Curb Stomp Battle/Film

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Suspiria. The head witch was invisible while summoning the zombie of Suzy's friend Sara to kill Suzy. However, her powers of invisibility weren't as strong as she thought, as an outline of her form started appearing, giving Suzy the chance to kill her with a single stab to the neck, before the zombie could reach Suzy. She died without any struggle.
  • Boogie Nights features a literal example in which Rollergirl demonstrates an alternate use for her skates.
  • In Kill Bill 2, The Bride has one of these when she kills Bill, the Big Bad of the series in seconds by hitting him 5 times, causing his heart to explode.
  • In the climactic fight of the prison boxing movie Undisputed (2002) Monroe takes a beating in the first few minutes but the rest of the fight played this straight.
  • Wolverine and Sabertooth fight three times during X Men Origins Wolverine, with Sabertooth getting the upper hand the first time, the second ends indecisively, while in the third, Wolverine beats ten shades of sunshine out of Sabertooth in around ten seconds.
  • In Star Trek the Motion Picture, V'Ger destroys three Klingon battlecruisers without breaking stride.
  • Captain Nero's ship, the Narada, effortlessly wrecks over fifty starships (47 Klingon, then 7 Starfleet, all offscreen, plus the Kelvin at the start) in the 2009 Star Trek movie. Pretty amazing for a mining ship, even one from where (and more importantly, when) it came from and with time to prepare.
    • And Spock does this to anyone who insults his mother.
    • Read the "countdown". Narada is a simple mining ship plus reverse engineered Borg tech. The tentacles were not in the original design.
  • Tony Stark's Power Suit vs. a group of batshit crazy terrorists armed with powerful automatic weapons, grenade launchers, and tanks = Ridiculously easy Stark victory, usually in under 6 full minutes. The more he upgrades the armor, the more epic the curb-stomp.
  • Steven Seagal is known for his characters dealing these out due to Seagal's fondness for playing an Invincible Hero. The trope is almost averted in Marked for Death -- Screwface is one of the few (only?) villains to actually give Seagal any real trouble.
  • Similarly, the death of Lo Pan in Big Trouble in Little China. It's all in the reflexes!
  • One ruined cargo bay. One endless horde of psychotic, berserk space pirates. One brain-damaged teenage girl. Guess who wins without a scratch.
  • Similar to the above example is Leeloo in The Fifth Element vs a large array of mooks.
  • The Kraken attacking the merchant ship in Pirates of the Caribbean can hardly be called a battle. It resembles the Kraken grabbing into the ship for a snack of sailors and then crushing it like an empty soda can once it's finished.
  • Most of the fights in Ip Man that the titular character is in. The film was explicitly meant to glorify him and be all nationalistic, though, plus the choreography is superb, avoiding any potential boredom. The opponents he Curb Stomps usually were Curb Stomping their opponents before he shows up, also helping to reduce the boredom and make the wins more impressive. An arguably deliberate Lampshade Hanging occurs in the final fight against General Miura, where Ip Man caps off by pinning the other guy against a pole and going to town with a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown while scenes of his practice on a training dummy are interposed.
  • Mr. Miyagi's fight with Johnny and the other Kobra Kai, in The Karate Kid.
    • A better example would be Miyagi's fights with the other BigBads. He pwns all of them without them ever laying a hand on him. Extra points go to his fight with Kreese, which is almost a Single-Stroke Battle.
  • Last of the Mohicans: Magua, who throughout the film has shown himself to be a total Badass by killing pretty much everyone he wants to kill, squares off with Uncas (himself a pretty fair badass) for the fate of a pretty girl and kills the poor boy with ease. Then Uncas's elderly father rushes forward for some payback, and takes Magua apart in seconds.
  • Neo's final battle with Smith in The Matrix was all of that. Five minutes after having had to run for his life (oh, and getting an entire mag from a .50 Desert Eagle emptied into him at point blank range), he's wiping the floor with Smith literally with one hand behind his back. It makes the earlier curb stomp battle between Morpheus and Agent Smith all the more worth it.
    • Neo starts getting used to being able to do this: in fact, his inability to curbstomp three Agents at once leads to a raised eyebrow, a muttered, "Upgrades...", and actually having to use both hands. Later, in order to even fight him to a draw, Smith has to Zerg Rush him with dozens of clones. This in turn sets up exactly how MUCH power Smith had gained when he is confident of winning in a one on one duel.
  • Pretty much all fight scenes in Watchmen are like this. The bestexample is Dr. Manhattan vs the North Vietnamese army. The poor saps barely get to run a few steps before getting disintegrated.
