Hollywood Tactics: Difference between revisions

* Charging with light cavalry exactly once, in the middle of the enemy lines. Light cavalry are usually used for flanking, since their attacks lack either the power or the sheer crushing momentum to penetrate enemy lines. Heavy cavalry such as knights would often strike the center of the enemy lines, but they relied extensively on their armor, momentum, and the great reach their weapons and mounts granted them; even so, knights preferred to use combined arms tactics and softened up the enemy with missile fire before they charged and even heavy cavalry preferred to hit the flanks.

* Following in the vein of old-style fights, [[Call That a Formation|complete and total lack of formation in armies that should have them.]] Soldiers would not usually break off from their formations to duel individually; battles were basically two masses of humans pushing against each other until one gave up. If you're dueling enemy soldiers unsupported, something's gone horribly wrong, unless you're part of a [[The Iliad|Bronze Age-type culture]]. Skirmishers are an exception to this; these are lighter troops that are designed basically to [[I Shall Taunt You|irritate the enemy with minor attacks]] so that their formation will be off balance when the main attack arrives (they are the martial equivalent of a left jab in boxing). The musketry equivalent of this is soldiers in the middle of a bayonet charge stopping to fire, sometimes even dropping to one knee. Another exception that crops up are Iron Age cultures, like the Celts and Dacians, that placed high value on individual heroism on the battlefields. The discipline and organization of Roman armies led them to victory while being outnumbered in several battles.

** 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 screwup and a showoff 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 {{spoiler|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.

* In ''[[Star Trek: Nemesis]]'', Enterprise security is fighting a Reman boarding party - both sides ducking behind conveniently-placed pylons and only coming out of cover to take a few pot-shots at the general direction of the opposing side. Maybe it's just me, but somehow the words "hand grenade" spring to mind. Even if they don't have anything equivalent to the concussion grenades in the future, they could use, say, an overloaded phaser, for crying out loud!

** The old series often mentioned that to take a ship you needed to capture the bridge and engineering simultaneously or else the defenders would flood the life support with anesthetic gas and knock out everyone. This is never mentioned in the films.

* ''[[Braveheart]]''. Historically, the Scottish army during the Wars of Independence used massed pike formations known as schiltrons, combined with use of rough, often swampy terrain and the over-eagerness of Anglo-Norman knights, a tactic which was used successfully at the Battles of Stirling Bridge and Banockburn, but broken up by archers and heavy cavalry at Falkirk. The movie instead depicts every battle as wild, berseker charges across an open field into the English lines, succcess or failure being apparently determined for the most part by narrative necessity. It does acknowledge the use of massed pikes at Stirling Bridge, but in response to a single cavalry charge, and they are soon abandoned.

** The English charge at Stirling Bridge is a peculiar aversion in that it is actually ''less'' stupid than the historical events; the film depicts a charge across flat ground at a foe apparently lacking polearms, while historically it was a charge across rough ground and across a narrow bridge at massed pike, ending exactly as you might expect.

* In ''[[Saving Private Ryan]]'', the squad comes across a machine gun nest apparently operating all by itself and decide to take it out. However, despite having the element of surprise ''and'' a sniper, the Captain orders them to charge it over open ground directly into the killing zone the Germans had created. ''And'' he sends the unarmed Medic up the middle for no reason. The troops start [[What the Hell, Hero?]]-ing before they even ''start'' the attack. To make it worse, this very "charge the MG nest" strategy had several of his men killed on D-Day. Possibly the scene is meant to show the Captain succumbing to PTSD.

** Then there's the film's climax, where an unimportant and replacable bridge is defended at all costs. Major Winters, of ''[[Band of Brothers (TV series)|Band of Brothers]]'' fame, said he never would have done something that pointless, to which he was told [[Reality Is Unrealistic|it wasn't dramatic enough]].