The 10 Greatest Heroic Sacrifices in Movie History

What do giant robots, fantasy warriors, and childhood imaginary friends all have in common? They each know how to lay down their lives when duty calls. Heroes come in all shapes and sizes: some human, some mechanical, and some like a weird elephant/racoon thing. But like a man on the internet sharing his perfect bleed-out spot meme, every hero on this list was ready and willing to make a gloriously cinematic sacrifice. These are 10 heroes who became movie legends not by how they lived, but by how they died. Grab a box of tissues, read on, and let the sacrifices not have been in vain.

Boromir

One does not simply become the poster child for heroic sacrifice in cinema, but at the climax of The Fellowship of the Ring, Boromir did. Unlike the rest of the Fellowship, Boromir wasn’t a powerful wizard, an ethereal elf, a dwarven hero, a pure-hearted hobbit, or a long-lost king. He was just a normal guy. Brave, brash, and ultimately fallible. He represents the duality of man in The Lord of the Rings universe. He burns with the desire to do great things, but it’s this craving for glory that made him so easily tempted by the One Ring’s promises of power. And despite nearly dooming The Fellowship with his all-too-human capacity for evil, he ends up heroically saving Frodo’s life by laying down his own. It’s impossible not to be moved watching him turned into a human pincushion by ork arrows, but still attempting to fight. Oh, Boromir, my captain, my king, you died a hero before you could turn into a villain — as the greatest heroes do.

Bing Bong

Leave it to Pixar to make audiences weep over an elephant/racoon named Bing Bong. The once-beloved imaginary friend of a girl named Riley Andersen, Inside Out‘s furry tragic hero faded from Riley’s consciousness as she grew older. And as Riley’s turbulent pre-teen emotions began to take center stage in her psyche, Bing Bong gracefully resigned himself to her subconscious mind. But once Riley’s inner sense of joy was threatened, poor Bing Bong was called to make an even greater sacrifice. A font of unconditional love, Bing Bong chose to fade from Riley’s memory to protect her and help her grow. He always dreamed of going to the moon with her, and before fading away, he passed that torch to Joy. The death of innocence is one of the cruelest parts of growing up, especially when poor guys like Bing Bong end up on the chopping block.

The Iron Giant

In the nuclear paranoia of a Cold War world, a best friendship between a little boy and a giant robot was never going to last. The Iron Giant‘s titular mechanical man is about as heroic as they come, a simple-minded giant with more emotional depth than every human in the small town where he crash-landed. While everyone and their mother knows the story of Superman in this 1950s world, few took the comic’s lessons to heart as deeply as this mechanical giant. After all, I didn’t see anyone else in that small town use their rocket-propelled feet to heroically throw their 50-foot iron frame in front of an approaching nuke in low orbit. “Superman” were the Iron Giant’s last words, and he’s more super than the Man of Steel himself.

Father Karras

Father Karras was a man struggling with his faith in God, a battle woefully exacerbated by a demonic being that possessed a sweet little girl. The tragic hero of The Exorcist, Karras makes the ultimate sacrifice to free the world of that ancient, supernatural evil. But while his heroic journey culminates in self-defenestration while possessed by the dastardly Pazuzu, it begins far before that. By actually considering that Reagan is truly possessed, Karras first sacrifices his own professional standing as both a psychiatrist and a priest — exorcisms aren’t exactly something that mental health professionals or the Catholic Church really recommend. Karras’ spiritual doubts are ultimately dispelled by a confrontation with spiritual evil, and his self-sacrifice ultimately preserves the very thing Pazuzu sought to destroy: his faith in God. Never has a heroic sacrifice carried such thematic weight!

