History EpicFail / LiveActionFilms

** Done deliberately in ''Film/StarTrekIntoDarkness''. Kirk, in violation of the Prime Directive, has elected to airdrop a cold fission device into the center of the volcano (ideally, using a shuttle), to save a pre-warp civilization – an act that constitutes interfering. Kirk and Bones beam onto the surface and begin a dangerous chase by stealing one of the tribe's sacred texts, nearly getting them killed multiple times over when the natives chase and hurl spears at them (and during which time Kirk phasers ''the animal they were going to ride away on''). The cable lowering the fission device into the volcano snaps, and Spock has to go in after it and manually activate it. Kirk and the crew have inexplicably parked the ''Enterprise'' underwater near the tribe, and when they are forced to break water in order to transport Spock out, the natives get a nice long view of the advanced technology and begin to worship it as their god. This botched mission results in Kirk being demoted and Pike taking over command of the ''Enterprise'' for a time.

** One of the guys at the apartment where Jules and Vincent go to retrieve Marsellus Wallace's briefcase ambushes them and empties his gun at the duo at very close range... and misses every shot. All three pause to stare in surprise. (Jules believes that this is a sign from God to change careers.)
** Later, an epic failure to follow basic gun safety leads to the memetic "IJustShotMarvinInTheFace" scene.

** First, they're captured by the Nazis and tied up together in chairs. When they're alone, Indy gives his father a lighter to burn through the ropes. First, he burns himself and drops the lighter. Then when he tries to pick it up, he ends up setting the floor on fire. Within minutes, the entire room is ablaze (except, [[{{Irony}} ironically]], the fireplace).
** Then they try to escape from Germany on a zeppelin and are forced to steal a biplane when the zeppelin is rerouted. They come under attack by a pair of fighter planes and the senior Jones has to shoot them down with the biplane's guns. He succeeds in shooting down one plane: the one he and his son stole, as he blows apart their own vertical stabilizer.

* This trope is used in ''Film/{{Aliens}}'' to emphasize how drastically unprepared the Colonial Marines are against the xenomorphs. The unit is sent into a highly critical part of the Hadley's Hope colony (the atmosphere processor), after reviewing its schematics. They are knee-deep in the xenomorph hive when Ripley points out to them that the machinery can be pierced by conventional weaponry, which leads a frantic and inexperienced Gorman to tell the Marines to give up all their ammunition (except for flamethrowers) to one man, [[PoorCommunicationKills without explaining why]]. When the xenomorphs inevitably crawl out of the walls, said soldier is the first casualty, causing everything to descend into anarchy. Apone stands in one spot trying to hear Gorman's orders just before he's abducted by a xeno, the only soldiers who survive are the ones who kept spare magazines and/or backup weapons, Drake and Vasquez stage a tactical retreat by shooting wildly with smartguns (which causes the damage that would eventually overload and destroy the colony), and Gorman is knocked out by unsecured cargo in the APC during the escape. Given that Burke admits to Ripley that the real objective of the mission was to smuggle some eggs out inside infected Marines, the fact that the squad performed so poorly was probably intentional: the Weyland-Yutani Corp wouldn't want a group of ''competent'' soldiers sent in.

* Early in ''Film/FallingDown'', a car full of Latino gangbangers do a fairly slow drive-by with [[MoreDakka at least three submachine guns]] on protagonist William Foster, who's on a payphone and has his back turned on them. They hit absolutely everything including several innocent bystanders, but completely miss Foster. Then the driver fails to notice the oncoming traffic and causes a massive crash that gets himself and most of his buddies killed. They also lose their weapons in the process, which Foster proceeds to take, [[KickTheSonOfABitch put a bullet in the sole survivor's leg for good measure]], and deploy later in his vigilante rampage through LA.

-->'''Deadpool:''' Ow! Fuck!! Your poor wife!\\

%%* ''Film/{{Paddington}}'': This is Paddington's trademark. No matter how simple and easy a task might be, trust Paddington to mess it up in a spectacular fashion.-Zero context example.

%%* ''Film/{{Paddington}}'''s trademark. No matter how simple and easy a task might be, trust Paddington to mess it up in a spectacular fashion.-Zero context example.

** When the protagonists are robbing the bank, the manager who earlier cheated Joe (and was a general slimeball) tries to shoot them. His targets remain still but he still ''misses every single shot''.

