Badass Normals in live-action movies.
- Neill Blomkamp seems to have a thing for making his Big Bads this trope. Colonel Koobus of District 9 is a South African mercenary who leads men to police aliens who can shrug off 9mm rounds and rip people's limbs off, and single-handedly takes out an alien Mini-Mecha which slaughtered all of his men. Kruger of Elysium takes on a guy in Powered Armor with a katana, though he does eventually get his own suit to fight Max's, and he also survives getting his face blown off. Eventually Subverted with Moore from Chappie, as he's set up as a tough ex-special forces operative, but at no point in the film does he even threaten Chappie without a major advantage like a weapon, a load of henchmen, or the Moose, and eventually Chappie royally kicks his ass - the film's climax makes it clear that past the bluster and military training, he's just a loser on a power trip.
- Buckaroo Banzai from The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. A world renowned crimefighter, Dr Banzai lacks superpowers but excels in his expertise in science, neurosurgery, test piloting and sense of courage to save the day. He's also a talented rock musician and his circle of associates (and fellow band members), the Hong Kong Cavaliers, are all exceptional polymaths in their own right.
- Charge from All Superheroes Must Die turns out to be one.
- Subverted in Blade Runner: You've got Harrison Ford playing Deckard, one of the specialists with the badass name "Blade Runner" who hunt the artificial, superhuman replicants. What you don't expect is that he'll get smacked around by some of the replicants easily and only survive by luck.
- In The Changeling, John starts to suspect that he has moved into a haunted house. But rather than go into denial or cower in fear, he actively seeks it out-exploring boarded up rooms and exhuming unmarked graves, alone, in the dead of night-to find out who it is and what it wants.
- Spoon of Dog Soldiers is a crazy British squaddie who takes on a werewolf in a fist-fight, and violently beats its furry ass. He only gets killed when another one turns up and the two double-team him, but he goes out with "I hope I give you the shits, you fuckin' wimp!"
- Elysium: Drakey and Crowe, Kruger's henchmen, who despite lacking exosuits, hold their own against Max and others, with Drakey single-handedly taking out the CCB building and forcing an evacuation.
- Ash Williams of the Evil Dead series. This man only wields a Chainsaw for an arm, a double barreled Remington shotgun note , a chiseled jaw, and the wit of a total jackass. Spouting off one liners left and right, this man who used to be an S-Mart clerk single handedly takes on an army of Deadites. He goes from a normal guy who is just as easily disturbed about the armies of hell as any other, to one of the most memorable movie badasses in history. Hail to the king baby.
- Jacob Kowalski from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them has no magic powers, but he doesn't need any to punch a double-crossing goblin or kick down a door that can't be magically unlocked.
- Snake-Eyes from G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (Storm Shadow is his Cobra counterpart), specificly when dealing with the Neo-Vipers. In the Paris chase he manages to do a lot more to try and stop Storm Shadow and Ana than his teammates in Powered Armor. All without having anything special besides a gun and his sword.
- Godzilla
- In a kaiju example we have Gorosaurus, who is little more than a giant theropod who can only bite, claw, kick and slash with no other otherwordly power or ability compared to most other kaiju in the franchise. Yet he is strong enough to physically overpower King Ghidorah and take his gravity beams head-on without much trouble in Destroy All Monsters.
- Godzilla: Final Wars has Captain Gordon. He defeats superpowered mutants and aliens armed with laser guns using only his fists and a katana. He was also able to survive a few encounters with Godzilla himself.
- Of the "Big Three" slasher villains, Michael Myers from Halloween is best known as this. Whereas Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th started out as this but is most famous in his Revenant Zombie form from the later sequels, and Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street is a ghost with Dream Weaver powers, Michael is known for getting no such explanation for how tough he is: as his former psychiatrist Dr. Loomis puts it, he's simply evil. Of course, he has countless superhuman feats in every continuity (knowing how to drive despite being imprisoned since childhood, pulling a headstone out of the ground, shrugging off gunshots, regrowing eyes after they were shot out) that strongly imply Loomis is onto something about him being anything but "normal." Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers tried to tie him to an ancient Celtic curse to explain his apparent powers, but that movie was swiftly disregarded by later entries.
