbledore’s death was widely reported more than three years ago when the book came out.  I mean, there are Facebook groups dedicated to this.)  But it’s the way that Dumbledore meets his demise that is so disheartening… the powerful wizard is taken down with the flick of a wand.  Put up a fight next time old man!  While I have not read the books, one can suspect looking at his Lord of the Rings doppelganger Gandalf that the white bearded one will be making a return.  If there is a do-over, die better the second time.