History BreakTheCutie / LiveActionFilms

* Quite literally, in ''[[Film/ShortCircuit Short Circuit 2]]''.

* ''Film/Batman1989'': Alicia was physically and psychologically tortured by Joker, then killed when he lost interest in her.
%%* ''Film/BatmanReturns'': Poor Selina. '''Administrivia/ZeroContextExample'''

* ''Film/XMenFilmSeries''
** ''Film/XMenFirstClass'':
*** Charles Xavier. When the movie starts, he's a friendly, happy-go-lucky, idealistic Oxford grad whose only interests are protecting his foster sister, studying genetics, drinking yards of beer and picking up coeds. His initial reaction to meeting other mutants is a puppyish eagerness to find others like him, as well as a gung-ho enthusiasm to work with a superhuman team to fight evil. During the climax, [[spoiler:he gets smacked around in a variety of ways, including telepathically experiencing Shaw's gruesome death at Magneto's hands, getting shot in the spine, and having the US government, his best friend, and his sister all turn against him. By the finale, [[HumansAreBastards his government is trying to hunt him down]], his [[FaceHeelTurn best friend is preparing for a war against humans]], and he's crippled for life in a wheelchair.]] We know from future installments that he never quite abandons his ideals, but he's frighteningly subdued and obviously much more cautious about who knows his secrets.
*** Hank [=McCoy=] starts off as the adorably awkward love interest for Raven. He then undergoes a KarmicTransformation after telling Raven that society would never accept them for the way they really looked.
*** Raven Darkholme starts off as an innocent WomanChild who [[spoiler:turns into a villain by the end, after being harshly rejected by her love interest Hank, and being repulsed by both humanity's intolerance and by Charles' ideals]].
*** Erik Lehnsherr as a child in the early scenes, where he is subjected to the harsh treatment of the concentration camps and is forced to watch his mother die simply because he couldn't move a coin in time.
** ''Film/XMenDaysOfFuturePast'': Professor X's attempts to set up a school for mutants has come crashing down around him due to the outbreak of the Vietnam War. It's heartbreaking to see just how much those events have broken him, to the point where he's taking a serum designed by Hank that suppresses his powers and restores the use of his legs just so he can sleep at night without feeling other people's pain.
** ''Film/XMenApocalypse'':
*** For the past decade, Professor X has been very happy running his school with Hank by his side, and he's pleased by human society being more accepting of mutants. He's then kidnapped by Apocalypse (and with Magneto's assistance, no less), his home is blown to smithereens, and he's brought halfway across the world into a situation where's he's completely at the mercy of a mutant who's more powerful than he is. Apocalypse wants to cleanse the Earth of any mutant or human who isn't strong enough to survive the new world order, and he intends to [[spoiler:exploit Xavier's telepathy to facilitate this extinction-level event by taking control of him]]. For Charles, this is a far more terrible hell than what he had endured in the previous two films. Creator/JamesMcAvoy [[https://in.movies.yahoo.com/post/137684622919/x-men-apocalypse-on-set-of-the-darker- sums up his character's suffering as:]]
---->"It wasn't just the weight of the world I was feeling. It was the death of the world."
*** ''Literally'' BreakTheCutie in the case of Quicksilver. He's a ManChild living in his mother's basement who simply wanted to meet his estranged father. When he seeks the Professor's help in locating Magneto, Peter is abducted, imprisoned and interrogated by [[spoiler:Stryker]]. He joins the X-Men when they head to Cairo, but the reunion Maximoff had longed for with Erik doesn't come to fruition because he learns that the older mutant has another family and is [[spoiler:mourning their deaths]]. Quicksilver fears that Magneto may not embrace him as a son because Lehnsherr doesn't love his mother, so Peter assists Mystique in attempting to take down Apocalypse. The god-like mutant then [[spoiler:breaks Maximoff's leg, which leaves the latter thoroughly vulnerable, and it seems that Quicksilver will meet his death at the tip of Psylocke's katana]].
** ''Film/{{Logan}}'': Mutants are just about extinct, everything Charles did for them throughout the series having [[AllForNothing come to naught]]. He personally killed seven of his beloved X-Men with his psychic powers when he had a seizure. He now lives in a metal tank, where Logan keeps him drugged up so he won't endanger anyone else. Throughout the film he sees people he cares about hurt and killed, accidentally harms a lot of innocent people with another seizure, and [[spoiler:finally is killed by Logan's EvilTwin, whom he believes to be Logan]].
** ''Film/DarkPhoenix'':
*** Jean Grey. [[spoiler:She gets a serious case of PowerIncontinence when she absorbs Phoenix Essence so it won't kill her friends and the astronauts they just saved. As Phoenix power takes her over, she learns about memories that Charles blocked in her mind (again). Those memories? She unwittingly caused a car accident that killed her mother, but her father is alive and wants to do nothing with her. Afterwards, she unwittingly attacks policemen, ''kills'' Raven by accident, and then is pursued by alien race and their leader that wants to claim that power for herself. Good lord]].
*** Charles Xavier again sees his efforts torn apart as [[spoiler:Raven is killed, Hank is alienated by his choices, notably regarding his decision to suppress some of Jean's memories, and joins Erik in his revenge quest, and Jean's attacks against humans reset the human-mutant relations back to the level seen at the end of ''First Class''.]]

