Discussion Main / HollywoodTactics

If anyone wants to update the video links for Star Wars: The Old Republic because Gametrailers is defunct, as best as I can tell/remember the trailer was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0ATsRJggl4 . I can't tell what the Force Unleashed trailer was, but I suspect it was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Gclxgy2A_M , where dozens of Stormtroopers have lines of sight on Starkiller, but only a few fire at once. And all of them seem to be running closer to the guy with lightsabers, despite having, y'know, guns. If some mod wants to update it, you might add this commentary in a bullet sub-point. Or simply give each game it's own bullet point.

Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Needs Help, started by eedwardgrey3 on Jan 2nd 2016 at 4:55:34 PM

Moved the post to the proper location.

In Star Trek Deep Space Nine the bad tactics of the Jem'Hadar could be explained in that they aren't the ones making the tactical decisions in the first place, but rather the Vorta and the Changelings, with the former preferring to make big shows and the latter arrogant and lacking any real understanding of any non-changling motivations. In fact, in one episode while both Federation and Dominion forces are stranded with limited supplies, the Vorta commander reaches out to Sisko offering to be taken prisoner in exchange with dealing with the Vorta's problems of the Jem'Hadar near the point of entering a drug withdraw induced beserker-rage by killing them in a battle that is designed to fail if Starfleet puts up an ounce of resistance. On the Battlefield, Sisko tries to avert the fight by revealing the Vorta's treachery... but the Jem'Hadar commander reveals he was well aware of it... the Vorta's entire orders of battle were so horrible, he suspected the Vorta was throwing the unit's lives away but the Jem'Hadar must follow orders from the Vorta no matter how tactically disastrous they were and were genetically engineered to do so.

It should be noted UNIT troops also ran into a hallway, stopped, waited until everyone was there, then opened fire. Nobody think about tossing a frag around the corner, or opening fire when they see a target. And they shoot straight ahead. Like, wall of lead, but none miss apparently.

A good one for the Orks section under Warhammer 40K-while the Orks generally paint their gear (and themselves!) blue, red, purple and Mork-knows how many other shades of colors, their latent psychic fields actually generate real bonuses for the paint color rather than just hilarity and eyesores (i.e. red paint increases speed, blue paint generates higher luck somehow, and purple makes things harder to spot).

"Assaulting castles as a first resort. This was only done very rarely, and even then they usually just waited outside the castle walls until the enemy starved or surrendered, though this failed as often as it succeeded due to logistical issues on the part of the besieging force."

This part confuses a siege(which were quite common) with storming the castle. And to my knowledge it usually failed because a relief army arrived.

Harry Potterandthe Methodsof Rationality's mention doesn't go into enough detail, it makes the work sound far more convoluted and confusing than it actually is while serving as a bad example of this trope.

Draco's units use proper formation, the text explains why this is a good formation, and then Harry Potter-Evans-Verres defeats this formation with "The power of chaos", a head-on Leeroy Jenkins Zerg Rush with absolutely no tactical worth. He doesn't have superior numbers or superior training or superior skill, he just wins because the writer thinks "The power of chaos" should always triumph over "Copied ideas" like formations that work well. Whether this counts as an aversion of this trope or a straight usage of it is up to you.

I was wondering about whether it is worth noting in the Dwarf Fortress example that it is possible to avert Hollywood Tactics through creative use of hardened (and ridiculously-deadly) architecture (admittedly turning out to be a case of 'No OSHA compliance' and/or 'Death Course' in the process) though the community tends to view an excessively hardened defensive build as boring. Will assemble the specific text, format to best of my abilities, and submit to the relevant forum topic as well!

The page has been locked a while ago due to persistent Conversation in the Main Page issues.

Please request any edits in this forum discussion - adding them here just makes it easier for them to be missed.

This entry is written horribly, with Bold Inflation and Conversation In The Main Page.