  • In Equilibrium, when Preston faces Brandt in "Father's" office, Brandt virtually exudes confidence and generally seems like a worthy foe (and actually fought Preston to a standstill in an earlier scene). Preston then literally slices his face off in about two seconds. The following fight with DuPont can at least be called a fight, but still doesn't seem too challenging to Preston, either.
  • Kurt Wimmer loves these. In Ultraviolet, Violet squares off against a dozen fellow hemophage assassins. The other Mooks were just humans, but these guys have all the same supernatural powers that she does. And they do the same thing she does. And there's a dozen of them. All of them combined should present some kind of threat, right? Right? After two seconds, we find out no.
  • In A Christmas Story Ralphie knocks down the bigger and older bully Scut Farkas and proceeds to sit on him and pummel him.
  • Blade does this after drinking quite a lot of blood in both the first film and the sequel.
  • Star Wars:
  • In The 13th Warrior we don't have this. In fact, one of the hero warriors seems to be getting his ass kicked in a duel. Then the reveal as one of the other heroes nods to the dueling one and he just waits for his opponent to approach and lops his head off. Seems the entire fight was a Curb Stomp Battle that he pretended was close to teach the villagers to respect the heroes.
  • in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones is faced with a skilled swordsman in the midst of a more involved fight/chase scene. Obviously too fed up to deal with him at the moment, Indy pulls out a gun and shoots him, effectively putting an end to the fight before it could get started. The legend is that it was initially scripted to be a fight, but Harrison Ford was suffering badly from diarrhea and improvised to cut the scene short and remove any potentially unpleasant running around.
  • In The Godfather, Sonny delivers one of these, complete with gratuitous whacking of the head with a trash can lid, to his sister's abusive husband, who puts up a hilariously pathetic retaliation and winds up utterly emasculated in front of his pals.
  • The short film Bambi Meets Godzilla.
  • Godzilla's fight against his In Name Only counterpart "Zilla" in Godzilla: Final Wars lasts less than a minute. Watch it here.
    • Godzilla was then on the receiving end of a CSB when Monster X changed into Keizer Ghidorah. Gotengo's interference was all that saved him.
    • From the minute Godzilla gets free in Final Wars, to almost the very end could very well be considered this. This whole movie seems dedicated to this trope in general, the earth itself even gets it.
  • The final punch-up in The Forbidden Kingdom. The audience sees it coming, but the gang leader certainly doesn't.
  • In Troy, the young and feckless Paris challenges hardened warrior Menelaus to Combat by Champion, and gets an asskicking. His defeat is so absolute it ends with him literally crawling towards his brother to get away.
    • In the first fight in Troy, Achilles runs towards the enemy champion, dodges two thrown spears on the way, reaches him, kills him, and slows down again without breaking pace.
  • In Transformers, Jazz made a valiant effort to attack Megatron and keep him away from the others, but it did not end well. Optimus Prime does this most memorably against Bonecrusher.
    • Most fights in the second movie go this way. But when the Decepticons are wading headlong into the combined air-ground fire of entire battalions of a military that is equipped to fight them and is working alongside the Autobots, that's a given.
    • Starscream vs Ironhide and Ratchet in the Mission City battle. The two Autobots are temporarily taken down in ten seconds while Starscream didn't even scratch his paint job.
    • In Transformers 3, the final fight between Optimus Prime and Megatron turned out this way. Megatron won't be coming back this time.
  • In G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, the Cobra attack against the NATO convoy is a perfect example. Every shot from the Cobra gunship annihilates a NATO vehicle, their heavy machine gun bullets just bounce off of it, and when they fire missiles at it the gunship spins around in midair and shoots the missiles down. Once the Cobra Vipers disembark, they perform an Unflinching Walk through assault rifle fire. It doesn't turn into an actual fight until the Joes arrive.
  • In Avatar the first major fight is this, with the RDA wiping out the Na'vi Hometree (and, unbeknownst to them, killing their leader in the process) without so much as a single casualty. Indeed the only downside to that fight for them, beyond seriously pissing off the Na'vi, is causing a couple of Heel Face Turns in their own troops.
    • The final battle of the movie is this in two parts. Roughly 1000 Na'vi cavalry troops charge less than 100 humans with guns and AMP suits, while another 1000 Na'vi on their banshees divebomb onto a human bomber convoy. It doesn't go well for the Na'vi. Part 2 starts when the whole planet intervenes in the battle against the humans. A sudden superfauna stampede eliminates the human ground forces within minutes, and another 10,000 banshees join the dogfight in the sky, destroying all the gunships escorting the bomber with no resistance.
  • The Big Bad of The Lost Skeleton Returns Again vs The Dreaded Magdraklorp. The Skeleton is crushed to dust before he can finish his Badass Boast

