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This piece was originally published in 2010.
Vulture is recirculating it in celebration ofThe Batmans HBO Max release.
So who better to consult to come up with a list of the ten greatest kills in movie history?
We spoke to Reeves about his favorite kills, and heres what he told us.
I was a kid and we went to see it in Santa Monica at the Criterion Theater.
Right from the beginning, the movie is so scary and so suspenseful.
Theres something about the anonymity of this scene that makes it all the more horrifying that could be you.
And you think, Now, Im not in a safe environment.
He lets you know from the beginning that there are no rules.
What goes wrong here is the inspiration for the scene in the car with Richard Jenkins.
InDial M for Murder, once you know whats going to happen theyre going to kill Grace Kelly!
you watch with heightened suspense as everything goes wrong.
And Hitchcock puts you in the position of knowing whats going to happen, knowing the killer.
And youre seeing through his eyes as everything goes wrong.
Youre almost rooting for him, and its kind of tragic at the end when he dies.
And thats sort of what happens when Richard Jenkins meets the beginning of his end inLet Me In.
Hitchcock kills the character that right up until then was the main character in the film.
You see these images of Danny horrified throughoutThe Shining, the elevator with the blood, and all that.
He is the sacrifice the film makes.
The Alien Comes Out of John Hurt,Alien
Id never seen anything like that before.
When I was growing up, I saw t-shirts of the alien in 3-D coming out of peoples chests.
As a younger person, I was a real chicken when it came to movies.
I was heavily affected by what I watched emotionally.
And once I realized there was something inAlienlike that, I was actually terrified to watch it.
After the volume of violence it takes to bring him down, the character gains epic status.
Bonnie and Clyde are killed at the moment of their greatest emotional connection.
Theres something mythic about death coming at the greatest moment of your life.
The Killing of HAL,2001: A Space Odyssey
This is just incredibly memorable.
The way HAL sings, Dai-sy, Dai-sy, slower and slower as hes dying.
Its very sad: The machine seems like it feels so betrayed.
It has this awareness, and theres something genius about the way Kubrick did it.
Theres this kind of regression, as it starts singing this childlike song.
Its a truly haunting death for a machine, and it makes explicit this connection between man and machine.
