False Reassurance / Live-Action Films

False Reassurances in Live-Action Films.

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• In Ant-Man, Darren Cross invites his assistant Hope out to a celebratory dinner prior to a major business triumph. She toasts him with "You're a success story, Darren. You deserve everything coming to you." What he doesn't know is that she's in league with her father, Hank Pym, to ruin him and destroy his research.
• In Bad Reputation, the avenging heroine tells the Big Bad who she's pretending to seduce is that "it's just you and me", apparently referring to how the previous time around the villain had his fellow rapist jocks and Alpha Bitch girlfriend plus Girl Posse. In truth, she's already killed the rest of them.
• Batman (1989): The Joker grabs henchman Bob by his shoulders and promises him: "You... are my number-one... guy." [i.e., "You're irreplaceable"]. And that's true. But what Bob doesn't know is that their old boss, Carl Grissom, had said the same words — and in the exact same rhythm, too — to Jack Napier (the man who became the Joker) just before setting him up to be nearly assassinated. It's clearly Foreshadowing that the Joker will scheme to have Bob eliminated the same way Boss Grissom had tried to have him eliminated... until the subversion toward the end, where the Joker does execute Bob, but merely in a fit of anger when Batman foils his big murder plot.
• The Penguin does this in Batman Returns when he uses a swarm of bats to force the Ice Princess off the edge of a building, resulting in her death:
  Catwoman: You said you were just going to scare the Ice Princess.
  The Penguin: She looked pretty scared to me!
• Battlefield Earth:
  • Terl is informed that he will serve another tour of service as Chief of Security on Earth. Terl protests because he sees this as an inferior assignment and mentions his performance and achievements...
    Zete: Home office is well aware of your academic achievements and obvious talents. That's why we decided not to keep you here for another five cycles.
    Terl: It's a joke, oh thank you Sir. I don't know if I could have kept my sanity being here another five cycles...
    Zete: We've decided to keep you here... another fifty cycles! WITH ENDLESS OPTIONS FOR RENEWAL! WITH ENDLESS OPTIONS FOR RENEWAL! WITH ENDLESS OPTIONS FOR RENEWAL!
  • Later on, Terl himself pulls this on Jonnie by promising that he won't kill Jonnie's friend, if Jonnie promises to never ask Terl for anything ever again. Terl then has his Number Two Ker do the dirty deed. Strangely, at the end, Jonnie doesn't appear to hold any ill will against Ker.
• In Blade II, Blade kills a whole building full of vampires trying to find Whistler. He tells the one survivor, "Tell me where he is and I'll consider you a loose end." The survivor tells him and Blade lets him go. At the very end of the movie, Blade tracks him to a porno theater and says, "You didn't think I forgot about you?" before killing him. (After all, what do you do to loose ends?)
• Come Play: A promise of never being alone with a new friend might sound sweet, if it weren't talking about a long-limbed monster that quite literally won't leave you alone.
• In Conspiracy (2001), about the Wannsee Conference of Nazi Germany in 1942, State Secretary Kritzinger believes that the 'Final Solution to the Jewish Problem' has already been settled by his department and frequently asks why the meeting has been called. When it becomes clear that the "evacuation" of the Jews in Germany involves their complete annihilation, he is outraged because "that possibility has been personally denied to me by the Fuhrer." The response from Reinhardt Heydrich, the chairman of the meeting, is to simply reply "and it will continue to be." Kritzinger finally realizes that Hitler's "denial" of that possibility is literal.
• The Dark Knight Trilogy:
  • In The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent holds a gun to Maroni and demands information. When Maroni asks if Dent will let him go if he does, Dent responds "It can't hurt your chances." Unfortunately, Maroni didn't consider the fact that answering the questions wouldn't help his chances of survival, either. True to his comic book origins, Dent's victims always have a 50-50 chance; the coin doesn't play favorites.
  • The Dark Knight Rises does this too:
    Bane: Calm down, Doctor! Now's not the time for fear. (Beat) That comes later.
