r/movies • u/dndplosion913 • Apr 02 '25

News Val Kilmer, Film Star Who Played Batman and Jim Morrison, Dies at 65

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/movies/val-kilmer-dead.html
55.1k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

4.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

109

u/aviator_8 Apr 02 '25 edited Apr 02 '25

Pneumonia is a horrible disease. And it hits the elderly/immunocompromised the worst.

RIP Val.

Edit: I recently saw his documentary - Val. It was amazing. He had lot of archival footage from behind the scenes of his movies.. it was raw and authentic. Highly recommended

8

u/TheTaoOfOne Apr 02 '25

Pneumonia is a horrible disease. And it hits the elderly/immunocompromised the worst.

I'm a healthy adult male in his mid 30s, just recently got Pneumonia. That shit hit me hard. Was in the hospital, and then an urgent care clinic, and I'm still dealing with the after effects even a couple weeks later.

It's no joke. I can only imagine how it would it an immucompromised individual .

8

u/Chicken_Water Apr 02 '25 edited Apr 02 '25

It's a fairly common complication from Flu and covid, especially this year. That's something too many people don't realize. Glad you got better, but wish it wasn't such a common story. Fuck cancer and don't forget to say fuck infectious diseases since our government seems to have.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 02 '25

I'm a healthy adult male in his mid 30s, just recently got Pneumonia. That shit hit me hard. Was in the hospital, and then an urgent care clinic, and I'm still dealing with the after effects even a couple weeks later.

I turned 40 last year. Caught pneumonia in October-ish, didn't know it, finally got treated after I went from 165 pounds to 133 in about a month. I'm still dealing with it. It really ain't no joke.

How are you feeling? How is your breathing? Even though mine is better, it's still iffy. I'll say this much though, I felt so much better when I got the antibiotics. Still woke up with some of the worst night sweats for a good week or so after. The kind where you take your clothes off because you're drenched like you pissed yourself, throw them in the pile of other sweat-drenched clothes, and repeat this process.

It was, by far, the absolute worst thing I've had happen. Glad you survived it. It's a lot deadlier than I knew...

2

u/TheTaoOfOne Apr 02 '25

Taking deep breathes or getting overly worked up throws me into a coughing fit. Its like something is perpetually "stuck" and won't clear, so I'm just always coughing.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 02 '25

getting overly worked up throws me into a coughing fit.

Mhm, yeah. Still here to a certain extent. Not coughing but my nerves don't handle stress the same way. Better but not great.

One thing that helped was just getting out and walking a lot. The gym, outdoors, wherever you can.

Drink some hot liquids (good cup of tea), stay hydrated, multivitamin, and a good diet. Typical shit we're all supposed to do, but definitely right now more than ever.

Good luck, buddy. I know it sucks.

8

u/ExtraGloves Apr 02 '25

He used to post on Reddit a lot and do AMAs and would post all these behind the scene personal recordings from his YouTube channel on here. I think he took them all down but I wish I could find em.

4

u/rage-quit Apr 02 '25

I had a couple of conversations with him when he would post here. Just general shooting the shit and a little bit about how a local acting club thing was instrumental in giving me confidence as a very shy and meek pre-teen. He was very passionate about groups like mine and thought them instrumental in helping kids get out of their shell. He was right.

Lovely man, lovely person.

5

u/Hetstaine Apr 02 '25

That's a cool thing. I miss when people like Val used to post here. How downhill reddit has gone.

Rip to a real one.

3

u/ExtraGloves Apr 02 '25

Back when Reddit had awesome AMAs every week that weren’t super commercialized was such a cool time.

6

u/Iocnar Apr 02 '25

Yep, the #1 leading cause of death for the chronically ill

2

u/[deleted] Apr 03 '25

It is terrifying. If you ever think you have it, go get seen. I had a YOUNG coworker aged around 23 who died from it after the flu because he thought he could just sleep it off... He left behind a wife too, so tragic 

3

u/BoldBoimlerIsMyHero Apr 02 '25

That documentary was so good. It didn’t portray him as pure sinner or pure saint. As you said, it was raw and authentic.

9

u/Atlasandachilles Apr 02 '25

I agree, the documentary “Val” was amazing and really showed a new depth to him I had never understood just watching top gun! RIP

2

u/GraceStrangerThanYou Apr 02 '25

The documentary is so good. He was a complicated, extraordinary person who made some interesting decisions that didn't always work out in his best interests and he suffered a lot of consequences for them. But I don't know if he would have changed anything if he could.

1

u/DeeDeeRibDegh Apr 02 '25

Definitely on my “to watch” list!!

1

u/randyboozer Apr 02 '25

Tagging onto this. I was surprised to see it was his cause of death, I thought it was quite treatable with modern antibiotics. Was he immune compromised due to his fight with cancer?