The Dumbest Ways Characters Have Been Brought Back To Life

Death in fiction isn't always permanent. In movies, for example, it's not uncommon for filmmakers to kill a character off, later regret the decision, and then bring that character back. Star Trek famously did this with Spock, who died in The Wrath of Kahn and was then resurrected in The Search for Spock. It can work out great, because a fan-favorite character's death is usually a memorable scene, but then said characters come back to life so they get to have more adventures. Bringing someone back from the dead is complicated, however. Some characters are revived in pretty stupid ways. Here are some of the the dumbest examples of characters have been brought back to the land of the living.

X2: X-Men United ends with Jean Grey sacrificing her life to save the rest of the team. In the comics, she's died and returned to life a bunch of times, so fans pretty much expected her to come back. The last shot of the movie even teases an appearance by the Phoenix, a cosmic entity who has resurrected Jean Grey in the funnybooks once or twice. Still, some explanation was needed. In the beginning of X-Men: The Last Stand, Jean just comes back to life. Literally, Cyclops goes to visit the place of her death, and Jean just shows up. She just walks out of some mist and then she kills Cyclops. The movie's explanation is basically that she's just super powerful. She willed herself back to life. Why did she wait several years before doing so? Apparently, that's not important. Oh, also she's evil now. Why? The movie never really bothers to answer this.

To be clear, Freddy Krueger is already dead. He's a spirit possessed by a trio of dream demons. Since he's starting off dead, no explanation for his reappearance is needed! No one is going to ask "hey, why is the ghost back? He died in the last movie!" So, it's confusing as to why in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4, the filmmakers decided to resurrect Freddy by using...wait for it...dog pee. To be clear, he isn't resurrected entirely by dog pee. He's mostly brought back by some girl still believing in him and dreaming about his domain. Freddy doesn't actually come back, however, until a dog pees on his grave, which fully revives him. Once again, no explanation is provided. It's seems like whoever was writing the script got stuck on the revival scene, probably took a break to walk his dog, and then was like "oh my god! That's it!" Then New Line Studios paid him actual money for having written that.

The Ben Affleck-starring Daredevil movie has a lot of problems, mainly in how much it tries to cram into the plot. For example, the movie attempts to stuff Matt Murdock's entire relationship with female assassin Elektra, played by Jennifer Garner, into one movie. They meet, they fall in love, she gets killed, and he grieves the loss, all in under two hours. In the comics, Elektra is killed but is eventually resurrected, so fans expected her to come back. Which she did, in the spin-off movie Elektra. In the comics, her revival comprises a huge story, so how's it handled in the movie? Somebody says "I thought she was dead?" and then she responds "I got better." The theatrical version never really goes into much more detail, offering only vague hints. The real answer, of course, is probably something like "we signed Jennifer Garner to a multi-picture deal."

The hero always saves the damsel in distress. It's pretty much a rule in classic movies. That's why it's so shocking at the end of Richard Donner's Superman when he fails to save Lois Lane. When Lex Luthor enacts his plan to cause natural disasters across the continent, Lois gets stuck in her car during an earthquake. A crack opens up in the road and she gets stuck, and by the time Superman arrives, she's already dead. It's a powerful moment, and nobody saw it coming. It's then ruined because Superman flies up into the sky and begins circling the planet. He flies so fast that Earth's rotation reverses, which somehow reverses time. Superman then corrects the Earth's rotation and flies back to Lois. He arrives in time to prevent her death. Aside from how stupid the mechanics of this are, Superman didn't arrive in time to save Lois because he was out saving other people. He basically decided that Lois was more important that a town full of people. Also, why not turn back to the Earth's rotation to back before Luthor even enacted his plan and stop him from starting?

Everyone credits 2000's X-Men for kicking off the current comic book movie craze, but Blade really deserves the credit. The Wesley Snipes movie showed the world that just because something is based on a comic book, it doesn't have to be full of silly costumes and dramatic speeches. The movie was made for adults, and had some truly dark moments in it. The heaviest scene comes when Blade finds his mentor, Whistler, after he's been attacked and bitten by vampires. Whistler shoots himself with Blade's gun to prevent himself from turning into a monster, leaving Blade emotionally destroyed. Then, at the start of Blade 2, it turns out Whistler didn't actually kill himself. That's all the explanation given. Also, apparently there's a way to prevent someone from turning into a vampire, so Whistler is just completely back to normal. Why does Whistler beg to die if there's a simple cure? Also, why does he pretend to shoot himself in the face, and why doesn't Blade go check on him? All Blade does is kill vampires, but this one time he forgot how it works?

What makes this entry so frustrating is that Michael Myers is a slasher movie villain, and those are the easiest characters to resurrect. He dies at the end of pretty much every other Halloween movie before this, so it shouldn't have been hard to bring him back. To be fair, in the previous movie, Halloween: H20, Myers is actually decapitated, which is a hard wound to recover from. People's heads don't usually just grow back. Still, in Resurrection, it's explained that the person decapitated at the end of H20 isn't actually Michael Myers, but some random EMT who Myers found, knocked out, and dressed up in his costume. Myers also broke this guy's jaw so he couldn't talk and explain that he wasn't Michael Myers. That doesn't explain why he was trying to kill Jamie Lee Curtis, though. The guy that she decapitates is clearly trying to murder her, instead of just taking off the mask and showing her his "not Michael Myers" face. It's never a good idea to have a popular character's resurrection rely on somebody else acting like a complete moron.