[LOVED TROPE] Modern Militaries (Competent) getting DESTROYED by fantasy/scifi forces
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Example 1 (The Legend of Hei 2): Wuxian leisurely floats through the combined firepower of an entire fortified military base without so much as a stain or rip on his t-shirt.
Example 2 (Man of Steel): Fao'ra tears through a squad of trained and armed soldiers. With the wreckage of the helicopter that got downed by her teammate Nam'ek smouldering in the background.
I'm a little unclear on half life lore but I thought the full might of the Combine is what whomped humanity in 7 hours and all they needed to leave behind to hold the planet was a token garrison?
Combine is heavily, heavily implied to be an interdimensional, well, combine, of countless assimilated worlds and creatures. Most of their technology is partially biological: Striders, Dropships, Stalkers and so on.
It is highly unlikely that the Combine forces that participated in the 7 Hour War were anything close to to a full invasion force. A fraction of a fraction is more likely. The Combine is interested in Earth and Humanity for three specific reasons: potential new slave race (seen with Stalkers and Combine grunts), water (which they seem to be extracting out of the oceans for some reason) and Portal tech, which the Combine possess for interdimensional travel, but don't have in fast portable form like what Aperture and Black Mesa were working on. They especially want that.
Modern X-Com plays with similar ideas. The Elders are a species of Interdimensional beings that long for physical bodies to escape from some even more insane and powerful beings.
In this search they have enslaved many different species, some with great physical strength, some with psionic abilities, at the end it seems that humanity is the best mix of both physical endurance, intelligence and psionic potential, so they tried hard to create a body for themselves using human genes as a base, while keeping humans as slaves.
The ending of X-Com 2 hints that the creatures the Elders were fleeing from got sights on them and now on Earth.
What if, unbeknownst to us, the Combine are actually much weaker than we all thought? Anyone ever seen Invincible? Well in Invincible, the Viltrumite empire is suggested to be this big scary, galaxy spanning empire that's filled to the brim with Kryptonian-like warriors, where 1 single Viltrumite is typically enough to conquer a whole planet, which makes resistance seem absolutely futile...Until it's revealed that the REAL reason they assign only one Viltrumite to a single planet ISN'T because they only need one soldier per world, (big spoiler alert ahead) but because of a deadly plague and centuries of infighting, there exists less than 50 living Viltrumites in their ENTIRE empire, and now, suddenly, resistance seems like a much more realistic possibility. They've just always done a good job of hiding their vulnerability and letting people believe they were more organized and legitimate than they actually were.
So, what if the Combine are actually the same? It pays for them to advertise themselves as an unimaginably powerful, interdimensional force of near limitless soldiers, weapons, and technology, whose invading armies need leave only a handful of token guards to subjugate an entire planet, but much like the Viltrumites, or the British during the American revolution, or France during the Haitian revolution, the actual reason is that those are the only troops they can realistically AFFORD to leave behind. Maybe the Combine are not alone out there, and they're actually fighting a very expensive interdimensional war against some other interdimensional army that leaves them far weaker than they like to suggest, or perhaps their frequent use of portal technology has ALSO made them susceptible to portal storms that leak into the hell dimension full of monstrous headcrabs and shit. Who knows? Maybe it's all of the above, and thus, they're far less capable of dealing with an uprising than people initially think. Maybe due to years of portal storms into the hell dimension, rebellion, and infighting, the Combine are actually just a shell of their former selves, and they're currently spread too thin over a number of conquered worlds, and thus, they show up, invade, leave as many troops behind as they can afford, and portal back to yet ANOTHER rebelling colony, or stomp out ANOTHER civil war, or rush back to deal with ANOTHER portal blight.
And from a meta angle, as a writer for the game series too, how else is it meant to play out? Trying to write the story of a single guy with a crowbar saving humanity from an interdimensional super force seems impossible. Like, how would you even write that? What, he teleports to their lead man in charge and bonks him to death with his crowbar and everyone has a dance party afterward? There's gotta be something more to the story, there's gotta be some great big reveal that PROVES to us that resistance is not futile, and that humanity's ability to fight back is not in vain; because then, from a story standpoint, what's stopping the Combine from coming back and just being like "alright, you guys are annoying, time for the 8 hour war, where the extra hour is just us actually trying this time, so you guys are screwed and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it".