• False Reassurance in Restraining Bolt form: In Demolition Man, Raymond Cocteau has Simon Phoenix programmed as a killing machine... but also unable to kill Cocteau. What he forgot to do was do the same to all the old cryo-cons Phoenix freed...
  Simon Phoenix: Will someone kill him, please? He's pissing me off.
• "I never drink... wine", from the 1931 film version of Dracula. Dracula doesn't point out to the poor sap offering him a glass of wine what he does drink. You can quote this line to the bartender in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.
• Everything Will Be Okay: Divorced dad Michael picks up his little girl Lea for the typical weekend non-custodial visit—only he is planning to use this weekend to kidnap his daughter and steal away to the Philippines. The first use of the Title Drop comes when Michael and Lea have arrived at the airport and she's twigged to what's going on. The second use of it comes from Lea's mom in the last line of the movie, when the cops have arrived and arrested her father. Both times, it is plainly not true.
• At the start of the movie Fallen, we hear Denzel Washington's character John Hobbes narrating that he's going to tell us about the time he almost died. During the course of the movie, Hobbes matches wits with the demon Azazel, who destroys Hobbes' life piece by piece, and worst of all, Hobbes is Fighting a Shadow because Azazel simply possesses people and jumps from one to another at will. Still, Denzel the narrator said at the start that he almost died, so when he comes up with a plan to actually take down Azazel, it has to work and he has to survive, right? Nope. The narrator at the start of the movie was actually Azazel, who managed to possess the body of Hobbes himself and then just barely escaped the trap that was meant to kill Azazel.
• The hero of Final Justice is released from a Maltese prison on his oath as an American police officer not to interfere with a Maltese case. He starts interfering again as soon as he's out the door, explaining that he's actually a Texas lawman.
• In Ghost Rider (2007), Johnny makes a Deal with the Devil so his father doesn't die of cancer. That doesn't stop him from dying right after in an accident.
• From G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra: "This will only hurt a little. What comes next... more so."
• An unintentional example occurs in The Godfather; during a meeting between the bosses of the Five Families, Don Vito Corleone swears upon the souls of his grandchildren that "I will not be the one to break the peace that we have made here today." When Vito dies and Michael takes over, all bets are off.
• In The Heiress, the unwitting and naive Catherine is happy when her savvy father assures her that he will treat her new lover with due respect.
  Dr. Sloper: I shall be as fair and honest with him as he is with you.
  Catherine: Thank you, father, that is all we shall need.
• Claudia from Interview with the Vampire, presenting Lestat with two victims, says "I promise I'll take care of the bodies!" Yes, theirs and Lestat's, once she cuts his throat — she's using the laudanum she already dosed them with to weaken Lestat.
• Used in Nanny McPhee, when the nanny knows that the children are faking illness to stay in bed, and plays along, but then uses her magic to bind them to their beds, and make their feigned illness the real deal. The father tells her that when caring for them to give them lots of sweets and whatever they wanted. She assures him that she'll give them "precisely what they need". She then recommends Cook make a broth for the children, given her military experience and gives them a disgusting medicine, every hour. Needless to say, they get better very quickly, with the assistance of "best potato gruel with peelings in", and a turkey neck.
• Nightcrawler ends with Lou talking to his new interns at Video Production News, telling them they're not doing anything wrong. As he puts it, "I won't ask you to do anything I wouldn't do." However, the film begins with Lou mugging a guard for a watch, and his actions become sociopathic as the movie continues, including extorting his boss for sex, cutting his rival's brake lines and turning the crash into a story, and ultimately getting his partner killed by a criminal just because he asked for a raise.
• In None Shall Escape, Karl tells Wilhelm that he's leaving for Vienna and threatens to reveal Wilhelm's role in the Reichstag fire and the "Schleicher murder" (i.e. the Night of the Long Knives) unless he leaves the Nazi Party, leading to the following exchange:
  Wilhelm: You leave me no choice.
  Karl: Then you will come?
  [Wilhelm nods]
  Karl: In Vienna we can be free to start some kind of a new life. And whatever little money that I've been able to save, I will share it with you.
