Deconstructed Tropes in live-action movies.
- Are We There Yet? deconstructs First Father Wins. Lindsey and Kevin Kingston greatly adore their divorced father, Frank, and made it their mission to chase away their mother, Suzanne's, boyfriends until their parents reunite. However, it's evident that their mother has no interest in reconnecting with their father; when Suzanne is talking on the phone with Frank, who claimed he was sick so he could not pick up their children and spend time with them, she protests he has not spent time with them since Labor Day, and while arguing with her, he just hangs up on her. This implies that Frank has not stayed in contact with his ex-wife and children after the divorce. Lindsey and Kevin run away from Nick Persons, their mother's friend, when they learn he is interested in Suzanne and decide to go to their father's house, believing they can get their parents to fall in love again. But when they arrive, they find out that he is not sick, but in fact with a new family. Lindsey and Kevin finally realize that their father was lying to them so he could cut them out from his life. Even Nick, who was understandably angry with their antics, is sympathetic when he learns this and assures them that it was not their fault because their father is losing out on having his children in his life. Though painful, Lindsey and Kevin accept that their father does not want them around anymore and bond with Nick as their new father figure.
- A segment A is for Amateur from ABCs of Death 2 deconstructs Air-Vent Passageway trope from every action movies you ever saw in your life.
- American Animals deconstructs The Caper. This movie (Based on a True Story) shows why Hollywood style heists do not work when performed by amateurs.
- The Filipino film "Anak Ng Cabron" asks "What kind of man would possess the typical action hero qualities (masculine virility, mastery of his home, has no problem with violence)? The answer: a Villain Protagonist.
- Bedazzled (2000) deconstructs the Dogged Nice Guy trope. Elliot has a crush on Allison, a colleague of his, but he doesn't have the courage to ask her out. When he says he'd give anything to be with her, the Devil comes along and offers him 7 wishes in exchange for his soul. So, he agrees to the 7 wishes, which he uses to win over Allison. However, each wish has an unforeseen hitch, and after 6 wishes, the Devil prepares to take his soul, but in the end, Elliot avoids going to Hell by using his final wish to give up on ever being with Allison, wishing she'd simply live a happy life with or without him. The Devil lets him go, impressed that he's learned from this experience.
- Big Bully deconstructs Bully Hunter. Davy has his bully Rosco arrested for stealing a moon rock... and years later finds out this ruined Rosco's life, when his family abandoned him to a reform school and grew up a pathetic milquetoast.
- The Icelandic film Bjarnfreðarson deconstructs the Pointy-Haired Boss trope by taking a comedy one from a comedy series and revealing him to be a Rounded Character with realistic and deeply disturbing reasons for being the way he is to his underlings.
- Blood of the Tribades: Lesbian vampires. Here, they are portrayed positively, and violently persecuted by the male priesthood of their religion for being "abominations", never shown as predatory or evil.
- Boiler Room reveals the ugly side of those who promote and get suckered into Get Rich Quick Schemes.
- The brokers at J.T. Marlin are knowingly robbing investors of their hard-earned savings via stock fraud, but project themselves as honest businessmen. Several scenes show the higher-ups hiding their fraudulent activities by altering their records and setting up new office space in case the feds shut it down while letting the trainees be Cannon Fodder and take the heat. In a deal with the feds, Seth downloads the firm's records and client files onto a floppy disk as evidence.
- Hoping to make a quick buck on the market, the investors in turn are putting their money in deals Too Good to Be True. The unused alternate ending reveals that one scammed off client plans a workplace massacre after he lost his life savings and family.
- J.T. Marlin lures in new trainees with the promise of making them millionaires via a Fauxtastic Voyage, but the company actually wants them to burn out with low pay and replace them with New Meat by ill-treating them like crap if they don't sell enough and viewing them with suspicion if they exceed the absurd requirements. Any new sale they make become house accounts, meaning the entire team is working for a senior broker's profits.
- Seth also applied for a stockbroker trainee job just to go legit and please his father, but doesn't realize it's a scam until he starts snooping around J.T. Marlin's records. Wracked with the guilt of robbing countless investors, Seth cooperates with the FBI in exchange for a lighter sentence.