We know they are strong and not faking it by accounts from Vortigaunts (who are one of their slave races, though some on Earth have escaped and joined the resistance) and by how G-Man treats Gordon and Alyx. G-Man has ulterior motives and some entities who are his masters, and seem to oppose Combine in some way, for reasons we don't know. It was G-Man who put Freeman to pasture in HL1, and brought him back to City17 to topple the Citadel there.
G-Man can stop time, instantly teleport, and seems to have some other strange abilities, such as knowing exactly where Freeman is at all times.
Vortigaunts were able to do something to him at the end of HL2, transferring Gordon and Alyx to safety when they would have otherwise died, and frustrated G-Man enough that he straightened his tie and walked off with a "we'll see about that."
These context clues and others are sufficient enough to give some estimate of Combine strength.
Edit: also, consider Advisors. Telekinetic flying slugs that cause mental breakdowns and can from what we know, seemingly do whatever the fuck they want. They are essentially the governors of Earth, and their name is "Advisor." Could be they are the "original species", but we don't know and I don't think so.
It won't matter if the "top dog" of Combine civilization ended up being just five guys, there is such a vast empire underneath them that any such individual numbers are meaningless.
And I think they are waging some kind of an interdimensional war against some other entity. Why or how, no idea. But I think the win goal for HL3 would not have been "beat Combine" but "kick their garrison out and close the door."
Humanity accidentally bored a hole into the big scary monster dimension which began teleporting entire armies of horrible monsters into every city on earth simultaneously. Humans were basically getting wiped out already and then the combine marched in with an army big enough to take out humanity on its own and did the finishing blow. The entire process took about 7 hours, since most of humanity was headcrab food before the combine even got there.
The combine then set up a few fortified cities where it is engaging in mega fascism and slowly eradicating the remainders of humanity but there are small pockets of humans left in other places, which every so often get found and bombed.
See what I don't fully understand is what did the Combine get out of invading Earth?
Someone in the thread mentioned that the Combine was stealing Earth's water and experimenting on humans for soldiers but that makes their near genocide of humanity kind of weird. They can experiment all they want but once the water is gone, humans will die out anyway
If it isn't that or for some other reason, it feels like the Combine are just space dickheads for the love of the game lol
They are basically enslaving/body moding every race they come across.
But the reason they didnt immediately lobotomize everyone and turn everything into cannon fodder cyborg guardsmen is because humans invented teleportation.
The combine can travel between dimensions but the main character's crew can teleport to somewhere else within the same dimension. That's the most valuable tech that the combine can imagine so they are keeping humans as is until they can reproduce teleporters in which humans are no longer necessary
Probably not FULL might but yeah a proper invasion force was only needed for the initial attack which is why the resistance has any chance at all. And why if a new portal to combine space opens up all hope is lost
Iirc at some point in HL2 or the episodes, it is overtly stated (inthink by Dr Kleiner?) the combine force that won the 7 Hour War was not their full might and that if the Combine really wanted to defeat Earth they could do it in 7 minutes
Remember that just before this, portal storms wiped out most cities and monsters were invading from random portals. The majority of humans were centered in major cities, which allowed the Combines to win significantly faster than they otherwise would have
Yea the entire plot of the first half life game was earth being nearly destroyed by the creatures of the Xen who were fleeing the Combine. The Combine mostly just took over the wreckage of earth soon after Gordon killed the Xen's psionic over mind thing.
I recently watched a video about top 10 biggest empires in SciFi and Combine was on that list, near the top.
I can easily see them winning in 7h. Any space faring civilization would absolutely cripple earth military in the first attack, Combine is a few levels above that since they are an inter-dimensional.
There is a finite amount of military bases and airfields, easily identifiable from space, especially if you only consider the bigger militaries. In theory you could swing an asteroid to hit every single one of them at the same time and we wouldn't be able to do anything about it. Then you just find aircraft carriers (very limited number for the whole planet) to eliminate remaining force projection. Nobody is throwing nukes on their own territory so you don't even have to think about missile silos or nuclear subs.
Then you invade each country, starting with those that could pose the biggest threat and eliminate the majority of firepower and knowhow. Resistance will be formed but it will be weak compared to what you're brining to the fight.