• The In Name Only Starship Troopers movie, full stop. The tactics and military conduct in this movie are so bad that it makes you think they're deliberately trying to lose*
  some theorize
  that this is indeed the case]], and would probably need an entire essay dedicated to it to do it justice. However, the film is a subversion; unlike most films all of their incredibly bad ideas don't actually work, and by and large the human troops are completely slaughtered. The writers intent seems to have been to use the enormous casualty rate resulting from them as a way to emphasize that War Is Hell, but the human characters just come across as idiots who dont know how to conduct warfare instead (especially absurd because the entire culture is built around militarism). Notably, the Bugs actually do use decent tactics and combined arms given their limitations. They routinely stage ambushes and the basic drones soak up a lot of casualties, but they were literally born to be cannon fodder.
  • Let's count:
    • Ships parked shoulder-to-shoulder in orbit? Check.
    • Underestimating an enemy that can throw asteroids at you from across the galaxy? Check.
    • Invading with a ground army against an enemy with plenty of open-air targets instead of just nuking them from orbit to clear out the surface emplacements? Check.
    • No artillery, armor, air, or orbital support for your massive ground assault, even when clearly shown having carpet bombing capabilities? Check.
    • After landing, announcing their presence to all of Klendathu by exiting the landing craft screaming while the craft shoot off flares? Check.
    • Attempting the Zerg Rush when the other side is the Zerg? Check.
    • Using horrendously ineffective assault rifles (though to be fair, they have a slung-under shotgun) against an enemy that can survive an entire clip being unloaded into it? Check.
      • To be even more fair, in Real Life it is difficult to change personal infantry weapons. The M-16 rifle was a disaster when first introduced. In recent times the US Army has had several programs to create "advanced" personal infantry weapons which all were dropped after spending billions.
    • The only "tactic" on display is the Circular Firing Squad... one for each bug? Check.
    • No actual tactics whatsoever? Checkmate.
  • Bear in mind the above is from the Battle of Klendathu. Afterward, the Federation gets a little more clever, but their main planetary force still seems to consist of nothing but plain old infantry, with no mechanized support whatsoever, and airborne support showing up for all of one scene and then promptly forgotten about. Word of God tries to Hand Wave this by stating that the Klendathu terrain was horrible for tanks and the like, but that doesn't explain why they don't use their airborne capabilities more often, for either transport or attack.
    • Even worse in the original, they were packing only rifles, no form of heavier weapons whatsoever, when even MGLs were man-portable, never mind RPGs.
  • Morale and training among the soldiers appears to be incredibly poor as well, as the first attack disintegrates into a confused rout literally moments after the first engagement and a few casualties. The Terran military also has a strangely bipolar way of maintaining discipline and unit cohesion. Serious offenses quickly result in corporeal punishment and refusing to fight is threatened with summary execution by shooting, but not only do they organize random parties after a minor engagement, they also do it right in the middle of enemy territory. They're also a-okay with fraternization among the troops, even though actively encouraging romantic attachments between them could seriously undermine their units' combat effectiveness.
    • The training itself throws all forms of safety and sense out the window, without any cover from stray shots in live fire exercises for the troops marching around it, not even a wall.
  • When the people on the ship notice the giant asteroid heading toward Earth, rather than firing their rockets immediately to get out of the way, they wait until the last possible second to dodge out of the way of the giant, seemingly unguided asteroid, which clips off a large part of the ship. Despite this, the captain of the ship compliments the pilot as the best damn pilot in the fleet, instead of telling her she's an incompetent screw-up and a show-off that got a bunch of people needlessly killed. She's also never court-martialed, demoted, or even reprimanded for nearly killing hundreds of people and causing millions in damage by recklessly flying out an interstellar spaceship from spacedock in her first ever piloting duty, an action she even has the nerve to laugh off right afterwards.
  • Briefly averted in the third film, where Colonel Rico rallies his troops and they make the best of their weapons and terrain (using grenade launchers to force the bugs back while the troopers advanced, with troopers walking along the tops of the trenches to give them covering fire). Indeed, his defense of Roku San proved to be quite effective, until the perimeter defenses were shut down by The Mole. Later, the military's introduction of mech units proves to be a vast improvement as well.

Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings:Tolkien was a history professor, and it shows. Jackson and his screenwriters, while better at characterisation, didn't do the research and always screwed up when they changed the battles.

New or modified examples:

The Helm's Deep downhill cavalry charge, although perhaps this falls into complete absurdity rather than hollywood tactics. In the book, it was infantry.

Faramir at Osgiliath, first time. It's been known on our Earth for, oh, thousands of years that if you're defending a river against superior numbers then 1. you shoot the enemy while they're in the boats and 2. you hit the enemy while they're trying to get off the boats and thus handicapped by splashing through water and mud. Faramir sportingly lets the orcs land safely, also trapping his own troops between the orcs and the river.

Faramir at Osgiliath, second time. Denethor, as a civilian leader should, has commanded what should be done, "retake Osgiliath", without specifying how. Denethor then has lunch. The cavalry charge is Faramir's idea, not forced: he could have rode closer to the city and then dismounted to attack.

The film tries hard to make Denethor more obnoxious and less sympathetic than in the books. Unfortunately, these two battles show that Denethor's distrust of Faramir as a military commander is fully justified.

