Characters who have trouble judging and controlling their own strength in Live-Action Films.
- DC Extended Universe:
- In Man of Steel while being bullied in a Flash Back, Clark grips a fence poll to stable his anger. When Pa Kent scares the bully away, it's shown Clark has mangled the metal with his bare hand.
- In Wonder Woman Diana is getting knocked around during her Training from Hell and she uses her bracelets to defend herself... and nearly kills her sparring partner with the blow back scaring the fellow amazons and herself. Done more positively later as Diana is climbing tower but to her horror loses her handhold and falls down but then discovers
she can just dig her hand into the stone with Super-Strength and climb up the fun way. - Wonder Woman 1984. Barbara uses the Dreamstone to Make a Wish to be just like Diana Prince, whom she admires for being beautiful and confident, but she has no idea that Diana has superpowers as well. Her first hint is when Barbara goes to open her refrigerator and rips the door off its hinges.
- Downplayed with Barry Allen/the Flash in Justice League but he's still surprised that he can reduce Parademons to mush◊ with his Super-Speed, there'a little Fridge Horror if you consider he could've done to normal humans if wasn't careful.
- Completely averted in Zack Snyder's Justice League. Barry knows the effects of his Super-Speed on humans, and makes minimal use of it to move people around such as when he saves Iris West from a car accident with extreme care. He also saves a bunch of people in the tunnels battle, but not by moving them unlike the theatrical version, rather by preventing debris from falling on them.
- Invoked a lot in SHAZAM! (2019), Billy is ecstatic at being able to punch through concrete but runs into trouble like ripping open his school bag and nearly killing a mugger accidentally. Billy also has trouble with his Shock and Awe powers not only does he destroy one man's phone while charging it but he nearly gets a bus people filled with people killed with one careless lightning bolt.
- In Fantastic Four (2005), The Thing is prone to doing this with drinkwear, though it could also be related to reduced sensation with his new skin making it hard to tell how much he's squeezing. His jaw muscles also increased in strength with the rest of him, as he's seen accidentally biting through the tines of a fork. Also, few chairs support his weight any more, but he doesn't always remember this.
- Jason Voorhees has this happen to him in Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, when he throws Bert into a tree and, much to his surprise, tears his victim's arm off in the process.
- Hancock. Though in his case, it's more a case of him simply not bothering to check his superstrength.
- In Kamen Rider: The First, Hongo Takeshi runs afoul of this trope in a non-comedic manner, trying to save a little girl from being hit by a truck. He scoops her up a little too forcefully, and while he does save her life, she has to be hospitalized anyway due to the pressure he put on her body.
- Elvis Presley's boxing movie, Kid Galahad.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Played most straight in Captain America: The First Avenger after Steve gets the Super Serum and is surprised to see what his body can now do.
- Pepper Potts goes through this twice in Iron Man 3 first when she uses iconic Powered Armor and blows herself over trying to get the repulsor working, in the Final Battle when injected with the Extremis Virus she was bit shocked after she brutally killed the Big Bad Killian.Pepper That was really violent.
- Iron Man himself occasionally forgets he is armored plated Walking Armory as when he took his first joyride in Mark 2 and when he tried to land safely on the roof of his mansion he fell two stories into his workshop... completely overlooking how heavy he was.
- Thor, despite being Brought Down to Normal, still had Super-Strength by Earth standards as seen he shoved a doctor off him... sending the doctor flying and causing a riot within the hospital. Much later in Thor: Ragnarok, the God of Thunder truly realized his namesake and sent the Hulk flying off him with a punch, Thor then stared at electricity flowing on his arms with interest.
- The titular antagonist of Avengers: Age of Ultron accidentally slices Klaw's arm when the latter enraged him by comparing him to his creator Tony Stark. He apologizes meekly and half-heartedly as Klaw starts bleeding and gasping in pain and shock.
- In the same movie Scarlet Witch unconsciously disintegrates three Ultron bots into dust in a moment of despair after she senses that her brother Pietro has died Taking the Bullet.
