Took A Level In Badass / Live-Action Films

Why is it always you? So that your character arc can be all the more cathartic.

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• In 28 Days Later, the main character just barely flees the soldiers about to execute him, and sees a jet trail above, realising there's still civilisation intact from Zombie Apocalypse. Before, he was a wimpy bike courier boy, but when he makes it through the Heroic BSoD caused by this realisation, he switches into utter badass mode, wreaking havoc, killing with his bare hands, performing Offscreen Teleportation and spouting oneliners. While to us, the audience, this is a good example of Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass, Jim's friends are so surprised by his sudden acts of badassery that they think he's become Infected.
• Kitai's character-arc in After Earth is strongly about this.
• The character of Hudson in Aliens goes from whiny soldier to Level A Badass with a moment of You Shall Not Pass!. And Ripley as well, transforming from the Final Girl in the first film to a full Action Girl in the second.
• Angelica Chaste, in Angels Dance, starts out as a repressed mortician who thinks a doll is her baby. When she finds herself the target of an aspiring hitman learning the trade by assassinating a randomly picked individual she gets scared...then she gets mad. By the end of the movie, she's levelled-up in badass to the point that she's as much of a threat to her pursuers as they ever were to her.
• In Apocalypto when Jaguar Paw reaches the forest while being chased by the bad guy Mayans: "I am Jaguar Paw. This is my forest. And I am not afraid."
• Back to the Future
  • Between the second and third films, Doc Brown (of all characters) takes a level in badass. Back to the Future Part III sees him toting a big bad rifle, saving (and subsequently wooing) a damsel in distress, standing up to the local gunslinger, hijacking a train and driving it off a cliff (so it can hit 88 miles per hour and travel in time, not to commit suicide).
  • George McFly. With an assist in the past from his as-yet-unborn child, he goes from a mousy, cowardly junior-level worker to a highly successful writer... and along the way, Mrs. McFly gets a little spillover badassery (or at least some weight loss and athletic skills).
• This happened to Cinderella of all people in Cinderella III: A Twist in Time. The Prince also gets a fair amount of this, turning him from a Satellite Love Interest to a Deadpan Snarker with skills that rival Eric.
• In The Chronicles of Narnia, the dryads go from sissy flower ladies to deadly trees that destroy most of the Telmarine army. Likewise, Lucy Pevensie. In Lion... she does essentially nothing. In Prince Caspian she does no more than show off her dagger with Aslan as backup standing right behind her. By the time Dawn Treader rolls around, she's throwing herself fully into close-quarter combat and beating her pirate captors unconscious with blunt objects. Granted, older sister Susan gets a similar on-screen moment of glory in Prince Caspian, but it was always hinted (but never shown) that she'd done her bit at the battle at the end of the first film.
• Morgan Sullivan from Cypher starts out the movie as a timid, henpecked house husband who's looking to make his life a bit more interesting by becoming a corporate spy. By the end of the movie he's sat through an intensive brainwashing session without batting an eyelid, escaped from an ultra-high security data centre and blown up a small army of Mooks. Subverted in the sense that he's been a badass all along and didn't know it.
• Dallas Buyers Club - Ron Woodroof Takes A Level In Intellectual Badass, jumping in just a few months or arduous research from a no-good, womanizer blue-collar hick to a healer able to save hundreds of people from AIDS during the 1980s panic.
• Throughout The Dark Knight Trilogy, the Gotham Police is mostly an ineffective nuisance riddled with corruption. Until the end of The Dark Knight Rises that is, when they take on Bane's army of mercenaries after months of being locked up with little more than food and water.
• As a general rule, the less someone did this in The Descent, the faster she died.
• Sgt. Powell in the first Die Hard. Munching donuts and relegated to desk duty in the beginning, he gets a huge Moment of Awesome at the end when he shoots the final bad guy dead in the face, complete with the Rousing Music playing in the background.
• In The Dilemma, Ronny creates a flamethrower using a candle and cleaning solution to scare off the man Geneva's seeing.
• Over the course of District 9, Wikus goes from sweater vest-wearing pansy to badass who single-handedly breaks out of a fortified government facility and then later chooses to break back in.
