Tempting Fate/Film

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Tempting Fate in Film include:

Subpages

Other Examples

  • A crooked police lieutenant to Jack Napier near Batman's beginning: "The future? You mean when you run the show? You ain't got no future, Jack!" (This culminates in an Ironic Echo at the factory, when Napier kills the lieutenant with a single shot.)
  • Taken to ridiculous heights in Hot Shots. One character, appropriately named "Dead Meat" Thompson receives a visit from his wife as he's preparing to fly a training mission, and what follows is an enormous list of things he has to live for, including his beautiful wife, that he's carrying his (unsigned) life insurance papers with him, and that he's figured out the real culprits in the Kennedy assassination but hasn't told anyone and has the evidence on him. No, he doesn't make it back home...
    • He also breaks a mirror, walks under a ladder, and has a black cat cross his path. Also, his kids are scraping asbestos off the pipes back home, so it's apparently hereditary.
  • Happens subtly in Full Metal Jacket. "I am f**king bored to death, man!" Not for long, you aren't.
  • Babylon A.D.. The High Priestess of the Noelite sect is on the phone with Russian mob boss Gorsky.

High Priestess: Mr Gorsky, when I kill, I kill for good.
Gorsky: Are you threatening me?
High Priestess: Bless your soul.
Gorsky: You'll need a nuke to kill me!
(Gorsky's security system detects an incoming missile)
Gorsky: Bitch...

Alfalfa:(while running around in his underwear) Things can't possibly get any worse!
 (turns around and runs straight into Butch and Woim)
Alfalfa:Then the clouds opened up and God said, "I hate you, Alfalfa!"

  • In The Film of the Book of A Clockwork Orange, Alex is being interviewed while being fed by the widower of the woman he raped in front of him. During the interview, he says, "I get the feeling something bad is going to happen." Two seconds later, he's out like a light.
  • In The Dark Knight Saga, the Joker is shooting at an armored truck using handguns and a shotgun when someone on the inside remarks that he's going to need something a lot bigger to get through it. Cue the rocket launcher.
    • Later in that same scene, the Joker's semi and the Batpod are playing chicken when Batman fires something. The Joker says, "He missed!" -- except what Batman fired was a cable, which he uses to pull a snowspeeder and jackknife the truck into the air.

Batman: One man or the entire mob? He can wait.
Maroni: Some two-bit whackjob, wears a cheap purple suit and makeup. He's nobody, he's not our problem....

  • Though the rest of the cast are hardly innocent of this, Juno tempts fate at least five times in The Descent:

"Everything's going to be fine. Better -- it's going to be great!"
"You want adventure Holly, when have I ever let you down? Tomorrow's going to be awesome."
"Relax, I've never been lost in my life!"
"We'll be fine."
"It's about us. Getting back to what we used to be."

    • After Sarah becomes stuck in a tight cave tunnel, Beth tries to calm her down by essentially telling her that this is the worst thing that will happen to her, and everything will be alright after she calms down and works herself free. Things get MUCH worse.
      • Particularly cruel of fate in this instance, as when Beth says "the worst thing that could've happened to you has already happened" it seems like she's referring to the brutal deaths of her husband and daughter. Fate looks at this poor woman and says "Nope. Better kill all of her friends too."
  • Fantastic Four gives Reed Richards the line, "A few days in space, what's the worst that could happen?", sarcastically echoed by Ben after turning into The Thing.
  • Two perfect examples played straight in Hellboy:

Hellboy: We'll be OK so long as we don't separate.
(cue huge spiked walls rising from the ground separating the group into teams)

Hellboy: I'll be fine. Hey, how big could it be?
(cue corridor-sized tentacles reaching around to grab Hellboy and pull him into the fray)

