Hyper-Competent Sidekicks in Live-Action Films.
- In Atomic Blonde, Merkel is this to Lorraine as her East-Berlin contact, arranging fake passports and crowds to shield her from snipers with a single whistle. He later finds and smuggles Lorraine out of East-Berlin, and during the end smuggles a gun into a bucket for Lorraine to use against the Russians and after she's done goes to work in disguise as hotel staff to dispose of the bodies.
- In Austin Powers, Number Two is one to Dr. Evil. As he explains to his boss multiple times, Dr. Evil could be a comfortable billionaire if he didn't constantly squander his cash on high-risk schemes to Take Over the World.
- A prevalent running gag in Big Trouble in Little China. Jack Burton acts like the hero, but it's his sidekick Wang who actually knows what's going on. And yet it's Burton who kills the Big Bad by catching a knife thrown at him and "returning" it.
- Played with in The Devil Wears Prada. On the one hand, Andy and Miranda's other employees are regularly expected to do the impossible instantly and perfectly. On the other hand, this is not because Miranda is a Fake Ultimate Hero; rather, she's The Ace and demands the same from everyone else. When Andy arrives for her interview during the fim's opening, she is informed that Miranda has burned through a long string of assistants because they were not hypercompetent enough.
- Django Unchained's main villain is Calvin Candie, a foolish and pretentious dandy who the main characters outfox fairly easily. However, his head slave, Stephen, is a Category Traitor who quickly figures out what they're up to and exposes their whole scheme. It's heavily implied that Stephen is the one who actually runs Candie's plantation, which leaves Candie the freedom to sleep around and pretend to know French.
- The Fastest Gun Alive: Outlaw Judson Swope is nearly as good of a gunfighter as his boss, Living Legend Vinnie Harold, and is also more intelligent and controlled than Harold.
- Exaggerated and deconstructed in The Green Hornet, where the title character is an Upper-Class Twit completely reliant on his valet Kato's intelligence and strength. When Kato worked for Britt's father, his skills were only used for Ethnic Menial Labor. Britt realizes Kato's untapped potential, hence their becoming crimefighters, but still treats him as a sidekick even though he's doing all the work. Their character arc is basically about Kato learning to stick up for himself and Britt learning to appreciate him.
- Intolerable Cruelty names this trope "The Tenzing Norgay", after the Sherpa who helped Edmund Hillary get to the top of Mount Everest.
- The Invincible Fist is a wuxia featuring a pair of swordsmen, the Tieh brothers, on a quest to hunt down a bandit lord. The older brother, Tieh Wu-qing, is the hero (in fact the film's original title is named after him) but his younger brother and lancer, Tieh Er-lang, is no slouch in large -scale battles easier, taking names in solo fights and killing hordes and horde of mooks by himself. So much that in the final battle, Wu-qing is fighting the main villain in a one-on-one battle - because his brother had killed every remaining mook in a lengthy fight before he was killed by the main villain.
- In Johnny English, the titular secret agent is constantly bickering his partner Bough over his inexperience even though he is completely in denial of his own incompetence. Bough himself doesn't realize it.
- In the sequel, Johnny English Reborn, Tucker acts as English's sidekick. Downplayed at first, as Johnny outclasses him in combat. However his confidence over his success causes him to disregard all the clever observations made by Tucker and fails the entire mission. Unlike Bough, Tucker eventually calls out Johnny over his failures.
- The second Lake Placid movie has the rich Egomaniac Hunter who keeps screwing things up and looking like an idiot, and his assistant Ahmad, who once kills a crocodile with a machete and rarely if ever screws up.
- The Last Voyage: While Captain Adams has some Reasonable Authority Figure moments, First Officer Osborne reacts to the boiler explosion more quickly and decisively than his superior.
- Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome: While Pig Killer isn't a fighter to the same degree as Max, he helps save the day several times. He starts the "Two men enter, one man leaves" chant that keeps Max from being executed for sparing Blaster and revealing that Aunty Entity hired him. He sends Max's monkey into the desert with a bottle of water to keep him from dying of thirst. He also plays such a big role in helping everyone break out of Bartertown that Max asks whether he's the one with the plan about what to do next.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- In Iron Man, Tony Stark may be able to build a miniature arc reactor in a cave, with a box of scraps, but it is no secret that for all his genius, he can't function without his ever faithful assistant, the beleaguered Pepper Potts. To the point that Tony doesn't even hesitate in making her the CEO of Stark Industries during the first sequel, seeing as she's essentially been running the company for him for years.
- In Thor: The Dark World, Malekith is shown to be fairly powerful, but has not shown nearly as much skill or strength as his second-in-command, Kurse. While Malekith got defeated by Frigga in a sword-fight, Kurse easily defeated every Asgardian soldier in his way and gave Thor a beatdown almost as easily.
