Required Secondary Powers / Live-Action Films

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• The Adventures of Baron Munchausen: The Baron has four extraordinary companions, and some of their abilities come with this. Berthold's Super-Speed includes sufficient temporal perception to be able to observe and think while running fast, as seen when he's outrunning a bullet and able to analyze the situation. It also shows some realism in that he can't catch the bullet (it's still moving very fast, and he hurts his fingers in the attempt) and he has to find a more realistic solution by deflecting it. Albrecht's Super-Strength also seems to come with super anchoring, as he can lift the Sultan's entire treasure without the floor collapsing, and can pull several ships out of the sea by their anchor lines and swing them around without moving himself.
• In the Alien franchise, the Xenomorphs' bodies are immune to their acidic blood. In Alien vs. Predator, Scar uses this against them by turning a dead Xenomorph's skull and tail blade into a shield and spear that can withstand the blood.
  • Alien: Resurrection shows the Xenomorphs themselves exploiting this fact to escape their confinement. Several Xenomorphs attack and kill another that they are confined with, since they are immune to its acidic blood, but the cell they are confined in is not. When its acidic innards burn a hole through the deck, they use that hole to escape into the ship.
• Riddick has perfect night vision, but as a result normal levels of light are blindingly bright to him and he needs to wear shaded goggles at all times in daylight.
• Lampshaded by the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella (2015). Glass isn't exactly soft on the feet, so she magically made the glass slippers comfy too.
• In The Dark Knight, mention is made of the the last film's suit having a lesser degree of maneuverability thanks to its primarily Nomex and Kevlar construction, which kept Batman from turning his neck and generally slowed him down. A new batsuit is then made for him, with more flexible armor that comes with a trade off of overall reduced protection for increased maneuverability.
  • Also a case of Truth in Television. Part of why this scene was written was to fix the major problem every Batman costume had of preventing the actor from moving their head.
• Since Darkman got 40% of his skin burnt off, he pretty much needs some kind of Healing Factor to avoid just dropping dead from massive infection. The third movie actually confirms that he does have one.
• DC Extended Universe:
  • Aquaman (2018):
    • The film explicitly spells out that in order to have the ability to live underwater, Atlanteans also have bodies capable of withstanding the tremendous pressures and extreme low temperatures of the ocean floor. They also have Innate Night Vision since there would be little light in the deep sea.
    • Black Manta's first prototype of his iconic eyebeam suit accidentally discharged on the workbench, almost killing Manta. When the dust settled, it was revealed that the prototype split the helmet in half from the heat of the blast. He was able to redesign the helmet so it wouldn't have this issue.
  • Zack Snyder's Justice League: Barry Allen/The Flash makes sure to be as careful as possible when using his Super-Speed because of how he interacts with the environment. In his first scene, his regular shoes explode off his feet the instant he makes a turn, and when he's trying to guide Iris to the ground safely, he is ultra gentle with repositioning her in mid-air. When Bruce sees his costume, he notes that it's made of space-age materials able to withstand high levels of friction.
• The drug 'Slo-Mo' of Dredd has the side effect of dramatically improving its user's reaction speed, since it slows their perception of the passage of time. Despite this, it is never used as a combat drug; slowing your perception of time doesn't let you physically move any faster, so the only thing it really does in a battle is let users see their death coming in agonizing detail.
• Elysium:
  • Using an exosuit requires skeletal implants, which explains why Max can tear off a droid's head without ruining his fingers or Kruger surviving a grenade that reduces his face to a bloody mess.
  • Kruger's energy shield does not negate momentum, so when he's facing a high-powered rifle it still knocks him back.
• Lampshaded in Ghostbusters (1984). It only occurs to the guys that they haven't tested their ghostbusting equipment, which Peter says is at least part of a miniaturized nuclear accelerator, once they're in the elevator on their very first job, which ends up being Team Pet Slimer. Peter then brings it up again in the first sequel that they haven't used the equipment in years and will it still work only when they're about to fight two ghosts in what is assumed to be a life or death situation.
  • Noted and averted in Ghostbusters (2016) when in the first third of the film, Holtzmann has to lug around a huge cart full of unspecified equipment only mentioned as "highly unstable and dangerous." Much ado is made of all the grounding Erin has to wear in the subway when they first attempt to catch a ghost, including an increase in power to strengthen the stream that actually entangles the ghost, and a later scene shows the ladies actually testing Holtzmann's inventions. Played straight when Erin is surprised by the kick of the proton shotgun in the climactic battle.
