Major spoilers ahead. The deaths of major characters are important events in movies whether we like them or not. If used wisely they can add to the involvement of the story and make the story more compelling. If Bambi's mother has been killed then who's to say Bambi won't also bite the bullet. Sometimes though a character death just seems thrown in to cause a bit of upset in the viewer or as a quick and easy plot fix. Here are a few movie deaths that rocked me like a hurricane.

In Young Guns a group of young cowboys set out to avenge the death of their mentor. They are deputised so that they can bring the mans killers to justice. During their first arrest the leader of the gang played by Charlie Sheen is gunned down. On first watch I couldn't believe it. I kept expecting Sheen to pop up again throughout the film. I'm still waiting. It worked well in Young Guns because it showed how dangerous the old west was and that any one of the heroes could be killed at any time.

The X-Men are a team of mutants brought together by Charles Xavier. Leading the team out in the field is Cyclops. In the third X-Men movie the writers decided they would kill off both of the X-Mens leaders. I think they must have been comics writers in another career. What this ridiculous decision did was leave the X-Men without any leaders so that Wolverine would have to step up and lead them to glory. What the writers didn't understand is that Cyclops and Xavier are the lynchpins of the X-Men. It just felt weird without them. Wolverine is supposed to be a renegade character who does what he wants when he wants. It's in his nature to disappear from the X-Men for months on end so he's the worst possible option to be their leader. The movie tried to have a get out clause at the end with Xavier being alive in another body but it was too little too late.

In the first Transformers movie the writers decided to kill the Autobot Jazz. Their reasoning was that because they couldn't kill the two most popular characters Bumblebee and Optimus Prime, Jazz was the next in line. One of the Autobots had to die so that the battles would be more realistic so fair enough. When it came to the third Transformers movie I figured that at least one of the Autobots would snuff it. As I'd heard the reasoning behind the grim reapers appearnce in the first movie I had a feeling which Autobot would be next. Guess what, I was right. It was Ironhide.

To see one of my favourite Autobots get his chest blasted out and to disintegrate before my eyes wasn't much fun. Imagine how traumatised young Ironhide fans would be. That Ironhide had to be killed off to further the story was fine by me. He'd had a good robot innings. What wasn't so cool was that not one of the characters in the movie even mentioned Ironhide's death. They just moved on to the next problem. That's cold Autobots. Damn cold.