Deathtrap (plot device)

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A deathtrap is a literary and dramatic plot device in which a villain, who has captured the hero or another sympathetic character, attempts to use an elaborate and usually sadistic method of murdering him/her.

It is often used as a means to create dramatic tension in the story and to have the villain reveal important information to the hero, confident that the hero will shortly not be able to use it. It may also be a means to show the hero's resourcefulness in escaping, or the writer's ingenuity at devising a last-minute rescue or deus ex machina.

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[edit] History

This plot device is generally believed to have been popularized by movie serials, though it is best known for its use in the James Bond film series and superhero stories, and has precedents in the 19th century theatrical melodramas from which the cliché of the moustache-twirling villain leaving the heroine tied to the railroad tracks is derived.

[edit] Narrative use

It is a common criticism that it is unbelievable in story plots to have villains try to kill the heroes in such elaborate ways when they could use simple methods like shooting them. Through the decades, comic book writers have responded to these complaints by devising ways in which the deathtraps have served other purposes.

For instance, one Legion of Super-Heroes story by Jim Shooter had a team of Legionnaires put into a variety of deathtraps and the villains wanted the heroes to successfully escape. This was because the real purpose of the deathtraps was to have the Legionnaires use a great deal of energy doing so, which the villains then harnessed for their own benefit. Other stories have had villains use deathtraps as a means of testing the heroes or to distract them while the villain attends to other matters.

Another rationalization for a deathtrap is when a particular villain simply enjoys leaving his victims some small chance of survival, just for the sake of sport. Such "sporting" villains include The Riddler, who has an uncontrollable compulsion to create intellectual challenges for his enemies. The Joker, Jigsaw Killer, and Arcade are other villains who simply enjoy the challenge.

On occasion, the villain may employ a slow deathtrap because they enjoy their victim's suffering prior to death, either due to sadistic tendencies or a desire for painful vengeance.

In a similar vein, the villain, often a megalomaniac, may feel that, as a reflection of his own imagined greatness, it would be "beneath him" to simply murder his enemy like any common criminal, and that his enemy's death should be the worthy spectacle that a successful deathtrap would provide. In contrast, he may feel that his enemy, having provided him with a worthy challenge in their earlier encounters, himself "deserves" such a grandiose death, or that the enmity between the two is so "epic" that it merits no less than such a conclusion.

Finally, the villain may simply be too insane to recognize the impracticality of the situation, although this characterization is rarely seen outside of deliberately parodic characters such as Dr. Evil.