• Pasha Antipov, a minor character in Doctor Zhivago, begins the movie as an utter wimp. He's a cuckold, a bespectacled naif, and an ineffective revolutionary. Even his name is a bit puny. But then he's hit by a bomb on the Eastern Front and drops out of the movie—only to return in an impossibly cool scene as the enigmatic "General Strelnikov," a Badass Longcoat with his own armored train.
• Vlad III Dracula who was already a badass as a human, stepped it up a notch after becoming a vampire in Dracula Untold.
• Dredd. Anderson starts out as a rookie cop in over her head, and becomes a full on badass. Dredd himself even notes the change.
  • At the beginning:
  Dredd: You ready rookie?
  Anderson: Yes sir.
  Dredd: You don't look ready.
  • And at the end:
  Dredd: You ready?
  Anderson: Yeah.
  Dredd: (approving) You look ready.
• Evil Dead 2: Ash starts out as a wimpy college kid, but eventually cuts his own hand off and replaces it with a chainsaw and arms himself with a sawed-off shotgun, remarking, "Groovy!"
• In Feast, when all the hero types are dead and hope is lost, the mother who lost her son (Tuffy) "levels up" and becomes Heroine 2. Then she proceeds to punch all the monsters teeth out with the butt of her gun and punch its stomach through the mouth, choking it to death. Crowning Moments of Awesome? Yes, you could say that. In Feast 2 she spends much of the movie surviving, but surviving through a Feast movie is a pretty big deal.
• Flodder 3: Daughter Kees has been taking karate lessons. She uses it to beat up the tennis players who were chasing down Son Kees, several police officers who were trying to forcefully evict the Flodders, and even her own karate teacher boyfriend when she finds him cheating.
• Jason Tripitikas takes several levels in badass in The Forbidden Kingdom after he trained with Lu Yan and the Silent Monk. It isn't enough for him to take on The Dragon (Ni Chang), but it's still a vast improvement. Then again, it's Jackie Chan (Lu Yan) and Jet Li (Silent Monk), the two of them combined could grant a 90 year-old grandmother several levels in badass.
• More than one case in the Friday the 13th franchise.
  • Lori Campbell in Freddy vs. Jason. Near the beginning, she faints when her boyfriend reappears, and then his friend starts telling her about Freddy Krueger. By the end, she sets the docks on fire, blowing both of them into the lake, then decapitates Freddy with a fucking machete!
  • The trope is played very straight in Jason X, in which an android girl is given an upgrade that makes her an instant commando. She subsequently blows Jason up with a BFG.
• Kate from From Dusk Till Dawn goes from a naive young girl who can barely hold down a shot of whiskey, to a trash-talking, crossbow-wielding, vampire-killing badass.
• The El Mariachi trilogy starts off with the main character as an Action Survivor in a Stern Chase plot. By the time of the second movie, he has a habit of going into bad guy bars and shooting up the place. By the third movie, he's a legend.
• In Enchanted, Giselle goes from helpless Disney Princess to climbing a building and slicing a dragon's tail with a sword.
• Sam in Full Contact goes from abject coward to badass after betraying his best friend and thinking he killed him.
• Galaxy Quest: Most of the cast took a level in badass around the time they escaped from the airlock. Not only is it their first real victory, it's when they stop acting like actors and start acting like Big Damn Heroes
• In the film adaptation, The Giver stalls the Chief Elder long enough to prevent Fiona's execution.
• Godzilla Junior in the second Godzilla series. During his first two appearances in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II and Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla, he was much like his Minilla, and was actively disliked for it. Then along comes Godzilla vs. Destoroyah and Junior has become a badass Teenzilla, who despite being a Gentle Giant and overpowered by the titular villain, hands Destoroyah's penultimate form its ass after a long, brutal fight where he gets to demonstrate just how much of a Determinator he is. Destoroyah's freaked out enough that after it's resurrection into its final form it goes after Junior first, despite the adult Godzilla having arrived. Temporarily killed, he is resurrected by Godzilla's death as the new Godzilla and, assuming that he is the Godzilla who appears in Final Wars, may now be even more badass than his dad.
• In Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Gizmo, who has spent a good chunk of the movie being tortured by the Gremlins, decides to fight back in an homage to the Rambo series. The first order of business was to shoot the Spider Gremlin with a flaming arrow, killing it.
• Happy Gilmore: "Happy learned how to putt... uh-oh!"
