The Worf Effect / Film

• A common trope in horror movies, especially slasher movies, is to kill off The Big Guy early, in order to establish the killer as somebody who can overpower even the toughest of the heroes. For the same reason, police officers who show up in such films aren't long for this world.
  • In the opening scene of Scream (1996), Casey attempts to threaten Ghostface by telling him that her football player boyfriend is on his way to her house and will beat his ass when he gets there. Ghostface's reply? "His name wouldn't be... Steve, would it?" He then instructs Casey to turn on the patio light, where she sees Steve Bound and Gagged in a chair before he gets Gutted Like a Fish, driving her over the Despair Event Horizon. Dewey Riley, the police officer protecting the main characters, also gets viciously attacked, though he survives his injuries.
  • Played for Laughs in Feast, where the guy introduced as The Hero gets brutally killed just seconds after his introduction. His last words? "I'm the guy who's gonna save your a-"
• Battle for the Planet of the Apes: No fight is involved, but Jake, the burliest human in Ape City, is unable to lift up a loaded wagon to replace a broken wheel, while a sinister gorilla does so with no trouble at all, emphasizing the physical superiority of the gorillas.
• Casper: Played for Laughs as Carrigan at one point gets Ray Stanz of the Ghostbusters to try to stop the ghosts, but instead, he's overwhelmed, telling them "Who You Gonna Call? Somebody else." before promptly leaving.
• The Dark Knight Rises: Just how formidable is Bane? He literally broke The Batman in a Curb-Stomp Battle.
• In Die Hard 2, Colonel Stewart's men kill the SWAT team sent to protect Chief Controller Barnes when he goes to activate the antenna array in the Terminal Annex. Only McClane is able to kill all of them to prevent them from killing Barnes, too.
• In Enter the Dragon, we get introduced to Williams' ability to kick butt. He then faces the Big Bad, Mr. Han. It is the first time we actually see Han in action so naturally, this trope in invoked.
• Fantastic Beasts: Gellert Grindelwald, the real greatest dark wizard of all time in terms of skill and power, exceeding Voldemort by default of being very nearly equal to Albus Dumbledore, has a real knack for this, just as much as Albus in the original series did. Anyone who tries to take him on tends to be swiftly stomped to the ground no matter how badass they are to demonstrate how Dumbledore's admission of Grindelwald being comparable to him is a valid statement. The most prominent example? Newt is seen taking out 3 Aurors with ease, yet Grindelwald while disguised as Graves and holding back hands him his ass on a silver platter. Not to mention how Theseus, a famous war hero, and Leta, stated by Dumbledore to be one of the most cleverest students Hogwarts ever had, also similarly get stomped, Leta even dying! The reason why Newt was able to defeat Grindelwald in first movie was purely due to him being The Beastmaster as he unleashed the Swopping Evil at the right moment and Grindelwald who was focused entirely on fighting wizards, not magical creatures — got taken completely off guard. Indeed, in the third film, he fights Dumbledore to a stalemate! This is especially a solid example as no one was ever able to break even with Dumbledore previously and that's with him being 100 years old and not at his prime level. The best that Voldemort could do was keep him at bay and barely escape after being bound by possessing Harry rather than escaping with his own strength while Dumbledore was hardly trying in the fight, while Grindelwald explicitly goes toe-to-toe with Albus, manages to push him back at times and avoid being decisively overwhelmed and ultimately escapes the fight under his own power rather than Dumbledore letting him escape like he did with Voldemort in order to attend to Harry. The producers justify his ability to reach a stalemate as their first fight is just the beginning of the conflict between them, and the legendary duel that will be shown in later series will be even more epic, as well as firmly establishing that Grindelwald truly is one of the two most powerful wizards ever in the series, narrowly surpassed by Dumbledore in skill and equal to him in power.
• In Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) the fiery pterosaur Rodan is shown to have immensely destructive capabilities, obliterating a small town with the gust of his wings just by flying over it, and effortlessly destroying a squad of fighter jets shooting at him. And then King Ghidorah shows up, who very quickly turns the tides and tears into Rodan like an eagle seizing a crow...
• Hobbs & Shaw has Brixton's punches send Hobbs and Shaw flying. Word of God is that this was deliberate, and Idris Elba playing Brixton is probably meant to play into that.
• Samuel L Jackson is infamous for playing badasses in movies, so at the end of the movie Jackie Brown when the titular character asks bail bondsman Max Cherry "Are you scared of me?" The answer was obviously "yes". Having just killed Samuel L. Jackson's character, Ordell Robbie, puts her in the same category of lethality as Emperor Palpatine, King Kong, a hyper intelligent shark and the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad.