• Consider the physics of the American Godzilla (1998). In order to not tear himself apart every time it took a step, the Godzilla would need hyper durable muscle and bone tissue. A body composed of this kind of material would undoubtedly be extremely resistant to even heavy artillery fire. Yet somehow this Godzilla seems to be very susceptible to military weapons and survives mainly by evading the enemies' attacks.
  • The 2014 film covers this with Godzilla's physiology: His body is more bottom-heavy to support his mass, and he has gills, explaining how he can stay underwater for so long.
• The invulnerable Hancock is shown to shave with his own fingernails. One wonders how he clips his fingernails, though; possibly with his teeth. He also has to focus in order to not leave a huge crater every time he lands. He leaves a small crater instead.
  • A deleted scene shows Hancock having sex with a female fan, and just before he climaxes he has to throw her out of the way as his super sperm shoots through the roof into space.
  • He hurls a Jerkass kid into the sky so high he vanishes from view, then catches the boy with a maximum of a few feet for deceleration. Really, the acceleration of how fast the child was THROWN probably should've broken his neck. Or dislocated his limbs. Or something. But at least his hair was messed up so they paid lip-service to physics, right? An original treatment of the movie said that Hancock was able to control wind, as demonstrated in his battle with Mary when the weather gets all wonky. That would account for the lack of trauma on the kid, if the wind was slowing him to a safe speed on the way in.
  • He also apparently has the ability to root himself to the ground, in order to No-Sell a train.
• Another take on invisibility would be Hollow Man. The character Sebastian Caine gained invisibility powers that made all of his organs invisible. The problem was outlined when he screams that he can't block the strong ambient lights, since if your organs are invisible, then so are your eyelids and your arms; nothing will block the light from you. The film ignores the problem that invisible eyes would not be able to see.
  • The made-for-TV sequel brings up another problem. Since invisible cells no longer block radiation, an invisible man slowly goes insane (and that's a problem, since the invisible man in this film is a trained soldier). Also, someone who spends a long time in this condition eventually becomes visible... but looks like a horribly-burned person from all the radiation damage. Though if invisible cells can't block radiation, then why are they damaged by it?
• A very subtle version occurs in the film I, Robot. Spooner has a robotic arm, and is seen eating a lot, including hot drinks with a ton of sugar, presumably to help power it. His body is also significantly reinforced (several synthetic ribs, an artificial lung and reinforced shoulder) probably so the arm doesn't tear off should he punch at full strength. This is shown when Doctor Calvin is giving his arm a once over, her fingers slide to each rib only for Spooner to respond to her touching one with a flinch and "Hehe. Um... That one was me."
• In Man of Steel, Superman has a beard at the start of the movie, but loses it by the end. The Gillette company has various well known scientists and other celebrities theorizing just how this could be possible (here's Kevin Smith's theory, for one), considering he has Nigh-Invulnerability, and therefore his body hair should be just as strong and resistant as the rest of his body. Theories range from basic applications of Material Science to grind the hair away to using the Large Hadron Collider to create mini wormholes to transport each follicle through time and space, among other wackiness.
  • Superman has been shown to shave using his heat vision with a mirror in the past.
  • The scene where Clark locks himself in a closet (due to sensory overload) hangs a massive lampshade on why these are needed. This becomes a plot point when he fights other Kryptonians who haven't had time to adapt.
  • In another scene, it doesn't matter how strong he is...Clark can't hold up part of an oil rig if the platform he's standing on bends and collapses under his feet.
  • Kryptonians in the film have no anchoring ability to go along with their Super-Strength, so every superpowered punch sends people hurtling around like a rag doll.
  • The heat vision in this version of Superman has the rather nasty side-effect of seemingly burning not just whatever a Kryptonian looks at, but also their eyes and the surrounding skin. This leads to a required cooldown period every time its used; which comes back to bite Clark in the finale. During the fight he uses the heat vision to melt down an i-beam Zod tries to hit him with, but forgets about the after-sting...which gives Zod the opening he needed to promptly hit Clark square in the face.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Iron Man: A large chunk of the film can be summarized as "Tony Stark figures out the necessary Required Secondary Powers through trial and experimentation, and perfects them". Tony initially discovers the problems of flying without stabilizers, and didn't foresee the problem with his equipment icing up at high altitudes. The "Icing problem" becomes a Chekhov's Gun near the end when it turns out that Obadiah and his team didn't consider it either.
  • Iron Man 2:
    • One of the more amusing scenes is watching military scientists around the world try to kit-bash their own homemade Power Armor, but being completely unable to figure out the Required Secondary powers (North Korea's was too top heavy and fell over with the weapon system active, Iran's crashed, and Hammer's suit the upper half turned 180 degrees while the feet remained fixed with a person inside).
