Infinity War and Musings on Fictional Death

While it's obvious that the victims of Infinity War's "Snapture" will come back, there's a lot of speculation about the other deaths in the movie.  Mainly Loki, Heimdall, Vision, and Gamora.  Some people are saying, "They better not bring any of these characters back, or those gut-wrenching scenes in Infinity War will lose their impact."

I'm not saying they're wrong, but here's the thing.  I've been reading comics for most of my life, and even wrote my own back in high school.  And there's something I've noticed about comic book death, and it's a rule so important it deserves to be in bold:

The cheesiness of a fictional resurrection is directly related to whether or not the resurrection was already planned when the the character died.

The best writers will plant subtle clues about the character's return, sometimes before the character even actually dies.  You often feel stupid later when you go back and discover these clues.

I'm not saying it's a universal rule.  A good writer can bring back an old character in interesting ways, and a bad writer can make a planned resurrection look like an ass-pull.  But in most cases, I believe the rule holds true.

Some examples:

Loki "dies" in Thor: The Dark World.  He shows up again at the end of the movie, though, like we all knew he would.  Not cheesy in the slightest.

In Highlander II: The Quickening, MacLeod resurrects Ramirez by shouting his name during a quickening.  The writers of the first Highlander movie probably had no intention of ever resurrecting Ramirez (or making them aliens, or having a sequel at all, really), and this comes off as very cheesy.

When Superman died in the comics in the 90s, they'd already planned his resurrection.  His return was long and convoluted, but honestly no cheesier than the Superman comics typically were already.

When Jason Todd (the second Robin) was killed by the Joker, he was meant to stay dead.  Years later he was revived as a side effect of Superboy Prime punching a hole in the universe... or something.  Do I have to tell you that's cheesy?  The animated version had him brought back by Ra's al Ghul's Lazurus pit, which isn't much better.  Todd became a popular character after that, so I'm not saying it was a bad decision... but the actual resurrection itself was pretty cheesy.

A quick and easy rule for movies: If a character shows up by the end of the same movie in which they supposedly died, it's not as cheesy.  Infinity War parts 1 & 2 (or whatever part 2 is finally called) are basically one long movie.  They were written at the same time, partly filmed at the same time, and whatever resurrections happen in part 2 were already planned when the characters died.

I'm not saying Vision or Gamora will come back, I'm just saying don't dread the possibility, you bloodthirsty miscreant.  If they come back, it will be an important part of an already planned-out story.