The following post has moderate spoilers for the film The Atomic Blonde starring Charlize Theron and Directed by David Leitch.

There are lots of tropes in writing and popular media but an interesting effect takes place when a character occupies several tropes at once. In Atomic Blonde Theron’s character Lorriane while on an undercover mission to East Berlin works with and has an affair with Delphine a French agent also working a mission in Berlin. Delphine, played by Sophia Boutella, is very inexperienced as an intelligence officer but her and Lorrain form a close sexual relationship. As the film moves from the second to the third act Delphine is killed.

Delphine and her death occupy possibly three different well-worn cinematic tropes.

The Junior Partner:

Often in spy and action movies the main character will receive vital assistance from a less experienced character with the protagonists acting as a mentor for the novice. Very often as the situation escalates and after the junior partner has obtained vital information for the plot and as the writers raise the stakes the story’s antagonists will kill the Junior Partner. Over the long run of the James Bond franchise he has left a trail littered with expendable Junior Partners.

Bury Your Gays

This one, in my opinion, divides into two major categories. During the period of the Motion Picture Production Code when gay and queer character could not be clearly identified as such, characters that were understood to be gay came to bad, usually, lethal ends as ‘punishment’ for the sinful lives. After The Code was abandoned and replaced with the Motion Picture Rating System the treatment of gay character changed from condemnation of the characters to condemnation of the society that ostracized them. Often the gay characters still came to bad and usually lethal endings but now it was meant as a tragic statement on their abuse at the hands of uncaring society. Either way gay characters came to repetitious, clichéd deaths.

Now It’s Personal

In action adventure movies the protagonist is often a reluctant one. He, and it is nearly always a he with this trope, wants to avoid the trouble of tackling the antagonist and simply wants to live his life. When this happens usually at the end of the first or second acts someone close to the protagonist will suffer terribly at the hands of the antagonist or their minions. Now with the stakes having become person the protagonist is motivated and propelled towards the conflict. (And too often sexual assault of the love interest in a common second act motivator.)

In Atomic Blonde Delphine’s death can clearly fit into the first two tropes. She serves as the junior partner to Lorraine, obtaining vital plot information, and then, no longer serving any real plot function she is dispatched to raise the stakes. As she and Lorraine became lovers over the course of the film, and Lorraine is clearly marked as bi-sexual by her relationship with male characters earlier in the film, Delphine certainly fits into the gay character doomed to death trope. The third trope applies less clearly as Lorriane is fully motivated throughout the film.

What I find curious is how a person’s personal filter colors their perception to tropes. Delphine fit cleanly into The Junior Partner and Bury Your Gays but people rarely mention both, it is nearly always one or the other and which trop they cite as the active trope, usually irritating them for it presence, is nearly entirely a function of their lived life. This better than almost anything else typifies by often repeated comment that ‘no honest critique can be wrong.’ Art is an alchemical reaction between artist intent, random circumstance, and each person in the audience own lived life; that is what makes art so magical and transcendent.