Flaw Exploitation in Live-Action Films.
- The Avengers:
- This is Loki's favorite tactic, but it is used against him in the climax. Tony realizes that he and Loki are similar, and this helped him figure out that Loki would sacrifice pragmatism for showmanship, which would end up biting Loki hard.
- Black Widow manipulates Loki's love for "The Reason You Suck" Speech to get important information from him. The Chitauri use his thirst for revenge and "worthiness" to have him fetch the Tesseract.
- In Batman Forever, Batman exploits The Riddler's need to be smarter than everyone else and Two-Face's compulsion to judge his decisions with the flip of a coin to defeat them both.
- In The Dark Knight, one of the reasons why the Joker is so effective a villain is that he's very good at pointing out the flaws in the principles of others, and exploiting those flaws to his advantage. Some examples are: 1) He immediately recognizes that Batman is the real reason why organized crime is threatened in Gotham and points this out to the mob, which causes the mob to hire the Joker when they realize he's right, giving the Joker access to Gotham's underworld. 2) He exploits the fact that Batman really is an unlawful vigilante by promising to kill people until Batman unmasks, turning the city and the cops against Batman. 3) He convinces Harvey Dent to become Two-Face by telling Dent that the so-called justice system that he supports is filled with corrupt people who constantly tolerate corruption and profit from crime, which is true since Jim Gordon is forced to work with suspect cops in order to have enough men to do his job. 4) He constantly iterates that people are complacent and corruptible and backs up his beliefs by putting people in a position where they have to choose to obey the law and their principles, or lose something they dearly love (only Batman consistently demonstrated his incorruptibility).
- In The Godfather, Sonny is lured into an ambush after his brother-in-law beats up his sister. This is to exploit his hot-headedness and love of family.
- In the finale of I Shot Jesse James, John Kelley turns his back to Bob Ford as the latter howls for his blood. Kelley knows Bob has an aversion to shooting people In the Back, given this was the way he killed Jesse James. This leaves Bob unable to shoot Kelley, and he can only pitiably scream for Kelley to turn around. Kelley does eventually, but draws his own shotgun to even the odds.
- Lampshaded during Sid's Evil Gloating in Jake Speed:Sid: "Heroes... you're so predictable. Always doing the right thing."
- James Bond:
- Many of the Bond villains have remarked upon and even used 007's Fatal Flaw for women against him to varying degrees of success.
- Bond uses these two to find a way to escape and defeat the villains if he's in a tight corner:
- Bond One-Liner. He always has a quip ready for any situation. Using humor as a shield and a weapon by accurately pinpointing and exploiting his enemies' flaws, he can subtly insult his captors when they invite him to dinner.
- Bond Villain Stupidity. Whenever villains give a Motive Rant about their Evil Plan and how they plan to off Bond, it quickly becomes clear to him that they're just ranting about their insanity via Psychological Projection. They're determined to justify their crimes to 007 while ranting about his own flaws, only for 007 to subtly insult them while cooking up a plan B to escape and defeat the baddies.
- This is how The Bug met his end in Men in Black. Despite his claim to being the top of "evolutionary ladder", Agent J thought and said otherwise by stomping on a few roaches which triggers The Bug's Berserk Button, which gave K who was swallowed by said Bug enough time to reach for his blaster and leave a big hole to escape out of.
- A rare hero-on-hero case occurs in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Azeem, newly arrived in England, needs to turn toward Mecca to pray, but it's too cloudy for him to tell which direction it is. Rather pettily, Robin won't tell his friend which way is East until Azeem confesses the name of the woman he was imprisoned for loving.
- In the movie, Azeem says her name was "Yazmeena", which was considered more likely than the book, in which her name is "Barbara".
- SHAZAM! (2019) reveals a drawback of being one of the Seven Deadly Sins; you're telling people your flaw just by introducing yourself. Because Billy realizes the Sin inhabiting Sivana is Envy, he knows just what to say to enrage the demon so much it emerges to attack him, even though this leaves Sivana powerless and his defeat leads to them being resealed.
- Averted in Speed. Shoot the hostage.
- Kirk taunted Khan in Star Trek II in order to get him to enter the Mutara Nebula, which gave Kirk the advantage and ultimately victory. The result is that Khan was undone by his own massive ego.Kirk: I am laughing at the superior intellect!
- Darth Sidious/Emperor Palpatine of Star Wars is the master. He exploits Amidala's anger at the Republic to get Chancellor Finis Valorum out of the way so Palpatine himself can become Chancellor, he (indirectly via Count Dooku) creates the Separatist Alliance, a rebellion based on real anger people have with the central government, and exploits the Senate's fear of the Separatists' droid armies to give him dictatorial power. He exploits Anakin's ego and fear of losing loved ones to tempt him to the Dark Side, exploiting the Jedi's aloofness to sow distrust on the side. He exploits the Rebellion's fear of galactic WMDs by using the second Death Star as bait for an ambush and nearly manages to exploit Luke's concern for his friends to tempt him as well. His one mistake was forgetting that he'd originally exploited Anakin's fear and anger at losing loved ones, so killing Anakin's son...
- Who, of course, exploited Vader's feelings to turn him against Palpatine. Not consciously (he went to try and rescue Vader, not kill Palpatine, according to the EU).
- It could be said that Luke certainly USED his father's feelings for him. But he used his father's positive (Light Side) emotions to help Vader/Anakin turn and free himself from the Emperor's control. Also, Luke's intent seemed to be for his father's own good and redemption, not JUST to topple the Empire for the Rebellion.
- Who, of course, exploited Vader's feelings to turn him against Palpatine. Not consciously (he went to try and rescue Vader, not kill Palpatine, according to the EU).
- In Superman II, General Zod realizes Superman's weakness is that he cares for the humans he's protecting. Zod and his minions start attacking and endangering the people of Metropolis. Superman finally realizes that fighting his enemies in the middle of the city is endangering innocent lives and takes off.
- In T2 Trainspotting, Renton and Sick Boy are able to steal large amounts from the patrons of a Unionist event at a pub because so many of them use "1690", the year of the Battle of the Boyne
, as their PINs. - In The Usual Suspects, Keyser Soze plays on Cujan's high opinion of his deduction skills to make him believe Keaton was the mastermind instead of him.
- Scottie's fear of heights in Vertigo is taken advantage of by Elster and Judy when they switch Elster's wife for Judy on top of the bell tower while Scottie couldn't follow up.