• While the film version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix hinted at the badass that Neville Longbottom would become, its only in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 that we get to see his true nature. His speech to Voldemort refusing the Dark Lord's offer of amnesty was as eloquently phrased as any seen on film before.
  • Even before then. Just after the sacking of Severus Snape, when Harry asks that the professors buy him some time and he goes off in search of Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem, it's Neville that Harry puts in charge in his stead with a casual, "Hold the fort, Neville." To his credit, Neville doesn't even flinch. He just nods in acceptance of this duty.
• Hellboy
  • Abe Sapien between the first and second film. He goes from the geeky, psychic Non-Action Guy to someone that carries a gun and has enough martial arts ability to at least evade and stall a troll three times his size, if not actually damaging it. Still geeky and psychic, but a bit more power behind it.
  • Liz Sherman even more so. She goes from a scared, childlike woman who has no control over her powers to a fearless, SWAT-gear-wearing, room-torching, sharpshooting badass in the second. Being a BPRD agent is incredibly Darwinistic; you either become a badass or you die.
• In Help!, it's oddly George. After doing Funny Background Events for most of the film, he leaps aboard a moving car towards the end of the film to rescue a kidnapped Ringo who's been stashed in the trunk.
• The Final Girl in horror movies usually makes this change, going from scared n' sexy to fighting the monster hand to hand.
  • Barbara in the Tom Savini's remake of Night of the Living Dead (1990) goes from fetal position to super-zombie hunter.
  • The Halloween series had Laurie Strode go from a Damsel in Distress in the original film to a badass Action Girl in Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later.
    • Laurie Strode in the new timeline is in a similar situation to Sarah Connor, mentioned below; Originally she was stalked by the horror that is Michael Myers and became the Final Girl, our heroine's experience and the knowledge that her enemy will return someday means she's made of much sterner stuff in round two. Michael's back, but Laurie's had years to plan for this day. Bring It!
• The character Johnny English is a secret agent who can be best described as a Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass...with a considerable emphasis on "moron". After a disastrous mission in Mozambique, English is sent to Tibet to undergo a special training. Not only did he take a level in badass, he acquired Balls of Steel as well.
• Kimi: Angela at the end efficiently manages to kill all three hardened killers in her apartment with a nail gun.
• Kingsman: The Secret Service:
  • Eggsy when he puts all his smarts and skills with his Kingsman suit and gadgets, he becomes nearly unstoppable.
  • Roxy conquered her fear of heights to the point she was able to shoot down a satellite with twenty year old plus equipment from the stratosphere.
• This is the central theme of many, many kung-fu movies (such as Drunken Master and Fearless Hyena), in which the central character learns a new style of martial arts in order to defeat the villain.
  • Similarly this is how the American martial arts film The Karate Kid goes.
• The protagonist in Layer Cake spends the first half of the film thinking he's absolutely on top of his game; he's repeatedly proven wrong when people turn out to have been plotting against him and playing him, resulting in his life spiralling out of control. After he decides to kill his boss, who has been siphoning off his money and is about to rat him out to the police, he becomes much more ruthlessly efficient and starts setting up gambits of his own.
• The titular protagonist in Lucy covers the entire spectrum over the course of the story, starting as a helpless victim and progressing towards becoming a god-like entity.
• As in the books, Gandalf the Gray from The Lord of the Rings, already quite a powerful wizard, dies in his fight with the Balrog, but is resurrected and comes back as Gandalf the White - master wizard, great warrior and all-round ass-kicker extraordinaire.
  • Sam, Marry, and Pippin go from inexperienced, peaceful, and unimposing Non Action Guys, to doing everything in their power to aid the real fighters in their party during, to being brave heroes in their own right, that slay their fair share of enemies. Especially Sam, who in the third film, faces down and defeats Shelob all on his own, before sneaking into a tower to rescue Frodo while cutting down any orc that gets in his way.
• Madame Web (2024):
  • Cassie does this several times throughout the film. After her experience in the healing pool of the Spider Tribe, her psychic abilities are noticeably more focused on her return to New York, keeping her and the girls ahead of Ezekiel so easily Mattie even comments on her showing off with it. Then again at the end, where she unlocks her astral form ability, allowing her to mentally affect the physical world with her mind.
