Overshadowed By Awesome / Live-Action Films

aka: Film

• This forms the basis of Amadeus's plot, with Antonio Salieri envious of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart because he looks mediocre in comparison despite his own formidable talent and thus seeks to destroy his career. This is of course more based on their places in history than their actual interactions, as they got along quite well in real life in spite of being professional competitors. In fact, Mozart was overshadowed by Salieri several times, a fact that is acknowledged in the film with Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro being overlooked by the Emperor in favour of one of Salieri's operas.
• DC Extended Universe:
  • In the last 30 minutes, this happens to Batman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. When Doomsday shows up, both Superman and Wonder Woman give excellent displays of their power and skill against him, and even if they can't take him on they still make it clear that they're trying. Batman, though, is basically powerless against him and spends the fight running away (quite literally; the most he can do is duck when he gets shot at and leap away from attacks, then towards the end fires a single grenade at him). It's noticeable because a few minutes before that, he got an impressive scene showing him destroying Lex's hired goons, and he won the fight with Superman (though only because Superman was only trying to disarm Batman while Batman was giving it his all). He still gets to weaken the monster at the most crucial moment with a Kryptonite gas grenade.
  • One criticism of The Flash in Justice League is that both Superman and Wonder Woman come off as being just as fast as he is, making his one superpower seem rather redundant. Especially as Superman's strength and Wonder Woman's gauntlets complement their speed very effectively. And in case anyone is wondering: Batman is overshadowed in this film too once the actual League is assembled, although he at least still has a role as the brains and money of the group. One scene demonstrates this trope for the Flash: both he and Superman are rushing to evacuate the civilians around Steppenwolf's base. Barry saves a family... before turning around and seeing Superman carrying an entire apartment building to safety. Zack Snyder's Justice League completely averts this meanwhile, as the film balances the team better (even when Superman shows up) and gives them all more to do.
• Elf: Buddy is a human raised by Santa's elves and living at the North Pole making toys like them. Despite being hyper-competent by human standards, such as assembling 85 Etch-a-Sketches in a single day, the elves out-pace him and have already made 950 more. After he migrates to New York to move in with his human family, his seemingly lackluster skills then stand out, with folks being amazed by him renovating a mall in a single night or building and throwing snowballs with machine gun firing speed and accuracy.
• Godzilla:
  • Anguirus, a giant dinosaur whose only power is his huge size and strength (no flight, no transformations, no crazy energy beams), is the trope's kaiju equivalent.
  • Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): Rodan is a giant, Hot-Blooded, Magma Man bird who can create village-ravaging cyclones just by flying, and he utterly trounces and mercilessly decimates a jet squadron deployed to occupy him. However, he shares the movie with two other Toho-originated monsters whom are capable of handing his ass to him, acting as the main Kaiju hero and the movie Big Bad respectively: Godzilla himself (whom here survives the very thing that vaporized the original Godzilla and goes full Burning mode without dying), and King Ghidorah (here returned to the character's original roots as a world-ending eldritch threat that's at least as powerful as the aforementioned Godzilla and can hold its own in a fight, with Multiple Head Case for cool factor and with the abilities to form world-ending gigantic alien storms and dominate the other Kaiju on Earth, Rodan included, as its slaves).
• This happened to Master Liu in Ip Man. He was a competent martial arts teacher and managed to win against the unnamed martial artists. However, he was defeated by both the titular character and the two antagonists, making him look like a weakling in comparison.
• This happens to Kick-Ass when he meets Hit-Girl and Big Daddy and understands that they are infinitely more badass than him. And then comes the climax of the film, where Kick-Ass straps on a jetpack with shoulder-mounted miniguns with a rocket launcher for good measure and proceeds to mess the Big Bad's shit up big time.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Wherever Loki goes, as soon as he says his name, people remark that he's Thor's brother, and he hates it. He has been constantly overshadowed by Thor since they were children.
    Loki: I remember a shadow, living in the shade of your greatness.
  • Except for the scene where they fight each other, Hawkeye and Black Widow both suffer from this trope in The Avengers. While they are hypercompetent at archery and hand-to-hand combat, respectively, their status of Weak, but Skilled just doesn't measure up to Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, or the Incredible Hulk.
    [Thor has just decimated the enemy with a well-placed lightning-strike at a bottleneck, killing scores of enemy soldiers]
    RiffTrax: Impressive... between that and Hawkeye standing at a roof-top somewhere shooting arrows they might have a shot!
  • Captain America's portrayer Chris Evans himself joked on the Jimmy Fallon Show that he watched the movie and realized he "had no business with this crew! The Hulk can rip jets in half, Thor is calling down thunder, Iron Man can shoot missiles, and I'm over here going, 'I'll take the stairs!'" Evans said Cap's superpower is "heart". "He'll help you move on a Sunday!" Similarly, Scarlett Johansson expressed fears of this happening to her character Black Widow (another Badass Normal) being swept aside as an Avenger. Thankfully, this turned out not to be true for both her and Cap.
  • Hawkeye himself suffers from this trope moreso than Widow. While the MCU is full of characters lacking superpowers, Hawkeye doesn't have as much screen time or action scenes compared to his fellow S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. It didn't help that he was excluded from more grounded installments that could've helped show off his skills and talents. Jeremy Renner even lampshades this by singing a parody of "Thinking Out Loud" as Hawkeye, lamenting on being in this status while pointing out he 'can do so much more than just archery'. Just check out the video!