Battle of Pelennor Fields: Tolkien knew that horses won't charge elephants, and his Haradrim use the mumakil, like the historical Seleucids, as a screen to keep the Rohirrim away. If shooting elephants in the eyes was deemed too gruesome (as opposed to hamstringing them, not to mention slaughtering huge numbers of horses?), they could have at least kept the Gondor infantry attacking the mumakil, not the cavalry.

Babylon 5 There is a very good example of piss-poor tactics in Babylon-5, which I would add to the article were it not locked.

Someone who follows the show more religiously than myself could probably give the name of the episode, where the White Star fleet battles the Earth Alliance's Shadow-enhanced destroyers. The Destroyer commander demonstrates court-martial worthy incompetence when his forces come out of hyperspace, taking the White Stars by surprise and completely encircling them. Said Commander then proceeds to send a signal demanding surrender, thus sacrificing the element of surprise, giving Ivanova's fleet time to array themselves in response to the encirclement, and then meet said attack head-on. All of this rather than open fire immediately upon arrival, devastating the enemy, and then offering to let any survivors surrender. Such incompetence, with such a high cost would see a real-life Admiral at the very least removed from his command. Interestingly, this event is a good example of Hollywood tactics playing out exactly as they should...crushing defeat for the idiot who attempted to employ said tactic.

It should be worth mentioning in the Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn example how, when Zelgius met up with the rest of his army, his forces were in various formations instead of just one huge hulking brute of an army, shouldn't it? Perhaps as a means to contrast with how the cutscene showed it, if nothing else.

Also, perhaps a mention should go to how before he came in, all the other commanders and senators were engaging in such tactics and how it's lampshaded by Zelgius himself and Levail?

The dragon age entry also needs cleaning up: justifying bad tactics by saying that the king, who isn't the commander, isn't a tactician, while there is a whole army of soldiers and many many many people with battle practice who have the kings ear, and the king is no total idiot, just a glory seeker...

The M*A*S*H example (Hawkeye comes up with the suggestion that they surrender to the sniper. He argues that this would allow them to attend to the wounded, but fails to explain how this makes any sense ...) - this should be somewhat explained and justified, or removed from the Hollywood Tactics page completely. The MASH was a series running on a Black Humor and depicting the absurdity and pointlessness of war (and with Hawkeye as a Dead Pan Snarker extraordinaire), and so the proposal actually makes some sense (sort of) - according to The Laws And Customs Of War, medical personnel and chaplains, when surrendering, are to be allowed to "continue to exercise their medical and spiritual functions" - i.e. if the hospital surrendered, the stated objective of "allowing them to attend to the wounded" would be satisfied, and with the hospital being located behind the UN Forces frontlines, liberation from captivity would be matter of time - surely a lonely sniper who infiltrated there possess much greater military strength than a whole mobile hospital unit combined, but he's relatively powerless against any possible liberating force. The problem here seems to be laying chiefly in fact that the sniper is both Genre Savvy (attacking a medical installation is a war crime, so he really does not want to expose himself) and unwilling to be distracted from his harassment fire by following the rules to his disadvantage. Or he just did not care - but Hawkeye's "plan" to exploit the rules of warfare by interpreting them literally by itself is hardly an example of the Hollywood Tactics, though perhaps appealing to absurdity and verging on the insane troll logic. Absurd - yes, impractical - yes, incomprehensible and unreasonable from the conventional military logic point of view - perhaps; but hardly an example of the Hollywood Tactics.

could an admin clear up the MASH entry? In the first paragraph it would be good to know what the flaw in hawkeyes plan actually is. And the second is totally wrong as the pilot says he can't land there.

Does the Independence Day example belong? The complaint is that it was bad tactics to send a flight of jets armed with sidewinders against the alien bases. The ships are hovering over major cities, and combat bases aren't exactly built that close to them. Mobilizing artillery would have taken hours at a minimum, and scrambling jets for an aerial opponent is fairly standard. They would also want to force the alien bases to move away from populated areas, so outright destroying them wouldn't be their primary objective. And going to the nuclear solution runs the risk of fallout. The only thing they knew about the enemy ship at that point was that it possessed a gigantic laser in its belly; they had no reason to assume the hull would be impervious to conventional ordnance or that it would possess energy shields. I mean, what kind of tactic would you use for a force with unknown armament and capabilities that just revealed it was hostile a few hours ago?

An edit I made earlier, which was taken off did have a key bit of useful info in it for the Independence Day trope. I.E. that they fist tested the ship's capabilities with jets, then try a more deadly response with nuclear ordinance.