The Skeleton: Get ready for the battle of the centur- *crush*

  • As a deliberate parody of action movies, the titular character in You Don't Mess With the Zohan is a literal One-Man Army to the point that the Israeli counter-terrorist unit constantly tricks him into taking out terrorists all on his own without even giving him a gun. At the start of the movie, Zohan is shown to be eliminating an entire terrorist cell by himself.
  • The battle between the SEALs and Hummel's forces in The Rock.
  • Taken. All of Taken. Liam Neeson curb stomps the entirety of Paris, except for his fight with The Dragon.
  • In a comedic example, Everett McGill from O Brother, Where Art Thou? picks a fight with his ex-wife's fiancée and ends up getting punched repeatedly while he fails to land a single blow. Of course, it doesn't help that his fighting stance leaves him wide open.
  • John W. Creasy, played by Denzel Washington, vs. oh, pretty much the entire corrupt Mexico City police force in Man On Fire.
  • The title character from Book of Eli does this to most of the bad guys he comes across.
  • In the sequel to Disney's Aladdin, Return of Jafar, Genie Jafar utterly curbstomps the weakened Genie -- during his Villain Song no less!
  • Happens to Castor Oyl in the live action Popeye movie when he signs up for one round with a professional boxer - you wouldn't really expect it go go any other way though, especially when said boxer is named Oxblood Oxheart.
  • The final fight between The three protagonists and Sam at the end of Kidulthood. Sam spends a few minutes beating the hell out of Trife, when he gets attacked from behind by Jay, who is thrown on the floor and beaten down in under a minute, before Sam shoves the third protagonist aside with little effort. The other twenty or so people present are too scared to anything. Although, when Sam attacks Alisa, Trife Curbstomps him back.
  • The first time Danny goes into an underground prize fight in Unleashed, he is pitted against the reigning champion. Since all fights are death matches, and this guy has been the champ for a while, you can expect this fight to be brutal. You would be wrong. As soon as it starts, Danny punches him in the throat three times in quick succession, and the guy keels over.
  • In the introductory scene in Darkman warehouse owner Eddie Black and his dozens of workers thoroughly frisk Durant and his small handful of goons. Eventually, it is revealed that Durant had an ace up his sleeve, the wooden leg of an invalid gang member was actually a machine gun. With some creative acquiring on site after the initial volley of bullets, it is revealed that most of Durant's gang is left standing (possibly one casualty). The only one left standing on the other side is Eddie himself (and not for much longer).
  • In Bad Day at Black Rock, Spencer Tracy delivers an epic beatdown to a thug played by Ernest Borgnine. Made all the more awesome by the fact that Tracy's character is a Handicapped Badass, and he is literally fighting the thug singlehanded.
  • In The a Team, Pike literally believes himself to be the toughest guy on the planet and takes great pleasure in beating down an (at the time) pacifistic B.A. Baracus. At the end of the film, B.A. promptly shows him how wrong he is in this belief.
  • The Princess Bride: The book makes it more explicit: Inigo Montoya kills four of the best swordsmen in the world in five. Seconds. Flat.
  • Tron: Legacy: Rinzler effortlessly lays a smackdown on of Sam in the most showboating way possible when they first meet ("why do I feel like I just got dunked on?").
  • Big Daddy does this in Kick-Ass when he storms the Big Bad's warehouse and kills about eight men very quickly and brutally, without so much as a scratch on him, all of which was later viewed on hidden camera.
  • The Lord of the Rings: A battalion of treeherders vs one of the two most powerful wizards in the world, with the wizard having home-fortress advantage. The ents win.
  • Space Jam has a brief one where the Monstars are initially scoring so often against the Tune Squad that the score ticker spins out a label stating "Kinda one-sided, isn't it?"
  • In Thor, The Destroyer does this to the Warriors Three and Sif. When Thor arrives, he turns the tables around. The same thing happens earlier when Thor fights (flies straight through the head of) the giant ice monster.
  • Apollo Creed's fight against Ivan Drago in Rocky IV. Apollo, being past his prime, was no match for the juiced-up Soviet.
  • The final fight scene in Gladiator is a great example of this trope done well, when mortally wounded Maximus methodically, painfully, and extremely satisfyingly takes Commodus apart in front of the entirety of Rome, with Commodus landing only one minor blow early on.
  • Aliens sets the Colonial Marines up as well-trained, hardened badasses who will probably fare much better than the crew of the Nostromo. A few minutes in once they reach the alien nest, nearly 3/4ths of the squad is killed or cocooned.
    • The marines dealing with a lot more than just one Alien had something to do with it, too. Once they have an idea of what they're up against, the survivors put up a much more valiant fight the second go-round.
  • An example occurs in the Hitman movie. Even ends with a very literal and abrupt curb stomp by 47. Most others in that movie are curb stomp battles as well, but not so literal.
  • In Serenity, River does this. Twice. Summarised quite nicely by this xkcd strip.
  • In The Avengers, Loki makes the monumental mistake of trying to intimidate the Hulk with boasts about Loki's godlike status and powers. What follows can only be described as the Hulk picking Loki up by his legs and literally wiping the floor with him.

Hulk: Puny god!

  • Lee vs O'Hara in Enter the Dragon. We're led to believe that O'Hara will put up a reasonable fight, being The Dragon and all. Instead, he doesn't even get the courtesy of getting a punch in (well, OK, he gets a kick, but Lee is just too quick for him)
  • The Last Starfighter has these all over the place. Alex almost gets curb-stomped by the first assassin to show up at his home (until Centauri shows up and rescues him), convincing him to go back and fight, until he finds out the Rylos got so thoroughly curb-stomped in his absence that he, Grig, and their prototype Gunstar are the only defense left for the entire Star League. Only after he curb-stomps a few enemy spy ships does he realize that he really IS good at this, and manages to curb-stomp the entire Ko-Dan armada (including command ship) in about two passes.
  • The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Cranky Kong gives Mario powerups to prevent the duel between him and Donkey Kong becoming this.
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