Save The Villain / Live-Action Films

• Happens in Avatar: The Way of Water in a way. Spider, the son of Quaritch, saves Quaritch's recombinant, though he's very reluctant to do so, and returns to Jake's family afterwards instead of staying with him.
• The Dark Knight Trilogy:
  • Batman Begins:
    • Bruce Wayne is trained by the League of Shadows, and for his initiation is ordered to kill a captive criminal, with the implication that refusal would have permanent consequences. He refuses nevertheless (especially on discovering their Evil Plan for Gotham) and ends up blowing up the building killing who knows how many Faceless Goons in the process. However, he saves the life of his mentor Ducard, perhaps because he's come to see him as a surrogate father figure. Sure enough, he comes to regret the decision.
      Bruce: I saved your life.
      Ducard: I warned you about compassion, Bruce.
    • Later in the movie, this trope is subverted as the train Batman and Ra's are on heads swiftly to a very deadly crash, Batman declares, "I won't kill you... but I don't have to save you," and escapes the train alone. Fans are sharply divided over this, with some thinking it's way out of character for him, while others seeing it as simple, pragmatic, and heroic (that Batman is responsible for the train being about to crash also complicates matters of responsibility for the death).
  • In The Dark Knight, it's played straight with the Joker. Not so much with Two-Face, but that was accidental; Batman was trying to save a child's life more than trying to kill Two-Face.
• Batman Forever, with Robin saving Two-Face, the man who killed his parents. Deconstructed as it turns out saving the bad guy might be a bad idea, as he gets captured and used in a Sadistic Choice by The Riddler. When Two-Face falls to his death later, he doesn't get saved.
  Two-Face: Good boy. The Bat's taught you well. Noble. [draws a gun] Stupid, but noble.
• Indiana Jones:
  • Subverted in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. At the climax, Indy tries to pull Elsa out of the crevice, but she's so obsessed with reaching the Grail that she refuses to give him her other hand, and eventually slips and falls to her doom anyway. The exact same thing almost happens to Indy a few minutes later when his father tries to pull him out, but common sense wins over, and he abandons it.
    • Inverted in the prologue, where Indy falls into a lion enclosure and the villains save him.
  • Also subverted in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom when the Giant Mook's sash is caught in a rock crusher. Indy grabs onto a rope to escape and reaches out to try and save the dude, but the pull in both directions is too great and he's dragged under anyway. Even for a child-whipping brute who'd just been trying to kill him, Indy must have decided it was just too nasty a way to go to not at least make an effort.
• The Karate Kid:
  • In Part II, Mr. Miyagi and Daniel save Mr. Sato's life during a typhoon, even while the latter rants and rages. Afterwards, Sato not only changes his mind about duelling Miyagi to the death, but he also deeds the village back over to the villagers and uses his company's machinery to rebuild it for them.
• This also happens in the film adaptation of Thunderbirds, with Alan saving The Hood from falling into the Mole's rotating blades.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: After the Enterprise crippes the Reliant, they receive an ultimatum to prepare to be boarded. Khan activates the Genesis device, determined to take the Enterprise with him rather than surrendering.
  • In Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Kirk attempts to save the Klingon commander, Kruge from falling into a crevasse after the same officer ordered the death of Kirk's son David. Kruge tries to drag Kirk down with him; Kirk then quits trying to save him and starts kicking him loose.
    Kirk: I...have had...enough of...you!
  • Offered to Nero in Star Trek (2009). His response is pure Card-Carrying Villain.
    Nero: I would rather suffer the end of Romulus a thousand times. I would rather die in agony than accept assistance from you!
    • This is possibly the only example that doubles as a What the Hell, Hero? moment, given Nero's status.
      Spock: Captain, what are you doing?
      Kirk: Showing them compassion. It may be the only way to earn peace with Romulus. It's logic, Spock, I thought you'd like that.
      Spock: No, not really. Not this time.
    • Although Kirk knew what Nero's response would be; And he's all too happy to oblige him.