The Mongol part in the real life section completely mischaracterizes the Hungarian and Polish forces. Excluding some of the order knights (who were much better off in close combat than their foes), they did not simply charge, they used sound tactics that often were able to match or outmatch the Mongols on a tactical level; the problem for the Europeans was whenever things were going well for them, like at Sajó Bridge, the Mongols could just ride away to fight again another day, or feign a retreat and try again immediately, because they were much swifter than the Hungarian forces (because the Hungarians had chased off their own light cavalry en masse due to infighting and paranoia). European retreats, on the other hand, were devastatingly costly as the Mongols were able to ride them down. Furthermore, their swiftness meant their was not many options for European infantry when mounted archers were shooting them, this was a result of the Mongols having many more horses, it wasn't a choice the European generals had made.

the last point of custers last stand has to removed, because loosing all his men is not a reason to loose the battle, it's the result...

This example isn't clear about whether it actually belongs.

• During the battle of Marineford in One Piece, Whitebeard's initial tactic of emerging right in the middle of Marineford harbor is visually impressive and carries shock and awe, however that is his only tactic, and left him totally surrounded. (He did, however, stop to notice the Marine warships on opposing sides, and ordered his pirate allies to use their ships to fire on them, correctly noting that it was a encirclement plan. But by then, it was too little, too late.) Meanwhile, the Marines used actual strategy, including combined arms, flanking, fortifications, and psychological warfare. It is testament to the pirates' impressive resolve and power that it isn't a total slaughter from the very beginning... though about halfway through, it becomes clear this will not end well for the pirates.
  • Whitebeard's dramatic entrance wasn't his only tactic; he did keep one ship in reserve out of sight of the enemy, in case things went wrong, and it's the use of that ship that enabled his forces to invade Marineford's main plaza.

R.e. the Chronicles of Narnia: Some confusion there regarding who is talking about which movie. Disambiguation needed.

As far as #1:Lion Witch Wardrobe goes, in my opinion the tactics were fairly reasonable. The Narnians are an army of Ragged Rebels, and the White Witch's forces are Bestial Brutes, so on both sides the tactics need to stay fairly simple to reduce confusion among the troops.

Peter openly admits that he has no tactical experience. He's not really a "leader" but a symbolic rallying point. He needs to be out front, highly visible, to inspire the troops - and also to serve as bait for the Witch. My interpretation was that the goal of the Narnians (hereafter "A" for Aslan) is to draw the Witch's forces ("W") into a trap. The centaur heavy cavalry are most effective on the open plain, so that's where they're deployed, with the best-armored of the light infantry. The archers are deployed atop the cliffs, where they're hard to get to (and the remaining infantry are kept out of sight in the canyon?). The W forces are almost entirely infantry, with very little cavalry, archers, or air support - but they have at least 3:1 numerical superiority, and heavy infantry (the minotaurs) which A lacks.

Neither side has defensive earthworks, stakes, etc. - this probably _is_ a tactical failure on A's part. The W army, believing that they outnumber the A side even more than they actually do, initiate the attack with a charge by about half their forces, with the other half and the Witch remaining in reserve. A's air support, lacking actual bombs, instead play the role of skirmishers, breaking up the W line and slowing its' momentum slightly. A's forces then counter-charge, and melee is joined.

Peter waits until the Witch commits the second half of her forces, then signals for the phoenix to lay down a flame-wall between those reinforcements and the melee. The Witch breaks through it easily (more easily than A expected, from the look of things), but it slows the W reinforcements enough that the A troops can rally and fall back, drawing the W army into the broken terrain where they can't hold formation and have to fight uphill while the archers whittle them down. In MMORPG terms, Peter's group are the tanks: drawing aggro, pulling the W forces into range of the DPS, and then holding them there.

It's not a bad plan, but W's sheer numbers start to overwhelm A's forces - until Aslan arrives with extra reinforcements, which combined with the death of the Witch and the unexpected return-from-the-dead of Aslan himself, demoralize the W army.

It's not clear whether the Narnian counterattack in the canyon consists entirely of de-petrified Narnians from the castle, or if they are simply augmenting a reserve force of A's infantry which was being held in reserve to hit W's flanks once W were squeezed into the canyon (a variant on the classic Hannibal maneuver). The movie makes it seem like the former; the latter would make more tactical sense.

Movie #2(Prince Caspian) is more problematic. The Narnian tactics against the Telmarine cavalry are good (pit trap to stop the charge, followed by a flank attack from hidden ramps) but they don't seem to have had any real plan to stop the (much more numerous) pikemen - who, on their part, are much too eager to break ranks once their slow, stomp-marching squares actually reach the Narnians. The Telmarines show good use of artillery (trebuchets to smash the Howe, multi-shot ballistas to shred the Narnian air force), but after being routed by the walking trees, it's not clear at all just how "we can defeat them if we draw them to the river" was supposed to work. Defeat them by milling around on the shore?

