Let old people live

Ethel Barrymore looks pretty healthy here. She was only 67.

I believe that sick, elderly characters in movies should survive at the end of the movie, even if they've gone through something physically grueling that might be expected to cause their deaths. I'm tired of old people dying in every single movie. They're like Chekov's gun. You see an old person in act one, you're going to see a dead old person by the end of act two.

Wasn't there a Disney movie about a boy and his dog, and the dog almost dies but recovers? If they can start letting animals survive, why not old people?

And now that I think about it, why does the gun you see hanging on the wall in act one have to be fired by the end of act two? Have a character with a house full of guns and have the guns do him absolutely no good at all when there's a home invasion of some sort. Make the gun nut as helpless as the rest us.

As it happens, I just watched The Spiral Staircase (1946). It takes place before World War One. A serial killer is on the loose. (Spoilers) A woman suffering hysterical mutism has locked the man she believes to be the killer in a closet but can't use the telephone to call for help. Then it turns out a DIFFERENT guy is the killer and he's about to murder her, too, but the man's own elderly invalid stepmother (Ethel Barrymore) staggers out of her room and empties a revolver into him. And then she dies.

She didn't even exert herself that much just pulling a trigger a few times. Killing him could just as well have given her a new lease on life. She could decide that she no longer feels helpless.