• Inverted in Blade Runner, in which Roy Batty saves Richard Deckard. Deckard is an anti-hero and Batty is an anti-villain.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides: After Angelica is accidentally poisoned, Jack is determined to save her with the Foutain's healing powers. This shows that even though they are on opposite sides, he still loves her too much to let her die.
• James Bond:
  • Subverted in the trope-heavy GoldenEye. James Bond catches his friend-turned-Arch-Enemy Alec Trevelyan/006 by the ankles just before he falls to his death (from his own superweapon, no less). "For England, James?" "No, for me" and he lets go. The villain survives the fall long enough to also die in a spectacular explosion.
  • In Casino Royale (2006), James Bond saves Le Chiffre from Obanno, the African freedom fighter who'd lost money from the attempted terrorist attack in Miami, which was foiled by Bond. Not out of any compassion, but because Bond's mission was to bring Le Chiffre in alive so that MI6 could get him to inform on his terrorist clients.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Iron Man: Subverted in a deleted scene that shows Tony trying to save Obadiah after both their suits have been disabled, but Obadiah grapples the wrist of Tony's suit to drag Tony down as well, and Tony is forced to eject his glove so he doesn't die.
  • Thor:
    • Subverted during the climactic battle between Loki and Thor. When they crash through the wall of the Observatory and onto the Bifrost, Loki rolls over the edge and is left clinging to it by his fingertips. As they are brothers, Thor only hesitates briefly and reaches down to help him, but it turns out to be one of Loki's illusions.
    • Defied when Odin tries to save both of his sons from falling into the abyss after the explosion of the Bifrost, but Loki lets go and allows himself to fall.
    • Played straight in relation to the Frost Giants, the deadly enemies of Asgard. The whole point of the battle was to prevent Loki from exterminating them.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy (2014): Defied when Nebula is hanging on her cybernetic hand, and Gamora reaches out to help her only for Nebula to cut off the hand and fall down. She successfully lands on the windshield of the ship below.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: Nebula hunts down and attacks Gamora on Ego's planet once she gains a ship for herself. Gamora is able to hold her own against her sister, however, and blasts Nebula's ship. Before the ship goes up in flames, she drags Nebula out. The two reconcile later.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: Groot makes the decision to save Adam Warlock, who had relentlessly attacked the Guardians and tried to kidnap Rocket. When Adam asks Groot why, Groot states that everyone deserves a second chance. Adam repays this debt by saving Peter from suffocating in space.
  • Spider-Man: Homecoming: Peter saves Vulture when Toomes becomes trapped under flaming rubble. Vulture is grateful for this and returns the favor by refusing to reveal his identity to Mac Gargan a.k.a. Scorpion.
  • Spider-Man: No Way Home: After Doctor Strange tells Peter that the villains from the Raimi films and the Webb films are destined to die, Peter becomes determined to depower and cure them before sending them back to their home dimensions. He manages to pull it off with the help of the other movies' Spider-Men, though it takes some effort to cure the Green Goblin after Aunt May's death drives MCU Peter to nearly kill him at first.
• At the end of In the Line of Fire, Horrigan tries to save the assassin Leary from falling off an elevator, noting when Leary asks him that he doesn't want to, but it's his job.
• Averted in Race for the Yankee Zephyr (1981). The villain and his chief henchman are squabbling over the aircraft and its cargo of gold bullion, even as it sinks beneath a lake. Disgusted by their behaviour, the hero refuses to save them from drowning despite the Damsel Scrappy imploring him to do so. In The Stinger though the villain surfaces again clutching a lifevest, shouting for his henchmen to come and rescue him.
• Memorably averted in Darkman, where the final Climbing Climax ends with Westlake catching the villain (by his ankle, for a change) just before the latter can fall to his death from a half-built skyscraper. Hanging helplessly, the Big Bad confidently points out that Westlake can't possibly drop him, because then he wouldn't be able to live with himself. But unfortunately for him, this hero's been learning to live with even worse things, all through the film...
