[This article contains spoilers!]

There are film scenes which make me close my eyes, and these are not scenes including a joyful crowd of naked bodies. The problem appears when bodies visible on the screen lack some limbs or when they are flooded with blood. Sean Bean, a British actor, is a master of such scenes. He’s died in a number of movies, and we have to admit that he is quite skilled in what he’s doing. Directors seem to have made a competition out of this, and they keep inventing new ways to kill him. Some examples from the “Kill Sean Bean” game are, among many others, pushing off a cliff by a herd of cows, beheading, tearing apart by horses, hanging, slitting throat, stabbing, and being shot with bullets or arrows. Just like in one of Metallica’s songs – “Sad but true”. Geez! All of us will kick the bucket someday, but Sean undoubtedly is in the lead, when it comes to dying. Just take a look at the compilation below:

The first time I saw Sean Bean’s death on the screen was in his role of Boromir in “The Lord of the Rings”. I remember it well – I was watching the movie with my younger sister, squeaking when I saw the slow-motion death of the handsome warrior. I looked at this partly covering my eyes with my hands, and I remember myself saying to my sister: “Don’t let him fall flat on his stomach, not his stomach!”. Phew… At least the arrows didn’t come out of his back. Eh, how I regretted Boromir’s death…

Another of Sean Bean’s roles which made me feel like OUCH! was the role of Sean Miller in “Patriot Games”. The final battle between Sean and Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) takes place on a speeding motorboat. Just looking at the title of this article you can guess that Sean Bean loses this battle as well, and dies skewered on a blade. This scene used to haunt me for a long time, because I had a very vivid imagination as a child. (“It pierced him through!”)

I remembered this good enough to say: “He’ll die in the end, won’t he?” while watching another movie with Sean (“Golden Eye”). The family member with whom I was watching the movie just gave me a murderous stare, but I was actually right – Sean turned out to be a good boy and didn’t let me down. Which means that at the end of the movie he fell down from a great height and got smashed by a burning construction.

His spectacular death in „The Game of Thrones” is worth mentioning, too. When the broadcasting of the series started, I had already read around a quarter of the book. When everyone felt shocked or indignant because of Ned’s death in the 9th episode, I had been sure he’d die ever since I saw him in the first scene of the first episode. You could say he’s a real spoiler-man.

I don’t want you to think I’m a mean liar, so I need to mention the movies in which our favourite “dead man” remains alive, for example in “Troy” or the series of movies about Richard Sharpe in which he plays the main role. But that’s just a tiny decoy… Anyway, the diversity of his film roles is so great, that you can say he died in every historical epoch.

Now it’s high time I ended this article, because when I look at all those drastic scenes, I start to feel sore as well…

Marta "Nubia" Porwich
Tłumaczenie: Justyna "Rayla" Mędrek