U-571. The heroes capture a German submarine and end up tying the captain to his bunk, although from what I remember they don’t realise he was the captain. He gets free and tries to sabotage the engines, so they hit him and tie him up again - and then, when a German destroyer comes along, unaware that U-571 has been captured by the allies, he grabs a wrench and starts tapping something like U-571 HAS BEEN CAPTURED in morse code on the hull.
At which point the heroes beat his brains out, which is fair enough - war is hell - but you have to admire his tenacity. Captain Needa from Empire? He’s given an impossible task which he does as well as could be expected; when he fails he takes the rap personally rather than blame his crew.
I’m surprised no-ones pointed out Khan, from Wrath of Khan. Not so much courage as mania, but even when he has lost the fight he still tries to get Kirk. “To the last I will grapple with thee”, and I suppose you could count Captain Ahab as well.
I was going to mention Predator, but the villain spends most of the film with overwhelming technical superiority, and even when the chips are down he still knows he has a nuclear bomb strapped to his wrist. Unlike Khan (if I recall, his wife died when Ceti Alpha whatever blew up) his motivation isn’t even remotely sympathetic. I was also going to suggest the policemen from the first Terminator film, who stand their ground as the Terminator shoots up their police station, except that, er, they weren’t the bad guys. They must have really loved that police station.
Enemy At The Gates. Ed Harris had a pretty heroic death as the German sniper Major König. He realized he had been beaten by Russian sniper Jude Law, so he straightened up his uniform at faced the sniper at attention.
Stan Satan. I like it! It gives him a human quality.
“I was talking to Stan at the Paradise Club last night. He was there with Bobby Beelzebub, Andy Asmodeus and Petey Pazuzu and they were steaming mad. And I do mean steaming! I don’t like to talk out of turn but the Boss needs to watch his back. I think they’re planning a hit.”
I always think it is weird that people take that line to mean God magicked the Pharaoh, rather than the Pharaoh thinking about the shit Moses’ god has put him through and said “You know what–eff that guy. I’m not giving in.”
This is the same God that was down with the Israelites killing every man, woman, and child in certain cities. And prohibited intermarriage with other tribes. I put nothing past the OT God.
You left out what he did to Jephthah’s daughter in the book of Judges and the whole business with the tribe of Benhamin in the same book, and the bears he sent to kill the kids for making fun of Elisha’s bald head.
No, it’s just that, like you and me, they don’t believe in weird shit happening for real. There’s no such thing as ghosts, vampires, aliens- or invincible killer robots from the future. So they returned fire and had all of two seconds to wonder why the target wasn’t dropping before they died.
I assumed it was ‘based on’ an event in a later novel in the series. When as a privateer, Aubrey in the Surprise, cuts out the french frigate Diane. There is a french intelligence agent onboard, who is captured, but later posing IIRC, as a woman manages to escape when a whole group of women and civilians who were onboard the Diane are returned to France.
Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez. Agrees to a scam where he trusts Blondie’s shooting to save his life, walks 70 miles back from the desert with his hands tied, tracks down Blondie and does the same thing to him.
While this may result in a disqualification due to his mental capacity, The Joker shows an enormous set of metaphorical cojones while being questioned by Batman.
Oh come on. Sending in the Random Bears as a response to petty offence is totally a thing you’d do. Except they’d have frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads. And they’d be covered in bees.
Shit was hilarious, but maybe you had to be there. And not like those jeering kids very much. Or the other, totally innocent 40 the bear mauled.
In Watership Down (both book and animated film) General Woundwort, a rabbit, goes down trying to kill a farm dog after telling his fellow rabbits to stop being wusses about it. Perhaps not a sound strategy but you gotta hand it to the guy that he didn’t let some 70lb predator push him around.
E.T. (1981)
The government guys did exactly what they should have, try to establish some sort of communication with an alien life form that had achieved interstellar travel. When they finally caught up to E.T., it was too late, Elliot had killed him with candy and beer. Did they shoot Elliot on the spot? Throw him in jail? No, they did their best to save E.T. (and Elliot) and only moved to take him away to be dissected after it was clearly dead. Except of course, E.T. wasn’t actually dead, Elliot escapes with him, returns him to his ship, and technology that would have advanced us hundreds or thousands of years was lost forever.
I hate that fucking kid. His name should have been “Idiot” instead of “Elliot”.
Long John Silver is a schemer, a liar and a cold-blooded murderer, but he is “brave and no mistake”, to quote Jim Hawkins. When the jig is up and the five remaining pirates are about to settle his hash (and Jim’s), all he does is taunt them first to dig for pig-nuts in Flint’s now-empty treasure pit, and then mock George Merry for “running for captain again? You’re a pushing lad”.
How about the Alien Queen? She makes a deal with Ripley, you get to leave with your child, as long as you don’t hurt mine. Ripley betrays her and murders a whole generation of her family, so she hangs onto the outside of a spaceship, just to get revenge.
Zod (Man of Steel) was prepared to risk imprisonment in the phantom zone to bring down a government who were happy to just sit there while the planet exploded beneath them (admittedly, he did go batshit insane for the rest of the movie)
Mystique in Xmen has always been very confident of her own abilities. Her power is disguise, but she is more than happy to take on a room full of armed men if her disguise fails.