* ''Film/GodzillaKingOfTheMonsters2019'': [[Characters/MonsterVerseMadisonRussell Madison Russell]]. She suffered the first stage before the events of the film in the form of her brother's death and the utter messes that her parents have both been since, but she's still a WideEyedIdealist with a profound awe for Titans such as Mothra as well as genuinely being concerned for both her parents' welfare (especially her father, who's been absent for years). Over the course of the film, Madison's wide-eyed idealism gets shattered when she personally witnesses malevolent Titans such as Ghidorah for the first time, she gets to watch her mother [[spoiler:knowingly put millions of people including her own father at risk and unwittingly leash a world-ending force]], and finally she watches [[spoiler:her mother's death]]. The novelization of [[Film/GodzillaVsKong the sequel]] also confirms that Madison has PTSD from her up-close experiences of [[BigBadWannabe Alan Jonah]] massacring Monarch outposts and her [[spoiler:close brush with Ghidorah when the monster was actively hunting her]].

* Elle from ''Film/LegallyBlonde'', though she usually bounces back.

* ''Franchise/{{Alien}}'': Newt. Before the colony was taken over by aliens, she was apparently a perfectly normal first grader. After spending a few weeks fighting for her life against a ravenous, chitinous swarm of parasites, however, she is too scared to even sleep on top of her bed ([[spoiler: which is probably a good thing, since the movie's CorruptCorporateExecutive decides it's a good idea to unleash a few face huggers in her room to get rid of Ripley]]).

%%* ''Film/{{Crush}}'': Oh Scott. '''Administrivia/ZeroContextExample'''

* ''The Machinist''. [[spoiler: The whole film is about Christian Bale's character Trevor coming to terms with the guilt of having killed a young boy in a car accident and just driving away. The guilt causes him to lose weight massively, never leave the house, hallucinate, become paranoid and not sleep properly for a year.]]

* ''Film/GodzillaKingOfTheMonsters2019'': [[Characters/MonsterVerseFamilies Madison Russell]] arguably goes through this. She suffered the first stage before the events of the film in the form of her brother's death and the utter messes that her parents have both been since, but she's still a WideEyedIdealist with a profound awe for Titans such as Mothra as well as genuinely being concerned for both her parents' welfare (especially her father, who's been absent for years). Over the course of the film, Madison's wide-eyed idealism gets shattered when she personally witnesses malevolent Titans such as Ghidorah for the first time, she gets to watch her mother [[spoiler:knowingly put millions of people including her own father at risk and unwittingly leash a world-ending force]], and finally she watches [[spoiler:her mother's death]]. The novelization of [[Film/GodzillaVsKong the sequel]] also confirms that Madison has PTSD from her up-close experiences of [[BigBadWannabe Alan Jonah]] massacring Monarch outposts and her [[spoiler:close brush with Ghidorah when the monster was actively hunting her]].

* ''Film/{{Crush}}'': Oh Scott.