  • Played with with the three future Spider-Women. While we don't see them develop their powers during the film, the ending has them heading rapidly towards this under Cassie's tutelage.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Iron Man 2:
    • Happy Hogan, of all people. After Ivan Vanko makes his grand Dynamic Entry during the race that Tony forces himself into, and is about to make his finishing blow on Tony, the bodyguard, in Tony's custom limo, comes out of nowhere, rams into Vanko full force, and manages to keep him effectively pinned against the chain-link fence for several minutes. He's shown to be decent in a fist fight, too, just not on Black Widow's level.
    • The Mk II goes from a flight test beta to the embodiment of More Dakka. As discussed by Rhodey, this was the point.
  • Iron Man 3:
    • Tony Stark, after being left in the middle of nowhere with a severely damaged armor being repaired and with an evil plan to thwart, he suffers a panic attack when he realizes he can't keep going with the suit he's so dependent on. Until he realizes that he doesn't need to have a suit of armor to be a hero, and his wits are enough to help him build a makeshift arsenal to infiltrate the bad guy's lair and discover his plan.
    • Pepper. Holy SHIT, Pepper! After spending most of the final battle as a Damsel in Distress, she dodges a repulsor blast, uses Tony's knee as a jumppost to leap into the air, punches THROUGH the suit that fired the blast, pounds the suit into the ground, rips out its arc reactor, rips off the disabled suit's arm, bludgeons the Big Bad with it so hard that he flies back several meters, dons the arm, kicks a high-power explosive charge at the Big Bad and shoots it with the borrowed repulsor to blow him to pieces, all in the space of a few seconds. Tony promptly proceeds to spend the next few seconds slack-jawed - and for good reason.
      Pepper: Who's the hot mess now?
  • Loki seems to have taken a few—possibly traumatic—levels in badass between the events of Thor and The Avengers. While he was ostensibly the main antagonist in the former, his return in the latter is accompanied by a shiny new spear of doom, an army of alien cyborgs, and a new plan to rule the Earth. The scariest part is that he seems pretty capable of carrying out this plan.
  • Hawkeye and Black Widow start The Avengers as assassins and secret agents, but by the end they're straight up superheroes able to keep up with gods, monsters, and super soldiers.
  • Literally forms the basis of Captain America: The First Avenger's plot, with courageous but scrawny Brooklyn kid Steve Rogers being transformed into the ultimate super-soldier: Captain America. It also emphasizes the fact that he still manages to be the same Nice Guy that he was before the super-soldier procedures when he's transformed.
  • Villainous version in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. HYDRA learned a valuable lesson from their defeat: how to fight smart. No more acting openly, for a start - HYDRA coiled around SHIELD's heart and subverted it from within. No more first waves of nobody Mooks - neo-Hydra is a No-Nonsense Nemesis who hits you as hard as they can as soon as you become a target. Most of all, no more city-killing super-weapons: HYDRA's new toys can kill huge numbers, but they'll do so individually and primarily targeting those they have decided are threats.
  • In Avengers: Age of Ultron, J.A.R.V.I.S., in a sense. He goes from a bodiless A.I. to a full-on Avenger when he is reborn as Vision.
  • Thor: Ragnarok has Thor fully embracing his "god of thunder" moniker and learning that he's still The Ace even without Mjolnir to channel his power. Avengers: Infinity War has him forge the legendary battleaxe Stormbreaker, which is not only more powerful than Mjolnir and allows him to channel his power even greater, but it can also summon the Bifrost at will, so he can effectively travel between the Nine Realms without any outside assistance.
  • Doctor Strange and Scarlet Witch take this up to eleven by getting stronger and better with virtually every new movie or show they're in. Just compare Wanda's first appearance in Avengers: Age of Ultron and Stephen's time as a trainee sorcerer in Doctor Strange to how they both are in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (and anything in-between; particularly WandaVision for Wanda and Spider-Man: No Way Home for Strange) and you'll see how chasm-like their power levels are in each one.
  • Mantis as introduced in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 possesses powerful telepathic and empathic abilities, but she's a weak and inexperienced girl who has no real combat training. However, the movies sprinkle in scenes to show that she's resourceful with her abilities and from Endgame onwards, she is shown actively participating in battle. By the time of the Holiday Special, she is much better in combat, can use a candy cane as an Improvised Weapon and can leap from wall to wall. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 has her become much more physically stronger and skilled in combat, taking down monsters and High Evolutionary guards with relative ease. She's also gained enough worldly experience to strike out on her own.