    • Tony chides the captured Ivan Vanko about his failed attempt to kill him, implying that although he figured out the arc reactor technology, he screwed up on some other details, which allowed Stark to defeat him. This would only have been a bonus: Vanko's true goal was simply to prove that arc reactor technology could be duplicated.
    • One subplot is that Stark himself didn't fully anticipate all the secondary tech required for the arc reactor to work perfectly either. Or at least function within a human body.
  • Iron Man 3: Extremis grants a Healing Factor to the person, as well as Super-Strength and the ability to generate heat. Killian even learns to breathe fire. However, there is a nasty side effect in that, those who reject the serum end up exploding like a bomb.
  • Though the films never explicitly bring it up, the suits seem to have some sort of inertial dampening, or Tony would be paste from several of the hits and hard landings he takes. Broken bones and concussions, at least. For instance: in the first film, Iron Man is shot down by a direct hit from ground-to-air artillery while he's flying over mountains; while there's little doubt the armor can take both the hit, and the impact with the ground, it's only its active systems which prevented the occupant from liquefying from either. By contrast, when War Machine is disabled from a much lower altitude in Captain America: Civil War, it basically becomes a thick metal coffin, and Rhodey suffers spinal injuries from the impact that leave him paraplegic.
  • The Avengers: Hawkeye is extremely observant and perceptive, which is why he's one of the world's best marksmen. He mentions that the Tesseract could be a door from the far side as Five-Second Foreshadowing for Loki's arrival.
  • Avengers: Age of Ultron: Quicksilver is superhumanly durable in order to survive the stresses of moving at superhuman speeds. Among other things, this lets him punch Ultron's drones apart with his bare hands while moving at massive speeds, without breaking his arms. Unfortunately, this doesn't extend to bullets.
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier: Like the Quicksilver example, The Falcon is shown wearing goggles whenever he flies. Moving that quickly while that high in the air would logically require some sort of eye protection, a detail which is usually ignored in the comics.
  • Ant-Man: The titular character has his suit equipped with these. The sealing keeps unshrunk air molecules from suffocating him and prevents imploding from the shrink process, there are built-in regulators to keep him from shrinking too small and it has radiation shielding to prevent brain damage from the effects of Pym Particles on the brain. Lack of the last one was a factor in Yellowjacket's decreasing sanity as the film goes on.
  • Averted in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Ghost's phasing powers are controllable, but they also cause her extreme pain and if she goes too long without immersing herself in a Quantum Energy Chamber, her body would rip itself apart on the atomic level.
  • In Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Adaptational Wimp Black Bolt is shown to lack these. His Super-Scream alongside his Power Incontinence results in him caving his own skull in when Scarlet Witch uses her magic to make his mouth vanish. Logically, the same result would probably occur if he ever suppressed a cough/sneeze without thinking.
• In The One, all shown versions of Jet Li's character never have problems that a Super Speedster or a Lightning Bruiser should have, such as flying backwards every time he punches someone at super-speed or having his clothes ripped off by running at speeds at over 60 mph, or jumping high and leaving footprints in the road every time he moves really fast. Also, his gun doesn't seem to suffer any ill effect from being hit with a bullet from a futuristic gun, not even a scratch. Inertia also, apparently, does not exist for them, as they can go 0 to 60 in a matter of seconds and stop just as fast.
  • There is also the fact that Gabe seems to instinctively know how hard to hit, even though his strength and speed have been rapidly increasing for the past several months. Granted, his constant martial arts training could have something to do with this, but he seems to be genuinely surprised every time he does something superhuman.
• Doc Ock from Spider-Man 2 is repeatedly shown using a couple of his mechanical arms to brace himself whenever he lifts something that would be too heavy for his body to take, but one must wonder exactly how strong the man must be regardless. The man can take punches to the face from Spider Man without even flinching (Flash Thompson, an obviously experienced fighter, was sent flying by one of Spidey's punches), and can be thrown about like a rag doll without even scuffing his shoes. Additionally, the tentacles are controlled via a neurological interface that links them to Ock's brain. A human being's brain simply isn't built to process the information that four additional arms create, so the system is also operated by an artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, after his accident, their Morality Chip is destroyed, which leads to problems.