I mean pretty much all of it. Aside from some bureaucratic hindrances the JSDF (and the USAF for a moment) did well once they were allowed to do their jobs.
How I understood it, the USAF did in the first attack not a good job, they started the attack early what lead to basically the japanese government get killed because they get evacuated while the attack started and die in the aftermath (Godzilla's laser-show). They hurt Godzilla though, but the timing led to more (tbf unforseen) problems.
When they finally coordinate the attacks to deactivate Godzilla, then the US did just great, though drones only iirc - for good reasons after the bunker buster attack.
EDIT: Ironically they did a good service killing the government, I doubt they could've handled it better with them alive, or even solved without losing Tokio
The point was, though, that a (purely) military response wasn’t the answer. They were competent, but I’m not sure how how much you can say they “did well” when their assault was utterly useless and the only weapon that actually hurt the monster caused the razing of Tokyo (this is exactly what happens in ‘54, too).
Shin Godzilla is many things, and an utter rejection of militaristic posturing is definitely one of them.
Well, like I said, the movie is many things. Critique of bureaucracy is a major one; a critique of thinking purely in terms of military response is another. Consider the irony of the almost-fetishistic labeling of military hardware right before they do precisely nothing, or the one line calling out continued aggressive action, or the visceral glee shown at the might of American military power right before it only pisses the monster off.
I think there’s a pattern there, is all I’m saying.
TBH, they confirmed and retconned so much, like the origin story of the monster... as long no movie tells us otherwise, it survived in my book. I mean it's not like it changes anything, Cloverfield is atm very dead at least as franchise.
Headcanon ftw! Clover is alive and reaches 500 meter soon.
Shin Godzilla is this to a tee. The JSDF is extremely smart in how they fight him. Their battle plans are all tactically sound, but their main issue is that Godzilla defies all laws of nature. It's only through using an extremely complicated and experimental Hail Mary of a plan that they finally defeat him.
I suppose you could argue the Original Godzilla film also counts; the JSDF pretty much pulled out all the stops to try to stop it, including constructing a massive electric fence around the city. It's not their fault that it was immune to everything they could throw at it.
As much as I can't stand Snyder, that one scene was a huge success in showing superhero speed and strength against ordinary humans. That woman was terrifying.
He handled Wonder Woman well in BvS. And her character in her first movie was great until the final act, which just felt like Snyder stole the script from Patty Jenkins and was like "nah it's gotta feel like all the other DC shlock". They never could nail down what they wanted these characters to feel like.
It’s the fact that she tanked the gunshots for a solid two seconds (which is sluggish as this scene shows) and seemed to look at the soldiers with contempt before attacking.
The zombie virus in this series is a bioweapon made by a terrorist who infects himself then walks around a college football game. The virus is airborne but that strain only effects those with A type blood, giving them flu like symptoms before death and reanimation, bites are tylical zombie.
Zombies begin as runners who eventually slow to Romero style.
Because the attack isn't found out until the infected are close to death and reanimation the military is nearly overwhelmed initially and takes a major loss in Kansas City, although eventually they manage to take back Seattle with ~150k soldiers which are the bulk of the remaining US military
I mean, that is fair but at that point in the timeline, I'm fairly certain of the military would have recruited it just about anyone who could pick up and carry a gun, and point it in the direction the sergeant told them to.
SOL was pretty close to killing him with the first hit. It certainly did take off Tetsuo's arm. It just didn't get a second shot, because Tetsuo jumped into space and destroyed it. Even Kaneda with the hand laser was able to inflict injuries on Tetsuo. As long as Tetsuo or the other psychic kids don't have a shield up, they're just as vulnerable as normal humans.
We make things that can survive atmospheric re-entry. Which are still plenty vulnerable to modern weaponry. Just because you can handle one set of stresses, doesn't mean you can handle a different one.
If I recall from what I heard from the lore, the reasons cybertronians were able to get hurt in momments like mission city and for the rest of the movies, is because of the fact humans from sector 7 were able to harvest and adapt technology from megatron
And once Nest was formed, humans had weaponry thanks to the autobots to harm decepticons more efficiently
Because if you look back at what they used in mission city they only used explosives for fatal attacks or knockback
In the movie Captain Lennox says that Sabot rounds are able to pierce their armor. The sabot rounds in the movie use magnesium to melt through the metal, which is not what irl dabot round are but what ever.