• Done in a Marx Brothers movie of all places. In Monkey Business, Zeppo Marx spends the first half of the film running from ship security and being nervous about holding a gun. He ends the movie brawling with gangsters and having a prolonged fight with the racketeer boss.
• Neo in The Matrix has many levels of Badass uploaded into his brain, most memorably, Kung Fu. Later in the film he then takes some more when he hacks the system and starts to see everything in green.
• In Moonwalker, Michael Jackson mostly does shit like running through a field of flowers with some children. However, at one point, he takes a level in badass by grabbing a Tommygun and mowing down a bunch of ghetto stormtroopers. Toward the end, he takes another level in badass and turns into a giant robot and blows the shit out of a bad guy's evil lair.
• In the first Mummy film, Evie is a timid librarian firmly stuck in her Damsel in Distress role. By The Mummy Returns, she has become an Action Girl who can fight off Mooks on her own using awesome martial arts skills that she didn't know she had, as well as a few of Rick's more straightforward moves. It turns out she is rediscovering her Secret Legacy as a spiritual reincarnation of an Nefertiti who was well-trained in combat. Her brother Jonathan too, to an extent. He is a pretty good shot with a rifle and proves it during the ambush of the cultists. He also tries to take on Anck-Su-Namun and manages to hold her off long enough for Alex to revive his mother, so she could take it from there.
• Mystery Team. Duncan can apparently only aim his slingshot properly in a poorly lit room.
• North and South: The 4 main male characters definitely. They start off as dapper gentleman or scruffy goof-offs, but eventually work their way to becoming quite tough and capable, most notably in Charles who is more than badass enough to handle any number of assailants in hand-to-hand combat. Some of the ladies also show remarkable toughness. Brett yanks her own sister off a horse and threatens her with a pitchfork when she tries to get Billy executed. Semiramis comes within an inch of murdering Salem Jones. Madeline attacks Justin with a saber when he refuses to let her go.
• Oldboy (2003) lampshades this. The philandering, perpetually-drunk thirty-year-old salaryman spends 15 years in a private prison trying to train his body to be tough. When he gets out, he wonders if all that training paid off when he gets into a fight. It turns out, it did.
• Glinda from Oz the Great and Powerful, in comparison to her original book and 1939 depictions. Considering that her magic is not really meant to be used offensively, and she's a pacifist who firmly believes in Thou Shall Not Kill, it's amazing how she overpowers Evanora and shatters her magic pendant, finally showing herself to be the powerful witch she really is.
  Glinda: Bubbles are just for show...
• P2: After being kidnapped by Thomas, her stalker, and failing to call the police or escape from the parking garage, Angela is driven to knock out the security cameras with an axe, escape from a locked trunk with only a crowbar, kill her kidnapper's dog with the crowbar, and steal a car and end up in a game of chicken. This isn't even counting her Playing Possum, cuffing Thomas to the car, and finally setting him on fire with gasoline and a taser when he calls her a cunt.
• Done in Paul Blart: Mall Cop where Paul initially manages to defeat the Le Parkour Totally Radical mall robbers through large amounts of dumb luck, upon learning that his daughter is amongst the hostages he takes a massive level in badass, setting up a fair amount of traps and managing to stealthily take out the remaining goons with a combination of disguises and using his location (IE getting them to come to the Rainforest Cafe and hiding amongst the animatronics).
• In The People Under the Stairs, Fool was originally reluctant and a tad wimpy to go in the house is seemingly like an average kid, but when Leroy is killed and is chased several times, he willingly takes on anything that comes in his way, such as punching a dog in the face, later killing him holding a villain at gun point, punching him in the nuts and then blows the house up killing the villains, saving the day in the process.
• In the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie, delicate but spirited Damsel in Distress Elizabeth Swann has become a quite competent sword-wielding Action Girl. This is handwaved in a throwaway line: her fiance Will Turner, the best swordsman in the series, has been teaching her for the past year. Then again, she is hanging around with pirates... Even more so when she becomes the captain of a ship, escapes from Davy Jones, and then becomes the Pirate King (King, not Queen) in the third film. Will was already somewhat of a badass, but becoming the captain of the Flying Dutchman certainly counts.