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is being run by an ordinary one - he doesn't even have Nemo's "mad science knack" for him. But seeing how it's Sean Connery, obviously he kicks as much and more ass then various immortals and Hydes.
- Sonya Blade in Mortal Kombat (2021) is this owing to her lack of an Arcana from not being a chosen warrior like the rest of her teammates. She compensates by being a hardened and experienced special forces member who can hold her own against monsters and even combatants with Arcanas of their own with nothing more than her wits and pragmaticism to get her through it. She ultimately subverts it when she defeats Kano and claims his dragon brand for herself, developing an Arcana and becoming a chosen warrior as well, but all of her impressive fighting is done before this happens.
- The original trio of heroes in Mystery Men. Maybe. Mr. Furious does seem to have Rage Enhanced Super strength, though we're still not sure if he could lift a bus or not.
- In Oz the Great and Powerful, Oscar Diggs, who will later become The Man Behind the Curtain, isn't actually a real wizard, but is still badass enough to defeat The Wicked Witch of the East and The Wicked Witch of the West.
- The Perfect Weapon (1991): Jeff is a construction worker and skilled in martial arts.
- Lord Cutler Beckett from Pirates of the Caribbean is a particularly terrifying example. He doesn't have any supernatural powers or combat ability, but more than makes up for it in manipulation, blackmail, and sheer heartless cruelty, all in the name of defending his business. By the third movie, At World's End, he's subjugated the devil of the sea, Davy Jones, even mocking him to his face and forcing him to unceremoniously kill off his beloved Kraken, a huge threat to the pirates in Dead Man's Chest that succeeded in killing Jack Sparrow. Beckett so strongly exemplifies this trope that his very presence signifies pirate mythology itself dying.
- Riddick of Pitch Black had this going for him until the sequel retconned him into the last of a fearless warrior race.
- Brom from Sleepy Hollow, who is equally skilled with a musket and a blade, and proves it in his ultimately futile battle against the Headless Horseman.
- In the Star Wars universe, there are many who can perform amazing feats even if they lack Force-sensitivity or superhuman alien/cyborg/droid physiology:
- Jango Fett from Attack of the Clones has about the best record in the Star Wars films of a normal fighting the Force-using Jedi. First, he fights Obi-Wan using gizmos and gumption. Jango gets the worse of the combat, but his gadgets last just long enough to allow a quick escape, and Obi-Wan is certainly inconvenienced. Later, he manages to kill a distracted Jedi Red Shirt with some blaster sharpshooting. This must have gone to his head, because he ultimately tries to take on Mace Windu and gets rather anticlimatically curbstomped — note that Windu was absolutely elite even among the Jedi.
- Padmé Amidala proves herself to be not only a brilliant politician, but also a crack shot. She personally took command of a successful campaign to liberate her homeworld from the Trade Federation, and held her own in the opening of the Battle of Geonosis, fighting back-to-back with seasoned Jedi Knights, armed with nothing but a salvaged blaster. Between films, she gets a new title, moving from Royals Who Actually Do Something to Action Politician. In Revenge of the Sith, she hangs up her blaster, but only due to being pregnant. In fact, in a deleted subplot, she even helps to lay the groundwork for La Résistance!
- Finn, as seen in The Force Awakens, is able to hold his own in a lightsaber battle with trained Force-sensitive Kylo Ren despite the former's only having been trained in the use of Stun Batons (best exemplified by FN-2199 AKA 'TR-8R') which absolutely does not translate to the bottom-heavy lightsaber(it's worth noting that on close inspection, Finn has a tendency to overswing in his fight with Kylo, which is remarkably realistic, considering) and Kylo's being a trained Dark Side wielder hopped up on rage and pain (though, admittedly, also badly wounded with a weapon we've seen send Stormtroopers in full armour flying). In The Last Jedi, he faces against the elite Captain Phasma using a baton he IS familiar with and kicks her ass with very little help from Rose.