Jack Dawson (and many others)

Jack’s heroic ménage à trois with Rose and a floating door in the frigid North Atlantic waters is the stuff of cinema legend. His sacrifice was so painfully affecting to audiences that some Titanic watchers tried to prove that it didn’t need to happen at all. “There was space on the door!” they said. “It would have carried them both!” But according to director James Cameron, Jack had to die — science says so. 25 years after the film’s release, Cameron tested the fan theory that Jack could have fit on the door. Yeah, he could have fit, but the door would have sunk and killed them both. Besides, poor Jack had to die for this Romeo and Juliet retelling to have any artistic meaning. As for the ship’s captain, the crew, and the band, we wish they didn’t have to go down with the ship either. Gentlemen, it was truly an honor.

Everyone in Rogue One

The Star Wars franchise tends to play by classic hero’s journey rules: good guys win, bad guys lose. Then Rogue One hit cinemas like a shrieking TIE fighter and made us all screamcry in response. The good guys die in this film. Every. Single. One. This squad of heroes laid down their lives to help a certain Chosen One blow up the Death Star. Without the deadly space orb’s schematics, the Rebel fleet would never have known about its proton torpedo-sized exhaust port. And as we learn in the film, this design flaw was created by engineer Galen Erso, the tragically killed father of the film’s tragically killed heroic protagonist Jyn. Heroic sacrifice runs in the family.

Joseph Cooper

Joseph Connor is the only character on this list whose heroic sacrifice didn’t result in death, but he didn’t know that when he was making it. To shed mass from the spaceship Endurance and save his friend Amelia, Interstellar‘s astronaut hero self-ejected into the jaws of a gargantuan black hole. While he was ultimately rescued by some kindly higher-dimensional aliens, Cooper was fully prepared to suffer the most existentially terrifying death a human being could conceivably suffer. Black holes are lightless voids that shred matter at an atomic level, and if the aliens hadn’t intervened, Cooper would have felt himself pulled apart by the black hole’s tidal forces. That’s a little too heroic a sacrifice if you ask me.

Seok-woo (and many others)

Train to Busan‘s workaholic protagonist ultimately showed up for his poor daughter, but it took a zombie apocalypse to make it happen. While this divorced dad was usually too busy to be there for his kid, he proved his love for her by saving her from hordes of flesh-eating zombies. Seok-woo wasn’t the only one to lay down his life for a loved one. Plenty of the other passengers (like the heroic Sang-hwa) sacrifice themselves to buy the other survivors a little more time. Poor Kim Su-an manages to survive the horrifying ordeal after watching her zombie-bitten father throw himself from the train, making this film’s ending the definition of bittersweet.

Jasper

Tons of people die for the cause in Children of Men, but Jasper’s death is the most heroic of all. In a dystopian world where humans are slowly becoming infertile, activist-turned-bureaucrat Theo is tasked with escorting the pregnant Kee to a secret group of scientists trying to stop the catastrophe. They’re tailed by a militia group called the Fishes, and take refuge with Theo’s stoner cartoonist friend Jasper. When the Fishes find them, poor old Jasper goes out to buy them some time. He doesn’t have a gun or grenade up his sleeve, just his natural charm, which only buys Theo and Kee a few minutes. The Fishes kill him, but not before he flips them a glorious middle finger. Dystopia or no, death comes for us all in this world, and Jasper chose to go out in the most heroic way possible.

Logan

Marvel movies are chock-full of heroic sacrifices. Iron Man. Groot. Captain America. Black Widow. But while many lives were tragically lost in the fight against Thanos, arguably the most devastating death in Marvel’s multiverse happens in another timeline. Logan takes place after the dissolution of the X-Men, following its titular adamantium-clawed hero through a grim future world. Reduced to a drunken drifter, Logan ultimately finds purpose taking care of young Laura, a mutant with powers like his. After teaching Laura everything he knows, Logan’s ultimately dies after battling mercenaries trying to abduct her. His heroic sacrifice signals the end of an era: there are no mutants left but one. Superheroes may be gone from this world, but the last surviving one’s final act helped a little girl find peace. The X-Men could leave no more heroic a legacy.

(featured image: 20th Century Fox)

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