- The Little Bill storyline in Boogie Nights was included, among other reasons, to deconstruct the male fantasy of having a pornstar girlfriend/wife. Little Bill is wracked with jealousy and feelings of powerlessness by his wife's promiscuity, culminating in his committing a double murder/suicide.
- The Butterfly Effect is one of the most famous and cruelest deconstructions of It's a Wonderful Plot. Evan Treborn's life is incredibly depressing because of his horrifically traumatic childhood, and all of his friends and his girlfriend, Kayleigh, are all worse off than before he met them. Shortly after Evan discovers he can time travel by reading his old journals (an ability he inherited from his father), Kayleigh commits suicide, so he repeatedly attempts to change the past to save her life and make things better, only to make them even worse for his loved ones and/or himself. On top of that, Evan starts suffering severe brain damage as a result of his Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory kicking in and the new timelines' memories coexisting with his older ones. Eventually accepting that Kayleigh will be better off if she never knows him, Evan goes back one last time to when he first met her, scaring her so they never become friends and fall in love, which completely fixes his life and everyone else's. The director's cut is even worse; there, Evan realizes that he is the reason everyone's lives are so miserable and the only way they'll be happy is without his damaging influence. So he goes back to when he was in his mother's womb and strangles himself with his umbilical cord. And judging from his mother having two miscarriages before Evan, it's strongly implied that they could also time travel and chose to sacrifice themselves for similar reasons.
- Can't Hardly Wait deconstructed several high school tropes like Amanda the popular girl note and Mike the Future Loser note .
- The 2013 adaptation of Carrie does this with Instant Humiliation: Just Add YouTube!. In this version of the story, the Alpha Bitch Chris films her humiliation of Carrie in the school showers in the opening scene and posts it online to show the whole school... which becomes the hard evidence that Ms. Desjardin and the principal need to punish Chris. When her father tells the principal that there's no proof of what Chris did beyond the word of a teacher who Chris is accusing of slapping her and cursing at her, Ms. Desjardin responds by bringing up the video and asking to see Chris' phone, prompting an immediate Oh, Crap! response from Chris while her father realizes that his daughter lied to her about the incident.
- All Girls Want Bad Boys is deconstructed with Solange from Casino Royale (2006), who is married to Dimitrios and suffers through a loveless, unhappy marriage. Out of spite, she hooks up with Bond and laments to him that she had "so many chances to be happy" with "nice guys" but keeps being drawn towards bad men instead. Later in the film, her association with the man who helped orchestrate the bomb plot (Dimitrios) and the man who foiled it (Bond) is what got her tortured and killed.
- Chronicle deconstructs teenage superheroes like Spider-Man. Instead of realizing that with great power Comes Great Responsibility, the three protagonists use their powers for their own purposes — doing Jackass-style stunts, getting girls, getting revenge on bullies, showing complete lack of concern for those "beneath" them... It's only when Matt is forced to kill his cousin Andrew to stop his rampage that he realizes the responsibility that comes with his powers.
- Death Sentence is a deconstruction of the Papa Wolf and the Vigilante Man. Nick's desire to get vengeance on the gangster who killed his son pushes him to deliberately obstruct justice and start a Cycle of Revenge that only ends up harming him and his family further.
- Diary of a Mad Black Woman deconstruction Remarried to the Mistress. Charles McCarter planned to do this with his mistress, Brenda, whom he had an affair with for years and even two children. Charles kicked his wife Helen out of their house on their 18th anniversary, justifying it, saying that the two of them were miserable; he's sick of treating Brenda this way, and Brenda is the mother of his two children. And because Helen signed a prenup, Charles doesn't have to support her financially and can kick her out of the house, though eventually, he agreed in court to support her mother at the senior citizen center. However, when Charles is shot and taken to the hospital, Brenda reveals her true colors when she asks the doctor to take him off of life support, justifying it by saying she doesn't want Charles to live as a cripple, but it's clear that she's after his money he doesn't want to take care of him. However, because Helen was still technically married to Charles, she had power of attorney and told the doctors to keep him alive. Brenda just straight up abandons Charles, takes as much money as she can, and leaves with their two children. Charles was in denial and demanded to know where Brenda and his children were as Helen was taking care of him; Helen, losing patience with him, informed Charles that Brenda left him for dead and as for his children, she wanted to have children with him, but because of the stress of their marriage, she had two miscarriages. Later, Helen informs Charles that Brenda took all his money, so all his servants left and took some of his things with them. Charles eventually accepted that Brenda never loved him and that he was mistaken in treating Helen the way he did. He apologized to Helen for his actions, with her forgiving him, and Charles accepted that Helen had moved on to another man.