  • King Kong: "Don't be alarmed, ladies and gentlemen. Those chains are made of chrome steel!"
  • Labyrinth
    • Sarah tells the Goblin King that his Labyrinth is "a piece of cake." The results are unfortunate.
    • "It's not fair!" also means something has gone awry. Jareth even lampshades it at one point: "You say that so often. I wonder what your basis for comparison is."
    • While passing through the goblin city Sarah says "I think we're gonna make it" and Hoggle replies "Piece of cake". The goblins immediately appear and attack.
  • In The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Aragorn asks the Pirates to turn back. Their response: "Ha! and whose army?" Cue the Undead Army's arrival.
    • "No man can kill the Nazgûl" Sorry dude, that's a woman.
      • And a hobbit. Merry struck the first, and arguably most important, blow.
        • Um...it gave her an opening, sure, but I think the king would have recovered. I'm pretty sure the blow that killed him was the one to the face.
          • In the film, probably. In the book, Tolkien makes it pretty clear the nature of the sword Merry was using, specially created to slay Nazgul, made it very likely more important than, yes, even the sword to the face.
    • "Not by the hand of man shall he fall." Oh, that makes him sooo much safer. They only left out, let's see, women, children, hobbits, elves, wizards, An ear infection, giant eagles, Ents, Sauron, other Nazgûl, dragons...in short, many, many things that are more likely to kill him than a puny man and a few that aren't.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: The Battle of Helm's Deep is going well, initially, and King Theoden asks, "Is this it? Is this all you can conjure, Saruman?" The Uruk-Hai then suicide-bomb the Deeping Wall (in a world which has never seen explosives before), and Theoden gets an Oh Crap moment.
    • Theoden also did this before the battle when he said, "No army has ever breached the deeping wall or set foot inside the Hornburg."
  • Lampshaded in The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2004). Ranger Brad gets killed moments after warning everyone about the horribly mutilated farmer that had been found earlier.

Ranger Brad: Say, I must be crazy walking around in these woods at night with a horrible mutilation practically around the corner. Oh well.

  • In Mousehunt, after the auction ends disastrously, Nathan Lane tries to reassure the auction goers by saying "This house will last forever!" Just after he says that, the house collapses indignantly.
  • The Mummy Trilogy: "It's just a book. No harm ever came from reading a book." Oh, yes it can, Evey. Up to and including The End of the World as We Know It.
    • Lampshaded in The Mummy Returns.

Evelyn: It's just a box. No harm ever came from opening a box.
Rick: Yeah, right, and no harm ever came from reading a book. You remember how that one went?

  • Pearl Harbor. A Japanese bomb lands next to a sailor and doesn't go off. Not realising the tiny spinning propeller at the back of the bomb is the fuse, he shouts "It's a dud... IT'S A DUD!" KA-BOOOOM!
  • In The Princess Bride, Westley and Buttercup are discussing the final dangers of the fire swamp:

Buttercup: (while in the Fire Swamp) Westley, what about the R.O.U.S.'s?
Westley: Rodents of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist... (Westley is attacked by a R.O.U.S.)

    • To be fair, Wesley had already seen the R.O.U.S.'s, he was just trying to make sure Buttercup didn't freak out.
  • In the Cold War Alternate History movie Red Dawn, Soviet paratroopers have just landed in an American town. We see a bumper sticker saying THEY CAN HAVE MY GUN WHEN THEY PRY IT FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS! The camera then moves down to the owner of the car lying dead with a Colt .45 in his hands, which is then souvenired by an enemy paratrooper.
  • Star Trek (2009). Scotty says he's going to beam Kirk and Spock into what he thinks is a cargo hold "where there shouldn't be anyone around". It's no surprise at all when they materialize in the midst of a control room full of armed Romulans.
    • Supposedly, what Scotty beamed them into was originally the cargo bay, but after the Narada was rammed in the beginning of the film some changes had to be made.
    • A more positive example when Pike says to Kirk, "I dare you to do better."
  • The Film of the Book of Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears apparently changed the villains from the book's Islamic extremists to neo-Nazis because the film-makers considered a large-scale terror attack on the US by Islamic extremists to be too implausible. Ooops.
    • To give an idea of how ooopsy that actually was, the film shoot was wrapped in June 2001. Another couple of months and they might have had time for a quick rewrite.
    • Other sources claim the change was made to avoid angering groups such as CAIR. Who would soon have other issues to worry about.
  • Tremors: Earl and Valentine have resisted temptation (free beer) and left Perfection, Nevada for a new life. As they're driving along Valentine says, "Now there's nothing, and I mean nothing, between us and Bixby!" Seconds later, they see Edgar Deems high up on a power pylon. They stop to help him, and later events force them into a battle to the death against the Graboids.
  • Young Frankenstein:

(Froederick and Igor are exhuming a dead criminal)
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: What a filthy job.
Igor: Could be worse.
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: How?
Igor: Could be raining.
(it starts to pour)

  • James Bond villains do it sometimes. One of the best examples is evil hacker Boris Grishenko in GoldenEye, who, after surviving the destruction of the Janus Base and his boss's demise, delivers his Catch Phrase "I am invincible!" -- scant seconds before huge vats of liquid nitrogen decide to disgorge their contents in his direction, flash-freezing him to death on the spot.
    • The opening of the movie with the Dam infiltration:

Alec Trevelyan: Half of everything is luck, James.
James Bond: And the other half?
(alarm goes off)
Alec Trevelyan: Fate.