• The Jurassic Park movies gauges the danger-levels of characters against the T. rex (the most well-known dinosaur even before the movies came out) in order to let the audience know how tough they were:
  • Muldoon takes on a T. rex early in the first film and holds his own, but is then easily outsmarted and killed by the Velociraptors in order to establish them as more of a threat. Ironically, the T. rex later kills the Velociraptors.
  • A T. rex is killed by the Spinosaurus in Jurassic Park III to show that the latter is tougher. Ironically, this was due to a real life example: the fight was intended to be longer and more even, but the Spinosaurus animatronic was far stronger than anticipated and took the T. rex animatronic's (which was an older model) head off in one swipe, forcing it to be shortened.
  • Played with and ultimately subverted in Jurassic World; the I. rex gets the upper hand and soundly trashes the old T. rex, but a timely distraction from Blue gives the T. rex room to recover and overpower the I. rex. Although played straight earlier on: one of the first victims of the I. rex is an Ankylosaurus, a large herbivore with an armoured shell and a heavy bone club on the end of its tail, which gets killed very quickly and messily by the abomination.
• In Kingsman: The Secret Service, after the original Lancelot's introduction shows off his badass credentials by having him effortlessly slaughter a room of bad guys without spilling a drop of whiskey, Gazelle suddenly and quickly kills him to establish how formidable she is.
• Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings is a powerful wizard, respected and feared by all. It is thus a very big deal when he is terrified of the Balrog in Moria and showcases the Balrog's power and the tragedy of Gandalf's defeat. Though he doesn't fight like Gandalf does, Legolas' reaction to the Balrog is this: when the camera cuts to his face after Gandalf says the name of the new threat, the elf prince who is unflappable and composed throughout the trilogy, stands frozen in wide-eyed fear◊.
  • Gandalf gets Worfed quite a bit throughout the movies. In The Fellowship of the Ring, he's curbstomped by Saruman, though he gets to pay that one back in the sequels when he Comes Back Strong. The extended edition of The Return of the King has the Witch King shatter his staff, in the theatrical cut he 'merely' expresses apprehension at the thought of having to fight him. And in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, he's easily defeated by the Necromancer/ Sauron.
• In Pacific Rim, when Crimson Typhoon is introduced, its impressive combat record is listed along with a description of its ace pilots. When Cherno Alpha is introduced, it's revealed that not only is it a Mark 1 Jaeger, making it the oldest still functioning, but it's the largest and heaviest Jaeger around. It's also stated that the perimeter it was assigned to went 6 years without being breached by a Kaiju attack. During the Hong Kong attack, both Alpha and Crimson get to show off their skills, but are completely destroyed by the two attacking Kaiju, effectively spelling out just how dangerous they must be to eliminate such powerful Jaegers with so little effort. Gipsy Danger's ability to defeat both by itself (albeit one at a time, after they had split up) illustrates just how powerful it is, despite the rust it has in some inconvenient places. Striker Eureka is also defeated in the battle but is not an example; it was taken out by a specialized attack that the other nuclear-powered Jaegers were immune to. Incidentally, the scene also serves to reveal that Kaiju are developing ways to counter individual Jaegers — not just the specialized weapons above, but Odachi's acid breath counters Cherno's dense armor, and its prehensile tail can grab Crimson Typhoon's head.
• The first hour of Predator establishes that the team of commando mercenaries is made up of the absolute deadliest men on Earth as they slaughter a guerilla encampment made up of several dozen Mooks. This is used to highlight just how dangerous the titular alien is when he shows up and starts effortlessly slaughtering them one-by-one. The Worf Effect is especially well outlined in the means by which the Predator picks off the members of the team.
  • Blain Cooper (aka 'Old Painless') hasn't got time to bleed; the Predator stuns him with its first attack and messily eviscerates him with its second, making him both feel pain AND bleed.
  • Hawkins, who exhibits situational awareness around himself so effectively that even while he's reading a newspaper he catches a balled up wrapper thrown at him from outside his line of sight without looking. The Predator catches him completely by surprise.
  • Billy, their tracker, fears no man, yet is plainly terrified by this opponent. Although he exhibits his own moment of truly bad ass awesomeness by staying behind to buy his team time to escape, and facing it by himself.
• In The Rock, the elite SEAL team sent in against the renegade Marines is quickly ambushed and massacred, leaving behind only the two non-SEALs that were accompanying them.
• Snatch. Gorgeous George is very muscular and uses unorthodox attacks while training. He gets one-hit KO'd by Mickey.
• Space Jam: A New Legacy: The Road Runner, normally an untouchable Comically Invincible Hero in his cartoons, gets noticeably subjected to this during the game. Not even his Super-Speed is enough to get past Chronos' time-mastering abilities and gets literally handed on a silver platter to Wile E. (though he does escape when time speeds back up).