- District 9 deconstructs the daylights out of the First Contact plot. The fact that the aliens landed over Johannesburg and were practically starving creates the bad conditions in the first place, but it's still fairly realistic and dark. It helps that the first half of the film is held documentary-style. It's basically Apartheid with aliens.
- The Driver in Drive (2011) is a deconstruction of the Stoic hero of Seventies and Eighties action films. His heroic attempt to help his love interest by helping her husband work off his mob debts wind up making her a widow and worsening the situation for both of them. His skill at driving is barely put to use, he desperately wants to get out of his situation but his stoic nature and sheer inability to negotiate makes him unable to talk his way out, and he only just survives most of the physical altercations he gets himself into due to being quicker than his opponents. Furthermore, his stoic demeanour is slowly chipped away over the film to reveal a blind, seething rage which quickly leads to his love interest rejecting him and alienates him from his boss, who's his only other friend. He ultimately exits the film bleeding half to death, his boss dead, and neither the girl or the money to show for it.
- Bruce Lee's Fist of Fury shows the hero's Roaring Rampage of Revenge escalating the violence rather than stopping it, to the point that by the end of the movie, The Hero is a completely broken man who has lost everything in his desire for revenge... including his girlfriend and his family, who have been brutally slain by the enemy. In the end, he kills the Big Bad and then goes into what's all but stated to be a Suicide by Cop, having nothing left to live for.
- Fargo deconstructs the Papa Wolf trope. Wade (whose daughter has been kidnapped) is one of the most unsympathetic characters in the film. He is willing to barter money over his daughter's life (despite being extremely wealthy), and his insistence on handling the ransom money is motivated mostly by his dislike of his son-in-law Jerry. As far as he knows, the kidnappers gave specific instructions for Jerry to bring the money, so going himself could very well endanger Jean. He charges into the drop-off with a concealed pistol and no information on the kidnappers other than the time and place of delivery. His Clint Eastwood act when interacting with Showalter is completely ineffective, gets himself killed, and exacerbates the danger to his daughter's life even further.
- The Flying Deuces with Laurel & Hardy deconstructs the Heartbroken Badass joining the Legion of Lost Souls, a popular media trope at the time. The duo join the French Foreign Legion after Oliver Hardy has his heart broken by a beautiful woman. They learn the hard way that a broken heart doesn't take a long time to mend, military life is hard and, most of all, they simply can't quit the Foreign Legion; quitting is considered desertion, leading to being sentenced to death.
- The original Godzilla (1954) deconstructs Godzilla Threshold by showing how dire a situation would be to employ such tactics as well as the severe consequences of such actions. Daisuke Serizawa ends up deciding to use the Oxygen Destroyer but only after being severely torn against using it in the first place and allowing Godzilla to live. Bear in mind that, by this time, Godzilla had already killed hundreds if not thousands of people (with survivors over-crowding hospitals suffering from either radiation poisoning, severe injuries, or both). He is understandably concerned with what might happen if the device ends up in the wrong hands, and ultimately agrees to use it but only once. To ensure this, Serizawa ultimately commits a Heroic Sacrifice by choosing to die alongside Godzilla rather than allow himself to be forced to develop another Oxygen Destroyer. The consequences of such actions, however, are that there's actually an entire species of Godzilla (meaning humanity has to use less effective ways to deal with them) and that the Oxygen Destroyer itself lead to the creation of Destroyah.
- Shin Godzilla later deconstructs both the Godzilla Threshold and America Saves the Day by showing just how desperate the US is at stopping Godzilla. Long story short, they first try using armor-piercing missiles that manage to make Godzilla bleed. But, it also enrages Godzilla to the point where he begins demolishing Tokyo by firing atomic beams from his mouth, dorsal fins, and tail. This only causes the US to decide the best course of action is to essentially nuke Japan. Thankfully, Japan is able to stop Godzilla by freezing him alive via coagulant but it's only a temporary solution and the US is still perfectly willing to nuke Tokyo once Godzilla inevitably wakes up again.