* The attack on District 13 in ''Film/TheHungerGamesMockingjayPart1''. Instead of collapsing the entire complex, [[spoiler:the Capitol only succeeds in damaging passages near the surface and possibly some surface-to-air emplacements. No casualties are reported]].

** Then they try to escape from Germany on a zeppelin and are forced to steal a biplane when the zeppelin is rerouted. They come under attack by a pair of fighter planes and the senior Jones has to shoot them down with the biplane's guns. He succeeds in shooting down one plane: the one he and his son stole when he ends up blowing apart their own vertical stabilizer.

** The gang's first blunder comes when they use a military base for a (rigged) bicycle race. It turns out they can't move the motor pool, so the track has an enormous gap in it... which they don't discover ''until the race is about to begin''. The crowd started rioting when they were told the race had to be postponed indefinitely.

* The 1978 disaster film ''Film/{{Avalanche}}'' ''really'' takes the cake in utter incompetence. When the titular avalanche hits, rescue crews race to the rescue. One truck dumps their equipment, causing an ambulance to stop and the driver hopping out in annoyance. This causes a police car to swerve, fishtail and ''hit a pedestrian and send him through a storefront window as the car itself goes through.'' Then, there's a group of rescuers completely missing catching a man falling from the destroyed remains of a ski lift (granted, he was probably dead from electrocution, but his fate was sealed when the rescuers missed). For a hat trick, some rescuers are able to rescue the leading male's mother and get her to an ambulance and heading towards a hospital. However, on the way down, the driver decides to go really fast, causing him to throw the ambulance into a ravine below where it blows up.

* In ''Film/BigGame'', Oskari threatens to shoot Morris - who's standing about four metres from him - with an arrow. The problem is, he can't properly draw a bow, and the arrow ends up landing exactly in the middle of the way between them with an embarrassed ''thump''. To add to the insult, Morris looks like he's about to burst out laughing.
* In ''Film/DogDayAfternoon'', three men decide to [[BankRobbery rob a bank]]. They walk into the bank in broad daylight with no masks, no gloves, and no floorplan, without checking if their information is up to date. The mastermind Sonny Wortzik doesn't even think of blacking out the security cameras until the unmasked robbers have been inside for almost five minutes, and he's too short to reach them without jumping. One robber [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere quits]] because he can't bring himself to pull a gun on someone. Then the remaining robbers make the tellers open the vault and find barely any money left to steal, because the latest shipment is already gone. All the while, the robbers use each others' real names, allowing the authorities to identify them easily--especially Sonny, who also announces that he is a [[UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar Vietnam veteran]] and a former bank teller. Then, while raiding the counters, Sonny decides to dispose of the traveler's check register by lighting it on fire. The thick smoke drifts through a vent and alerts everyone outside that something's going on in the bank. Before long, the robbers attract not only police and media attention but also a huge crowd of onlookers, ensuring that they are trapped inside a sweltering building with no means of escape, that their faces will be on national television, and that what began as a quick robbery is now a hostage situation with one robber [[SanitySlippage too mentally unstable]] to handle the ensuing standoff. To say that the robbers DidntThinkThisThrough [[StupidCrooks is an understatement]].

* In ''Film/GangsterSquad'', the squad's first operation as a unit devolves into equal parts slapstick and failure. They try to take down one of mobster Mickey Cohen's casinos by storming it at gunpoint, only to be met by a group of armed officers who assume they're robbers and try to arrest the group. On the squad's escape out of the casino, their car breaks down, and Harris and O'Mara get arrested after giving the car a running boost. The two men get beaten, arrested, and sent to jail, where Cohen sends men intending to pick them up and execute them. The squad arrives to save the two men, but Kennard's plan of tying a rope from his vehicle to the prison window bars fails (the bumper gets ripped off the car), Keeler's plan to cut the power results in chaos in the prison block, and the whole thing would have gone south if Wooters hadn't shown up.

** The gang's first blunder comes when they use a military base for a (rigged) bicycle race. It turns out they can't move the motor pool, so the track has an enormous gap in it... which they don't discover ''until the race is about to begin''. The crowd start rioting when told the race has to be postponed indefinitely.

