THE MANY DEATHS OF SEAN BEAN
For any fan of HBO’s runaway hit Game of Thrones
who had not read the George R. R. Martin books
on which they are based, the sudden and brutal death in
episode nine of Lord Eddard Stark, immaculately played
by Sean Bean, came as something of a surprise. And not,
by and large, a pleasant one.
Just look at how Hitler reacted!
Therein, Sean Bean is referred to as a “two-legged spoiler”, because he “always snuffs it.” And, yeah, that’s not at all unjust. Sure, he made it all the way through Troy, what with his awesome portrayal of canny Odysseus (who, of course, has to live in order to go on The Odyssey), and Greek mythology proved to be further kind to him with his appearance as the immortal—if petulant—King of the Gods, Zeus, in Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. Of course, his appearance as our hero in all of those Sharpe movies, based on the swashbuckling Bernard Cornwell books (Sharpe’s Company, Sharpe’s Enemy, Sharpe’s Sword, etc.) have left him yet alive, and he even managed to survive a post-apocalyptic, monster-ridden nightmare in last year’s Syfy original movie, The Lost Future (despite some very close calls; he even got shot with an arrow and lived!).
Bean recently survived a real life stabbing, too, thank all that is holy. You’d think that he’d know better than to get close to sharp objects by now. After all, he’s played sundry characters -- many of them sympathetic villains -- who die by blade… a lot. Below, a list of twenty-five (yes, twenty-five) times Sean Bean has passed from this mortal coil on film.
Needless to say, SPOILERS ABOUND. You have been warned.
1. Ranuccio
Caravaggio (1986)
Notable for being a) the first time Sean Bean meets his maker on film and b) a whole lotta nakedness, this meandering biopic of artist Michelangelo Merisi (as opposed to, y'know, the Ninja Turtle) sees Bean play a prize fighter-cum-artist’s model who arouses the passion of his patron but who is in turn in love with the dirty-faced Lena (Tilda Swinton). A twisted triangle ensues, and eventually simple-minded Ranuccio gets his throat sliced open for his impudence. Also starring Dexter Fletcher (oh, hello, Spike from Press Gang!) as the young Caravaggio, this movie is stylized, anachronistic, frustratingly silent for long passages of time and bizarrely foot fetishistic… and is probably even less fun than all of that makes it sound.
2. German Soldier
War Requiem (1989)
Another movie with director Derek Jarman (of Caravaggio renown… or not), and another onscreen death for Bean as his character, known simply as German Soldier, is killed when he is shot in the hand and then has a bayonet run through his body. Then there’s a truly incomprehensible bit at the end where… maybe he’s in Heaven? But a really depressing Heaven? Yeah, this is one wacked out film. Indeed, it’s pretty much a silent movie, with all the “action” set to the rousing strains of composer Benjamin Britten’s 1962 music exploring, well, war. There is a whole lot of miming, and the only dialogue is provided by the occasional poem recitation and a choir harmonizing indeterminately. Don’t be fooled into thinking that Bean must have been merely an extra in this film, with a character name like “German Soldier”. After all, in this, his last performance, Sir Laurence Olivier’s character rejoiced under the sobriquet “Old Soldier”. Meanwhile, this movie is fatiguing and dull; not remotely recommended.
3. Tadgh McCabe
The Field (1990)
This Irish family drama centers on farmers determined to keep their land, no matter what the cost. Bean plays the dutiful son of the clan, and meets his end when -- and this is true -- he falls over a cliff whilst running from a herd of stampeding cows. It’s just so The Lion King, and emphatically not funny. Even though it sounds like it probably should be.
4. Carver Doone
Lorna Doone (1990)
In R. D. Blackmore’s classic, beloved 1869 tale of costumed melodrama, pretty young Lorna Doone is in danger of a forced marriage to her cousin, the willful, wild and witless Carver. She is in love with another man -- the simple but stalwart John Ridd, who hates the dastardly Doones with some heat. (They killed his father. Prepare to die.) It is soon discovered that she is not a Doone at all, however; having been kidnapped by those brigands as a baby, she is revealed to be heiress to a vast fortune, and consequently she and Ridd are parted. Through various political maneuverings and a bunch of lurid plot devicing, Lorna is eventually reunited with her love; meanwhile, the tyrannical Doones have finally pissed off their neighbors royally and are all of them put to the metaphorical sword. Carter survives to shoot Lorna on her wedding day, and is punished for this egregious act by drowning in a mire. A mire! (Lorna lives, by the way. Huzzah!)
