Before we begin tonight's list, I would like to address some comments made about the previous List of the Obscure.  In my first issue, I may not have reached quite as deep into the realm of the Obscure as one would expect based on the name.  Or, as our good friend Greg King put it:

Wow, so Deep Impact and Armageddon had some things in common? Is the next list going to be the ways that black people are different from white people?

Fine, point taken.  Maybe not everything I write about will be so obscure.  In that light, I'd like to propose a new slogan for this feature.

List of the Obscure: I'll write about whatever the fuck I want (TM).

(I'm just kidding Greg, you know I wuv you.)

1. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

Sean Bean is a walking spoiler alert.  At some point in his career, casting director's must have decided that he gave a really great death scene, because everytime I see him in a movie, he ends up dying.  More often then not, he dies in a really spectacular way.  Let's start with his biggest hit, Fellowship of the Ring.

Bean is Boromir, the conflicted wannabe hero who succumbs to the lure of the ring. Blah blah blah, everybody saw this one, I don't need to tell you about his death.  Three giant arrows to the chest, shot by a giant monster.  And this was one of the tamer deaths on this list.

2. Patriot Games (1992)

One of the reasons that Bean keeps ending up on the wrong end of a horrible death is that he plays the bad guy really well.  This time he is Sean Miller, an IRA terrorist who is sent to prison based on testimony from former CIA operative Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford).  Sean Miller/Bean learns the same thing that Darth Vader, Nazis, and Calista Flockhart have all learned:  when you engage Harrison Ford in hand-to-hand combat on a speedboat, you end up impaled on an anchor.

3. Equilibrium (2002)

Uh, he gets shot or something. I didn't actually see this. Did anyone see this? What the hell is this movie? Why did Sean Bean agree to be in a cheap looking Matrix knockoff? British actors will be in anything.  Jesus, look at this poster. 

Let's just move on.

4. The Hitcher

Shotgun to the face!  That'll teach him to hitchhike.  I didn't see this either.

5. Goldeneye (1995)

Aah, Goldeneye - the only movie to have its reputation improved by being adapted into a video game.  However, the movie had something that the video game could only dream of: an awesome death scene for Sean Bean! This one is my second favorite on this list.  The favorite? Well, you'll just have to keep reading.

(suspense)

Losing a fist fight 200 feet above the ground never ends well, but I don't think it could end much worse than this.  We're going to have to go second person on this one.  Your an ex-00 agent.  First, Pierce Brosnan foils your plan to take over London by hitting it with an EMP.  Then, he kicks you off the top of the dish, and you fall 200 feet to the bottom.  Are you dead? Well, maybe you are dead, and maybe I am dead, but Sean Bean is a former 00-agent.  He is about to get up and roll out of there.  But THEN, fucking Pierce fucking Brosnan has to go and blow up your satellite dish, so that the whole works comes crashing down on top of you while he flies off in a helicopter with some hot Russian chick.  Pierce Brosnan is a dick sometimes.

6. Don't Say A Word (2001)

This movie sucked, but it will always hold a special place in my heart.  The Suze made me watch this Michael Douglas/Sean Bean/Brittany Murphy crapfest, because it had the girl in the commercial saying, "I'll never tell..." and she was all spooky about it.  Sean Bean takes Michael Douglas' family hostage, threatening to kill them unless he can get crazy ole Brittany Murphy to tell him where a hidden fortune is, uh, hidden. 

Turns out it was hidden in a grave.  So Sean Bean goes and digs it up, but somebody should have told him, "Hey, Sean Bean, you die a horrible death in all your movies, are you sure you want to go digging up graves?" Nobody did, and that's why the grave collapses, burying Sean Bean alive. To death.

So why does this masterpiece hold a special place? Because this was the movie where I realized, "Hey, that's the Lord of the Rings guy! And he was in Goldeneye too! Does he die in every movie he's in?!"

7. The Island (2005)

And The Island was the movie that confirmed it: yes, he does.  This was also my favorite Sean Bean death scene.

Too bad its trapped in another terrible movie.  The problems here are too many to count, so we'll just stick to the big one:  why is Lincoln Six-Echo (Ewarn McGregor), a clone from an organ farm, able to turn into a super-spy in order to take down the organ farm? He was stupid enough to think the organ farm was a utopian society, but smart enough to infiltrate the organ farm and take it down? Organ farm! ORGAN FARM!!

Sean Bean is the evil mastermind behind the ...organ farm... and he tries to stop Abraham Eight-Bravo, or whatever, from taking it down.  And what does he get for his trouble? The same thing every scientist who messes with God's creations should get.  Spear gun to the neck! Yeah! And then he falls off the walkway they are fighting on (did I mention that? there's a walkway) and Washington Twelve-Zulu falls off the walkway, but he holds onto the spear gun, and Sean Bean is dangling from the spear in his neck, so Obama Seven-Hotel can climb back up, and escape with Scarlett Johanssen, and get on a boat and sail to an island.  The end.

Got an idea for List of the Obscure? Let me know about it.