[edit] Famous examples of deathtraps

  • Raiders of the Lost Ark: Sealing Indiana Jones and Marion in the Well of Souls
    • Escape method: Seeing a possible tunnel entrance, Jones climbed a statue and toppled it towards the wall to create an entrance to a passageway that led to the outside.
  • Goldfinger (novel): James Bond is shackled spreadeagled to a table and a circular saw (a laser in the film) is approaching to cut him in half. Unlike many deathtrap scenarios, Bond remains under constant supervision, and he does not use (or have) a device or outside help to escape.
    • Escape method: Bond bluffs Goldfinger, and persuades him that his replacement "008" also knows about Goldfingers' plans and so Goldfinger elects to not take the chance of another spy coming on the scene to interfere, which he can avoid by holding Bond captive.
  • Live and Let Die: Doctor Kananga and a minion tie James Bond and Solitare to a platform to be lowered into a shark infested pool to be eaten alive.
    • Escape method: Without the villains seeing, Bond activates his watch's rotary saw function to cut through his restraints to free himself and attack Kananga.
  • The 1960s live action television series Batman usually had two-part episodes which have a cliffhanger involving bizarre deathtraps.
    • Example: The Joker traps the Dynamic Duo without their utility belts in the bottom of an industrial smokestack and begins to gradually fill it with a deadly heavier-than-air gas.
      • Escape method: The pair lock elbows and brace their backs against each other to walk up the smokestack to the top opening and slide down a support cable safely to the ground.
  • The Incredible Hulk often has Bruce Banner finding himself in elaborate deathtraps where his only escape is they produce enough emotional stress to trigger his transformation in the Hulk who uses his superhuman strength and endurance to break free and attack his assailants.
  • The Perils of Penelope Pitstop always involved improbable deathtraps, usually set by the Hooded Claw.
  • X-Men #17-18 - Magneto seizes the X-Men and renders all of them unconscious. He then decides to put them inside a steel gondola lifted by a hot-air balloon, so that it rises extremely high in the sky, into the upper atmosphere until they suffocate.
    • Escape method: Jean Grey uses her telekinesis to stop the balloon from rising, Cyclops uses his optic blasts to pierce it so that it deflates slowly and they fall back on Earth, with Jean controlling the descent.
  • Iron Man #118 - Anthony Stark is struck unconscious and thrown out of the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier, several thousand feet up.
    • Escape method: Regaining consciousness and his composure, Stark quickly dons his power armor and barely dons the complete suit to engage the flight function before he hits the ground.
  • Fantastic Four #278-279 - Kristoff Vernard, the adopted son of Doctor Doom, launches the Baxter Building into outer space and then explodes it with the Four and an associate inside.
    • Escape method: The Invisible Woman erects a force field bubble (an ability which of which Doom's son was unaware) to protect the occupants from the explosion and they play dead when a probe examines the wreckage. Once alone, the superhero team leaves orbit by Mister Fantastic using his stretching power to shape the force field into an aerodynamic form. Once achieved, he carefully created an air leak to serve as propulsion to make the bubble start re-entry. To survive the resulting heat generation, The Human Torch temporarily absorbs the heat energy to keep the temperature in the bubble at a livable level until it has descended into the lower atmosphere. This has some peril as Johnny has to suppress the involuntary urge to explosively release the excess until he is allow to fall out, release and follow the field from the air. Once achieved, the bubble is steered toward Latveria and to one of Doctor Doom's castles with She-Hulk serving as a battering ram to gain entry on impact.
  • Dick Tracy was the first comic strip to use deathtraps extensively[citation needed]. The most famous was devised by Mrs. Pruneface. Her creation was that of Tracy lying chained to an apartment floor underneath a refrigerator supported by two ice cakes which had a sharpened pole aimed at the detective's heart. The heat was turned up and as the ice cakes melted, the pole would descend until it impaled Tracy.
    • Escape Method: Tracy noticed that the floor was on a slight incline and hit upon the idea of repeatedly striking the floor with his pelvis, thus caused the fridge to be slowly shifted to one side until the pole missed him. Meanwhile, Pat and his police comrades eventually found Tracy and freed him.
  • Perhaps the most elaborate deathtrap of all time (and one of the most famous) was the Marvel comics villain Arcade's sadistic amusement park, "Murderworld," an underground complex which contains many elaborate "rides" modeled after various carnival Fun Houses, where Arcade trapped the superheroes, fully intending to kill them but, for the sake of his twisted sense of gamesmanship, willing to spare them if they escape his traps. Arcade and his deadly amusement park have appeared in several different franchises of the Marvel comics universe, and tested several different superhero teams.
    • Escape Method: Since each "ride" in Murderworld is different, escape methods vary. When Arcade, who sometimes acts as a hired assassin rather than simply for his own amusement, traps his clients' enemies in Murderworld, they, being for the most part ordinary men and women, customarily do not escape, although, as with his superhero enemies, Arcade will theoretically allow them to depart unharmed should they manage to survive.
  • Disney's The Great Mouse Detective: Ratigan ties up Basil and Dawson in an intricate mousetrap and tells them about his plot to kill the queen. He then leaves to see his scheme unfold, assuming that they will soon be dead.
    • Escape method: Basil uses his scientific intellect to use the different aspects of the trap against each other
  • Goku Midnight Eye: Goku is spotted infilitrating the villain's headquarters and is trapped in a hall as retractable walls are deployed and the area containing Goku is flooded with enough water to drown him.
    • Escape method: Goku uses his cybernetic eye to control the various retractable walls in the building while the water level in his area rises almost to the ceiling. When sufficient water is collected, Goku opens one of the walls containing him and the villains realize that he has turned the deathtrap into a weapon, directing the mass of water right to their control room. As a result, the water rams through the control room's door, drowning most of the staff while Goku safely rides the torrent to the destination to bring the fight to his enemies.
  • Saw (film series): The plot of the series revolves around the Jigsaw Killer, a dying vigilante who kidnaps his victims and places them in deadly traps to test them, and give them an opportunity to repent from their former lifestyle in which they took their lives for granted

[edit] The villain speech

A simpler variation on the deathtrap is the villain speech, also known as monologuing. The villain, after having captured the hero or another victim, gives a long speech taunting and sneering at his victim, pontificating on how said victim will soon die, and reminiscing over how he tried for so long to get his kill and is now about to reap the reward. Villains may also give away details of their evil plots, on the rationale that the victim will die immediately. This speech, given when the villain could have just killed the victim in a matter of seconds, is invariably used to give another character time to come in and save the victim, or for the victim to escape. In The Incredibles (which popularized the term "monologuing"), Mr. Incredible and Frozone even attacked villains in the middle of their speeches (Mr. Incredible is seen attacking Syndrome and Frozone is mentioned to have attacked Baron von Ruthless off-camera). In a literary sense, the villain speech is also used as a form of exposition.

Even in relatively realistic stories, villains will often take a moment to say something pithy before finishing off the victim.