  Wilhelm: When do you leave?
  Karl: Tomorrow morning.
  Wilhelm: Expect me tonight.

Wilhelm does indeed show up at Karl's home that night. He brings other members of the Nazi Party, and Karl is arrested and deported to a concentration camp.

• In Once Upon a Time in the West:
  Morton: Tell me, was it necessary that you kill all of them? I only told you to scare them.
  Frank: People scare better when they're dying.
• Played for laughs in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, where Marc-Ange wants Bond to marry his rebellious daughter Tracy because he thinks she needs a strong man to tame her. At their wedding he reminds her to "obey her husband in all things", and she promises she will, as she always obeyed him - in other words, when she wanted to do it anyway. He picks up on her meaning, and wishes Bond luck.
• In the opening of Outbreak, US Army doctors McClintock and Ford arrive at a mercenary camp in Africa to take a look at a strange new virus. Upon seeing the horrific effects of the disease, McClintock tells the head doctor that he'll arrange for an airdrop of penicillin and plasma. He also tells one of the mercenaries that he'll be brought home and will see his girl again. A few hours later, a plane does come by and drop a large container... it's just that the container is actually a fuel-air bomb which vaporizes the camp.
• Pinocchio: While riding on the coach bound for Pleasure Island, Pinocchio asks the Coachman if he'll become a real boy there. He knowingly responds, "You won't be a puppet anymore, that's for sure."
• Pitch Black: After the eclipse plunges the planet into darkness, Riddick leads the group back to the cargo ship for supplies. Laying low and peering over a ridge, he makes the claim of "Looks clear." When Johns advances, one of the Bio-raptors comes shrieking into view, nearly taking his head off as it flies by.
  Johns I THOUGHT YOU SAID IT WAS CLEAR!
  Riddick: I said, it looks clear!
  Johns: Well, what does it look like now?
  Riddick: (looks again, shrugs, then deadpan) Looks clear.
• Pirates of the Caribbean:
  • Captain Barbossa does this repeatedly in the first film. He promises Elizabeth that he will leave Port Royal if she turns over the medallion. She does, and he promptly leaves with her on board the Pearl because she never bargained to be returned to shore. Later on, he promised that he would release Elizabeth if Will took her place as his prisoner. He then makes Elizabeth walk the plank because Will never specified when or where she would be released. Just about any time a pirate agrees to adhere by "The Code", it's a false reassurance since it only applies among pirates, and it's more "guidelines" than actual rules.
    • A similar scenario plays out in the Kingdom Hearts adaptation of the film. Will asks Barbossa to let Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Elizabeth go and to leave their ship. Barbossa ties the party up in the hold while a group of Heartless stays behind to detonate the ship with gunpowder barrels, because Will only demanded that the pirates leave.
  • Even Davey Jones gets in on it in the second film, after Will wins a game of chance (or rather, someone else intentionally loses) that gets him out of his debt. "Congratulations, Mister Turner, you're free to leave. The very next time we come in to port!" Cue group Evil Laugh — for Jones, and therefore the Flying Dutchman, can only make port once every decade. Then again, he promptly breaks his word, when Will tries to swim for it at night and is picked up by a passing ship. Sure, Will is free to leave... until the Kraken comes for him.^note Although that might be not because Will left, but rather because he stole the key to Davey Jones' locker in the process.
• Planet of the Apes (1968): Zaius says that if there's any evidence of human civilization in the cave, then he'll acquit Cornelius and Zira. When he finds such evidence, he proceeds to completely ignore or dismiss it.
• In Quigley Down Under, sharpshooter Quigley informs the Big Bad (a potential employer at that point) that he doesn't have much use for pistols. Doesn't mean he can't use one, mind you. This same Bad Boss had pulled a similar stunt when he enticed Quigley to come to his ranch to scare off some "wild animals" — failing to mention that the "animals" are the native Aboriginal tribesmen.
• Resident Evil: The Final Chapter: After exposing and incapacitating The Mole, Alice states that she isn't going to kill them... then steps aside to reveal a pissed off Claire, who does the job instead.