The movie’s just like that… except it kind of sucks. Bean’s commitment to Carver’s sociopathic bluster is this lackluster film’s only saving grace; so much so that one could almost wish that Lorna would choose him over the whey-faced Clive Owen-as-Ridd, and that he would emerge victorious from her two suitors’ inevitable confrontation. But… no.
5. Gabriel Lewis
Screen One, “Tell Me That You Love Me”, 03.02 (1991)
It’s a story told in a hundred Lifetime movies. Woman meets handsome, charismatic, tender man and she falls under his spell. But before long he becomes unreasonably jealous of her attention, starts to accuse her of heinous disloyalty, and the dream turns into a nightmare as she becomes the focus of his hypnotic, psychotic obsession. Bean’s Gabriel is just such a man, but with one notable difference. When, at the last, his inamorata Laura has been freed from his control, it is not because he has been taken permanently out of the picture by her new boyfriend, a protective police officer or through the kind offices of America’s lax gun control laws. No, Gabriel stabs himself rather than live without his "other half". It’s quite sweet, really.
6. Robert Lovelace
Clarissa (1991)
This sumptuous three-part costume drama, based on the 18th-century Samuel Richardson novel, is utterly captivating. Bean plays Robert Lovelace, a privileged, charming and spoilt man about town who sets his wicked sights on the virtuous and steadfast young beauty, Clarissa (Saskia Wickham). She is initially attracted (as are we all), but slowly he reveals himself to be an utter cad, rakehell and scoundrel. He rapes the poor dear child, and is finally called to account for his nefariousness by his best-friend Jack (Sean Pertwee), and he is then stabbed with a rapier in a duel over the lady’s honor. A fitting end.
7. Sean Miller
Patriot Games (1992)
Armed Irish Repbulican militants are at the heart of this taut political thriller, and Sean Bean is at the heart of them. Miller has been haunted by tragedy and has turned to vengeance against the English to soothe his wounded poet’s soul; unfortunately for him, superspy Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford, in a typically excellent performance) foils his Royal assassination plan, killing Sean’s brother in the process, and pretty soon the two are facing off mano-a-mano to the death… which, of course, comes to Miller, courtesy of Ryan. He get’s beaten, impaled on a boat anchor, and then blown up. Talk about adding insult to injury!
8. Lord Fenton
Scarlett (1994)
For many, the sequel to Margaret Mitchell’s much revered Gone With the Wind was the answer to a lifelong prayer. To others, it was as unnecessary as Teen Wolf 2. (For those who just want to cut to the chase: yes, Scarlett and Rhett do end up together.) In the much-watched mini-series made of Alexandra Ripley’s 900-page fanfic, our heroine was played by Joanna Whalley (who’s just never done anything to compare to Willow), our hero by Timothy Dalton, and Sean Bean turned in a suave yet sinister performance as the dastardly and calculating Lord Fenton, a -- not to put too fine a point on it -- rapist (again?) who is stabbed to death by one of his victims. (In the book, there was way less rape. Also, Fenton didn’t die and Scarlett wasn’t put on trial for the crime. Hollywood is wacky like that.)
9. Alec Trevelyan
GoldenEye (1995)
Trevelyan is one of those sympathetic bad guys at which Sean Bean so excels: raised in England after the death of his parents at the age of six, he is in fact of Eastern European descent, and his family -- denied entry into the Empire at the conclusion of World War II due to their collaboration with the Nazis -- were killed on the orders of Stalin. Don’t you hate when that happens? Despite being best buds with Bond, James Bond (Pierce Brosnan), Trevelyan plots his revenge on the nation he holds responsible, betraying his MI6 foster family and going into business as an arms dealer with delusions of world-domination-y grandeur. Of course, his evil schemes must be thwarted, and after some tense moments the scarred, still unrepentant Trevelyan meets his fate crushed to death underneath the burning, mangled weight of the… er… big-ass antenna he’d been hoping to make his own.