• In The Princess Bride, Westley goes from a poor farm boy to Dread Pirate Roberts level of badass, immune to iocane powder.
• Red Dawn (1984) and its remake feature this, particularly the original version. The protagonists start out as normal kids, but level-up rapidly.
• Kyra, sometime between Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick.
• RoboCop, which is about what happens when a Nice Guy is murdered and brought Back from the Dead as a cyborg bent on getting justice for it.
• Rocky Balboa, the titular character of the Rocky series of films, must always have a mandatory montage in the films where he trains HARD. Pushing the absolute limits of his body, will, and expectations of him...these montages always end up with Rocky gaining a new "power" and thus...a new level of his already badass status. You can even visually see his badass level go up. Set to the song "Gonna Fly Now," this Training Montage is one of the most famous film conventions of the modern age.
  • In the first he gets the dedication and conditioning necessary to "go the distance" with Apollo Creed.
  • The second sees Rocky gain some speed and the ability to switch his dominant fighting hand.
  • The third gives Rocky a tremendous boost in speed and offense.
  • The fourth gives Rocky the ability to show Russia just how awesome he is by training in the snow by pulling chains.
  • The sixth (we'll skip the 5th) sees an aged Rocky gain overwhelming power to compensate for his eroded speed due to age.
• Daphne from Scooby-Doo mentions how she is sick of being the Damsel in Distress and thus takes kung fu lessons to defend herself. This pays off when she defeats a masked wrestler guy, even taunting him. "Now who's the Damsel in Distress?"
• During Firefly River Tam spent most of the action scenes she is involved passively crying or running away (with a couple of notable exceptions that she might not have quite registered as fights in the first place ("No power in the 'verse can stop me."). In the movie Serenity, however, she is quickly upgraded to a killing machine who defines Waif-Fu, and can take out roomfuls of armed assailants without breaking a sweat — sometimes brainwashing has awesome results.
• In Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Mary Watson definitely achieves this during the scene on the train and afterwards when she is pushed into the river by Holmes to save her, remaining remarkably calm for someone who just survived such a fall!
• Johnny 5 went this way in Short Circuit 2. After being nearly destroyed, he rebuilds himself as a crazy-ass punker robot and goes on a rampage.
• Clarice throughout the Hannibal series. Starts somewhat badass and comes out crazy-scary.
• Snatch.: Turkish's bumbling sidekick Tommy spends a large part of the film making stupid comments and looking silly. Then Brick Top's goons bust up the arcade and try to have a go at Turkish. Tommy stares down six goons with bats and crowbars with a gun he knows won't fire, and when one of the goons attempts to call his bluff he shoves the gun in the goon's face and dares him to make a move.
• Sniper: After spending much of the film as a Fake Ultimate Hero, Miller eventually rises to the occasion near the end when he goes back to save Beckett.
• Star Trek
  • After her first five-year mission, the Enterprise is practically rebuilt with new tech that makes her even more of a Lightning Bruiser. Her Deflector Shields, for example, can No-Sell an attack from V'Ger after a similar attack obliterated a Klingon battlecruiser.
  • David Marcus, Admiral Kirk's nerdy son, takes it up a few Badass levels between Star Trek II and III (see also Heroic Sacrifice).
  • Uhura takes multiple levels between the series proper and the films. While her snark - and the Mirror Universe episodes - have always hinted that she's far more than a Bridge Bunny, the films stop hinting pretty quickly.
  • While it's not stated in dialogue, Word of God (and a close look at the CGI) reveal that the Enterprise-E gained additional phaser arrays and torpedo tubes between Star Trek: Insurrection and Star Trek: Nemesis.
• Star Wars:
  • Luke Skywalker may have set the record for most levels in Bad Ass taken up in a single trilogy. He's a naive teenager who complains about having to clean droids at the beginning of the first movie and becomes the man who rescues a princess, nukes a Death Star, becomes an ace pilot and a celebrated war hero, amputates a number of bad guys, takes out a giant Walker with a hand grenade, survives an endless fall with the use of only one hand, gets into several lightsaber duels, demolishes Darth Vader in a fight, rescues his friends from Jabba the Hutt and Boba Fett, gives the Emperor the finger, and brings his dad back to the Light.