- However, The Rise of Skywalker subverts this towards the final battle. Sure, he takes out several Sith Troopers by himself and beats Pryde in a battle of wits... but he has just discovered he has the Force, so it's the normal part that's subverted.
- The Force Awakens has an even better example with a random Stormtrooper (canonically named "FN-2199", but better known to fans as TR-8R), who is able to take on Finn while the latter had a lightsaber with nothing but a stun baton and some serious Chutzpah. He would have killed Finn, too, had it not been for Han and Chewie intervening. Though, as noted above, since Finn had never trained with a lightsaber before, this isn't saying much.
- Wedge Antilles of the original trilogy and Poe Dameron of The Force Awakens are some of the best Ace Pilots whose piloting skills rival even force users like Luke and Vader. Wedge survived both attacks on the Death Stars (in the novels it's stated he's the only person to survive both Death Star runs) and even brought down a near-invincible AT-AT by using the harpoon cables of his snowspeeder to tangle its legs. In his debut film, Poe Dameron shot down 10 TIE fighters in 10 seconds with his X-Wing and landed the finishing blow to the Starkiller planet by flying into the it and destroying its core.
- All of the titular team in Rogue One, but especially Chirrut Îmwe who is not only lacking in Force-powers but is also blind and can still curb-stomp stormtrooper squads and shoot down TIE Fighters with nothing but a wooden staff and a crossbow, respectively.
- And of course there's Han Solo, who can take on waves of stormtroopers and fly his rugged freighter through a dense asteroid field.
- And his first girlfriend Qi'ra, martial-arts master.
- The Praetorian Guard in The Last Jedi, who show no signs of Force sensitivity whatsoever but are strong enough to take on Kylo Ren and Rey fighting together, and almost win.
- In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014), both April and Vernon went after Sacks and retrieved the mutagen despite neither being remotely skilled and Sacks having a gun.
- Kyle Reese from Terminator. An ordinary soldier from the future going up against a nigh-invincible killing machine. He dies bifurcating it with a handmade bomb, leaving his charge Sarah to finish it off by crushing it in a machine.
- The Transformers Film Series has an interesting example of how a group of characters grow into the role of Badass Normal. When they start off human soldiers were completely helpless against the Decepticons, as they would shrug off .50 cal machine guns and anything lower with no problem. Lennox and Epps managed to discover (almost by accident) that they were vulnerable to HEAT (High Explosive Anti-Tank) rounds, which they fired from hand-held weapons, as well as the really heavy weapons fired from artillery platforms. But due to difficulties mobilizing support crafts and hand-held weaponry not capable of extensive enough damage, they were still relying heavily on Autobot support during the course of Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen. By Transformers: Dark of the Moon, you see soldiers training directly with Autobots in how common infantry soldiers can do real damage against the big robots: using trip wires, blinding them with parachutes or sniper rounds, planting grenades on their feet to disable them... using Badass Normal strategies over heavy firepower. In the final battle of the film it effectively becomes Bash Brothers with equal footing with the Autobots and human soldiers just decimating the Decepticon ranks. Even Sam is able to take down Starscream.
- The fourth film shows the government hunting down all Transformers, claiming that the Autobots are not needed anymore. Naturally, the Decepticons return to show them they're wrong.
- In Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, back when Raze was human, he was strong enough to punch out werewolves. He was eventually turned, removing him from badass normal status.
- Lothar and Llane from Warcraft (2016) stand out among other heroes as being regular humans, as opposed to the rest of the characters — a half-orc, an actual orc and a pair of wizards. They keep up with orc-slaying just fine.