* ''Film/SavingPrivateRyan'': Played hard with [[TheChick Upham.]] The narrative goes through great lengths to point out how he is (almost to an adorable degree,) far more innocent and naive than his fellow squad members (which is justified considering he a not actually a ranger himself, but is rather on loan from Twenty-Ninth Infantry Division.) He is also notably the only member of the squad other than Miller who thinks that they should not execute Steamboat Willie, whom he vociferously defends, and is the only one to actually treat the German prisoner with some compassion and respect. [[spoiler: Cut to him by the end of the film, where he has watched just about every friend he's made get brutally offed with extreme prejudice, and personally bears witness to Steamboat Willie (the very German he had defended earlier in the movie) kill Captain Miller, the very man who had shown the German mercy when his entire squad demanded blood, almost causing Reiben to desert because of it. When Upham once again takes Steamboat Willie prisoner, he executes him in cold blood, becoming the only character in the film Upham has killed.]]

* Hiromasa from ''Film/{{Onmyoji}}'' has horrible luck when it comes to his romantic relationships [[spoiler: as both Sukehime and Himiko are both dead by the end of the films they appear in]].

* ''Film/TwentyTwoJuly'': Viljar ends up being shot multiple times at the Utoya summer camp, has to recover from said gunshot wounds, and ends up sharing to the court for his experience at the camp.

* ''Film/AllAboutLilyChouChou'' does this to every single main character.

*** Charles Xavier. When the movie starts, he's a friendly, happy-go-lucky, idealistic Oxford grad whose only interests are protecting his foster sister, studying genetics, drinking yards of beer and picking up coeds. His initial reaction to meeting other mutants is a puppyish eagerness to find others like him, as well as a gung-ho enthusiasm to [[TheyFightCrime work with a superhuman team to fight evil]]. During the climax, [[spoiler:he gets smacked around in a variety of ways, including telepathically experiencing Shaw's gruesome death at Magneto's hands, getting shot in the spine, and having the US government, his best friend, and his sister all turn against him. By the finale, [[HumansAreBastards his government is trying to hunt him down]], his [[FaceHeelTurn best friend is preparing for a war against humans]], and he's crippled for life in a wheelchair.]] We know from future installments that he never quite abandons his ideals, but he's frighteningly subdued and obviously much more cautious about who knows his secrets.

* ''Film/{{Reincarnation}}'': [[spoiler:Poor, poor Nagisa.]]

** To wit: she started as an IllGirl with a [[SoapOperaDisease vaguely-defined blood disease]]. While visiting her mother Marni's tomb, she runs into [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Grave-Robber]], who proceeds to call a whole platoon of heavily armed police down on them, then drags her into a cavern filled with the rotting corpses of repossessed victims. The stress makes her illness flare up and she collapses while surrounded by said cops, as well as the nightmarish Repo Man. When she wakes up, sick and weak in her bedroom, her father tells her it was all a bad dream, then yells at her for taking risks with her health. And that's just the beginning.

* ''Film/ManilaInTheClawsOfLight'': Julio was a naive country bumpkin before he arrived in Manila. The city's horrors, including [[spoiler:learning that his friend Atong was unjustly jailed and died in prison, and that his girlfriend Ligaya was forced into prostitution and killed by her owner]], turn him into a bitter and vengeful person.

* Martha from ''Film/MarthaMarcyMayMarlene''.

* Paul from ''Film/CacaMilis'' is friendly and a little juvenile, in a cute way. He's very proud of having memorised the entire train route; even Catherine seems a bit impressed. Then she pretends he got it wrong, confusing and distressing Paul. He's noticeably less jolly after that point.
* In ''Film/CedarRapids'' when Tim finds out that [[spoiler: Roger Lemke, his idol, was a sexual deviant that even Joan couldn't keep up with and that he bribed the ASMI president for each of his Two-Diamond awards. Tim also has to do the same to save his company. He redeems himself later on.]]
* In ''Film/ColdFish'', the introverted protagonist is forced to assist a brutal serial killer with his crimes. Henceforward, the trope is taken UpToEleven to a very disturbing degree.

* Chappie in ''Film/{{Chappie}}''. Over the course of the film he's mistreated by Ninja, [[spoiler: has an arm cut off by Moore, has to come to terms with his own mortality, and his mother-figure die among other things, all whilst having a child's mentality for the most part. Ultimately Chappie become an IronWoobie due to it.]]