So earlier this week, I was called a shit hot writer. But I think I imagined that middle word.

Anyway, whether I’m a writer or just a fool to myself, I think a lot about this stuff and after so much thinking that I successfully put off writing for hours, I have a strong opinion about characters being killed off in stories.

Let them die.

Please.

I saw a film recently in which a major character was killed and not only did I not feel a flicker, I don’t believe it was physically possible to care at that point. This was a good character, we’ve been with her through a lot and of course she’s well played, so this death should have been enormous and it was played on screen as if it was.

But it just wasn’t.

Because we’d seen her die before. She was shot early on in the film, then we went through that familiar feeling of no, come on, she’s a major character, this is a trick, she’ll be fine, and then we’re told no. We are directly told nope, she’s dead, deal with it.

And then she was fine. It had been a trick. Terrific.

So later on when she is killed and everybody’s is acting like this is really the end for her, you can’t engage because all you can think is that it was really the end for her last time too. By the time it is really sure she’s gone, you’ve been out of the film for long enough that you don’t care. Important character, big death scene, shrug.

Even now, talking to you about a month later, I don’t expect that this character has survived and will be in the sequel, I really don’t, but if she were, it would not be an enormous shock. It would be played as one, but it wouldn’t be it, you wouldn’t feel the shock.

But that possibility aside, at least this film killed her. I am wondering when we got so we couldn’t just let characters die. The name Lazarus is coming to mind, but then only slightly more recently there is Star Trek, in which I think every major character has died at least once and is always back next week.

I know the reasoning is that you have a popular character so killing them off will be this enormous thing that everyone will talk about – but they’re also so popular that they’re why audiences keep coming back for more. So kill them off, absolutely, but don’t kill them off, no.

Only, let’s say this particular character I just saw die on screen does come back for the inevitable sequel. As popular as she was, as good as she is, if she comes back and it’s all some trick or dream sequence, I won’t ever quite engage with that character the way I did.

That kills me.