The last year that I taught high school English, one of my classes and I conjured up a quasi-serious theory about some of the fiction we read, applicable to modern movies as well. We coined it the “Schneiderian Death Theory,” which we later changed to “Schneiderian Theory of Death” because we could then call it STD, which we all thought was very funny (and confirmed that I shouldn’t have been teaching kids who were on the same maturity level I was on).
It all started while reading Dickens’s Great Expectations, a book I despise more and more with each subsequent reading. In the novel, we have the notoriously deceptive and manipulative Miss Havisham, who preys on poor susceptible Pip’s infatuation for Estella for the better part of the unnecessarily long Victorian text.
But one thing about the plot always sticks out to me. Right before the villainous Miss Havisham oddly and spontaneously catches on fire for no apparent reason, she has a moment of clarity in which she apologetically begs Pip for forgiveness. Then, in true Dickensian fashion, she dies.
So, why do I care? Well, I’m curious about what characters do in the waning moments of their paper lives, when an author or screenwriter has already decided the character’s grim fate. Usually they fall in to one of three categories: 1.) the bad guys who deserved to die, 2.) the good guys who are martyred, or 3.) the minor characters whose deaths help to propel the plot forward (the exception being virtually all deaths in Michael Bay and John Woo films via explosion). But I’m interested in a fourth category, characters who are “not all bad.” They either start off as good characters and dally in evil, or reform themselves from evil to good over the course of the book. Good characters are good, bad characters are bad, but the tweeners often follow two trends: 1.) they have to have an epic revelation that brings them to the side of the good guys and 2.) they have to die immediately after said epic revelation.
So here are my examples: 1.) Darth Vader, 2.) Harry (James Franco) from the Spider-Man movies, 3.) James Knorrington (the commodore dude) from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Yes, it’s a limited group, and yes, they’re all from trilogies (which is either a coincidence or a future addendum to the STD).
Darth Vader starts off as good when he is Anakin Skywalker, becomes evil, saves Luke from the impending doom at the end of Return of the Jedi, and dies from injuries suffered while saving Luke. Harry is a good guy in the first Spider-Man movie, becomes the Green Goblin in the second movie, and becomes a good version of the Green Goblin who helps Spider-Man fight the evil black Spider-man and Sandman. In the final scenes of Spider-Man 3, Harry heaves himself in front of the rusty blade meant for Tobey Maguire, sacrificing himself. Commodore Knorrington is a good-ish guy in the first POTC movie (think about how he lets Jack Sparrow go at the end), becomes a vengeful scruffy hobo in the second movie, and then he literally “chooses a side” (his exact words) when he frees Elizabeth Swan from imprisonment in the third movie. Almost immediately after, he is stabbed by the squid-ish thing named Davey Jones.
Two questions: 1.) Why do they have to die, and 2.) Why do they always do something drastically good before they die?
Okay, here’s my idea, and it’s not really based on any evidence, just speculation. The Schneiderian Theory of Death argues that, the need to have the characters do something overtly good right before they die serves two functions, one literary and one moral. From a literary standpoint, these characters have to die because we don’t really trust them. They’ve dallied in both good and evil, and if they’re still a part of the plot, the audience can’t ever really trust them to do what’s right (and narratively, it actually distracts us from paying attention because we’re actually worried that the character could turn bad at any time and harm our hero). Even if the movie is ending, if the half-good half-evil characther doesn’t die, we assume that it is a loose end that will likely lead to a sequel. Fair enough; they have to die. But why does it have to be so epic? Why do they have to do something really good (or sometimes really bad) before they die?
My theory is that this need to classify characters right before they die is actually residual plot structure from Christian morality plays and novels. That’s right: Darth Vader saves Luke because of religion. Hear me out.
Lots of basic plot structures, even in 21st century movies, are carbon copies of plays and books that go back hundreds, even thousands of years. There’s a reason so many Shakespeare plays are remade with modern spins: they work. They resonate with audiences (didn’t you know that The Lion King was based on Hamlet?). But these plays were written at times when there needed to be a moral to the story, and that moral was usually Christian (more than most modern audiences realize, especially with Shakespeare). Even if writers weren’t (or aren’t) trying to consciously preach Christian morals, most of western morality is derived from Christian values, and these values are all over English literature and modern film. Even if religion is the last thing on your mind, and even if you are an atheist or non-secular humanist, if you’re watching these films, you’ve been brought up in a culture that has been heavily influenced by Christian values.
So back to the point. Why do these characters need to do something drastically good right before they die? The STD argues that these writers, probably subconsciously, are thinking about where these fictitious characters will go after they die (or more literally, they are thinking about where audiences will subconsciously think these characters will go after they die). It is one of the most influential yet overlooked decisions writers make in scripting these deaths. Think about it… only in religion do we feel the need to dichotomize death so concretely; you go to heaven or you go to hell. There is no middle ground. There is nowhere else to go. And in order to go to hell, you need to really deserve it. So if you’re not really good or evil, and you need to die, this poses a problem. The only way to fix this problem is to have them do something really good, then get killed off. The audience thinks to themselves Oh man. That guy had some issues, but at least he came around and made the right choice in the end. Subconsciously, we the audience guard the pearly gates to fictitious heaven, and we get to be the judge of who goes where. When these characters act nobly right before they die, we can’t help but deem them worthy of entry.
So let’s assume for a minute that I’m completely and totally right. Does this matter? Well, in short, no, not really. I wrote about it because I find it interesting how some writers completely fail to innovate when they craft their work. I’m not saying it’s wrong to replicate what worked for Shakespeare or Dickens or Aeschylus, but it’s like going to war in the 21st century with 16th century tactics. We are much more complex audiences than we were even 10 or 15 years ago. We love irony, we are drawn to complicated characters, and we are starting to get bored with the same old same old (no matter how much you use explosions to mask the same old, Michael Bay).
I’m not saying most modern writers are bad. On the contrary, I think filmmaking has improved more in the past 10 years than it had in the previous 50, and I don’t just mean through technology. Audiences have gotten more complex, and writers have adapted. Planet of the Apes type irony is a dime a dozen now. Now, the best movies have incredibly complex characters, and incredibly complex characters can’t be dichotomized as just good or just evil. So hopefully, the STD will convince those still fighting 21st century wars with 16th century tactics to start evolving, and stop blowing shit up.
Actually, I realize the reason I was thinking about this was because I watched The Dark Knight for about the 10th time yesterday. The more I watch this movie, the more I am convinced that it is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, and that Heath Ledger as the Joker is probably the best villain of all time. Seriously. Yes, he blows a lot of shit up, but it’s different than when Michael Bay blows shit up. He’s an inadvertent proponent of the STD in all of his dialogue. He talks about how Gotham’s criminals (i.e. boring villains) are motivated by money or power or greed. They always are, and they always die in the end (and go to fictitious hell). But the Joker is complicated. He is motivated by the joy of entropy. Go and watch the scene where he is in the interrogation room with Christian Bale and the scene in the hospital with Aaron Eckhardt. Absolutely brilliant writing and even more brilliant acting.
Movies send different messages now, and they don’t always need to be moral anymore. They can be philosophical and conceptual. Movies that “really make you think” don’t make you think about what they used to. So while Darth Vader, Harry, and James Knorrington are all in fictional heaven having tea with Miss Havisham, we’ll be down here enjoying real heroes and villains that don’t feel the need to be molded into conventional stereotypical norms.