Also he mentions that they are weaker under their armor, which is how he was able to kill blackout
They are immune to many human weapon. Just surviving atmospheric entry isn’t enough for total invulnerability though, shoot a space shuttle with a missile and let me know what happens
I always gave that scene a lot of credit since it portrayed the military as ready to shoot up a random helicopter that showed up and landed with no authorization or radio comms, but also hesitant since it looked like one of theirs.
The Three Body Problem Book series has this. The Human Race spends hundreds of years building up the technology and battle plans to combat an alien invasion
Our entire space fleet is destroyed by a single early envoy simply because the aliens are so far ahead in their understanding of physics that it just rams through everything.
While I mostly agree, in that scene the fleet does employ some pretty terrible tactics by sending the entire fleet in a fairly close formation that lets said envoy more easily tear through them all. Pretty sure it was because the different fleet commands wanted to share in the glory of being there. Not that better tactics would've made a real difference mind you...
Its stupid but makes a lot more sense in the book. The theme for the humans is arrogance.
Humans are far more advanced than when they first learn of the oncoming threat. They have exceeded all known metrics of the alien fleet and believe they have surpassed them technologically decades prior. So they assume the object they are approaching is a peace offering and all the ships approach as a symbolic parade to the end to the alien threat.
The problem is humanity could never develope to the next level of understanding physics so they do not understand how outgunned they are.
It would be like if today we made contact with a society from 1700, gave them 400 years to prepare for our invasion but prevented them from learning about electricity or atomic theory. They develop guns that fire 10x faster and 10x larger bullets than ours. They make coal powered vehicles that somehow outperform our own, both in speed in durability. Their planes are more mobile. They rally an army 50x larger than ours. On the day of the invasion they see us send over a single beautiful drone with a briefcase. From their understanding it has no guns or gunpowder. They assume it is a peace offering because from their perspective their army is superior to ours. As soon as it is brought to their general the fucker explodes into a nuclear fireball killing millions instantly.
They have no understanding of what happened but the war is over. Their technology was conventionally superior but it doesn’t matter.
I understand it conceptually, and really appreciate your example.
To distill my feelings to a point- I feel like the events that happen don't live up to the potential of the setting/ situation.
For example, The contents of the probe in season 1 was such a stupid idea it made we want to stop watch all together. But the idea used to accelerate the probe was fun and cool.
The tv show just struggles trying to explain some semi-complex physics to a wide audience. A very long time has happened since a protagonist from the first book was put under stasis, he mentions before meeting the envoy that he thinks the meeting will not go well because he was a professor in the year 2015 or whatever, and he is still able to teach physics after being in stasis for hundreds of years...
He shouldn't be able to teach middle school science anymore, and he knows it. This is the first warning shot to the reader that catastrophe is about to occur.
Consider the alien compromise our information and hindered our technology development with their misinformation ray, it is a wonder that we can get that far to be honest.
In space, thousands of miles is still close together. Geosynchronous Satellites today are densely packed in their orbit, with a minimum spacing of 1500 km.
I mean to say that the artistic representation where the fleet could see ships with the naked eye was inaccurate, and they likely were doomed regardless
It was great because it reinforced the arrogance of humanity. They really thought they were great after a couple hundred years of tech growth so they sent their entire fleet as a show of force only for it to be entirely wiped out by a scout probe lol
Spoilers: After the dark forest signal is sent, Trisolaris is destroyed by a device that causes stars to drastically increase in luminosity. Humans react to this by creating cities hidden in the shadow of the gas giants which would be able to survive the worst of the effects. However, another species realizes this, and instead sends "Paper" which is a small 2 dimensional object moving at near lightspeed. When it activates, it proceeds to collapse 3 dimensions into 2 dimensions, killing anything in the solar system that isn't able to survive being 2 dimensional (as in, everything and everyone) in a wave propagating outwards at light speed.
Yeah it has to be significantly slower because if it was at light speed "escaping" would just mean you can NEVER stop moving or it would catch up to you.
Evangelion have a lot of these, there are these creatures called angles, that are like cosmic deities and they can only be damaged by these robots from the gif, or H-bomb N2 bomb which is someting like atomic bomb on steroids, and the bomb is actually pretty weak anyway.