  • Tony's bodyguard Happy Hogan is a fairly competent boxer, but he gets overshadowed by people who are much more skilled than he is. It's especially obvious in Iron Man 2 when he knocks out a guard and happily announces it to Black Widow, only to find that she's knocked out all the rest. By the following film, he's traded being Tony's bodyguard for being head of security at Stark Industries, claiming nobody took him seriously as Tony's bodyguard.
  • Anybody in Avengers: Age of Ultron who is not an Avenger. At the party early in the movie, Rhodey tells Thor and Tony a story about how he (in his War Machine armor) responded to a warlord's threats by dropping one of the warlord's tanks on his front step. Tony and Thor just stand there politely, waiting for the punchline, and Rhodey has to explain that was the punchline. What is a badass climax to anyone else is just another day at the office for them. Rhodey is later seen telling the story again to another group of party guests, visibly pleased when they laugh.
  • Ironically, Hawkeye manages to avert this, due to director Joss Whedon amending for complaints about the first film. Despite initially losing to Quicksilver, through Combat Pragmatism Hawkeye's the only Avenger to take on and win against both Maximoff twins. Hawkeye manages to further avert this in his solo series, proving to be a John Wick-esque Mook Horror Show.
  • In Captain America: Civil War, despite being trained agents, Sharon Carter and Black Widow aren't at the level of a super-soldier. Perhaps to avoid calling too much attention to this, Sharon Carter's fight scene happens while the higher-powered Tony Stark, Black Panther, etc, are temporarily unable to use their equipment, and Black Widow is unseen for most of the supers-vs-supers airport fight until a critical moment in the end. Even Bucky Barnes The Dreaded Winter Soldier gets overshadowed courtesy of Black Panther and Spider-Man, justified in that apart from Cap and another Super-Soldier Joseph, Bucky has never had to fight anyone well above Badass Normal in his life.
  • In Avengers: Infinity War, Steve's group gets hit with this. They get a dramatic introduction, but are then sidelined until the battle in Wakanda, where they almost lose until Thor shows up. The rest of the film is about Thor's revenge quest which has him level grinding in badass and obtaining Stormbreaker, while Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Dr. Strange team up with the Guardians of the Galaxy to fight Thanos in space, so everyone else can't help but feel under-powered in comparison. The writers even commented that Thor would have stolen the entire film if not for his fatal mistake at the end.
  • Avengers: Endgame turns this on its head for Steve as during the climax, as he manages (albeit temporarily) overshadow both Thor and Tony during their three on one fight with Thanos, thanks to picking up the dropped Mjölnir proving that he is worthy and being the first to actually damage Thanos in the entire bout ^note  Thor being out of shape, was also a factor . Carol and especially Wanda in turn overshadow just about everyone in the Final Battle, with the former destroying Thanos’s spaceship and putting him on the ropes and the latter outright almost killing him on the spot, had he not ordered a Orbital Bombardment just to get away from her.
  • Spider-Man: No Way Home lampshades this In-Universe with Andrew Garfield’s Spidey from The Amazing Spider-Man universe saying he feels lame compared to his Raimi Trilogy and MCU counterparts since he hasn’t even battled aliens on earth or space, having at most fought a crazy russian man in a rhino mech-suit. Despite this, he manages to prove his badassery and worth in the climax, not only to his allies but most importantly to himself after Raimi Spidey tells him You Are Better Than You Think You Are.
• The Piano may be the only film in Oscar history to win acting awards in both the lead and supporting categories, only for the supporting performance to be better remembered than the lead.
• The sidekick class in Sky High was made of this trope. Every one of them had super powers, which makes them a step above "ordinary" people, yet they were pretty mundane compared to the heroes. ("I'm glowing.")
• In Star Wars, pretty much anyone compared to a Force sensitive that is trained to use the Force, even without much experience, is this. While Force sensitives with no training can draw on the Force instinctively to give them an edge, a trained Force user gets so many advantages over regular people that it's stupidly unfair. A Force initiate that can only use the basics still gains Combat Clairvoyance, Super-Reflexes, Mind over Matter abilities, minor levels of Mind Reading, and general Clairvoyance. Then their are the Jedi Knights and the Sith Order who are not only masters of the Force but also using it in combat which means that can take down some of the best Badass Normal fighters in the universe like they were nothing more than mooks.
  • Darth Maul is this when compared to other Sith, he is an extremely talented warrior who is easily on the same level as a Jedi Master, but is weak when compared to Darth Vader and Darth Sidious.
• Poor Anna Valerious in Van Helsing is simply a regular human up against vampires and werewolves, but she looks weak because her performance doesn't quite live up to the perceived hype of her introduction. She seems worse next to Van Helsing, who is anything but a regular human.
• X-Men Film Series:
  • Mariko Yashida in The Wolverine IS badass, as she kicks Yakuza butt at one point and stabs a robot! It's just that when you have a viper woman, a samurai best friend, a ninja boyfriend, and a big part of the plot was Wolverine losing his healing... you look less cool.
  • Happens to Wolverine, of all people in X-Men: Days of Future Past. He's The Heart here, helping 1970s-era Charles Xavier deal with his issues. Against the various security guards and soldiers, Wolverine pulls his weight, but he's not nearly as effective as Quicksilver or Magneto without his adamantium bones and claws. Against Sentinels, he's not even as effective as Beast. Even when this takes away his normal vulnerability to Magneto, he's still quite outclassed.

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