• Inadvertently in Horrible Bosses. Dale gives Harken his epiphenine medication when Harken was suffering from a peanut allergy reaction. In Dale's defense, he didn't know it was Harken.
• Butch does this for Marsellus Wallace, the man who wants him dead for not throwing a major boxing match, from Pulp Fiction. Pulp Fiction being what it is, though the two of them do fight, Butch then saves Marsellus from even worse guys.
• It is somewhat jarring when it is used in Daredevil. After he kills nearly every enemy he goes up against, and even going so far as to throw a helpless Bullseye out a several story building, he decides to let the Kingpin live. It really feels like the director wanted to keep the Kingpin alive in case a sequel was made.
  • That's not even the half of it. The director himself notes this was out of character:
    Mark Johnson: I don't really think it makes sense from a character perspective so much as from a story perspective.
    Avi Arad: Whatever you say, Mark...
    Mark Johnson: [laughs] I'm still trying to convince myself.
• Double subverted...kind of, in a Russian movie Lions' Share. The hero kicks the villain off a roof and, while the villain is falling, shoots him straight in the forehead, explaining "So that it doesn't hurt when you land."
• Father Cornelius saves Zorg from choking on a cherry in The Fifth Element, prompting the "You saved my life, so I'll spare yours" line.
• The Untouchables both affirms and subverts the trope when Elliot Ness first assists Big Bad mob hitman Frank Nitti, whom he had cornered dangling from a rope off the edge of a building and then after enduring some Evil Gloating Ness reappraises the situation and casually throws him off the roof.
• In the climax of Sherlock Holmes (2009), Holmes saves Lord Blackwood from being dragged off the bridge, if only so he can be properly hanged this time around. After Blackwood tries to kill him again, though, Holmes lets the hanging take place sooner than Blackwood had hoped.
• In the movie Safety Patrol, Mrs. Day, one of the two robbers, nearly falls into a Hades crater, and Scout and the other kids try to save her. They succeed, and she is arrested shortly after along with her son Bert Miller.
• In The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, one of the punk gunslingers loses his balance as he makes his way down to a rail (to kill our hero, Ford Fairlane). Zuzu tries to save him... by grabbing the gun in his mouth to pull him back up. Guess what happens next.
• The Mummy Trilogy:
  • In The Mummy (1999), Rick tries to pull Beni from out of the Collapsing Lair, but doesn't make it. He's not too upset about it, though.
    Rick: Goodbye, Beni.
  • Happens in the novelization of the sequel, The Mummy Returns, if not in the film outright. When Imhotep is hanging over a literal gateway to Hell and his lover abandons him to his fate, Rick actually feels sorry for him and attempts to pull him up, but a heartbroken Imhotep instead accepts his fate and lets go willingly.
• In the Spider-Man movies, both the original trilogy and reboot, Peter Parker frequently tries to talk the villain down, since most of them are actually friends of his, so he desperately doesn't want to have to fight them.
• Under Siege 2: Dark Territory: Averted when Ryback shuts a helicopter door on the helplessly dangling villain, cutting his fingers off and letting him fall to a fiery death.
• Jackie Chan tends to do this in many of his films.
  • In Rush Hour 3, where Chan plays Inspector Lee, this proves to be annoying to watch because after throwing Kenji into holding onto a net for life he chose to save Kenji which meant spending time and effort that could have been used to save the cute damsel-in-distress instead (Soo Yung).
• In Kick-Ass 2, Kick-Ass grabs the Motherfucker's hand as he's dangling over a shark tank. They argue about it, and the Motherfucker repeatedly swats at Kick-Ass's hand until he can't hold on and Motherfucker drops. The Stinger reveals that he did survive, at the loss of his limbs and dick.
• This is actually the heroes' main objective in X-Men: Days of Future Past because if Mystique kills Trask, it will trigger the awakening of Sentinels which will bring about the apocalypse. Although they succeed, Trask doesn't get off a Karma Houdini as he is arrested for selling military secrets.
