I definitely agree with John Kim that not all tropes are pro-Civilisation or Lawful, there are plenty of anti-Civilisation or Chaotic tropes, such as the Rousseau-derived Noble Savage of Dances With Wolves, Avatar, and a ton of other fiction - I think The Last Samurai falls in there too. I don't think Pulp PCs being im/mortal is either Lawful or Chaotic; but again I agree that functional immortality combined with notional 'death threats' feels more escapist.
To be fair, not all civilizations are worth preserving. Rebels fighting an authoritarian regime is technically “anti-civilization” in the sense of pulling down the established order, but that order was corrupt and needs to fall for the good of the people it exploits for the gains of its leaders.
Basically, there’s a difference between Law/Chaos and Good/Evil. Most of the subversion I see prevalent these days is more about establishing that the Good are actually evil and the Evil are actually good (ex. the Maleficent films, Superman expies who turn out to be jerks at best, more typically monsters, orcs are actually good and the humans are racists for attacking them, etc.).
And yes, if the point of the pulp hero’s “immortality” is that the pulp genre is fundamentally escapist, then it stands to reason that people interested in playing a game based on the genre are also looking for something escapist and your death mechanics should reflect that.
For example, one of the few really good mechanics that came out of Paradigm’s attempts at building their own system for Arcanis (which was intended to be a bit pulpy) was their Wounds and Stamina system which reinforced that. Stamina was basically your hit points, but all non-physical (bumps, bruises, minor cuts at most). At 0 stamina you’re knocked out. Wounds only occurred on critical hits, or other specific instances (and only 1 from any occurrence, though PCs only ever had 2-4). At 0 wounds you will die without medical attention and without expert/magic care you will probably acquire a permanent disability even if you do survive.
This fits the general pulp convention that heroes are typically only knocked out/captured rather than killed unless special situations are in play, while still keeping the possibility of luck/the fates ending them due to actual wounds.
You don't see Bucky die, you see him fall to his death, same with cap, you don't see him die, you see him fall to a frozing ocean. Fade to black change of scene.
That's easy to do in fiction, not so much in an RPG, because when the disintegrator ray, that we have seen disintegrate a tank Hits your PC...
This is where non-physical hit points (Stamina in that Arcanis system, Edge in my own) help to model situations.
See, in a pulp scenario the distintegrator ray NEVER hits the hero (until it does... i.e. a lethal critical hit); instead they dive out of the path at the last second, but are knocked unconscious by debris from the ceiling collapsing when the distintegrator ray instead strikes a support column.
Pulp is a genre that benefits from a less detailed combat system; one area where the OSR model DOES fit the mold is it’s it’s one minute combat rounds where a single attack represents a number of attempts in the larger flow of battle (so in a pulpy gun battle the combatants aren’t taking a single shot per round, they’re probably emptying their entire magazine and reloading again during the round).
Couple that with non-physical hit points and it’s very easy to create a system with a pulpy feel where you don’t describe the overall action of the past minute until the entire round is over.
So, using the Stamina/Wounds of Arcanis as an example, if the distintegrator ray knocks the PC to zero stamina, but it wasn’t a critical hit then the GM describes the action in such a way that evading the death ray results in their being knocked unconscious by a secondary effect. If it was a critical then they were seriously wounded in evading the death ray. If the hit dropped their wounds to zero then they were actually struck and distintegrated to the horror of their companions.
There’s no metacurrency involved, players aren’t using Fate or Luck points to alter outcomes, just the lack of detail allows the GM more latitude in narrating the outcome of a combat round (though the declared actions are obviously the starting point).
Heck, it’s a level of detail less than I’d enjoy, but you could even go as abstract as the new V5 mechanics where each turn is an opposed check (with bonuses based on the circumstances... so having a death ray might give the villain a +5 to their check result) with the winner doing their margin of success in damage to the loser and the GM narrating how that happens based on each participant’s declared actions.
Similarly, treating “mooks” as a single entity in a more abstracted system makes sense (particularly with the “one attack equals emptying your magazine over the course of a minute” aspect).