Arts question:  In my Shakespeare class, during a discussion of King Lear,
it came to our attention that nobody could recall any plays or movies or
similar works in which *all* of the characters wound up dead.  This naturally
does not include No Exit, for obvious reasons, but I was curious if anybody
can recall works of some sort where every character (not just the major
characters) dies by the end of the story.  

This is an item because I wouldn't mind stimulating some discussion.

150 responses total.

A Perfect Storm just crossed my mind, but it is disqualified by the bit
characters on shore.  In any case, George Clooney's giant chin (anyone who
saw the movie at TOP knows what I'm talking about) will live forever.

I suspect that there are stories of villages or communities that are
completely wiped out, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.

I don't think there are any humans left alive at the end of Silent Running.
And we blow up the world at the end of the second Planet of the Apes movie,
don't we?

What are the contexts?

Well, Silent Running is about Bruce Dern taking care of a spaceship of
plants with his robot buddies.  Frankly, I never did understand the plot
very well, because the robots don't talk, so there's not much dialog.  At
the end, he's ordered to come back to earth, but he doesn't want to, so he
blows himself up and leaves the robots to care for the plants. 

I haven't seen the Planet of the Apes movies since I was a kid, so I can't
remember much.  But the second one ends with Charleton Heston (I think) 
staggering into the underground doomsday-device control room and, as a
last dying act, pulling down on the crystalline switch, leaving it
streaked with blood.  Then the screen fades to black, so you don't really
see what happens next. 

At least, that's how I remember it.  Someone feel free to tell me what was
really going on.

That would have been the second "Planet of the Apes" (dialed in, can't access
imdb.com to get details) movie.  I don't remember the exact ending either.

"Pen and Teller get Killed" ends up with everybody dead (and I do mean
*everybody*), but it's not a well known movie at all.

Eww, forgot about that one.  It was a real stinker.

I don't think any of the characters in _Dark Star_ survive.

You beat me to it, Joe.  Everyone in "Dark Star" dies, or you know that
they are going to meet certain death very shortly.

Another King work: the Tommyknockers. I don't think anyone from the city
survives, but there may be a few ancillary characters (people on TV, etc.)
who are unscathed.
 
I would think that such apocalpytic examples would be restricted to:
-- All the humans die, but other sentient species survive (do any versions
of "I Am Legend/Omega Man" end with all the humans dead? I don't remember;
the movie version of "Lathe of Heaven" *begins* with everyone but one person
dying, but he brings a bunch of them back to life)
-- All the main characters die, but possible ancillary characters on TV
survive (it seems like I've seen a few horror movies like this, where the
point was that all the death was to prevent more death if the baddies got
away)
-- EVERYBODY DIES. It seems to me that there must be SOME stories like this,
but I don't know any. I know a few where everybody but one person dies
(there's a Twilight Zone episode where a solitary-type wishes he were all
alone, and the world gets destroyed, and he gets all excited about getting
to read in peace now, and his glasses break).
 
Time Machine has a sole human survivor as well.

I remember reading an experiment work of fiction which ran through a half
dozen phonebook listings about what people were doing the moment before the
nuclear bombs went off and destroyed everything and everyone. It was very
disturbing because it was so realistic.

"Dr. Stranglove" presumably ends with the Soviet Doomsday device going off.

How about a movie that is so bad you wish everyone were dead?

"Battlefield Earth."

That movie cries out for Mystery Scienc Theater.

Hmmm.  Nobody was permanently dead in "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band",
but their careers all died.

If I recall my viewing of Strangelove correctly, the principles had made
arrangements for select people to survive, including themselves.

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Does anyone survive in Das Boot?

Re #12: You mean like 'Death Race 2000'?

Re #12: The most recent version of "The Island of Dr. Moreau"
(with Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer in two of their hammiest
performances ever) is in that category.  Actually, most if
not all of the major characters do die -- and the movie was
so bad I didn't care.

Re 18:  The lieutenant/reporter survives, I think.

James Blish's science fiction novel "The Triumph of Time," 
the fourth (and last :) ) of his CITIES IN FLIGHT series, 
involves the end of the universe.  

        Everyone who was alive dies in Spielberg and Kubrick's "AI".

BTW, in Troma's version of Romeo and Juliet, Romeo and Juliet are among the
few major characters who DON'T die.

I was going to say Dark Star too!

In tthe past i was thinked that North American are donkeys, but now i see the
truth, some one are fool, any think ...great

In the 1959 film "On the Beach", about the aftermath of nuclear
holocaust, I don't think everyone in the world was dead yet by
the end of the movie.  But it was clear that they were soon
going to be.  Even Gregory Peck.

In the science fiction book "Demon" (John Varley), all human life on 
Earth is clearly going to end.  In "Warday" (I forget the authors), it 
seems very bleak that anyone will survive for long.  In "The Restaurant 
at the End of the Universe" (Douglas Adams), the universe ends, but the 
book travels to another point in time and continues with it's story.

Another near-miss is "The Quiet Earth", a 1985 scifi flick from
New Zealand.  There's all of two people left alive on earth
at the end, with a third person teleported to god-knows-where.
It seems to have garnered a Smithee Award for badness, but I
rather liked it.  There's that stunning closing shot...

There are numerous planets that go extinct in the various Star Trek series.
"All Our Yesterdays," for instance (the one written by the same guy who wrote
Blade Runner and Total Recall, IIRC; McCoy goes drug-crazed on an extinct
planet with a wayback machine that has apparently eaten Mr Peabody, and goes
back in time, managing to snuff out the Earth's evolution in the process
[making The Enterprise disappear]).
 
Of course, Star Wars: A New Hope features a planet (Aldaraan) getting blowed
up, but no characters are on it at the time (perhaps, ironically, some of the
characters in Attack of the Clones were on it...?).

        I think everyone died in one of the "of the Dead" movies.  Probably
the last of them.  "Day of the Dead", I think.

Re #30: I think you're conflating a couple of episodes there, Paul.  THere
was nothing about earth in All our Yesterdays.

I've not seen the "Living Dead" movies, but I understand that "Night of the
Living Dead" ends with the death of the last main character.  (A sheriff kills
him, so some people are still around.)

"I am Adam" (or similar title) in J. Merril's "World's Best SF (1965 ed.)"
ends with the guy who destroyed the world contemplating his rather quickly
approaching death.

"On the Beach" ends with the last known humans scuttling their sub.

#32> Single episode, but I may have the title wrong.
Ah yes, I quick jog over to the web tells me I'm thinking of "City on the Edge
of Forever," originally written by Harlan Ellison and thoroughly mangled by
the TV censors. "All Our Yesterdays" is also about time travel, but with a
different plot.

Ah, I see what you meant now.  But Harlan Ellison didn't write Blade Runner
or Total Recall.

Those were based on Philip K. Dick stories, if I remember correctly.

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More likely the Piers Anthony book was a "novelization" produced as 
a movie-tie-in after the movie was developed from the Philip K. Dick
story.    imdb.com says the film "Total Recall" was "inspired" by 
the Dick story, with "screen story" and screenplay developed by 
Ronald Shusett & Dan O'Bannon and a couple of other people.
 
(Shusett and O'Bannon wrote "Dark Star" (tying this drift back in to 
the earlier discussion) and the first Alien movie; I've always been 
a little disappointed that they've done so little else I cared about.
I thought they were on a roll.)

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