- A Gunfight is a deconstruction of the classic Showdown at High Noon. The gunfight between Tenneray and Cross is short, brutal, and in no way heroic or romantic. It horrifies and disgusts the people who had paid to watch it.
- Heartbreakers deconstructs All Men Are Perverts with style. Max and Paige make their living off conning rich men by seducing them, Paige remarking "we can't make a scumbag do anything a scumbag wouldn't do". But then when Max tries to seduce Paige's husband nice guy Jack, he says no and she has to resort to drugging him. Then the last man Max conned says he would never cheat on her again, not because he got caught but because of what he lost (her).
- Henry V (the 1944 Laurence Olivier version) deconstructs Medium Blending. The first scenes are done on stage at The Globe but we see the theater's limitations. Its hard to move around because of the narrowness of the stage. The production even gets delayed because of rain (The Globe has no roof). When the play resumes, it is now on a sound stage.
- Ip Man takes apart Old Master with Master Hung, who is badass enough to hold his own against Ip Man and Twister, but his age caused exhaustion to settle and it eventually cost him his life.
- In addition to being a general Genre Deconstruction of war films, Jarhead goes to great lengths to deconstruct the Cold Sniper trope with its portrayal of the protagonist and his closest companion. Both of them are Marine Corps STA snipers who relish being seen as calm, calculating badasses, and they join up to fight in the First Gulf War with the idea that serving as snipers will be the perfect way to prove themselves in the field. Over the course of the film, though, they gradually realize that the onset of computerized warfare is fast on its way to making their jobs obsolete, and it slowly becomes clear to the audience that their coolheaded attitudes are just facades—at heart, they're just confused young men with a lot of pent-up aggression who want an excuse to take it out on "the enemy".
At the climax, when they finally get assigned to an assassination mission after an entire movie of waiting for one, they're denied the chance to take the shot when their superiors suddenly decide to call in an airstrike instead. The companion subsequently has a mental breakdown while he begs his commanding officer to let him fire. When the Gulf War officially ends a few hours later, the two of them realize, with detached resignation, that they passed the entire war without firing a single shot. - King Ralph deconstructed Rags to Royalty by showing how unprepared he is in running government, and how impossible it is for someone like him to change the traditions of the royal court.
- The Last Jedi viciously deconstructs Locked Out of the Loop. Admiral Holdo refuses to tell anyone in the Resistance what the plan is to save them from the First Order fleet following them, or that there actually is a plan. As a result, Poe decides to take matters into his own hands, supporting Finn and Rose's unauthorized mission to hack into the enemy ship and destroy its tracking system. The plan ends up completely failing and almost got Finn and Rose executed by the First Order because the codebreaker they found turns out to be a Dirty Coward who sold them and the Resistance out as soon as they got caught. Then Poe and several others become convinced that Holdo is a traitor after she refuses to explain what she needs seemingly-defenseless transport ships for and they mutiny against her. Keeping people in the dark about such things is terrible for morale, and that low morale in a disorganized band of rebels is a recipe for desperate, rash, and even insubordinate behavior. The combined end result of the two incidents is that 95% of the Resistance force gets wiped out. So long story short, if Holdo took the time to reassure everybody that she did have a plan (even if it had to be on a need-to-know basis) and worked to have everybody trust her, most of the rebels could have survived the movie. It gets worse when Poe states that he would have gladly gone along with Holdo's plan and would have trusted her if he had known she actually knew what she was doing.
- The Last Seduction deconstructs the archetypical Femme Fatale plot by illustrating exactly what kind of woman would seduce a man into committing murder, and exactly what kind of man would fall for it, to a degree that is so extreme that it verges on Black Comedy. The short version? A very, very heartless woman and a very, very stupid man.
- Looney Tunes: Back in Action deconstructs Hated by All and Daffy's status as Always Second Best to Bugs. After getting sick of Daffy's prima donna antics, and discovering his fanbase is deemed "limited to angry fat guys in basements", WB considers him disposable and fires him... only to find the cartoons bombing without him, since Daffy being such an unpopular Butt-Monkey is a large part of what makes them funny in the first place. The duck is unappreciated, yes, but the audience loves to underappreciate him.