• From Robin Hood: Men in Tights:
  Maid Marian: Robin, promise you won't go.
  Robin Hood: All right, I promise you won't go.
  Maid Marian: Thank you.
  Ahchoo: But wait a minute, Robin, didn't you just...
  Robin Hood: Cool it...
  Ahchoo: Chilled.
• RoboCop 2, when Cain slices a guy open:
  Angie: You said you were just gonna scare him!
  Cain: Doesn't he look scared?
• Safety Patrol: When Scout's teachers tell Principal Tromp that his least favorite student, Scout Bozell, deserves to be on the safety patrol and that the rules say that they have to give him a turn, Tromp smiles and agrees that Scout does deserve to be on the safety patrol as long as he's a student at their school. He then proceeds to transfer Scout to a different school.
• In Sex and Death 101, Roderick (who has a list that accurately predicts every person he'll ever have sex with) is in a club with his friend Trixie when they spot Bambi Kidd and Thumper Wint, a celebrity Lipstick Lesbian power-couple. He takes a quick look at his list and finds that they're both on it.
  Trixie: Don't tell me one of em's on that fucking list. That list of fucking—
  Roderick: No, one of them is not on the list.
• In Sinister, true-crime writer Ellison Oswalt reassures his wife that they did not move into a house "down the street" from a notorious crime scene.
• In Sneakers, the hero, Martin, is captured by the villain, who is revealed to be his once-upon-a-time best friend Cosmo:
  Cosmo: I cannot kill my friend. (Turns to shotgun-carrying minion.) Kill my friend.
• In Stardust, a witch promises Tristan that she'll deliver him to Wall "in the exact same condition you're in now," and that she'll give him food and lodging along the way. When he accepts, she turns him into a mouse, putting him into a cage with cheese (food and lodging), and turns him back when she gets to the town.
• In Starship Troopers, the military recruitment officer who turns war wounds into Black Comedy:
  Officer: What about you, son?
  Rico: Infantry, sir.
  Officer: Good for you! (offers a prosthetic hand to shake Rico's) Mobile Infantry made me the man I am today! (wheels his chair back to reveal both his legs are missing at the knee)
  • It should be noted however that in the book this scene plays out, and then the recruitment officer goes on a break and puts on prosthetics that allow him to walk perfectly; he explains that his disability is deliberately played up to let potential recruits know exactly what they might be getting into and scare off the squeamish ones.
• Star Wars:
  • Emperor Palpatine pulls one of these in Revenge of the Sith: "I am sending you my apprentice, Darth Vader. He will... take care of you."
  • In The Empire Strikes Back, Lando Calrissian tells Han Solo and Princess Leia "I've just made a deal that'll keep the Empire out of [Cloud City] forever.". Unfortunately, Han and Leia discover mere seconds later that deal entails surrendering them to Darth Vader, who surrenders Han to the bounty hunter Boba Fett.
• In Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, the titular barber promises the "closest shave you will ever know." Then he slits their throats.
• In the 1960s version of That Darn Cat!, Patti promises she won't go to the police. So she goes to the FBI instead.
• Thor: Ragnarok: In his Establishing Character Moment, the Grandmaster reassures a captured criminal that he’s being pardoned. He then clarifies that the criminal is being pardoned from life, and melts the poor guy into a puddle of steaming goo.
• In Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, after Augustus is sucked up a pipe, his mother panics, "He'll be made into marshmallows in five seconds!" Wonka bluntly assures her that he won't - "because that pipe doesn't go to the Marshmallow Room, it goes to the Fudge Room!" In both the book and the Tim Burton remake, Augustus is shown to be fine in the end, but this version noticeably omits that scene...
• The Wishmaster films, being the classic "Monkey's Paw" style stories, do this continuously.
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Wolverine nearly throttles Colonel Stryker when he thinks he's lying. Styker swears that he's telling the truth "on the life of my son!" Of course, as we saw in X2, Stryker doesn't value his son's life very highly.

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