Best. Bond villain. Ever.
10. Dave Toombs
Airborne (1998)
Not to be confused with the 1993 teen skateboarding flick starring Seth Green and Jack Black (which is truly awful and yet is a way, way better film), Airborne is an action movie starring Steve Guttenberg. Yes, you read that correctly. He heads up a special ops squad tasked with retrieving a generic bioagent from some thieves mid-air. Naturally enough, Bean plays our villain, a black-clad arms dealer with a crisp British accent and crazy eyes who gets the only even vaguely decent lines and ends up shot in the chest. But, hey, at least it wasn't by, of all embarrassing ways to go out, Guttenberg. This may very well be the funniest movie you will ever see.
Please enjoy this trailer for what surely has to be a cinematic prank to rival Joaquin Phoenix’s I'm Still Here:
11. Jason Locke
Essex Boys (2000)
True Crime meets crime noir as this ripped-from-the-headlines tale casts Bean as merciless drug kingpin Locke, whose various double-dealings and thoughtless cruelties come back to bite him in the… well, everywhere, as he and two rivals/associates are gunned down while waiting patiently in a Range Rover, expecting to make a big score. Notable as much for Alex Kingston’s knockout turn as Locke’s Machiavellian, foulmouthed wife as for Bean’s full-frontal assault of a performance, Essex Boys is never a fun movie to watch, but is definitely one you won’t soon forget.
12. Boromir
The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Even if one hadn’t read The Lord of the Rings books and knew ahead of time that charming but corrupted Boromir was not long for this world, by 2001 Sean Bean had already established such a fine tradition of spectacular anti-hero death that his demise-by-orc was almost a given. The direction of this movie was such that when those orcs came racing towards Boromir, and he stood heroically fending them off in order to cover Pippin and Merry’s retreat, one couldn’t help but hope he would, against all the odds, make it. Alas, he was shot full of arrows. (Or, perhaps, happily he was shot full of arrows, considering the fervor of Tolkien purists.)
Just look at how Hitler reacted!
Therein, Sean Bean is referred to as a “two-legged spoiler”, because he “always snuffs it.” And, yeah, that’s not at all unjust. Sure, he made it all the way through Troy, what with his awesome portrayal of canny Odysseus (who, of course, has to live in order to go on The Odyssey), and Greek mythology proved to be further kind to him with his appearance as the immortal—if petulant—King of the Gods, Zeus, in Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. Of course, his appearance as our hero in all of those Sharpe movies, based on the swashbuckling Bernard Cornwell books (Sharpe’s Company, Sharpe’s Enemy, Sharpe’s Sword, etc.) have left him yet alive, and he even managed to survive a post-apocalyptic, monster-ridden nightmare in last year’s Syfy original movie, The Lost Future (despite some very close calls; he even got shot with an arrow and lived!).
Bean recently survived a real life stabbing, too, thank all that is holy. You’d think that he’d know better than to get close to sharp objects by now. After all, he’s played sundry characters -- many of them sympathetic villains -- who die by blade… a lot. Below, a list of twenty-five (yes, twenty-five) times Sean Bean has passed from this mortal coil on film.
Needless to say, SPOILERS ABOUND. You have been warned.
1. RanuccioCaravaggio (1986)
Notable for being a) the first time Sean Bean meets his maker on film and b) a whole lotta nakedness, this meandering biopic of artist Michelangelo Merisi (as opposed to, y'know, the Ninja Turtle) sees Bean play a prize fighter-cum-artist’s model who arouses the passion of his patron but who is in turn in love with the dirty-faced Lena (Tilda Swinton). A twisted triangle ensues, and eventually simple-minded Ranuccio gets his throat sliced open for his impudence. Also starring Dexter Fletcher (oh, hello, Spike from Press Gang!) as the young Caravaggio, this movie is stylized, anachronistic, frustratingly silent for long passages of time and bizarrely foot fetishistic… and is probably even less fun than all of that makes it sound.
