Characters struggling to figure out how their powers work in Live-Action Films.
- Batman Begins shows Bruce Wayne experimenting with the technology that would eventually become part of his iconic identity, learning from his mistakes (bouncing off that fire escape had to hurt!) and upgrading accordingly.
- Black Lightning (2009): Dima miraculously lands in an abandoned factory when he first activates the Black Lightning. When he locates its creators, they give him a handy manual.
- Chronicle features a lot of this when the three teenagers discover their telekinesis, starting off with fairly basic experiments with redirecting thrown baseballs and assembling lego sets (Matt having great difficulty getting the bricks to stay together), to testing forcefields by stabbing each other in the hands with forks. Even after they think they've managed to master their powers, more of this trope crops up when Steve learns how to fly; while Andrew gets the hang of it very quickly, Matt's first three attempts result in him crashing to the ground.
- In Danger Diva, at first Devi isn't sure how to use her cybernetically-altered voice, which can shatter glass and mind-control people. She learns to control it with the vocal coach Adrian.
- DC Extended Universe:
- In Man of Steel, it took Clark a few tries to figure out how to fly, and some time to get a handle on his Super-Senses. He uses this against the villainous Kryptonians, who need special helmets to prevent Sensory Overload. Zod, unfortunately, is disciplined enough to adapt pretty quickly.
- Played for laughs in SHAZAM! (2019), in which the wizard Shazam declares Billy Batson The Chosen One, hands him godlike powers, and lets him and his Muggle Best Friend Freddie figure out the rest from there.
- Bill Cage in Edge of Tomorrow initially has no idea how to fight in a powered exoskeleton or how to even remove the safety off of its mounted guns when he is dropped on a beach to fight in a failed invasion against invading aliens with Save Scumming powers. But when Cage gains their powers, he slowly but surely learns how to use his foreknowledge of the day's events to his advantage and learns more about how to fight in his suit.
- In The Fly (1986), upon unknowingly becoming a Half-Human Hybrid Seth feels different. Hours after his first self-teleportation, he startles himself out of sleep when he manages to catch a buzzing fly in his hand. From there, he quietly begins testing his new, mild Super-Strength and reflexes by lifting himself by his arms out of a sitting position in a chair, and even manages to perform a gymnastics routine on a hanging pipe. A few days later he challenges a barfly to an arm-wrestling match; it turns out to be so one-sided that he rips the man's arm open, and the expression on Seth's face suggests he wasn't expecting that. The changes get much uglier from there, and because no one has ever undergone an experience like this he has to feel his way through them; he notes that he had to figure out "the hard and painful way" how to eat upon realizing he couldn't digest solid food anymore, and when Veronica is startled to see him Wall Crawling he simply notes "Got pretty good at it, haven't I?"
- Green Lantern milks the humor from Hal Jordan's attempts to activate his power ring for the first time, which include calling out "To infinity and beyond!" and "By the power of Greyskull!"
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Captain America: The First Avenger: After Steve comes out of the tank with super-strength and speed, he spends the next minute or so running into store fronts and cars while trying to turn. Also apologizing. A lot.
- Iron Man:
- Tony goes through a few iterations of flight testing with repulsor thrusters. His first attempt is just boots (and at 10% thrust capacity)... causing him to shoot up like a cannonball, faceplant on the ceiling, then crash down to the ground. Then he gets doused with fire extinguisher. With his second test he gets smart and adds flight stabilizers on his hands (and only used 1% and then 2.5% thrust capacity), but hasn't entirely figured out how to steer his flight yet, causing him to drift beyond the testing area and in places he really shouldn't be. And he nearly gets doused in fire extinguisher. His full flight-ready Mark 2 suit also takes some time getting used to before he has flight control. He nearly dies when he goes up so high that his suit freezes over and shuts down, leaving him plummeting to the ground. When he regains control and flies back home he tries to land on the roof, only to fall through the roof, a piano, and a floor, before smashing one of his cars by landing on it. He then gets doused with fire extinguisher.
- He doesn't even intentionally create his iconic hand beams; he just accidentally finds out that having his hand stabilizers go off at full power while not in flight fires a blast of energy. He discovers this by launching himself into a wall.