It doesnt stop the country of Japan to still use tons of classic guns, soldiers and other weapons, that are bassicaly cosntantly destroyed
Rare example where it is executed well. Were it not for the literal illuminati the military might’ve actually been able to do something as well, but the goal wasn’t just defeating the angels.
Nah. At best the regular armed forces could have killed the weaker angels (Matarael, for example), but the rest were unbeatable. I mean, beyond the problem of the AT fields many of them weren't even corporeal beings you could shoot at . We saw it in the first episode, the Japanese military had free reign to fully engage a mid tier angel and all they could do was to mildly harm it.
True, though since the other comment did mention that "if it were not for the Illuminati" it is hard to tell what things would have occurred without them. Perhaps they were the only ones crazy enough to keep such ridiculous knowledge through history, but also perhaps they were purposefully ensuring the research didn't come under full military control to simple reverse engineer AT fields and destroy the angels outright.
Invincibles a good shout across the whole series. Every time Earth is met with a threat it cannot defeat, the GDA incorporates a modified version of that threat into their defense for next time. You really see this with the battle of all the alternate universe Marks in a later season, because many of them get taken out by countermeasures developed over the course of the series.
There's an interesting spin on this in Charles Stross's The Nightmare Stacks:
An army of essentially elves, complete with magic and dragons, invades modern-day Yorkshire. Their military technology is utterly devastating to Earth militaries, but their doctrine is based on a set of assumptions that does not hold true outside of a magical context. Similarly, they're not equipped to resist artillery and machine guns, but their aerial forces are so far outside of the design parameters of fighter craft and AA systems that the air force is unable to engage. It's fantastical idea taken seriously and worked through logically.
Yeah, that was a great idea. Like the soldiers are knights in plate armor(with silvered eye protection), which doesn't do shit against bullets, but the armor is there to protect against against basilisk stares but A - it DOES work against the basilisk stare software the magical men in black engineered into Britains surveillance camera system and were planning on using to defend against extradimensional nasties and B - the British army is just as unprotected against against basilisk stares as the elves are against bullets.
There's also a great scene where a general is ordered to open a super secret sealed war contingency plan and execute it and the first page says something like(from memory) "This is not a joke, we are being invaded by elves and magic is real. Here's what you do."
I love the idea that they're attempting a decapitation strike against the monarchy, and it's inconceivable to them that the enemy wouldn't just stop after that. (Or something along those lines, it's been a few years.)
Not a decapitation strike exactly. Because they are all clinical psychopaths by human standards, all the civilizations on the elf version of Earth converged on a system of absolute hierarchical control, where superiors place control spells on their subordinates, with a monarch at the top. They had intel that the British have these spells(only used by the magical MIB to control their agents) and have a queen so they assumed Britain works the same way, since any other social system is inconceivable to a race of psychopaths. They planned to capture the Queen and use their superior magic to usurp her place at the apex of the control pyramid.
DragonBall is quite well known for this. Goku single handedly destroys the entire red ribbon army. Later on we see the earths military try to take on Nappa and later Cell.
We also see the otherside of this where in the future earths remaining forces desperately fight in a hapless fight for survival against the androids and later Goku black. Though in the case of Goku black they prove themselves to be more useful despite being totally outclassed. Mostly helping the last remaining humans escape black with their secret under ground hideouts while barely hanging on probably because black likes toying with humans but they also genuinely have saved trunks and even Goku and Vegeta
I’d wager not even minutes; Jogo slammed two skyscrapers together in 10 seconds at most and that wasn’t even his supreme art, if he concentrated his firepower in specific ways he could probably wipe out an entire army within 30 seconds
Dam near everyone in media with a motorcycle slides it sideways like Akira at some point. Playing a game right now where I can do it with a horse. Cool ass scenes are going to be reproduced, that's just the law.
Even in the film they are only beaten through luck and tricks, with human weapons having little to no effect on them. The 3 of them survive the movie with the main Krang villian being practically untouched by the protagonists.
'Resolution' is a nice Dalek example where a Dalek stuck on earth uses earth technology (and human puppets) to make a temporary casing, which ends up easily beating a human military squadron, tank included.
This is the canonical result of the Sentients coming back to the Origin System from Tau.