2. German SoldierWar Requiem (1989)
Another movie with director Derek Jarman (of Caravaggio renown… or not), and another onscreen death for Bean as his character, known simply as German Soldier, is killed when he is shot in the hand and then has a bayonet run through his body. Then there’s a truly incomprehensible bit at the end where… maybe he’s in Heaven? But a really depressing Heaven? Yeah, this is one wacked out film. Indeed, it’s pretty much a silent movie, with all the “action” set to the rousing strains of composer Benjamin Britten’s 1962 music exploring, well, war. There is a whole lot of miming, and the only dialogue is provided by the occasional poem recitation and a choir harmonizing indeterminately. Don’t be fooled into thinking that Bean must have been merely an extra in this film, with a character name like “German Soldier”. After all, in this, his last performance, Sir Laurence Olivier’s character rejoiced under the sobriquet “Old Soldier”. Meanwhile, this movie is fatiguing and dull; not remotely recommended.
3. Tadgh McCabeThe Field (1990)
This Irish family drama centers on farmers determined to keep their land, no matter what the cost. Bean plays the dutiful son of the clan, and meets his end when -- and this is true -- he falls over a cliff whilst running from a herd of stampeding cows. It’s just so The Lion King, and emphatically not funny. Even though it sounds like it probably should be.
4. Carver DooneLorna Doone (1990)
In R. D. Blackmore’s classic, beloved 1869 tale of costumed melodrama, pretty young Lorna Doone is in danger of a forced marriage to her cousin, the willful, wild and witless Carver. She is in love with another man -- the simple but stalwart John Ridd, who hates the dastardly Doones with some heat. (They killed his father. Prepare to die.) It is soon discovered that she is not a Doone at all, however; having been kidnapped by those brigands as a baby, she is revealed to be heiress to a vast fortune, and consequently she and Ridd are parted. Through various political maneuverings and a bunch of lurid plot devicing, Lorna is eventually reunited with her love; meanwhile, the tyrannical Doones have finally pissed off their neighbors royally and are all of them put to the metaphorical sword. Carter survives to shoot Lorna on her wedding day, and is punished for this egregious act by drowning in a mire. A mire! (Lorna lives, by the way. Huzzah!)
The movie’s just like that… except it kind of sucks. Bean’s commitment to Carver’s sociopathic bluster is this lackluster film’s only saving grace; so much so that one could almost wish that Lorna would choose him over the whey-faced Clive Owen-as-Ridd, and that he would emerge victorious from her two suitors’ inevitable confrontation. But… no.
5. Gabriel LewisScreen One, “Tell Me That You Love Me”, 03.02 (1991)
It’s a story told in a hundred Lifetime movies. Woman meets handsome, charismatic, tender man and she falls under his spell. But before long he becomes unreasonably jealous of her attention, starts to accuse her of heinous disloyalty, and the dream turns into a nightmare as she becomes the focus of his hypnotic, psychotic obsession. Bean’s Gabriel is just such a man, but with one notable difference. When, at the last, his inamorata Laura has been freed from his control, it is not because he has been taken permanently out of the picture by her new boyfriend, a protective police officer or through the kind offices of America’s lax gun control laws. No, Gabriel stabs himself rather than live without his "other half". It’s quite sweet, really.
6. Robert LovelaceClarissa (1991)
This sumptuous three-part costume drama, based on the 18th-century Samuel Richardson novel, is utterly captivating. Bean plays Robert Lovelace, a privileged, charming and spoilt man about town who sets his wicked sights on the virtuous and steadfast young beauty, Clarissa (Saskia Wickham). She is initially attracted (as are we all), but slowly he reveals himself to be an utter cad, rakehell and scoundrel. He rapes the poor dear child, and is finally called to account for his nefariousness by his best-friend Jack (Sean Pertwee), and he is then stabbed with a rapier in a duel over the lady’s honor. A fitting end.
