Great Ineffectual Film Heroes

Inspired by this thread Indiana Jones- What If? wherein various posters list action heroes that don’t actually save the world.

Raiders of the Lost Ark - the Nazis killed themselves

Goldfinger - James Bond couldn’t stop the raid on Ft. Knox or disarm the bomb. Only Pussy Galore deciding she was a heterosexual saved the day.

What other action films (Inspector Closeau doesn’t count) is the “hero” little more than fodder for the villain?

King Kong - the idiots drag the gorilla to New York where it breaks loose and wreaks havoc. It took a lot of airplanes and the Empire State Building to defeat the beast.

Speed Keanu Reeves is a glorified punching bag until Dennis Hopper picks an unfortunate moment to raise his head.

The entire Aliens series - Ripley keeps killing off one unleashed face-hugger/giant grinning phallus headed-skeletor thing after another, and that damned “company” just keeps trotting back to unleash more. I’m sure she must have reconsidered the notion of being a stay-at-home mom at one time or another. (But considering they CLONED her, that company sure owes her one whopping-huge retirement package!)

Army of Darkness – the whole damn thing with the army of the dead rising was Ash’s fault, since he was too stupid to memorize the magic words. He also ends up trapped in a post-apocalyptic future rather than returning to his own time, because he didn’t count the drops of the magic potion and ended up drinking one drop too many.

Angel Heart – the whole time, Harry Angel was committing all the murders without even knowing it, and the whole time, he was really the guy that “Louis Cyphre” had hired him to look for. In the end, he was damned to hell.

Luke Skywalker - Return of the Jedi.

Think about it. Luke goes on the mission, thereby alerting Vader to their presence. Then he makes up for that by turning himself in hoping to turn Vader back to the light side. Well and good. An enormous lightsaber battle ensues in which Luke almost falls to the dark side and eventually wins over Vader.

Nifty.

Meanwhile, the real damn hero of the whole thing…Lando Calrissian and some X-Wings blow the Death Star II to flinders.

So suppose Luke HAD fallen to the dark side?

Lando would still have killed them all by blowing up the Death Star II.

Suppose Vader HADN’T come back to Jesus and saved Luke. The Emperor kills Luke and he and Vader shake hands on a job well done.

Lando would still have killed them all by blowing up the Death Star II.

Effectively, nothing Luke did had any effect on the end of the battle at all. No matter which way it went Lando destroys the Death Star and with it, the Emperor, Vader, a hell of a lot of contractors, all blewie!

Starship Troopers–Our Heroes do everything they can just to stay alive, and the D.I. gets to capture the brain bug which they can use to win the war.

The Thing–for all they know, the last two guys alive are both perfectly fine, but they sit there and freeze to death rather than light a fire that’d keep the alien alive, just in case the other guy’s an alien.

Batman–That black guy was kicking his ass up in the bell tower; the only way he could defeat him was to use a surprise attack and throw him over the edge. He barely managed to defeat The Joker.

The Road Warrior–he was fighting to protect sand. Yay.

No offense to Cal Meacham the poster, but Cal Meacham the “hero” of This Island Earth is nothing but a tourist … he assembles an alien device from the instructions provided, he’s invited into the aliens’ experimental lab, he’s asked to join a conspiracy which some of the other scientists have already formed, he’s taken to the aliens’ planet, where he fails to accomplish a darned thing before some other aliens blow it up … Like I said, nothing but a tourist.

Big Trouble in Little China Jack is just in the way throughout the film until the very last moment.

None taken. But in the book Cal is more of a hero. The Alien Machine isn’t a galactic Heathkit – they only send him a catalog, not schematics. Plus he has to rebuild broken parts himself.

Well, without his diversion the people wouldn’t have been able to get away, so he was really fighting to protect them, no matter what was in the tanker.

The Professor, on the other hand … he … um … crap, he didn’t do much, either.

And since it’s been mentioned how ineffectual Luke was during Return of the Jedi, we might as well add The Empire Strikes Back. Vader plans to freeze Han in preparation for freezing Luke, then kill Leia and Chewie. He does freeze Han, and Lando manages to get Leia and Chewie out of Cloud City. All Luke does is lose a hand. Lando is, again, the hero.

Indy managed to be completely useless in Last Crusade, as well. If the Jones boys had never gotten involved, nobody would have made it to the Grail.

Not great, but annoying. In Nightflyers (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093626/ ) Catherine Mary Stewart’s character, as far as I can tell, just messes things up.

Jack isn’t the hero. He thinks he is but actually he is the comic side kick.

The quartet of scientists in The Andromeda Strain spend nearly two hours studying the alien microbe, only to have it escape and… be benign.

Yay.

Pretty much like the scientist in War of the World (old version). He doesn’t really do much, the aliens die from just exposing themselves to our atmosphere, no?

Well, he survives until that moment, which I gather is pretty impressive in and of itself judging from all the destruction and whatnot.

Heh, exposing themselves…

Heh. Y’know, that’s absolutely right.

The entire battle of Endor was an elaborate trap for Luke. If there had been no Luke, the location of the Death Star wouldn’t have been intentionally leaked to the Rebellion. They may or may not have found out where it was otherwise, but even if they had, would the Emperor have actually been on board when Lando and Wedge destroyed it? And if the Emperor had been on board the Death Star II instead of back on Coruscant, he might have escaped the destruction and lived had it not been for Luke’s turning of Vader at the last moment.

Ah, but who who brings Pussy over to the good side? (If you see what I mean…)

Speed Keanu Reeves is a glorified punching bag until Dennis Hopper picks an unfortunate moment to raise his head.

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Keanu takes terrible risks to successfully save the busload of innocents. Of course Sandra Bullock is magnificent, but Keanu does his job.

Ah, but who who brings Pussy over to the good side? (If you see what I mean.)

Keanu takes terrible risks to successfully save the busload of innocents. Of course Sandra Bullock is magnificent, but Keanu does his job.

Yeah, but in all those movies, except maybe ST, if the hero hadn’t been in the movie, the bad guy would have won. Batman might not have been as badass as he was supposed to be, but if he hadn’t been in the movie, the Joker would have owned Gotham. Maybe the last two guys from The Thing didn’t have to freeze to death, but if they hadn’t been around to kill the alien, it would have conquered the Earth. And in The Road Warrior, Max was the diversion. If he hadn’t been there, the barbarians would have slaughtered the town and stolen the real fuel. None of them were ineffectual, in the sense that their actions had no effect on the outcome of the events in which they were involved.