- The Disney film Max Keeble's Big Move deconstructs Roaring Rampage of Revenge when he goes on this on his enemies after he finds out his family is moving. It's only later that he finds out that it's his friends who will pay for what he did.
- Mean Girls:
- Gretchen deconstructs the Satellite Character with the film developing Gretchen more than Regina herself. She confesses to Cady that she's secretly miserable being Regina's Beta Bitch and has to pretend to like or not like certain things to get Regina's approval. She is such an insecure mess that she is willing to put up with any amount of crap just to follow Regina (while bitterly seething throughout the whole time). At the end of the film, we learn that she has learned Cantonese to join another clique.
- Regina deconstructs Alpha Bitch. She's not really mean, she just has Brutal Honesty. She truly believes everyone likes her and hates Cady for turning them against her.
- It also deconstructs Mistaken for Gay in the story of why Janis and Regina became enemies. Regina became more popular and Janis felt she was being pushed away. Regina got tired of what she saw as Janis' clinginess and accused her of having a crush on her. This caused their friendship to unravel, especially when rumors began to spread that Janis was a lesbian and people began to shun her, which left Janis deeply hurt and angry.
- The film also deconstructs Pay Evil unto Evil. After Regina humiliates and hurts Cady, she plots revenge with Janis and Damian. However, in the process, Cady becomes the new Alpha Bitch, alienates her old friends and causes her love interest to break it off because of how awful she's become. In the end, Cady muses that ruining Regina's life did not make her any happier, and all she did was create a vicious Cycle of Revenge.
- The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc deconstructs the Jeanne d'Archétype. The film offers the suggestion that Jeanne could have been suffering from some mental illness that made her think she was hearing voices from God. What's more is that her exposure to the horrors of war turns her into a Broken Bird. The film also offers a Freudian Excuse for why Jeanne would want to stop the English - namely the murder and rape (yes ...In That Order) of her sister - and suggests she may have been using the voices as an excuse to get revenge.
- My Best Friend's Wedding deconstructs Relationship Sabotage. Clingy Jealous Girl Julianne gets completely chewed out for her actions to "steal" the guy she loves from his girlfriend, the Gay Best Friend constantly tells her her idea is stupid, the Nice Guy is upset when Hell breaks loose, and when the Villain Protagonist has to confront the other girl on the shit she did to her, all the women in the scene side with said girl and call the other girl "bitch", "slut" and "couple breaker" in the most hilariously awesome way ever possible.
- Nikita deconstructed Action Girl. She isn't a badass but a reluctant killer who barely escapes every assignment.
- Pitch Perfect deconstructs Character Signature Song by showing The Leader of a collegiate A Cappella group insisting on using the exact same set of songs throughout the competition, causing the judges and the audience to get tired and bored of their act. This also caused problems within the group because the members (especially The Hero) feel that they are being limited and held-back.
- Plan B deconstructs Gay Bravado by showing that men joking about being boyfriends or pretending to be attracted to other men as part of a Zany Scheme to hook up with a girl becomes much less funny when the men involved really are falling in love with each other but are unable to recognize or admit it because of ingrained machismo that often gives rise to this trope in the first place.
- Private Benjamin deconstructed Boot Camp Episode by showing that while she overcame boot camp, we also see how the army changed her life.
- Project X (2012) deconstructs the Wild Teen Party trope. High school seniors Thomas, Costa, and J.B. (with their other friend Dax filming everything) throw a birthday party with the intent of finally becoming popular and getting laid, but the party winds up spiraling out of control, resulting in property damage and people getting hurt. It ends with Thomas being indicted on six different charges, Costa awaiting the results of three paternity tests, J.B.'s parents convincing the judge that he's special needs and can't stand trial (leaving him to have to ride on the short bus for the rest of high school), and Dax under investigation for the disappearance of his parents.
- The film Real Steel provides a deconstruction of the Finishing Move trope. During an underground fight, Charlie gains the upper hand with his new robot Noisy Boy, putting his opponent on the ropes. Confident that he's gained the advantage, Charlie has Noisy Boy wind up for a big finishing move... giving his opponent enough time to strike Noisy Boy in the chest, knocking him to the ground and turning the tide of the match.