    • The trope is specifically invoked with his entrance in Return of the Jedi. When the audience last saw Luke at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, he was suffering from a heavy loss at the hands of Darth Vader, clearly outclassed in combat and powers, physically wounded from their fight, and psychologically traumatized from the reveal of their relationship. After the first twenty minutes of Return sets up Jabba the Hutt as the Disc-One Final Boss, having successfully imprisoned Han, Chewy, and Leia, Luke strolls into Jabba's palace (decked out In the Hood and stealthily using his Jedi powers) and lets Jabba know under no uncertain terms to return his friends or die, a much different Luke from the boy-in-training in the prior movies.
      Luke: (removes hood, threateningly) You will bring Captain Solo and the Wookie to me...You can either profit from this or be destroyed. It's your choice, but I warn you not to underestimate my powers.
  • Anakin Skywalker takes a level in badass between Episodes II and III, becoming a full Jedi Knight (and losing the awful rattail). By the time of the original trilogy this has flip-flopped though, with him being more ruthless and physically stronger as a cyborg but less powerful with the Force (and not to mention horribly crippled).
  • The Stormtroopers are mostly Cannon Fodder (at least in the visual mediums), despite their classification as elite units, and suffer from crippling accuracy issues that usually result in them getting mowed down by the heroes. However in The Force Awakens, they come off as considerably more competent, using strategic position on the battlefield and generally being less goofy on the job (in fact the contrast in their performance vs. their usual appearance can be somewhat jarring since people have come to expect the Stormtroopers to be fairly ineffective). They still miss against the heroes but that's more due to Plot Armor than straight out being bad shots.
• Straw Dogs: David Sumner is an unassuming mathematician who moves to England and allows the local louts to walk all over him. When the locals try to force their way into his home, however, he decides to stand firm and goes on to brutally murder them all as they break in.
• In the movie Suburban Knights, we can count Ma-Ti (from Captain Planet, not pun intended) who was the only guy to fight back against Malachite using his "heart" ring, the only power everyone thought was useless, even for a cartoon show.
• Terminator
  • One of the most jarring examples would be Sarah Connor's transformation between the first two movies: She (and the actress) was a normal, happy-looking girl in the first one (though even then, she still showed potential, as she ended up killing the T-800 despite being severely wounded), but looks like she gained about 20 lbs of muscle, as well as going from Damsel in Distress to Psycho Action Girl in the second. A decade of preparing for The End of the World as We Know It will do that to a person. Special mention goes to the scene at the end of the movie where, if not for running out of ammo, she would have destroyed the T-1000 on her own without the T-800's help. BAD. ASS. Special mention has to be given to the actress, Linda Hamilton, who in preparation for the role trained for 13 weeks under a former Israeli commando, undertook strenuous weight training, and learned how to pick locks. The famous One-Handed Shotgun Pump scene was added at her request because she had genuinely gotten strong enough to pump it with one hand, something that even Schwarzenegger was unable to do.
  • John Connor upgrades himself from fairly Wangst-ridden drifter who specializes in running away from Terminators who reluctantly gives vague radio support in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines to Colonel Badass able to rewire AI motorbikes and shout down experienced Generals and killer androids by Terminator Salvation. Quite a few levels in badassery and self-confidence gained it would seem.
• Transformers Film Series
  • Between the original '80s The Transformers cartoon and the 2007 film, Starscream has taken a major level in badass. To prove it, we have this line as Starscream flies over Mission City, from frigging Ironhide, of all people:
    Ironhide: It's Starscream!
  • The human character, Sam Witwicky, who spent the first two movies running away from these giant robots that try to blow him up or squish him (hey, you would too), suddenly has clearly had it with everything, and seriously invoked this trope. How badass has Sam become? Well if you must know... HE KILLED STARSCREAM! He even levels up his running away, having learned Parkour at some point between the second and third movies.
  • Megatron is pretty infamous for his Badass Decay. He spends most of the third movie as an injured, sulking cripple until Sam's love interest Carly, of all people, rouses him into beating the pulp out of the Big Bad, and he does a fine job indeed. All while still sustaining his injuries. To be fair, he shoots Sentinel Prime in the back, while the latter is busy beating up Optimus. This, however, gives Optimus the chance to decapitate Megatron and blow Sentinel's head off in the space of a few seconds.
