Sci-fi, horror, action, all of these genres exist in a certain heightened reality. Even in First Blood, which is a film that tries very hard to feel grounded in our reality, John Rambo goes through more than a human body can sustain. Then, by the time Rambo: First Blood Part II comes out, he’s surviving a ton of wounds and torture. And that’s not even factoring in that brand of convenience that comes from movies. For instance, a protagonist can stand on one big rock in a river with a bow and arrow while a nameless antagonist stands on another big rock in the same river with a pistol. The one with the pistol fires all his ammunition as the protagonist slowly raises and aims an arrow which goes directly into the antagonist’s heart. And even though that antagonist fired a dozen shots at an unmoving target, he might as well have been firing them in the air.
What we’re looking at today is a few movie characters who have benefitted from the type of convenience, but more often than not they’ve actually taken the blows, bullets, water in the lungs, and stabbings. Yet, they continue to fight another day, basically no matter what happens to them.
7) John Wick
Even in John Wick world, he really should have been dead after the fourth movie. He’d survived worse than he did in that seemingly final chapter, but he still got it pretty bad. And, more importantly, John Wick: Chapter 4 was a fine way to wrap up his story.
But, as for what he’s been through, it all starts with a broken heart. First, he loses his wife and then he loses his dog left for him by said wife. And, as he gets revenge for the pup, which then leads to a series of events that ultimately put him in front of the High Table, Wick is shot once without a bulletproof vest, shot a dozen times while wearing a bulletproof vest, stabbed six times, cuts off his own finger, gets beaten by a pipe, is thrown through basically every pane of glass he gets near, is shot off a building, gets in a few car wrecks that would do a number on one’s neck, and takes more punches than every boxer combined. He deserves to retire now.
6) Godzilla
In the original Gojira, the king of the monsters is taken out by the Oxygen Destroyer, which turns him into bones, just like Spike at the end of Gremlins. But it was clear there was a franchise here, so he kept coming back. He was trapped in ice in Godzilla Raids Again but came back to fight King Kong. He lost that fight but came back to fight Mothra. He beat her, but her larvae beat him. He took a few lightning bolt blasts in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster and Invasion of Astro Monster but wasn’t really hurt until he sustained a few grisly arterial sprays in both Godzilla vs. Gigan and Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla.
In the Heisei era, he fell into a volcano and still managed to come back for the next movie. If you can live through that you can live through anything. He did die for real in Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, because his over-radiated heart made him go boom, but we still got the Millennium era and, after that, the Reiwa era. The Reiwa era has been tough on him, with him frozen inside and out in Shin Godzilla and has most of his face blown off in Godzilla Minus One, which then regenerates. That’s not even factoring in every tank shell from the military or individual punch or laser blast from his kaiju adversaries. The king never gives up his thrown.
5) Sisu
Sisu is kind of like John Wick if you replaced a modern-day hitman with a Finnish Army commando towards the tail end of World War II. Like Wick, Aatami Korpi has put his violent past behind him, but is dragged back into the world by the cruelty of others.
And, as he’s tearing apart and blowing up Nazis throughout the first film and Sisu: Road to Revenge, Korpi sustains quite a few injuries. He’s nicknamed “the Immortal,” but we begin to wonder if that’s more than a name. Throughout the two movies he’s shot multiple times, hanged, lives through a plane crash, fights through car after car of a speeding train, gets stabbed, and narrowly avoids the blast of multiple explosions. Oh, and sepsis, basically throughout the entirety of both films.
4) Neo
The Matrix‘s Neo is basically Superman. All he’s missing is laser vision. Heck, the last scene of the first movie has him (much to the audience’s surprise) flying from street level to the camera up above the skyscrapers.
Let’s just look at the first movie. All throughout it does a wonderful job of making the Agents seem like what amount to unbeatable threats. Then, in the last 20 minutes, Neo is suddenly making them look ineffective. His fight with Smith in the train station is a draw, but then he’s stopping other Agents bullets in mid-air. His physical form did die in The Matrix Revolutions, but that was a sacrifice he chose to make to eliminate Smith once and for all. He wasn’t exactly beaten. Plus, his consciousness survived, establishing a long-lasting peace between the warring humans and machines. Not to mention, he was then resurrected in, well, The Matrix Resurrections.