- Secret Relationship is deconstructed through Anakin and Padme in Revenge of the Sith. After three years of sneaking around and hiding, their relationship is starting to wear on them and they are beginning to question if their marriage (now complicated by a pregnancy) is worth it but are afraid to admit it and avoid talking about anything that makes them uncomfortable such as when the political situation starts to find its way into their home. This lack of trust eventually drives Anakin over the edge to become Darth Vader.
- Later in the series, The Force Awakens deconstructs the Nerd in Evil's Helmet. Unlike the merciless, coldly menacing Vader, Kylo Ren is an immature, obsessive, entitled fanboy - and it's those immature and obsessive traits that led him to The Dark Side in the first place. Nor do they wash the blood off his hands from his deeds - he may not be the most imposing person, but ultimately, he's still a murderer, and the movie doesn't seem interested in making any excuses for that.
- The Runaways:
- The deconstructs Spotlight-Stealing Squad by showing how much the rest of the band resents the endless focus on Cherie Curie and how Cherie herself hates all the excessive spotlight, especially since she's still a teenager. And of course in this case the person being pushed as the frontwoman is only just the singer, while Joan Jett is the true Face hence why she kept her music career going. Bonus points for being based on fact too.
- The film also deconstructs Ms. Fanservice, with the rest of the band being furious that Cherie's sex appeal is getting more publicity than their music. Again, the mental damage this leaves on Cherie is not ignored either.
- Scream:
- Scream 3 deconstructs the Freudian Excuse. Sidney's Shut Up, Hannibal! to Roman implies that the Freudian Excuses of all the killers throughout the series are just that, excuses they use to cover for themselves and try to get sympathy when, in truth, they just enjoy killing people.
- The franchise as a whole deconstructs the Final Girl by showing how, despite having survived, Sidney's ordeal in the first film left her badly traumatized, and each successive encounter only makes it worse. She survives the murder attempts and tells her stories to the world, but now she has to fear the next dumb fuck who wants to be the next Ghostface. She becomes increasingly detached from reality out of fear for her life.
- Scream 4 deconstructs Found Footage Films at the end by providing a scarily plausible reason why somebody might be filming everything during the events of a horror movie: they're behind it all, and they're making a record of their own exploits. Charlie wanted to edit the video and upload it on the internet so as to build the legend of the murder spree, while Jill wanted to keep the video for her own sick, private pleasure. Even discounting the Snuff Film legend, there are numerous cases of Real Life murderers (such as Luka Magnotta
and the Dnepropetrovsk maniacs, both of whom had their "home movies" leaked online) recording their crimes for themselves.
- Secretary deconstructs Disposable Fiancé in a way. Lee agrees to marry Peter even though she doesn't really have a romantic connection with him, and doesn't enjoy the sex. The only reason she agrees to marry him is because she can't find a normal relationship after Edward fires her, and when she breaks it off she does it in a pretty insensitive way, not giving him a clear reason and not acting like she doesn't want to marry him until she delivers it as bluntly as possible.
- The Shop Around the Corner and its remake, You've Got Mail, deconstructed "The Reason You Suck" Speech in that saying this to the one you hate didn't make the lead female star feel better.
- Sky High (2005) deconstructs The Hero and Side Kick dichotomy or in otherwise labels. It shows the insecurity of young high school students today and can lead to serious consequences like Gwen Grayson otherwise known as Royal Pain.
- Unusually for a spy movie, the James Bond film Spectre deconstructs the concept of Big Brother Is Watching. While C/Max Denbigh supports total surveillance and thinks the 00-agent program is outdated, M is more concerned about the undemocratic dangers of creating a Police State and even directly questions C if all the data feeds might actually end up in the wrong hands. M even wonders whether C's surveillance plan can deal with moral situations, especially if someone who just sits with such technology would be capable of pulling a trigger and killing someone. Unfortunately, Bond and M's suspicions regarding the Joint Intelligence Service/"Nine Eyes" program were correct, as C turned out to be a SPECTRE flunky and the project itself a Trojan horse for world domination. If the data from all that surveillance isn't kept secure, then it's a double-edged sword, since SPECTRE had secretly bankrolled the "Nine Eyes" program for their own political ends.