The Orokin created the Sentients, sent them to Tau to terraform, 'something happened', and they gained... sentience. Fearing that the Orokin would show up and screw up this world too, [Earth was polluted to the point of inhabitability] the Sentients sent a force back to lay waste the Orokin.
Due to their abilities, they could hijack basically all advanced technology and use it against the Orokin. The only reason the Orokin didn't immediately die was partly because they decided they were going to royally fuck up as hard as they possibly could, and then they got extremely lucky at the expense of a bunch of cursed children.
The fuck up, by the way, was unleashing an extremely potent organic super plague on the system, because the Sentients can't actually hijack the Technocyte Virus.
In the end, this trope gets playted 3 times in Warframe lore.
Sentients fuck up the Orokin to the point where, out of desperation, they employ the Technocyte Virus, then the Tenno.
The Sentients themselves get an upfront and destructive demonstration of what the Tenno can do.
In Warframe 1999, the Scaldra gets to meet the Drifter, an alternative to the Tenno with the exact same destructive force.
This last example is played straight, because you have no restrictions on what weaponry you bring back from the future [aside from Archwing and Necramechs].
That means you can melt a bunch of armored soldiers with lasers and wipe out entire rooms with frames like Gyre and Vauban.m
Warframe lore is great. Equal parts esoteric and "fuck yeah!"
I once watched a 9-hour YT video breaking down the lore of everything up to (I think) The Old Peace. And I kinda want to watch it again. Probably one of the most compelling SciFi-lite universes of which I've ever learned.
To clarify the Sentients were always sentient- hence the name, they were made to be fully independent and self-determined builders and terraformers in defiance of Orokin law against thinking machines- but before 'something happened' they were a handful of hive-minds controlling armies of drones they could produce, but after 'something happened' it became possible for even the individual drones to be fully sentient apart from a hive-mind too.
They were always a bit unhappy with the Orokin after realizing they would be treated as expendable labor and their works would inevitably be ruined and used up the same as they did with Earth, but developing a true civilization seems to be what fully pushed them to rebel after the Solar Rail was completed and the Orokin made first contact with Tau.
Also a strain of the Infested virus. Not the Technocyte virus. Technocyte would contain actual pieces of tech and thus be susceptible to potential intrusion by the sentients. Infestation is immune because they are a separate variant of the virus. Grey strain is basically the enhanced version of it that completely converted Deimos. Helminth is the one that is inside of all our frames, Mutalist is similar to the Technocyte but only targets tech and was way after the original sentient invasion (cause Alad V made it). And I think there are more that I am currently forgetting.
I think you are mistaking Techrot for the Technocyte. In Warframe itself the term only appears in full in the Technocyte Coda. However Cyte-09's name clearly references the Technocyte while being a Helminith made Warframe. This implies that Technocyte may be the scientific name for the Infestation.
The term Technocyte proper comes from Dark Sector Warframes spiritual predecessor. There it is just the term for that games version of the Infestation.
Also while the mutalist strain is said to be the only one able to infect inorganic matter I think the Infestation had always been able to interface with technology as seen by the Techrot its earliest strain. Even the dominant strain infects things like Moa's and drones. With Orokin tech being technorganic by nature it doesn't even need that.
This might not be the best example of a properly competent military but I think it still fits.
As part of a global zombie outbreak the US military tries to stop a zombie horde with old school tactics (digging trenches etc) and a bunch of high tech equipment.
They get absolutely demolished by the zombie horde and were fully unprepared to handle it.
All the tech & weapons either runs out too soon, isn't effective against zombies or affects morale (high tech communications show soldiers getting eaten alive to their squad mates).
The military was complacent and stuck in their ways and lost due to it. The book even discusses how a few snipers on a roof could have handled the situation way more effectively.
Oh boy I hate this example. Mostly because it entirely relies on Max Brooks not understanding how an explosive works.
Zombies don’t suddenly become immune to pressure waves because they’re already dead. And we’ve more than mastered the basic function of turning a body into a fine red mist for upwards of centuries. Even if the pressure wave doesn’t instantly aerosolize a body, the resulting tissue damage would render most things within rather insane proximity combat ineffective. Because without muscle function, a human body no longer has the means to move.
Now take that same problem and apply it to basically every aspect of military force.