- Doctor Strange (2016): Dr. Strange's Badass Cape is a better fighter than the good doctor himself.
- Miller's Crossing: Leo is the head of the Irish mob that runs the unnamed city and is clearly a proficient fighter and marksman. However, it's made clear that the only reason he really runs the city is because of his right hand man, Tom, who acts as the true brains of the operation. During the war with the Italians, the second Tom fake defects to Casper's side, Leo's hold on the city begins to fall apart.
- Mortdecai: Despite officially being Mordecai's assistant, Jock is responsible for almost all the heavy lifting and at least half the brainwork of what they do.
- In One, Two, Three Schlemmer (Hanns Lothar) often is this to C. R. MacNamara (James Cagney), as he is the one who has to implement most of his zany schemes.
- Cato Fong of the original The Pink Panther movies. Gilbert Ponton in the Steve Martin reboot.
- Nobody will ever really understand why Jules agrees to serve under Reynolds in Pirates XXX.
- Vadinho from The Pumaman is a Badass Normal who constantly hand-holds the nominal superhero Tony through the adventure and displays power and badassery in such quantity that you wonder why he needs Tony at all.
- RocknRolla: June, Mickey and Roman's secretary comes across as more effective and resourceful than her bosses (who spend a lot of time ineffectually blustering and fretting) in her few scenes. She is the one to suggest using street informants to find Johnny Quid and knows exactly how much money they stand to lose if any of their clubs get shut down.
- In Sanjuro Muroto is this to Kikui.
- Gets a bit of discussion in Sky High (2005)Will: Do you hand [your Hero] A) his silver-tipped crossbow, B) a wooden stake, C)...
Zach: I'm already holding his crossbow, why can't I just shoot it myself? - Star Wars:
- R2D2, particularly if viewed as specifically see C3PO's sidekick. In the original trilogy, he hacks the Death Star main computer to show its internal lay-out and shut down the trash compactors, keeps Luke's X-wing flying, and functions as a spy and monitoring station. He's also shown a number of times to be particularly brave and determined. In the prequels, it's the same story again: repairing a ship in hard vacuum while other droids blow up around him, flying, and once again hacking in the enemy's flagship.
- In the Expanded Universe, R2D2 continues this trend. He's effectively saved entire planets and civilizations of the Galaxy numerous times thanks to saving Han, Luke, Leia, or whoever the hell he's with repeatedly despite great personal risk to his tiny droid self. It's all the more impressive that he accomplishes this without really having any direct defenses of his own.
- Of course, Word of God from Lucas himself has (sometimes) been that what we see aren't the true events, it's R2D2 telling the story to an alien race. It's entirely possible that he embellished a bit, especially since most of his biggest heroic moments had no organic witnesses.
- The Battle of Endor went from a disaster for the Rebels to victory simply because Chewie and two ewoks got the wild idea of hijacking an AT-ST in the ground battle. From there, the tables were turned on the Imperial ground troops, and then Han got the fake-out idea to lure the Imperials into opening the shield generator bunker, which then led to the bunker being blown sky-high, which then opened the way for the besieged Rebel fleet in orbit to do what they came there to do: destroy the Second Death Star.
- In the Imperials' side, Captain-turned-Admiral Piett is this to Admiral Ozzel. Darth Vader recognizes this, which is why he Force-Chokes Ozzel for screwing up the attack on Hoth and promotes Piett to take his place.
- In Steel, Steel's sidekick, Sparky, has a wheelchair that can shoot rapid fire energy blasts and fly. Since she has better powers and a better backstory, wouldn't the movie have been better if she was the lead?
- Tank Girl. The title character is fairly competent on her own, but her sidekick Jet Girl is significantly saner and somewhat more practical, meaning that because of her most of Tank Girl's schemes don't end with her dead.
- Warriors of the Wasteland (a.k.a. "The New Barbarians"): the bow-and-arrow-wielding Nadir does a better job of dealing with the homicidal Templars than the purported hero, Scorpion. He does it so well that it's usually his character depicted on the cover.
- Played straight from the point of view of the Watership Down rabbits in that Bigwig is tougher, stronger and more experienced in combat than Hazel, and in many warrens this would qualify him to be Chief, yet these rabbits have been through so much and come to respect Hazel's qualities of leadership, lateral thinking and delegation that he is, without having to even decide on it, the Chief. It's beautifully played with, though, when Bigwig faces down Woundwort at the end and informs him that his Chief told him to defend the run — Woundwort is visibly taken aback since he can't help but imagine the rabbit that could command Bigwig to be even stronger than him!
- In Without a Clue (1988), Sherlock Holmes is actually an incompetent stooge that fronts for Dr Watson, the true detective.