Nick: That's it, only three of them?
Roache: No, there's more. (showing more eggs in vicinity)
Nick: Only 20? I think it's much more than this.
(soldiers light the stadium)
Roache: Start counting.

Leia: It could be worse.
(ominous roar)
Han: It's worse.

    • And then there's the sarlacc's description, when Han finds out he will be terminated immediately:

Han: Good. I hate long waits.
[...]
C-3PO: In his belly, you will find a new definition of pain and suffering, as you are slowly digested over a thousand years.

    • And:

Tarkin: Evacuate? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances.

Nate: There's nothing I won't do with this long, long life of mine... That's what's great about being young. So much time to do great things.
(later)
Dewey: You know how mad Pa gets when we play with his machetes.
Nate: Come on. There's nothing wrong with a little machete-fighting.

    • The machete fight was after they played catch with live snakes and jousted on tractors.
  • Back to The Future Part II: The future has been saved, and Doc is trying to land the DeLorean during a very heavy lightning storm. Marty warns him to be careful: "You don't want to get struck by..." Guess what happens next.
  • Return of the Living Dead:

Freddy: These things don't leak, do they?
Frank: Hell, no! This was built by the Army Corps of Engineers!
(slaps tank, which instantly leaks)

  • A pretty blatant example occurs in Battlefield Baseball. The Gedo coach wonders out loud, while looking around, if there is a Worthy Opponent that was brave enough to assault his headquarters. Cue Jubeh, arriving at the scene with an explosion, followed by The Cavalry to do exactly that.
  • The first Resident Evil. Right after entering the code to open a door, J.D. says "See how easy that was?" Seconds later he's dragged to his death by zombies behind the door.
  • The raptors in Jurassic Park are contained, right? "Unless they figure out how to open doors." Guess what happens. Taken to ridiculous extremes in the Riff Trax.
  • Ministry of Fear (1944), the Film Noir spy movie by Fritz Lang. The Nazi spy says "You wouldn't shoot your own brother" to his sister as he escapes out the door. There's the crack of a shot and a hole appears in the door; moments later his dead body tumbles through.
  • The Great Race. While Max and Professor Fate are on a small iceberg, Max thinks there may be a storm.

Professor Fate: You thimble-headed gherkin, do you realize the odds against a storm in this part of the ocean at this time of year? 100-to-1.
(thunder, immediately starts to rain)

Lloyd Cramden: We've just had our first break. According to this dispatch I just received, our team of agents has them cornered! At any second... (gets another message) It was a trap. We just lost another team of agents.

  • The Golden Child. When Jarrell is taking the test to obtain the Dagger he says, "This is a piece of cake!" Not long after that he almost falls to his death and a rope bridge explodes.
  • Ocean's Twelve: Tess has to bail out most of the cast by impersonating her own actress. Matt Damon's character tries to reassure her that no-one she's going to run into actually knows Julia Roberts, and the last thing anyone will be is personal. In walks Bruce Willis, As Himself. Their reactions are priceless.
  • In the rather bad action movie Titanic 2 someone had the brilliant idea to name a ship Titanic and set it on the same route as the original. Things get worse not too long after.
  • Enchanted: Robert tells Giselle that if a relationship has issues at the beginning, it never changes. While Giselle ended up making Robert angry earlier, she ends up getting angry at Robert and she ends up loving the feeling. So things do end up improving between them. A lot.
  • Bob Hoskins delivers the line "I tell you: this is gonna be one lovely day," just before his car gets T-boned by a garbage truck and then riddled with bullets in the movie Unleashed.
    • And at the end of the movie, he gives us the second instance of this trope when he has his nice car parked in an alley during the final battle, saying "This will keep her out of harm's way." Guess what happens.
  • Lampshaded, like so many other horror movie tropes, in Scream.