* In ''Film/TheManWithOneRedShoe'', the agents sneak into Richard's apartment and disassemble the plumbing in his bathroom to look for evidence. They hastily reassemble it when they find out he's coming home and do such a poor job of it, the controls for one fixture end up turning on another one. Notably, Richard has to push the toilet flush handle to turn on the sink and repeatedly using it leads the agents to assume he's flushing the evidence.

%%* ''Film/{{Paddington}}'''s trademark. No matter how simple and easy a task might be, trust Paddington to mess it up it in a spectacular fashion.-Zero context example.

* In ''Film/{{Snatch}}'', there's pretty much ''anything'' [[StupidCrooks Sol and Vinnie]] put their minds to. In their defining moment, they were hired to take a briefcase from a man who had been sent to place a bet at a bookmaker's. They were to rob the bookie's place as well, so it wouldn't look too suspicious to the guy with the briefcase when they stole the case from him. In the end, they'd get the cash from the bookie's, their employer would get the case. Unfortunately, their getaway driver, Tyrone, DrivesLikeCrazy and backed into the van their victim had used to get to the scene, knocking him out and trapping him inside it. Later that night, they see someone carrying a case go inside, and without attempting to verify the target, Sol and Vinnie enter the bookie's, only to find that it's (obviously) the wrong person, and furthermore that the bookie's has no cash because all bets are off. Then the cashier lady turns out to be a BadassBystander who deftly disarms Sol of his shotgun and trips the alarm. Then they attempt (and fail) to open the front door. Reasoning that it's a security door that locked when the alarm was pushed, they try to ShootOutTheLock. The door turns out to be bulletproof, and Vince gets his leg grazed by the ricochet. They fall down in exhaustion and take off their ski masks, at which point they notice the security camera that's just caught them both unmasked. And ''then'', to top it off, Tyrone shows up to get them... it turns out the reason they couldn't open the front door is because [[DoorDumb they tried to push the "pull" side of the door]]. The clincher is that the pair are completely unknown in that part of the underworld, and the camera fails to be of any use because the owner doesn't recognize them... but Tyrone is recognized. Epic Fail indeed.

* In ''Film/StarTrekIIITheSearchForSpock'', Kirk and his TrueCompanions steal the ''Enterprise''. The shiny new ''Excelsior'', in hot pursuit, powers up its revolutionary transwarp drive... which promptly conks out [[spoiler:due to Scotty sabotaging it beforehand]], complete with sputtering engine noises, leaving Starfleet's "Great Experiment" adrift and having to be towed back to Spacedock.
* Captain Picard is known to strictly adhere to Starfleet's [[AlienNonInterferenceClause Prime Directive]]. In fact, violating it is a bit of a BerserkButton for him. So when he, Data, and Worf have to visit a primitive, inhabited world in ''Film/StarTrekNemesis'', they do their best to avoid contact with the natives. Within ten minutes of landing, they find themselves in a high-speed gun battle with some locals, before giving them their first look at a spaceship while the away team makes its getaway. To make it even worse, eagle eyed natives might have noticed that the aliens who were shooting up the place were members of three different species[[note]]Human, Klingon, and Soong-type Android[[/note]]--not only do the primitive people now know that they're not alone in the universe, they know that there's a whole community among the stars, and [[ParanoiaFuel that it has better guns than they do]].
* Done deliberately in ''Film/StarTrekIntoDarkness''. Kirk, in violation of the Prime Directive, has elected to airdrop a cold fission device into the center of the volcano (ideally, using a shuttle), to save a pre-warp civilization – an act that constitutes interfering. Kirk and Bones beam onto the surface and begin a dangerous chase by stealing one of the tribe's sacred texts, nearly getting them killed multiple times over when the natives chase and hurl spears at them (and during which time Kirk phasers ''the animal they were going to ride away on''). The cable lowering the fission device into the volcano snaps, and Spock has to go in after it and manually activate it. Kirk and the crew have inexplicably parked the ''Enterprise'' underwater near the tribe, and when they are forced to break water in order to transport Spock out, the natives get a nice long view of the advanced technology and begin to worship it as their god. This botched mission results in Kirk being demoted and Pike taking over command of the ''Enterprise'' for a time.