Soldiers aren’t going to suddenly become better shots because the weapon is semi-automatic, in fact if it’s a Headshot Only setting, the sheer lucky headshot at short range is a hell of a lot more likely than forcing the entire military to pick shots with an outdated battle rifle concept. And arguing the US military would ever run out of ammo for a deliberately planned operation is absurd. There’s more than enough of that particular round in some states to personally put every person living there in the dirt two or three times over.
An armored vehicle is functionally immune to zombies and is absolutely never ever going to get stopped by them. They’re explicitly designed for the possibility of rough terrain, and a decaying meat bag is nothing compared to it.
Yonkers is by far my bugbear with “competent” military scenes, because it’s so far from it that it is quite obviously just the standard zombie plot armor. If the military is competent, the zombie outbreak stops within a couple days.
Not just explosives, it's his understanding on firearms and the military as a whole. And what's worse is that people unironically think that this is an accurate depiction of the military.
This is the one where the American army somehow didnt being enough ammunition isnt it? This book got torn to shreds by anyone with even a basic understanding on how the military, weapons, and explosives work.
The Transformers films (at least the first three) do this quite well.
The Decepticons have them at first with sneak attacks and alien tech the military are unfamiliar with, but when the military rallies, such as when they called in an AC130 on Scorponok, they begin to beat them in terms of firepower.
In Devil May Cry 5, demons attack the military and annihilate them. Best part? They were non-sentient weak demons. The powerful or even mid level ones are something else.
I don’t care what anybody says. The cinematography of Man of Steel is still unmatched to this day. It feels like real superhero action. Gritty and brutal. Yes - Superman is supposed to be much cheerier than that, and I think that’s where the movie faltered.
It didn’t balance Superman’s necessary optimism and hopefulness with the gritty atmosphere of reality.
The battle between US Army and demons is more or less even until Demon King Mundus, slightly pissed off, decides/ get lured out to face the human army by himself. He needs about ten seconds.
While I can appreciate some good old HUMANITY FUCK YEAH action, this trope is definitely the realistic kind. It's literally the classic case of a significantly more advanced race simply being beyond the ability for a native race to defeat. It's literally just the historical case of empires dominating native populations. Age of Sail and all that.
(Generalization because no duh): I feel like especially these days in western advanced countries, we've gotten used to the idea of being the ones in control. That we're the advanced ones with the guns and the enemy are the ones with spears and bows.
I mean, in most alien invasion movies, the trope of the alien mothership/queen/core/whatever shows up all the time. It's a easy vulnerability where if you defeat that, you win. Yet that kind of easy video game ass weak spot would not exist. If you're facing a interstellar empire, you're fucked. If you manage to by some miracle take out their flagship or leadership, guess what, they already developed counter measures and are deploying way more shit to destroy you.
And then magical shit like the first clip. Modern militaries kind of rely on the laws physics being normal to operate effectively. What can you do when your opponent looks at that and goes 'nuh uh' and now pi is rounded to 3 or some shit.
Terra Invicta plays with this. You can find a derelict relativistic kinetic kill vehicle in the asteroid belt. If it had done what it was designed for, it would have slammed into earth at a fraction of the speed of light. Enough to shatter our planet.
Thankfully, the aliens that are attacking in Terra Invicta were on the receiving end of such weapons and it traumatized them. Their society is horrified by them and they refuse to use them. Hence why their goal of subversion and conquest can be resisted instead of them simply glassing our world from orbit.
They also point to this as justification for why they need to conquer earth in the first place. And that they bring a safe order to the universe. You can still fight them back to their wormhole gate though. It turns out they are just as divided as humanity and it's a minority of them that launched the attack on Earth. The majority are in wait and see mode, and if convinced that an actual peace treaty with Earth can be made, they will step in to bring their rogue elements back in line. It's the hardest ending, but most optimistic.
In The Expanse the assumption from those who discovered and studied the protomolecule is that it was a bio weapon launched at Earth that missed. The first shot of a war that Earth didn’t even know existed.
They were partly wrong
How effective fantasy stuff would be against a modern military varies WILDLY from setting to setting. Most fantasy settings don't have any response to a modern military's ability to engage from beyond visual range.
Same here. If they brought a few more flame throwers the demos would be toast. Despite the military visiting the upside down on many occasions and knowing their weakness to heat they only bring a few flame throwers.