Randy: Never, ever, ever, under any circumstances, say "I'll be right back." 'Cause you won't be back.
Stu: I'm gettin' another beer, you want one?
Randy: Yeah, sure.
Stu: I'll be right back!
Randy: You see, you push the laws, and you end up dead, okay? I'll see you in the kitchen with a knife.

  • Mystery Team: "He is NOT a murderer!"
  • This trope is featured prominently in the short film from the Nestle Philippines Anthology entitled Sign Seeker, where the protagonist spends the entire morning tempting fate, looking for specific "Signs" from the universe to signal to him if today is the day he will ask the girl he likes if she would like to go on a date with him. This is one of the rare, positive examples of this trope: it plays the trope straight and is still funny while NOT making the person who is tempting fate miserable in the process.
  • G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra offers a classic example of an enemy who appears to be retreating, but is actually just getting out of the way of something worse. At the climax of the rather lengthy Paris chase scene, Snake Eyes abruptly lets go of the Cobra operatives' car after hanging on to it for the entire chase.

Baroness: He gave up!
Storm Shadow: He never gives up.
WHAM! [their car gets brutally T-boned by an oncoming train]

  • From the first Harry Potter movie: When Harry's abusive uncle claims "there's no such thing as magic!"
    • Later in the same movie, when the same character claims that because it's Sunday, they're not going to have to deal with any letters. Cue several owls swarming the house and filling it with letters.
  • Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Grandpa Joe and Charlie are in the Fizzy Lifting Drink room. Grandpa Joe says "A swallow won't hurt us!". After they each take a swallow, they float into the air and almost get chopped to pieces by a huge exhaust fan in the ceiling. Laser-Guided Karma kicks in when it's revealed at the end that the only reason why they survived is because out of all the 5 kids, 4 of who lost by their own vices, Charlie was the only one who refused to give Arthur Slugworth, ostensibly a rival confectioner, a sample of the Everlasting Gobstopper--and as it turns out, Slugworth was actually a Wonka employee used for this Secret Test of Character.
  • Cyberdyne in the original universe of The Terminator (before the T-800, Sarah, John, and an employee of the company terminated the company with extreme prejudice in a well-intentioned yet failed attempt at preventing The End of the World as We Know It) found out the hard way that naming your supercomputer "Skynet" is just as taboo as naming your ship "Titanic".
  • Zombi 3 has the Genre Blind General Morton, with the help of Coleman and Cheney, burn a corpse infected with the Death One virus despite the environmental hazard warnings of Dr. Holder and his assistant, brushing off their concerns with the cheesy one-liner "That's ridiculous, pure Science Fiction!" Actually, he is a character in a Science Fiction movie, and yet, he consistently denies it a total of three times within the movie.
  • D.E.B.S.. While the protagonists are investigating a bank vault, Amy says "See? That wasn't so hard." Then a Trap Door opens under her, sending her down a secret underground slide.
  • In Paul, the statement "I doubt we'll ever see those guys again!" just ensures that 'those guys' show up at a random bar to delay our heroes as the feds are closing in. They also give one of the agents final confirmation that they're really chasing an alien.
  • This short film: "These guys stink! I can take them on all by myself!"
  • In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indy and his father are spying on the Nazi villains from a nearby ridge. After they notice that the Nazis have recently acquired a tank, Indy's father warns him to get behind cover before the Nazis spot him. Indy's response: "Dad, we're well beyond their range." Seconds later, a shot from the tank blows up the Jones's car parked a few feet away.
  • One of the best exchanges from Men in Black: a bad-tempered farmer named Edgar is investigating the flying saucer that just crash-landed on his pickup truck. As he peers into the smoking crater where the truck used to be, shotgun in hand, the unseen (by the audience) alien orders:

Alien: Place... projectile weapon ... on the ground.
Edgar: You can have my gun *racks shotgun* when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
Alien: Your proposal ... is ... acceptable. *eats him*

  • Gone with the Wind: When Scarlett tells Rhett she's having another baby that she doesn't want, he tells her to cheer up because maybe she'll have an accident. Angered, she attempts to hit him, takes a Staircase Tumble, and miscarries.


Back to Tempting Fate
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Tempting_Fate/Film?oldid=2027965"