7. Sean Miller Patriot Games (1992)
Armed Irish Repbulican militants are at the heart of this taut political thriller, and Sean Bean is at the heart of them. Miller has been haunted by tragedy and has turned to vengeance against the English to soothe his wounded poet’s soul; unfortunately for him, superspy Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford, in a typically excellent performance) foils his Royal assassination plan, killing Sean’s brother in the process, and pretty soon the two are facing off mano-a-mano to the death… which, of course, comes to Miller, courtesy of Ryan. He get’s beaten, impaled on a boat anchor, and then blown up. Talk about adding insult to injury!
8. Lord FentonScarlett (1994)
For many, the sequel to Margaret Mitchell’s much revered Gone With the Wind was the answer to a lifelong prayer. To others, it was as unnecessary as Teen Wolf 2. (For those who just want to cut to the chase: yes, Scarlett and Rhett do end up together.) In the much-watched mini-series made of Alexandra Ripley’s 900-page fanfic, our heroine was played by Joanna Whalley (who’s just never done anything to compare to Willow), our hero by Timothy Dalton, and Sean Bean turned in a suave yet sinister performance as the dastardly and calculating Lord Fenton, a -- not to put too fine a point on it -- rapist (again?) who is stabbed to death by one of his victims. (In the book, there was way less rape. Also, Fenton didn’t die and Scarlett wasn’t put on trial for the crime. Hollywood is wacky like that.)
9. Alec TrevelyanGoldenEye (1995)
Trevelyan is one of those sympathetic bad guys at which Sean Bean so excels: raised in England after the death of his parents at the age of six, he is in fact of Eastern European descent, and his family -- denied entry into the Empire at the conclusion of World War II due to their collaboration with the Nazis -- were killed on the orders of Stalin. Don’t you hate when that happens? Despite being best buds with Bond, James Bond (Pierce Brosnan), Trevelyan plots his revenge on the nation he holds responsible, betraying his MI6 foster family and going into business as an arms dealer with delusions of world-domination-y grandeur. Of course, his evil schemes must be thwarted, and after some tense moments the scarred, still unrepentant Trevelyan meets his fate crushed to death underneath the burning, mangled weight of the… er… big-ass antenna he’d been hoping to make his own.
Best. Bond villain. Ever.
10. Dave ToombsAirborne (1998)
Not to be confused with the 1993 teen skateboarding flick starring Seth Green and Jack Black (which is truly awful and yet is a way, way better film), Airborne is an action movie starring Steve Guttenberg. Yes, you read that correctly. He heads up a special ops squad tasked with retrieving a generic bioagent from some thieves mid-air. Naturally enough, Bean plays our villain, a black-clad arms dealer with a crisp British accent and crazy eyes who gets the only even vaguely decent lines and ends up shot in the chest. But, hey, at least it wasn't by, of all embarrassing ways to go out, Guttenberg. This may very well be the funniest movie you will ever see.
Please enjoy this trailer for what surely has to be a cinematic prank to rival Joaquin Phoenix’s I'm Still Here:
11. Jason LockeEssex Boys (2000)
True Crime meets crime noir as this ripped-from-the-headlines tale casts Bean as merciless drug kingpin Locke, whose various double-dealings and thoughtless cruelties come back to bite him in the… well, everywhere, as he and two rivals/associates are gunned down while waiting patiently in a Range Rover, expecting to make a big score. Notable as much for Alex Kingston’s knockout turn as Locke’s Machiavellian, foulmouthed wife as for Bean’s full-frontal assault of a performance, Essex Boys is never a fun movie to watch, but is definitely one you won’t soon forget.
12. BoromirThe Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Even if one hadn’t read The Lord of the Rings books and knew ahead of time that charming but corrupted Boromir was not long for this world, by 2001 Sean Bean had already established such a fine tradition of spectacular anti-hero death that his demise-by-orc was almost a given. The direction of this movie was such that when those orcs came racing towards Boromir, and he stood heroically fending them off in order to cover Pippin and Merry’s retreat, one couldn’t help but hope he would, against all the odds, make it. Alas, he was shot full of arrows. (Or, perhaps, happily he was shot full of arrows, considering the fervor of Tolkien purists.)
Ahead: More stabbings, shootings, and suchlike...