• Star Trek
  • Worf himself did not escape this trope when it came time for the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation to make it to the big screen. In Star Trek: First Contact, his ship (Deep Space 9's Defiant, a Super Prototype originally designed with the Borg in mind, if you're keeping track) is damaged early on against a massive Borg Cube ^note on-screen, at least. It's implicitly one of the only ships still intact and even at fighting capability, though the fleet first clashed with the cube at the edge of the Solar System! Worf is forced to hang out on the Enterprise for the rest of the movie. And wreck every Borg drone he encounters.
    Worf: The Defiant?
    Picard: Adrift but salvageable
    Riker: Tough little ship.
    Worf: "Little"?
  • Other Klingons suffer from this tendency, too. In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the opening sequence is three Klingon ships, all looking quite badass...and all three get taken to pieces in about ten seconds by V'Ger. For that point forward, Birds of Prey were about as durable as tissue paper.
  • In Star Trek Into Darkness, a bunch of Klingons (of course) ring it in as jobbers to show how powerful John Harrison is.
    • And the Enterprise herself, boasted as one of the most advanced ships in the Federation fleet (a few years prior), gets curbstomped by the Vengeance (A brand-new, so logically even more advanced) without even being able to fire a single shot back. An understandable outcome for a cruiser versus a battleship. Khan also mentions later that the Vengeance was specifically designed for that kind of overwhelming Warp ambush, previously thought to be impossible.
    • And as if that weren't bad enough, Star Trek Beyond has the Enterprise get torn apart by a swarm attack, with what's left of her crashing on Altamid.
  • Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home has Starfleet itself be Worfed to show how powerful the Probe is as it cuts its way through all the ships effortlessly on its way to Earth.
• Obi-Wan Kenobi had his fare share of worf effects through the Star Wars series. Obi-Wan was killed the first time we got to see Darth Vader in action, was getting beaten by Darth Maul (alongside his mentor) until Maul picked up the Idiot Ball, and was beaten by Count Dooku twice. He nearly becomes fish food thanks to Jango Fett, though he managed to put up much more of a fight than against Dooku. The one in Attack of the Clones is justified via Worf Had the Flu; the novel describes Dooku as rested and fresh, while Obi-Wan is exhausted from the Battle of Geonosis.
• Mario's showdown with Donkey Kong in The Super Mario Bros. Movie has him being absolutely pummeled by the gorilla, to the point where he needs a Cat Suit to defeat him. When Donkey Kong faces Bowser, Bowser is able to overwhelm him within seconds.
• Swelter includes Stillman, a character played by Jean-Claude Van Damme, whose one and only fight scene is a quick and systematic defeat by the weaker but more ruthless Kane.
• Terminator:
  • In Terminator 2: Judgment Day we see the T-800 (Arnold), the 6'2" unstoppable killer robot who for the whole last movie was one of the most menacing things ever put to film, get thrown around like a rag-doll by the considerably shorter and skinnier T-1000. Mainly at the end of the movie, though; earlier in the film, he tends to keep the upper hand. For the most part, if its a gunfight, the impervious T-800 will win. If it's a fistfight, the intangible T-1000 will win.
  • Even more pronounced in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, in which the even stronger T-X repeatedly defeats the Arnold Terminator in direct combat. He gets blasted inactive by a bolt from her plasma cannon, thrown through walls, gets his head knocked off and reprogrammed by her, and only defeats her by blowing himself up as well.
• From Van Helsing, Anna by Aleera, repeatedly throughout the movie. The above problem actually becomes an issue, as it turns Anna into a Faux Action Girl. For what it's worth, she gets even.
• In the 2011 film Warrior: We see Mad Dog crush his sparring partner with a spinning back elbow, only to be crushed himself by Tommy the first time we see him fight.
• This is played with on a meta level in Wishmaster. The evil Djinn's victims include people played by horror film icons such as Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street), Tony Todd (the eponymous Candyman), and Kane Hodder (Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th). It's a little hard to believe that this casting was not deliberate.
• Just like his comic counterpart, Wolverine gets this treatment in the X-Men Film Series. Magneto, Mystique, Sabertooth, Lady Deathstrike, and the Juggernaut all had their way with him throughout the series to show how tough they are. Good Thing He Can Heal!
• In X-Men: First Class, when he confronts the First Class, Shaw kills one of them in the conflict. Who does he kill? The guy whose power is gaining the traits he needs to survive in any situation.
  • After looking almost infallible previously in the prequel movies, Quicksilver shows up in the final battle of X-Men: Apocalypse just to put up a bit of a fight before falling to the Big Bad.
• Johnny Mnemonic: During the film's climax, Jane and her outstanding cybernetic enhancements that she insists make her a very great, more-than-capable fighter are outmatched and overpowered by the cyborg Street Preacher in a display of his superior strength.

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