- Starship Troopers is a deconstruction of classic Hollywood Tactics with usually gory results. Trying to out-Zerg Rush a faction that would make the actual Zerg proud? As in sending in millions of unprotected infantry without any support whatsoever? Or, never asking for space freighters to transport the infantry on the planet around? Placing all your space ships as close as possible to each other so the enemy anti-orbital artillery can conveniently land hit after hit? Yes, all of those are done by the humans and all of those end in utter failure. The bugs on the other hand are incredibly adept when it comes to tactics in this movie series. Unlike older cases where humans are facing mindless aliens who attack en-mass, they are dealing with a well coordinated Hive Mind that knows proper tactics, has plenty of surprising and deadly tricks in reserve, and their basic mooks can take so much punishment that it takes a whole clip of ammo just to bring one down.
- Star Trek: The Motion Picture deconstructs the idea of Back in the Saddle, showing Kirk is incredibly rusty after being put behind a desk for a few years and, when he's given command of his ship once more, his unfamiliarity with its refit nearly kills the crew. There's also the fact that he temp-demoted the ship's real captain, Decker, who resents Kirk throughout the movie.
- Star Trek Into Darkness deconstructed Jerkass Has a Point through Admiral Marcus who was absolutely right that a war between the Federation and Klingons was inevitable and they needed to be prepared for the upcoming war. However, they arrogantly believed they could control the dangerous Khan while their desperation to maintain control caused them to committing amoral acts, such as trying to kill the Enterprise crew to cover up their crimes. Though the Jerkass has a point, their Jerkassery caused them to go overboard.
- Streets of Fire deconstructs the Damsel in Distress plot. Cody's doing it for money, and Ellen is rescued about halfway through, the problem then becomes keeping her safe.
- Sunshine Cleaning deconstructs the Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job. The job in question - cleaning up after murders and crime scenes - is something that Rose and Norah fall into after hearing it pays well. Although disgusted by the work at first, Rose soon comes to find joy in what she does. When she meets up with her old high school friends later and talks about what she does, she realises she's proud of it."We come into people's lives when they've experienced something profound. And in our own small way, we help."
- There's Something About Mary shows how disruptive an Unwanted Harem can be on someone.
- A Thin Line Between Love and Hate deconstructs The Casanova trope. Martin Lawrence plays Darnell, a male chauvinist ladies man who has a habit of pursuing women and then throwing them to the side when he's done with them. He actively pursues a socialite named Brandi, who has suffered this treatment from men in the past before. After managing to Defrost the Ice Queen, Darnell manages to start dating her....up until he's no longer interested because he'd rather hook up with his childhood friend. Although the movie starts off as a typically Romcom, it goes dark from this point.
- Vampire's Kiss deconstructs the perceived glamour of becoming a vampire. The viewer thinks the main character will turn to Dracula but instead turns into The Renfield. His "transformation" alternates between laughable to pitiful to horrifying.
- Whip It deconstructs the Satellite Love Interest. Oliver seems like he's 100% the trope, as his character seems tailor-made to fall for Bliss and not do much else. In the end, though, it turns out he was just trying to get into Bliss' pants (he even gives away her old t-shirt to a groupie), and she later chides herself for falling for the act.
- It also deconstructs The Rival and the Opposing Sports Team in the form of Iron Maven. Maven loves derby and has a big competitive streak, and she dislikes the Hurl Scouts because they don't even try to play well. When she discovers Bliss' true age, she gets mad because Bliss' parents could easily have sued the league for allowing her to play and ruined the fun for everyone. In the end, when the Scouts finally get their act together and the last bout is just a few points' difference, she compliments Bliss' skills and even asks her to teach her.
- Yakuza Graveyard: Kuroiwa appears at first to be a Cowboy Cop played to the level of parody: He'll brawl with anybody, he beats up suspects and threatens to railroad them, he drinks, and repeatedly drives his fist into his palm when frustrated, even if he's talking to his superiors. But it becomes increasingly clear that he's a very sick man, whose constant anger is probably the product of all the beatings he took as a kid (because he grew up in Manchuria, despite being pureblooded Japanese). Gets even further deconstructed as he meets and eventually bonds with a Yakuza member over their shared racial struggles, straightforwardness, and love of brawling.