- In Captain America: Civil War, it's said that Peter Parker has had his powers for six months and is more-or-less used to them. He knows his strength well enough to consciously hold back. Though there shades of this trope like when Spidey does a Punch Catch to Bucky's cybernetic arm and just geeks over it not knowing how deadly that arm was to everyone else before then. In Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spidey simply pushes a mook over and sends him flying into another mook showing how strength is behind he's simplest movements. However, at a few points in Spider-Man: Far From Home, he slips up when he's stressed, like accidentally knocking his classmate Flash Thompson unconscious with a lovetap or snapping a seat belt that won't fasten.
- Hulk plays this very straight in Ragnarok as unlike the previous movies he's just chilling around and not on a Unstoppable Rage, at one point he unintentionally destroys a whole Quinjet just trying to reach his new best friend Thor.
- Played most straight in Captain America: The First Avenger after Steve gets the Super Serum and is surprised to see
- Moonraker. Jaws tries to pull the ripcord on his parachute... it comes off in his hand. Later on he's chasing Bond in a speedboat, realizes he's heading for an Inevitable Waterfall and tries to jerk the steering wheel to the side; it also comes off in his hand. Being Made of Iron, he survives both Oh, Crap!-worthy moments unscathed.
- In the fantasy-wuxia film, Na Cha the Great, the titular hero gains super strength after eating an enchanted fruit his father forbids him from touching. Suddenly feeling himself surging with energy, Na Cha decides to test his strength by punching a nearby tree - and end up splitting said tree into half, splitting all the way to the ground, and for the floor to break apart as well, inadvertently leading to a mini-earthquake. Cue Oh, Crap! from Na Cha when his father who is caught in the quake finds out what he did.
- In the background material for The One, Yulaw was first revealed as an interdimensional offender by a fellow agent who long suspected him. He did it by asking him to carry a case upstairs and then revealing that the case was, in fact, loaded with extremely heavy weights and cannot be lifted by a normal person. Yulaw picked up the case and carried it with ease, likely thinking it was full of books. When the agent (a multiple black belts) confronted him, he ended up getting thrown down the stairs and paralyzed from the waist down. It also happens in the film with Gabe Law, who is starting to discover his newfound strength (by accidentally breaking a rifle in half).
- One-Armed Boxer has the titular character mastering the Iron Fist technique for the first time after a Training from Hell montage. Eager to test his strength, he then punches a pillar on a random shed... and made the whole structure collapse instantly.
- Sky High:
- The Commander keep a couple of those mobile landlines in a drawer in case he breaks one on a rant.
- Also, once Will gets his super strength, he accidentally rips his front door off its hinges by opening it.
- Spider-Man:
- In Spider-Man Peter is ecstatic when he sends Jerk Jock Flash Thompson flying with one punch, only this gets subverted as he sees the horror and fear of classmates including MJ. Of course only Harry Osborn is excited at seeing his best friend’s Super-Strength.
- The best bits of humor in The Amazing Spider-Man was Peter struggling with his strength in regular activities e.g. turning off his arm alarm clock or brushing his teeth.
- Mostly averted with MCU Spider-Man; see below.
- Played with in Up, Up and Away!. The protagonist is born into a family of superheroes, but was born without a power. In order to convince his family that he's not a loser, he rigs certain things to fall apart as he uses them, such as taking the screws off the door hinges to make it appear he ripped it off. Played straight with a Noodle Incident for his father, who apparently did quite some damage to his house's foundation. Interestingly, this convinces everyone but his grandfather, who saw right through the ruse.
- In Superman Returns, Clark accidentally breaks the glass in the picture frame he's holding when Jimmy surprises him with the information that "Lois is a mommy". Also while playing fetch with his mother's dog, Clark accidentally throws the ball a bit too hard, and it sails into such a far distance, that the dog doesn't even attempt to run and retrieve it just letting out a whine.
- The Autobots of the Transformers movie basically destroys Sam's backyard. Part of it may have been scale issues (although Cybertronians are somewhat varied in size, very few shown in the movies are anything near human-sized), but the majority was the fact that Earth construction is considerably more fragile than Cybertronian construction. They were pretty good about not damaging animal life forms, at least.
- At the end of Young Frankenstein, the Monster accidentally rips off Inspector Kemp's wooden arm while shaking hands. Understandable, as the brain hasn't been attached to that body for very long...
