The 18 most devastating deaths in superhero movies

Just ahead of his death at the hands of X-24, Charles Xavier gives a solemn, regretful speech that perfectly captures the tone of this whole film.

It's all fun and games dressing like superheroes and fighting bad guys until someone sets fire to your dad. Still, it's the closest we'll ever come to seeing Nic Cage as Batman, so totally worth the blub.

We imagine Fandral, Hogun, and Volstagg have endless fireside tales of battles they've won. Yet the Asgardian trio met their match when Hela, the Goddess of Death, popped up as an opponent. Swift doesn't even cover it.

Magneto isn't been the biggest fan of regular humans. But when he retires and starts a normal life with a wife and a daughter, even he can't have foreseen that they'd die at the hands of homo sapiens searching for him.

Despite being right about the conspiracy and tracking the evil culprit halfway across the world, Rorschach just can't catch a break. His death at the hands of Doctor  Manhattan to keep him from revealing the truth and scuppering world peace is brutal to say the least: turned into a gory snow angel.

If Captain America is the first Avenger, then Margaret Elizabeth "Peggy" Carter is the second. Her death from old age is incredibly emotional both for Cap and the audience.

That's right, Groot is dead. The character you've been seeing in Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2 and Avengers: Infinity War is a new being grown from the seed of the previous character. We'll give you some time to wipe away a tear if that's news to you.

Star-Lord's adoptive dad is badass personified – as badass as Mary Poppins – but he's still sentimental enough to give his life to save Peter Quill's. Nice funeral, mind.

The relationship between Gal Gadot's Amazonian warrior and Chris Pine's pilot is very believable, and the fact that Steve Trevor tells Diana Prince that he loves her only moments before giving his life to save many more only adds to the heartbreak here.

He may have been brought back for the TV series but as far as the movies are concerned, Agent Coulson is dead. His demise was enough to galvanise the Avengers into a team (and galvanise the audience into all suddenly having something in their eye).

Gifted robotics student Tadashi Hamada is all heart, and he's a great mentor to a little brother who'd rather use his talents for illegal robot fights. So his death early on in the film delivers a real hammer blow.

It would have to be Wolverine that puts Dark Phoenix out of her misery, wouldn't it? Logan had been in love with Jean Grey since he first met her, but was the only one able to withstand her powers for long enough to dish out the killing blow.

Supervillains love giving heroes tough choices. Batman wanted to save his girlfriend over Harvey Dent, but the Joker had one last trick up his sleeve…

There was none of the coy relationship shtick in Marc Webb's reboot, as charismatic leads Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield sizzled up the screen as Gwen Stacey and Peter Parker. We all died a little bit when Spidey failed to properly catch her and she was killed by the fall.

Let's be honest, we "didn't see that coming" either. But Pietro Maximoff's sacrifice was the tearjerker moment the messy Age of Ultron needed.

"So this is what it feels like." Logan is talking about death – we're losing a cinematic best friend. Neither feeling is good.