• DC Extended Universe:
  • In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Superman blocks a punch that Doomsday throws at Lex Luthor, even after Luthor had endangered Lois Lane and Martha Kent and had dedicated his life to destroying him. Given Doomsday's strength, if the punch had landed, Luthor would have been Ludicrous Gibs.
  • In Suicide Squad, after the Joker's car falls into a river, Batman pulls Harley Quinn out and revives her with CPR before arresting her. Judging by the look on his face, he really didn't want to.
  • In SHAZAM!, the title hero saves Dr. Sivana from falling to his death after expunging Envy and de-powering him.
  • In Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Aquaman attempts to save Black Manta when he is dangling over a fissure. Manta sneers, "Never!" and lets himself fall.
• Deadpool (2016):
  • Colossus tries to convince the title character to spare Ajax, by saying that in moments like these, every illusion of a hero falls away, and it's in these decisions that one truly sees a hero. Deadpool has none of it, and just blows Ajax's head off anyway.
  • Colossus himself is seen to Outrun the Fireball while carrying both Negasonic Teenage Warhead and The Dragon Angel Dust.
  • A major plot point in Deadpool 2, where the murder of a racist child-torturing fanatic would lead to the killer becoming just like him and so preventing the asshole being killed becomes necessary to prevent the creation of a serial killer.
• Shark Attack: In the climax both the hero and the bad guy fall out of a helicopter over a shark-infested lake. While they struggle to climb on top of a nearby buoy as the sharks close in, the hero actually tries to help the bad guy up but is unsuccessful.
• In Once Upon a Time in the West, Harmonica kills the members of Frank's gang when they betray him for Morton and try to kill him. But unlike other examples of this trope, he's not doing this to save his life, as Jill accuses him of doing, but because Harmonica hates Frank enough to consider himself the only one allowed to kill him.
• Fortress (1992): At the end of Brennick and Maddox's fight to the death, Brennick tries to save Maddox from falling to his death but Maddox is then gorily eliminated by the prison security system on the Warden's orders.
• Barbarella: The gentle angel Pygar chooses to save the evil Black Queen from being consumed by the Mathmos at the end, despite the fact that she had tried to kill him by the same method earlier. His reason to do so amounts to "Turn the Other Cheek".
• Bullshot. A flashback to World War One shows the hero Bullshot Crummond was about to shoot down Otto von Bruno's Fokker fighter plane but refused on seeing his gun had jammed. The narrator notes that the events the audience are about to see would never have happened if he'd just shot the Fokker.
• Slipstream (1989). After his girlfriend is killed, the android Byron forgoes his Thou Shalt Not Kill inclinations and rips his way into Tasker's airplane as he's taking off and starts to choke him. Tasker does a Meaningful Echo of the poem High Flight that Byron quoted at the beginning of the movie: "I reach out my hand and touch the face of God." Messianic Archetype that he is, this snaps Byron out of his rage and he tries to regain control of the crashing airplane to no avail — only the Made of Iron android survives the crash.
  Byron: In the end, he thought I could save him. I'm too dangerous to be human.
• Aliens. Ripley stops Hicks from killing Burke on the spot once his betrayal is exposed, saying "No, we need to take him back!" Presumably she hopes a public trial will expose the Company's role in the deaths of hundreds of LV-426 colonists as well as her crewmates on the Nostromo in the first film. However, the aliens attack at that point, rendering the whole question moot when they get Burke instead.
• Subverted in Revenge of the Sith. After Anakin defeats Count Dooku in a lightsaber duel, cutting off both his hands and taking his weapon, he knows he should take Dooku into custody. However, Palpatine goads him into killing Dooku instead. Both to get rid of a now useless minion, and to start Anakin down the path towards the Dark Side.
• Played with in Juice. After Q and Bishop have their fight on a New York building rooftop during the climax of the film, Bishop is knocked over the edge of the building, desperately holding on. Q tries to save him, but is unable to keep his grip. Bishop falls to his death.

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