3) Dom Toretto and His Family
There’s a part in Fast & Furious 6 where a tank being driven by Luke Evans’ Owen Shaw is towing a car behind it while driving on a bridge. The towed car goes off the road, still attached to the tank by a long cable. It gets tangled up and the tank halts instantaneously. This sends Letty, who was climbing out to get away from Shaw, flying through the air to the other half of the bridge, which has about 30 feet separating it from the side with the tank. Dominic Toretto is on that other side and he gets on the windshield, his car slams into that side’s guard rail, which then sends him sailing through the air perfectly in line with Letty, who he then grabs, and they tumble into the windshield of another car on the tank side as the tank continues to move forward.
In reality, they would almost certainly miss one another. Dom has to snap to a decision and plan it out with exacting precision in all of two seconds. And, even if he did slam into her, the force behind her acceleration isn’t nullified. They would bash into one another and fall hundreds and hundreds of feet to their deaths. But this is Fast & Furious…physics can be whatever you want it to be.
2) Beatrix Kiddo
Things were going so well for Kill Bill‘s Beatrix Kiddo. She met the love of her life, put the violence of her profession behind her, was expecting a child, and was enjoying her wedding rehearsal. In came Bill and his Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, consisting of Elle Driver, O-Ren Ishii, Vernita Green, and Budd.
First off, Beatrix is shot in the head at the wedding rehearsal and, while she does go into a coma, she wakes up. And it doesn’t take all that long to get back into fighting form. Chronologically, her first target is Ishii, who gives Beatrix a run for her money with her Crazy 88s, including Gogo Yubari, whose swinging spiked metal ball (a meteor hammer, technically) gets some good hits, especially one to the chest. Then, while she wins her snowy sword fight with Ishii, she still takes a pretty nasty cut to the back. She then takes on Green, and their fight covers almost the entirety of Green’s home.
Most of Beatrix’s big injuries come in Kill Bill: Volume 1, but Volume 2 still had her getting a blast of rock salt to her chest, courtesy of Budd. Worse yet, she then gets buried alive. But she manages to get out of even that, which then has her win an eye-opening but mostly harm-free fight with Driver. She doesn’t take many hits once she gets to Bill‘s, either. Just a shot from a dart gun filled with truth serum. Beatrix went through hell to kill Bill.
1) Jason Voorhees
Let’s just narrow things down to how the ultra-murderous Jason Voorhees is finally defeated in each Friday the 13th movie. That’s not even counting every time he’s stabbed in the leg or shot during throughout the requisite third act chase. Let’s start with the proof that he’s unkillable: he was literally dead in the original film. He was just a kid who had drowned and now his mom was exacting revenge. But then that first film was a big hit, so it was only natural for sequels to be on their way. And, in Friday the 13th Part 2, Ginny slams a machete into his shoulder, putting him down for the count. But then that count is up, and he’s back in Friday the 13th Part III, in which Chris Higgins “kills” him (that actually was the plan, Part III was supposed to be the last one) by slamming an axe in his skull. Surely he couldn’t be alive after that, right? Nope, he was back for Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, which had him get a machete to the side of his face, which he then slid down.
Cut to Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, and he gets out of his grave after getting struck by lightning only to then have a boat’s propeller tear his face to shreds at which point he’s left tied to a big rock at the bottom of Crystal Lake. In Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood he goes up against Carrie White knockoff Tina Shepard, who telepathically sends nails flying his way, squeezes his mask into his skull, and dumps a porch’s awning on him. Then her dead dad bursts out of Crystal Lake and drags him to its depths once more. Then, in Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (which, like parts three and four, was supposed to be the last), he’s covered in toxic waste, which dissolves his face and leaves…his child form?
But he was still able to come back for Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, which is the only movie to kill him off in the opening (via a SWAT team). Then, in the ending, he gets dragged down to Hell. But even that’s not enough, because he somehow escapes Hell and finds himself in space, where he’s blown apart by Kay-Em, resurrects as an “uber” form, and is tackled by Sgt. Elijah Brodski, with whom he then goes tumbling through space towards Earth. Lastly, he beats Freddy Krueger and, in the remake, he gets dragged into a woodchipper, which he comes back from only to get stabbed by his own machete. The man simply cannot die.
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