* In ''Film/{{Ted 2}}'', Sam decides to let Ted drive her car for 20 minutes after he begs her to let him. We then see just how bad of a driver Ted is. He texts while driving, swerves between the lanes, then tosses a drink of some kind on the windshield of another car, causing it to crash. Then to top it all off, Ted burns himself while trying to throw his cigarette out the window which causes him to veer to the left of the road, narrowly avoiding several oncoming cars, then swerving to the right to avoid a head on collision with another car which causes the car to go off the road and down a hill, and when the car reaches the end of the hill it goes airborne and lands in barn.

** From ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger'', S.H.I.E.L.D's major CriticalResearchFailure when Steve Rogers has been thawed in a fake 1940's hospital room. Everything else in there was fine (a woman even entering in a suitable getup) - except for the radio broadcasting a "live" baseball game, from 1941. Rogers was frozen in 1945, and he was AT that game. ''They didn't even bother to check whether the game was from after he went MIA.''
** ''Film/TheAvengers2012'': Loki, who is [[VillainousBreakdown having a very bad day]], [[spoiler:runs into the Hulk and tries to ''browbeat him into submission''. The Hulk responds by [[MetronomicManMashing using him as a club]], AKA The Droopy Moment. "You know what? That Makes Me Mad!"]].
--->[[spoiler:"Puny god."]]

** ''Film/RogueOne'': Tarkin must have spread his [[SarcasmMode brilliant planning]] abilities to his fellow Imperials. Director Orson Krennic spends the entire film trying to [[spoiler: get the Death Star plan back into his possession]]. [[spoiler: At the end, not only have the Rebels successfully stolen the plans, but Krennic ends up [[KarmicDeath vaporized by the Death Star's own superlaser]]]].

* Nearly [[UpToEleven everything]] Creator/LaurelAndHardy get up to in their films. From [[Film/TheMusicBox delivering pianos]] to working at lumber mills, something is bound to go wrong.

* ''Film/TheNakedGun'' basically runs on this. Nearly every single thing [[IdiotHero Frank Drebin]] does [[UpToEleven falls into this territory]]. His biggest EpicFail, however, is his attempt to find evidence that [[BigBad Vincent Ludwig]] [[VillainWithGoodPublicity is actually evil,]] by means of breaking into his apartment. He finds incriminating evidence on a piece of paper, but using a lit match as his source of light, he holds it closer and closer for a better look... until he sets it on fire. His attempt to put out the fire, in summary, leads to a series of DisasterDominoes that end in Ludwig’s entire apartment room burning down and Frank [[AccidentalPervert stumbling into the neighbor’s room with a very inappropriate-looking object]], leading to a charge of sexual assault on top of the extremely obvious evidence that someone had broken into Ludwig’s room, AND the evidence that Ludwig is evil no longer existing either due to Frank’s idiocy. It is actually impossible to achieve worse results on a StealthBasedMission.

** One of the guys at the apartment where Jules and Vincent go to retrieve Marsellus Wallace's briefcase ambushes them and shoots at the duo at very close range... and misses every shot. All three pause to stare in surprise. (Jules believes that this is a sign from God to change careers.)

** The Millenium incarnation of Gigan is pretty bad with this; engaging a newly-released Godzilla (and not even ''trying'' to dodge the atomic breath that made [[YourHeadAsplode his head detonate]]), and then later, as Upgraded Gigan, he fires off his razor disks, turns around to resume the double-team on Godzilla... [[RunningGag and is decapitated by the razor disks Mothra reflected at him.]] [[MadeOfExplodium He's then blown up by a burning Mothra, though she survives (somehow)]].

* ''Film/Deadpool2016'': Deadpool's attempt to fight Colossus. He fails to make Colossus so much as flinch a muscle, but where the Epic comes in is that every time Deadpool lands a hit, he fully ''breaks the appendage at the end of one of his limbs''. He still keeps trying until he's only got one working limb though.

** It's implied that Deadpool would have kept going had Colossus not backhanded him, sending him flying into a car.

* ''Film/XMenFirstClass'': [=McCoy=] designs a suit that enables Banshee to fly by bouncing his supersonic screams off the earth's surface. Though the flight mechanism only requires the latter to use his power while looking straight down, Banshee comically flops his first attempt by getting too anxious and letting a pathetic yelp as he jumps out of a window, causing him to crash to the ground.