I have an issue with the film entry for King Arthur. It states that luring an enemy into combat in an open field is an inferior tactic to trying to fight them from a position of defensive strength, and normally it would be right, but this is sort of a unique situation.

Assuming we're talking about the most recent film from 2004, the wall isn't a castle or fort, it is just a wall roughly 80 miles long (that's the figure the other wiki gives). Without the Roman soldiers, even if Arthur had managed to station groups of defenders along the wall's entire length and keep them supplied, they would have been spread pretty thin. Had the Saxons retreated and attacked later at a different location, they probably could have easily overcome the small group of localized defenders before reinforcements arrived.

One of the things that makes defensive warfare so tricky is that you need to defend everywhere at once, while the attacker can concentrate their force at a single point. (think Maginot Line vs. German tanks) Attacking a superior force in an open field may not have been a great tactic, but if they tried to defend from behind the wall, it could have eventually resulted in an even SMALLER force being forced to fight the entire Saxon army by themselves.

I don't see this as bad tactics so much as a calculated gamble. In fact, the more I think about it, it seems like it was Hollywood tactics on the Saxon's part for running headlong into an area where they know their enemies are alerted and ready for them, instead of falling back and looking for a better time and place to sneak attack.

Edit: There's actually several other entries that I also think are less "bad tactics" and more "no good choices" (because, let's face it, barely winning the fight makes for good action sequences and drama). My understanding of the trope was that there needs to be better options, militarily speaking, and the commander instead picks one that is riskier, gets more people killed, or is entirely ineffective all on it's own. Anyone else have thoughts?

"Putting your general in the front lines. At least, so long as him fighting isn't a major part of your strategy. Though historically, whether your general fights from the front or not had a LOT to do with the local culture and concept of what a proper war leader is like. Alexander the Great always fought in the heat of battle, and his men wouldn't have followed him if he had preferred a nice tall hill behind the lines. "

In fact for most of history generals did prefer to be pretty close to the front lines if not actually participating. They wanted to see what was going on as much as possible and they also wanted to be able to pull rank at critical momments. One of the most preferred means was riding up and down just to the rear of the line on a horse where they could see and get where they were needed fast. It was actually often a more dangerous job then a private soldiers which is why generals were looked on as demigods in the past and today are often looked on as support personal in fancy clothes. Wellington for instance, lost half his staff at Waterloo doing this.

"You totally suck, Arasorn", is what the picture says.

"The Iraqi Army in 1991 deploying in Kuwait with its right wing sticking out like a "kick-me" sign."

I would say this was justified because the Iraqis genuinely believed that the Americans were going to attempt an amphibious landing on Kuwait as part of the American deception plan.

I don't know enough about Medieval tactics to comment on A Song Of Ice And Fire. At first I thought the books seem to avert this trope, but there are so many battles under so many different circumstances that I don't know how good it actually is. The tactics of the successful commanders seem clever to me, (attacking peasants to make the enemy army stretch itself out to defend them, using ambushes, taking advantage of the opposing commander's mentality to lure them into overreaching themselves etc.) but I don't know enough about real life tactics to know if these would actually work. The characters also mention some instances of where attempting to ride down a phalanx of pikemen has ended very badly, and how leading heavily armoured troops through swampy terrain while being showered with arrows is an equally epic fail, but again, I don't know enough to comment on whether the series as a whole plays this trope straight or averts it.

Can anyone who has read the series and knows a bit about real life medieval tactics help me on this?

You know, if we're going to have an image from The Return of the King, there should probably be an example to explain it. There used to be one, but there was a bunch of natter and someone removed the whole thing rather than just the natter.

So many justifying edits, ugh.

Sorry that's all.

"The Borg use NO tactics at all, but they still win because of We Have Reserves, Zerg Rush, AND the ability to adapt to enemy weapons and tactics. They don't care if their units are wiped out, because the next units they send will have adapted to the weapons/tactics the enemy used to defeat the previous units. All that, and a Hive Mind which keeps morale from being an issue."

My quibble with the Borg, is that their adaptability doesn't seem matched by an equally good memory. If they're a Hive Mind, why do they need to adapt to standard issue Starfleet weapons more than once? Or, at worst, after more than one shot in any given encounter? Why do we have the 'they wont attack until they see us a threat' line every time? They've encountered you before and you were a threat then! Besides which, Borg attack any intelligent life-form on principle, whether they're a threat or not!

Would the martial arts movie clique wherein the protagonist faces multiple enemies who all attack one or two at a time while the others just kind of stand around go here, or does it have its own thread?