- Ironically subverted by Obadiah Stane, the film's villain, who is able to match Iron Man blow for blow when he gets his own suit of armor, despite having never been shown to have any training of his own. However, he relies heavily on a targeting computer; when Iron Man disables that, he quickly proves unable to hit him with missiles from about ten feet away. Nor does Stane know about the dangers of his armor freezing up if he flies too high, a problem Iron Man had already dealt with earlier in the film and that he now exploits when Stane makes the same mistake he did. His proficiency is somewhat justified in that the Iron Monger suit was designed as a mass produced weapon that Stane could later sell to the military; it's implied that it's designed to be very easy to use as opposed to the specifically calibrated Iron Man suit Stark has.
- Stark didn't have much trouble operating his original "escape" suit either, despite not having much — or any — practice with it (but he designed and programmed it, so he knew how it was supposed to respond). Since Stane's suit is just a bigger and beefier copy of Stark's original plans, presumably there was something about the original design that made it fairly idiot-proof. That said, the entirety of the Mk. 1 suit's armaments were a flamethrower, a manually-fired missile, fists and a manual start rocket boost. The flamethrower requires next-to-no aiming capacity and the missile missed... thank goodness for Splash Damage. Meanwhile Stark couldn't stop himself from constantly adding upgrades and modifications that certainly would have made his own suit more complex and fiddly. (Not to mention Perpetual Beta.)
- Hilariously played straight in Iron Man 2 where the various corporations and countries (including North Korea) tries to replicate the Iron Man suit, only to be met with disaster each time. Justin Hammer's own demonstration even shows that, without proper knowledge, simply turning to the left can potentially snap your spine in two due to the hydraulics turning the torso too far. Subverted with Rhodey though, who not only managed to steal one of Tony's suits, but thoroughly beat Tony into the ground with it. Granted, Tony was piss drunk, but that's still rather impressive. It's implied that Rhodey only ever saw the suit, but never actually wore it before then.
- In Iron Man 3, Tony puts Pepper Potts in the Iron Man suit to protect her from flying debris. She tries to fight their attackers, but can't figure out how to work the suit, so Tony remotely takes the suit back when she is at a safe distance. Savin steals the Iron Patriot suit and has no trouble operating it. Also, it is revealed that the so-called terrorist bombings were really people who took Extremis and blew themselves up because they couldn't regulate their powers. When Pepper is injected with Extremis, she manages to control her powers and defeat the Big Bad with them.
- In Avengers: Endgame, Pepper manages to operate the Rescue armor quite well.
- Spider-Man: Homecoming Played With. While Peter knows the relative basics of his suit, he doesn't know some of the more advanced functions. But they were locked, and at one point in the film he is trapped in a warehouse, and so learns how to use them by methodically going over them in no particular order.
- Basically the main plot of The Meteor Man, where much of the movie is spent on Jefferson Reed learning to use his new powers, including flight (despite being afraid of heights).
- During his first flight as The Rocketeer, Cliff Secord accidentally turns the rocketpack off as he's saluting passengers aboard a plane. In the comic, his first flight had him unable to control his speed, and ended with an intentional crash landing because he couldn't figure out how to stop.
- A similar thing happens to the title character in Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D.: The first time his powers manifest, he accidentally cartwheels into a light pole; later, he tries to become Kabukiman, but somehow turns into a clown; even later, he learns he can fly, but due to not being used to it, he throws up, and it lands on an asshole lawyer below him.
- Spider-Man Trilogy:
- This happens literally to Peter Parker in the first movie.
- In the second movie, he briefly loses the power to shoot web — usually at inopportune moments.
- Luke Skywalker spends much of the original Star Wars trilogy learning how to use his Jedi powers, especially during his Training from Hell with Yoda.
- Star Wars, The Force Awakens: Whatever Rey's origins are, she apparently heard of the Jedi and Force Powers (because when she meets Han Solo and he claims "all of it" to be true, she doesn't demand clarification); the rest of the movie has her try out a variety of moves, gradually mastering them as she goes. She notably learns them much faster than anyone else in the series; she's better after two days than Luke was after three years.
- X-Men Film Series:
- X-Men: First Class shows more of this. Professor X hypothesizes that Banshee's sonic scream should enable him to fly (with a wing-suit), so he encourages him to jump out of a second story window. Three guesses what happens. Then, they decide that the main problem is that he didn't have long enough to generate lift, so they go to the top of a satellite dish. Banshee doesn't want to. Erik doesn't care.
- Even Wolverine isn't immune, at least when it involves his adamantium upgrade. His original bone claws tapered to points, whereas his adamantium claws have cutting edges. The first few hours after he got his metal in X-Men Origins: Wolverine were spent accidentally cutting things up, and X-Men: Days of Future Past has him trying to slash with the bone claws and failing.