  • This pales in comparison to what he does in Transformers: Age of Extinction — he manages to stay alive as a severed head, and manipulates the apparent human Big Bad's faction into building him a new body. Now Galvatron, he possesses a Nigh-Invulnerable body and nearly overpowers Optimus in one-on-one combat — all while posing as a remote-controlled drone — until Lockdown interrupts their fight. He then builds himself a new Decepticon army using all the humans' other drone Transformers, and even though he's largely Saved for the Sequel, he still comes across as far more menacing and competent than in the two previous movies (and maybe even the first).
  • Hell, just like Starscream, Megatron has taken a level in badass between Transformers: Generation 1 and the first movie (maybe even the second too). Gone is the General Failure incompetent cartoon villain commander (see the Western Animation section for more on that). This Megatron is a demonic-looking mechanical beast voiced by Hugo Weaving who rips Autobots in two, kills Jazz and Optimus, treats humans like insects and doesn't hesitate to flick those pesky buggers out of the way, and is absolutely ruthless in pursuing his objectives. And if supplemental material is to be believed, he's a cannibal too.
  • NEST infantry, by the third film, managed to pull out an unqualified victory in an engagement with 'Cons, instead of assisting the Autobots. In fact, the 'Bots show up to assist them.
  • After being a largely ineffectual Kid Appeal Character in Generation One, Bumblebee took a level in badass and is a skilled fighter who kills Brawl with a shot to the chest after Ironhide, Ratchet, and Jazz failed to in the first movie, takes on both Rampage and Ravage in the second movie and comes out on top, ripping off Rampage's arms and tearing Ravage in half, and not only takes Soundwave on in a fight, but kills him by uppercutting him through the chest with his blaster and shooting off his head.
• Under Siege. Jordan Tate (Erika Eleniak) is The Load throughout most of the movie, including not liking guns and acting scared. However, when Chief Ryback is about to be shot to death by Doumer she pulls a Bait-and-Switch Gunshot and blows Doumer away.
• The Wailing follows Jong-goo as he goes from ineffectual anti-hero to someone actually capable to defend himself and his family. Some moments illustrate this change:
  • At the start of the movie, a naked woman shows up at the police station in the middle of a stormy night, and Jong-goo is so terrified that he orders his deputy to look for her while he stays hidden behind his desk. At the end of the movie, he encounters the Woman of No-name, who he's been told is a powerful evil spirit responsible for all the deaths in the village, and while clearly scared he still stands his ground, look at her in the eye and demand answers from her.
  • When he first goes to meet the Stranger, Jong-goo is completely powerless against the latter's guard dog and is only saved when the Stranger gets back home, at which point Jong-goo just leaves without question. The second time he goes to the Stranger's cabin, Jong-goo easily kills the dog and openly threatens to do the same to the Stranger if the latter doesn't leave at once, and later Jong-goo leads a mob of angry people to do just that.
• Accomplishing this may, in fact, be the central thesis of Wanted (whereas the comic was more about supervillains just being supervillains).
• In the Laurel and Hardy film Way Out West, Ollie becomes surprisingly forceful and effective at movie's end in getting the deed to a gold mine back to its rightful owner away from the couple who conned it from them earlier.
• X-Men Film Series
  • X2: X-Men United and X-Men: The Last Stand have Iceman upgrading from student to X-Men. In the climatic battle of The Last Stand, he finally goes into his full ice form. By the time of X-Men: Days of Future Past, he has taken several more levels, including the debut of the iconic ice slide from the comics.
  • The mutant teens in X-Men: First Class, after their training. Plus several levels for Hank after he injects himself with his serum.
  • In The Wolverine, Ichirō Yashida went from a meek dying old man to a foe who can almost kill Wolverine himself.
  • X-Men: Days of Future Past: In comparison to X-Men: First Class where her only physical scenes involve weight training and her shape-changing abilities used only as a distraction to aid someone else, Mystique has developed into using some of the acrobatic fighting style that her older counterpart from the first trilogy excels at.
  • In X-Men: First Class, Havok lacks accuracy with his destructive powers, but shows signs of improvement by the end. In his brief scene here, he neutralizes a soldier using a non-lethal blast with little effort.

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