[edit] Spoofs

The concept of the deathtrap/monologue is featured in many satires. For instance, it was spoofed heavily in the Austin Powers movies, including a replication of James Bond's Shark Infested Water deathtrap. It is first introduced as "an easily escapeable situation involving an overly elborate and exotic death" with Austin placed on a platform over a pool (which Dr. Evil calls "the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism"). The trap is escaped by swinging on a grapple of dental floss. As the intended sharks with laserbeams attached to their heads were unavailable due to the complexities of international law regarding endangered species (much to Dr. Evil's disappointment), ill-tempered mutant seabass are employed instead. As part of the spoof, Scott Evil, Dr. Evil's son, insists that the deathtrap is pointless and that they could simply shoot them with a pistol, which he has nearby, and yells at his father for the further incompetence of leaving them alone. Dr Evil responds that not watching the killing but assuming it went well makes prefect sense.

James Bond movies have included so many deathtrap/monologue scenes that a card game entitled Before I Kill You, Mr. Bond was developed. Players, to score points, must read "taunt" cards that mimic many of the improbable situations Bond was found in.

Also, in the webcomic 8-bit Theater, the airship that the Light Warriors use is actually named the Deathtrap. It garners this name from its habit of randomly halting flight and plunging to the earth at high velocities of speed- "twice terminal velocity," as Red Mage states during one such incident. No one has died in the Deathtrap, despite this obvious fault. The lack of deaths is often due to the Light Warriors' ingenuity in surviving their own airship, which always results in methods that are bizarre or completely nonsensical- such as the incident wherein the character Black Mage used a Hadoken to create an explosion that "softened" their fall, despite his quip that "explosions are not known for their life-saving properties". The airship, the fact that no one has ever died from its crashes, and the way the Light Warriors are always saving themselves through strange methods are all probably references to the very phenomenon described in this article. Quite surprisingly, their last landing went smoothly, as Thief notes that there was "a less fire than usual," to which Red Mage adds "and no blood!" Oddly enough, Black Mage, easily the most villainous character on the team, was not present for that flight.

In the webcomic The Order of the Stick, the villain Nale has a monologue in the bathroom before leaving his room to prevent himself from "Going Bond villain" and forgetting what to do when the time comes.

In the webcomic Real Life, evil genius Tony captures a James Bond-like secret agent sneaking into his base. The agent, once strapped to a table, asks about Tony putting him in an elaborate deathtrap and then turning his head while the agent escapes. Tony tells him he has one in mind; he puts a gun in the agent's face, and if the agent moves, he pulls the trigger, and if the agent doesn't move, he pulls the trigger. The agent remarks that it leaves something to be desired.[1]

In the sit-com Blackadder, Prince Edmund is captured by his nemesis, The Hawk, who straps him into a chair which, in sixty seconds, will mutilate him in a variety of ways. Edmund's friends, Baldrick and Percy, manage to poison the Hawk and his followers, but while celebrating this unlikely victory, the time runs out, and Edmund suffers a terrible fate. In another episode, Lord Flashheart is confronted by a villain who begins an evil villain speech. However, rather than waiting for him to finish, Flashheart merely shoots him without warning.

Curse of Monkey Island makes fun of this cliché. The villain LeChuck, after capturing Guybrush Threepwood, insists on telling him his plans before executing him. By this dialogue, interesting background story that connect the games together are given to the player. Guybrush does him the favour to listen, but after a while he is so bored that he refuses to listen any more, even if LeChuck pleads to continue.

While not a spoof, the famous line from Watchmen wherein the character Ozymandias explains in detail how he will set his plan irrevocably in motion and then reveals that "I did it thirty-five minutes ago" is a skewering of the monologuing tendencies of supervillains.

In the Simpsons episode You Only Move Twice, which generally spoofs Bond villain clichés, supervillain/great boss Hank Scorpio has "Mr. Bont" strapped to a table with a laser à la Goldfinger. Bont manages to escape, only to be tackled by Homer. Scorpio's henchmen promptly shoot Bont. A deleted scene from another episode, $pringfield, also pokes fun at this. The scene has James Bond playing poker against one of his many villains. When he loses due to Homer (who had forgotten to take the Joker card out of the deck along with a card entitled 'Rules of Bridge') he is dragged off by the villain's henchman. While leaving, he says, "At least tell me the details of your plan for world domination", to which the villain replied, "Oh no, I'm not falling for that one again."

In the movie Dogma Azrael makes fun of the Deathtrap by saying, "Oh no, I've seen too many Bond movies to know that you never reveal ALL the elements to your plan, no matter how close you are to winning." (Quote may be paraphrased)

While not a spoof, J.C. Hutchins's trilogy of novels, 7th Son, uses deathtraps in a self-conscious and practical way. The novels feature a villain who sets up a series of deathtraps in remote locations that the team of protagonists must enter and subsequently escape, in order to eventually locate the villain's hideout. However the villain is really using the deathtraps (including an exploding water tower base and ambushing a protagonist on an ice field with dump trucks) to distract and slowly kill off the protagonists while the villain carries out his plans.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Real Life Comics - The Online Comic ©1999-2008 Greg Dean

[edit] External links