Like so.
This is basically the central premise of the series, so it's frequently subverted:- Almost the entirety of Beowulf is this, i.e. Beowulf gets instantly incinerated by the dragon.
- A Munchkin decides to use his gun against the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.
- Iron Man uses a tank missile against Obadiah Stane.
- In Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, they just use the Rail Gun to kill the Fallen.
- In The Dark Knight, this becomes "Why Don't You Just Run Him Over":
- Superman: Woah, hold on a second — you hit him?
Batman: Yep.
Superman: You hit the Joker.
Batman: Uh-huh.
Superman: You ran over a human being.
Batman: Sure did.
Superman: But... what about your rule?!
Batman: [smugly] Didn't kill 'im.
[cut to the Joker, lying in a hospital bed covered in casts, moaning in pain]
The Joker: You wanna know how I got these scars?
Nurse: [deadpan] From Batman?
The Joker: From Batman.
- In Harry Potter, Snape shoots Voldemort, then uses the Time Turner and Invisibility Cloak to kill young Tom Riddle as well.
- Played with in Saw, where the gun is fired by accident and the bullet ricochets around the room, hitting the playing-dead Jigsaw, killing him, essentially preventing most of the subsequent franchise.
- In Iron Man 3, it shows Tony activating the "House Party" protocols early, leading to a Macross Missile Massacre of Tank Missiles against the choppers.
- In Man of Steel, after Zod issues his threat against Earth, Superman goes to speak to Jor-El to find out more information about Zod. After learning that he's insane, cue Superman activating the phantom-drive on his ship and ramming it down Zod's throat, sending both him and the other Kryptonians back to the Phantom Zone and wrapping up the entire movie within 30 minutes.Batman: Could you imagine if you had to fight those guys on land?
Superman: Oh my gosh, can you imagine that? Thousands of people might have died!
Batman: Plus billions of dollars in property damage!
Superman: I can't pay that kind of debt on a Daily Planet salary! - In Godzilla (2014) the general responds to Serizawa stating that Godzilla must be what defeats the MUTOs with 'why don't we just nuke them'. Serizawa shoots him down and the general assumes that Serizawa just wants to see a monster fight. They are trying to nuke them at that point in the film, only for one of the MUTOs to take the nuke to the middle of San Francisco.
- In The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man ignores the guy in the Rhino armor that's conveniently terrorizing the city for his return. The police can deal with him! As in the movie, the guy opens his armor, to taunt the police... and gets immediately killed.
- The Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) video presents two scenarios in which the Guardians meet their ends by the prison guards and Ronan realizing this. A Mook also defends himself from Yondu's arrow by shooting Yondu before he can make the arrow strike him.
- In How to Train Your Dragon 2, Stoick ops to just throw his ax into Drago Bludvist's skull as the latter's about to kill Valka.
- In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Iron Man, Thor, and Vision shoot Ultron until he explodes, instead of shooting him and pausing.
- In one of the Survival 101 segments of Jurassic World, "Don't just stand there when you have a perfect shot.", As the I-Rex communicates with the Raptors to turn on the human team, Owen goes, "Who cares?! Just shoot her!" and the group shoots the I-Rex to death.
- In How Revenge of the Sith Should Have Ended, after Obi-Wan takes out Grievous's bodyguards, the latter has the battle droids surrounding Obi-Wan simply overwhelm and shoot him to death.
- In The Force Awakens, the stormtrooper on Takodana just guns down a lightsaber-wielding Finn instead of attacking him with a riot baton. Given how Finn has no apparent Force sensitivity or melee training, this would make a lot of sense if one would think about it.
- Suicide Squad (2016):
- Rick Flag simply shoots Harley Quinn in the head after being reminded by Waller that he has a gun when her nanite has been disabled.
- Deadshot just shoots Waller at the end.
- In Doctor Strange (2016), when preparing to defend the Sanctuary, Wong once again tells the defenders to choose their weapons wisely. As soon as Kaecilius arrives, Wong reveals that he chose a gun when he simply shoots Kaecilius dead.
- In Moana, instead of getting a chosen one to do the task, the ocean decides to take Te Fiti's heart and restore the goddess itself. It succeeds, though this has the side effect of leaving Moana and Maui stuck on their islands, complaining about how bored they are.
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 has Yondu's One-Man Army scene end with him simply getting shot dead by a Ravager, who originally gave away his position by yelling "DOWN HERE!" Then said Ravager and one of his comrades get shot by Rocket because they kept talking about this trope.
- The Last Jedi: Hux ignores Poe's attempts to buy time and simply has his ship shot down.
- For Justice League (2017), they regularly point out how with the Flash's superspeed, he could easily kill Steppenwolf a million times over by just driving sharp objects into his neck. Earlier from this, the Amazons just shoot Steppenwolf to death with their arrows instead of letting him monologue about getting the Mother Boxes.
- In Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the Indoraptor locks onto its victim once a laser sight from a rifle is placed over the target. One of the people at the auction points out that if someone already has a gun pointed at a person, it's way more practical to just pull the trigger and shoot the target instead of having a dinosaur go through the effort of hunting them down.
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse:
- A non-gun variant in the first scenario of this. Kingpin simply beats Miles to death before the latter can get up.
- In the second scenario, Jefferson shoots Kingpin in the head just as he’s about to kill Miles.
- Avengers: Endgame:
- Thanos orders another bombing on the Avengers headquarters, leading to all the surviving Avengers being killed.
- Thor pins Thanos down with Mjolnir (declaring that the latter's "Not worthy!"), leading to him, Steve, and Tony kicking the Mad Titan while he's down before Thor finally decapitating him.
- Wong simply traps Thanos’s army in the mirror dimension before beheading the latter with a sling-ring portal.
- Scarlet Witch simply crumples up Thanos when he’s about to say that he doesn’t know her.
- Terminator: Dark Fate: The Rev-9 doesn't bother attacking while the protagonists are trapped underwater and simply waits for them to drown.
- Iron Man 2: Whiplash cuts off Tony's head with his whips when Tony's still donning his suitcase armour.
- Wonder Woman 1984:
- Maxwell Lord gets his driver to wish that Wonder Woman would vanish, promptly Retgoneing her before she punches through the windscreen.
- Additionally, Steve Trevor takes advantage of grabbing Maxwell Lord, and Lord asking him what he wishes for, to wish for all the wishes Lord's granted to be undone.
- WandaVision: Kate Bishop knocks out Wanda with an electric arrow to the head, just like her mentor Clint did back in Age Of Ultron.
- Spider-Man: Instead of throwing the "new, unpredictable, twirly boomerang blade things" at Spider-Man during the house fire, Green Goblin just used the "pumpkin bomb" that was used on the Oscorp Board of Directors, vaporising Spider-Man.