• Averted in the made-for-TV movie Stan Lee's Lightspeed. The titular speedster (Lightspeed, not Stan Lee) gets windburn if he uses his powers without a special protective suit (which, by the way, he purchased at an ordinary sporting goods store) and quickly depletes all of his energy if he doesn't regularly take special nutrition supplements. Also, his base of operations for the duration of the film is the hospital room where he's still recovering from mild radiation poisoning as a result of his origin. He doesn't go even half as fast as some other speedsters, so the fact that he only gets off with only windburn is somewhat justified.
• In Stardust, Lamia puts a curse on Ditchwater Sal so that Sal will be completely unable to see, hear, feel, smell, or otherwise perceive Yvaine. The curse does give Sal one benefit: when Yvaine tries to attack Sal, she is stopped by an invisible forcefield (to ensure Sal can't feel Yvaine).
• Superhero Movie lampshades this as a spoof of the superhero genre. In a brief scene, Rick Riker meets another hero who has the power to become living flame like the Fantastic Four's Human Torch, but is not immune to being burned. Thus as soon as he transforms, he immediately experiences extreme pain and begs Rick to put out the fire.
• Superman Returns seems to have used this, though inconsistently, in the early "falling plane" scene. Previous incarnations would've just grabbed the plane anywhere and guided it gently to the ground. Here it rips apart repeatedly and nearly crashes despite his best efforts. Though once he got it down, he did hold the entire plane up by the nose; it scrunched the outer skin a little, but did not collapse on itself realistically.
  • Lifting the entire island at escape velocity, though, was pure Tactile Telekinesis.
  • They also show one of the downsides to Nigh-Invulnerability when, after being temporarily killed by the fall from space due to Kryptonite temporarily taking away his powers, medical staff attempt to revive Superman, only to find that his powers have returned, and the defibrillator shocks don't affect him, nor can they pierce his skin with a syringe to deliver epinephrine.
• The T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day is mentioned to be lacking a whole load of secondary powers. First off, it cannot assume a form that is significantly larger, nor gain mass. It cannot make internal workings or complex chemicals, so it can't become a bomb or a big gun, but can create knives and swords.
• Wheels in We Can Be Heroes (2020) suffers from an unfortunate lack of this. He has to be in a wheelchair because his super-strong muscles would snap his not-super-strong bones if he tried to walk.
• X-Men Film Series
  • The shapeshifter Mystique is shown to be capable of imitating the form of another person so closely she can fool retina and voice scanners. Doing so without closely studying (practically a medical examination for the retina) the person would require some form of ESP combined with photographic memory. The novelization of X2: X-Men United implies that most of the time many of her disguises are purely cosmetic, as actually replicating the textures of clothing and other materials puts a strain on her abilities. As for other mutants, she is able to duplicate their appearances, voices, etc, but cannot replicate their powers, as demonstrated when she mimicked Wolverine in the first movie and her claws were cut off when he attacked her since she couldn't duplicate the adamantium in his body. True to other X-Men media, Wolverine was immediately able to sniff her out as well, twice.
  • In X-Men Origins: Wolverine, it is shown that Fred J. Dukes has super strength and invulnerability enough to stop a tank round by punching it. However, when shown later in the film he's become morbidly obese, because he doesn't have a heightened metabolism to burn through all the pounds he's packed on due to his eating disorder, and as strong as he is he can just walk around with all that weight without overexerting himself. He's shown trying to work out in a boxing ring, because presumably lifting regular weights wasn't working.
  • Demonstrated in X-Men: Days of Future Past: Quicksilver must wear goggles when he's moving at high speeds. When he runs Magneto past a hallway full of guards during their escape from the Pentagon, Peter specifically supports Erik's head and neck to protect him from whiplash during the sudden acceleration, while afterwards Erik is visibly nauseated. He can also hit people harder with what appears to be much less force while in superspeed, though this is simply Hollywood slow-mo reining in his movements to a normal velocity. While the viewer sees Quicksilver prod a guard's cheek as he passes by, he is in reality thrusting his extended finger at potentially hundreds of miles an hour. Likewise, this video hypothesizes that his true power is Gravity and Inertia Manipulation, and that he's manipulating things so that, instead of speeding up, he's making the universe around himself slow down to just over a standstill (using this to explain why nobody combusts when he grabs them, or how objects aren't redirected when he pushes them away).
  • Wolverine's healing factor is almost a RSP for his claws; the act of extending his bones through his skin is incredibly painful and would be entirely impractical for him to do it without healing powers. Then again, the fact that his wounds constantly heal means he's constantly breaking skin to do so, and he says in X-Men that it hurts every time they come out. In Logan, when his healing factors are failing, it becomes a lot more painful for him to extend them all the way.

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