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The industry has a term for broad, uncomplicated antagonists: “mustache-twirling.” Mustache-twirling comes up, for example, if the script isn’t working to provide the antagonist with humanity or depth, if their motivations are just to be eeeeeeevil. The more likely it seems an antagonist might go “NYAH-HA-HA! NOW I’VE GOT YOU!” the closer we are to having a mustache-twirling antagonist. The best way to avoid mustache-twirling is to treat the antagonist with the same craft and attention with see with the protagonist. We should get a sense of personality, internal life, a background that has led the antagonist to these choices...

Every once in a while we’ll see a film in which the protagonist dies at the end. It’s a tricky maneuver to pull off, but by looking at movies that make this bold move, we can see some patterns in what works, and in which types of stories this kind of thing tends to occur. We most often see dead protagonists in period action-adventure, typically in the key of “epic.” In this very specific genre we find several examples: BRAVEHEART, SPARTACUS, GLADIATOR, 300. There is a certain high, bloody drama to seeing the protagonists of films of this nature die...