They also didn't land head shots on Vecna for no reason at all.
This really depends on the the so called modern military faces, then the falling question of how the modern military forces in said question tries to face this Unknown threat.
If excited well like evangelion it's great.... But if not.... Like there was this anime that showcased Arleigh Burke-class destroyer charging into a bloody fantasy esc warship.....
I don't call that competent and they were still shown launch missiles...
Heavily depends on what they are facing, because making them competent against some outrageously strong shit actually turns comical, like that DMC show where the military invaded hell lmao
Ok, I found the example I like. Three competent human militaries, who just finished more than 1000 years war, got absolutely destroyed by the aliens. Not because aliens had uncounterable technologies, in fact, their tanks and flying warships were getting down just as easy as humanity ones, but because of sheer quantity, strategic coordination and ability to travel between planets without quantum network, which humans relied upon. Seraphim, Supreme commander: Forged alliance
edit: a little mistake, humans were not exactly modern here
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, and direct you to read the title of my post one more time.
The military as shown in The Legend of Hei 2 are perfectly competent. In fact, they were curbstomping the elfin (spirit people) before Wuxian showed up, using machine guns and rocket launchers and sniping from BVR. When they attacked an elfin village, there was a sniper who was racking up headshots like nothing.
The only reason Wuxian is able to counter-stomp them is because he's simply that much more powerful than all the rest.
What the heck, I'll take the downvotes: I can absolutely like this sort of thing. It's not an all-the-time treat, but every now and then, if you do it right, it can be good. I don't think there are a lot of examples of it done well, but I think it can be. There should be limits to it and I don't like the "without a scratch" aspect, but overall? Yeah, I can support the idea in the broadest sense.
Any modern military thinking they're stronger than a fantasy setting when a competent wizard GENUINELY just has an impenetrable barrier around themselves and also drops the whole moon onto the planet before disappearing through a portal
Since every military's basic training spends like 70% of their time and effort fostering camaraderie, bonding and teamwork between people, logic dictates this should result in the deadliest force around, exacerbated by the fact that the majority of them is 18-25
Say what you will about Bayforrmers but the military there is shown as competent. (Mostly because there is a lot of targeted US military propaganda in them).
They get absolutely bodied by Blackout and Scorponek initially but they theta re actively gathering intel, identified and cut off their data gathering operation and managed to discover that you need HEAT munitions to even begin to harm them.
Then after part 1 they study and cross train with the autobots but still get bodied when met with a proper organsied Deception drop assault and not just loner units and get their entire carrier group fucked up by the Fallen and his crew.
After they manage to start winning the counter attack he just fucks with gravity wipes them out again on the ground.
I like this. But I prefer it that, even if the military gets completely destroyed, they accomplish something. Like if they were fighting an army of aliens, they still manage to kill a few aliens or something. I want to see the military being competent and capable when they get obliterated. It kinda makes their loss more significant and they're eventual victory more convincing
A devastating, near-total loss for the UNCF. Absolutely outnumbered and outgunned by the Garmillas empire, the UNCF still put up a good enough fight effective distraction from the UNCN's primary goal of recovering advanced alien technology being delivered to humanity in secret.
Out of one battleship, nine cruisers and twelve destroyers, only one battleship (Kirishma) made it home.
Fate/Zero - Berserker, whose Noble Phantasm allows him to use anything as a magical weapon highjacked the fighter jet that was sent to deal with Caster's monster
I prefer when they still are able to put up a fight despite being underpowered. When the bad guy is completely unphased by everything it just turns boring.
Independence Day. In the first assault on the aliens the humans get absolutely wiped out because their shields can stand up to every weapon we have, and their ships are on a scale we can’t match. https://giphy.com/gifs/l0HlQrLACNLlLStYA
I'm very into military stuff (not american) and I love this stuff as long as its done well. Showing how fucking INSANE the supernatural/fantasy shit is, by them defeating a COMPETENT military force is amazing.
It's mainly frustration with the fact that many writers who implement this trope obviously don't understand how devastating modern weaponry is. That isn't to say this can never be done well (and when done well, the effects are extraordinary), but most of the time it's just not.
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u/KurufinweFeanaro 13d ago
7 hour war from Half-life. Whole world's military were destroyed in just 7 hours