All The Tropes

Took a Level in Badass/Film

< Took a Level in Badass


Examples of Took a Level in Badass in Film include:

  • This was the central theme of many, many early Jackie Chan kung-fu movies (such as Drunken Master and Fearless Hyena), which may have set the stage for many of the examples mentioned in the rest of this section. (The quintessential American equivalent is the original The Karate Kid, but you don't see Neo in the Matrix saying, "I know karate!")
  • What do you get when you take a philandering, perpetually-drunk thirty-year-old salaryman, kidnap him off the street for no apparent reason, stick him in a private prison that looks like a hotel room, feed him nothing but Chinese take-out once a day, and leave him there for fourteen years? You get Oh Dae-Su, who can deliver beat-downs with his bare fists and kill people with nothing but a toothbrush.
  • Accomplishing this may, in fact, be the central thesis of the film Wanted (Whereas the comic was more about supervillains just being supervillains).
  • Neo in The Matrix has many levels of Badass uploaded into his brain, most memorably Fu Kung Fu. Later in the film he then takes some more when he hacks the system and starts to see everything in green.
  • Survivor Girls in horror movies usually make this change going from scared n' sexy to fighting the monster hand to hand.
    • Barbara in the color remake of Night of the Living Dead goes from fetal position to super-zombie hunter.
    • The Halloween series had Laurie Strode go from a Damsel in Distress in the original film to a badass Action Girl in H20.
    • Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
    • Return of the Living Dead III
      • An intelligent zombie turns her body into an unliving weapon by shoving shards of glass and nails through it. Unusually, the self-wounding was less about being a Badass and more about staving off the brain hunger to avoid biting and infecting her boyfriend. Which is even more incredible.
    • Clarice throughout the Hannibal series. Starts somewhat badass and comes out crazy-scary.
      • Due, of course, to Hannibal. Hannibal himself went through something a little similar when he and his little sister were held hostage as young children while he was tricked into eating her. Less than a decade after his release, he began to hunt down and consume them.
    • More than one Friday the 13 th.
      • Lori Campbell in Freddy vs. Jason. Near the beginning, she faints when her boyfriend reappears, and then his friend starts telling her about Freddy Krueger. By the end, she sets the docks on fire, blowing both of them into the lake, then decapitates Freddy with a fucking machete!
      • The trope is played very straight in Jason X, in which an android girl is literally given an upgrade that makes her an instant commando. She subsequently blows Jason up with an RPG.
  • Between the original 80's cartoon and the 2007 film, Starscream from Transformers has taken a major level in badass. To prove it, we have this line as Starscream flies over Mission City, from frigging Ironhide, of all people:

Ironhide: It's Starscream!

    • The human character, Sam Witwicky, who pretty much spent the first two movies running away from these giant robots that try to blow him up or squish him (Hey you would too), suddenly has clearly had it with everything, and seriously invoked this trope. How Badass has Sam become? Well if you must know... HE F*CKING KILLED STARSCREAM!
    • Megatron is pretty infamous for his Badass Decay. He spends most of the third movie as an injured, sulking cripple until Sam's love interest Carly, of all people, rouses him into beating the pulp out of the Bigger Bad, and he does a fine job indeed. All while still sustaining his injuries.
      • To be fair, he shoots Sentinel Prime in the back, while the latter is busy beating the crap out of Optimus. This, however, gives Optimus the chance to decapitate Megatron and blow Sentinel's head off in the space of a few seconds.
  • Pasha Antipov, a minor character in Doctor Zhivago, begins the movie as an utter wimp. He's a cuckold, a bespectacled naif, and an ineffective revolutionary. Even his name is a bit puny. But then he's hit by a bomb on the Eastern Front and drops out of the movie--only to return in an impossibly cool scene as the enigmatic "General Strelnikov," a Badass Longcoat with his own armored train.
    • In the book, it's Red Commander, not General. The Reds did not use officer and general ranks until WWII.
  • In the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie, delicate but spirited Damsel in Distress Elizabeth Swann has become a quite competent sword-wielding Action Girl. This is handwaved in a throwaway line: her fiance Will Turner, the best swordsman in the series, has been teaching her for the past year. Then again, she is hanging around with pirates...
    • Even more so when she becomes the captain of a ship, escapes from Davy Jones, and then becomes the Pirate King (King, not Queen).
    • Will was already somewhat of a badass, but becoming the captain of the Flying Dutchman certainly counts.
  • In the movie versions of The Chronicles of Narnia, the dryads go from sissy flower ladies to deadly trees that destroy most of the Telmarine army.
  • One of the most jarring examples would be Sarah Connor's transformation between the first two Terminator movies: She (and the actress) was a normal, happy-looking girl in the first one, but looks like she lost about thirty pounds of body fat and transformed the rest into solid muscle by the second one, as well as going from Damsel in Distress to Psycho Action Girl. Of course, a decade of preparing for The End of the World as We Know It will do that to a person. Special mention goes to the scene at the end of the movie where she, if not for running out of ammo, would have destroyed the T-1000 on her own without the T-800's help. BAD. ASS.
    • John Connor upgrades himself from fairly Wangst-ridden drifter who specializes in running away from Terminators who reluctantly gives vague radio support in Terminator 3 to Colonel Badass able to rewire AI motorbikes and shout down experienced Generals and killer androids by Salvation. Quite a few levels in badassery and self-confidence gained it would seem.
  • Another alarming one was Straw Dogs, in which Dustin Hoffman starts out as, well, Dustin Hoffman, in the role of a mathematician. As the local louts gradually cause him more and more grief, however, he goes a bit mad, and ends up brutally murdering them all when they try to break into his house.
  • Galaxy Quest: Most of the cast took a level in badass around the time they escaped from the airlock. Not only is it their first real victory, it's when they stop acting like actors and start acting like Dangerously Genre Savvy Big Damn Heroes
  • As a general rule, the less someone did this in The Descent, the faster she died.
  • In Michael Clayton, Arthur Edens does this when he escapes his hotel room in the dead of night leaving a message "Make believe it's not just madness."
  • In Feast, when all the hero types are dead and hope is lost, the mother who lost her son (Tuffy) "levels up" and becomes Heroine 2. Then she proceeds to punch all the monsters teeth out with the butt of her gun and punch its stomach through the mouth, choking it to death. Crowning Moments of Awesome? Yes, you could say that.
    • In Feast 2 she spends much of the movie surviving, but surviving through a Feast movie is a pretty big deal.
  • In The People Under the Stairs, Fool was originally reluctant and a tad wimpy to go in the house is seemingly like an average kid, but when Leroy is killed and is chased several times, he willingly takes on anything that comes in his way, such as punching a dog in the face, later killing him holding a villian at gun point, punching him in the nuts and then blows the house up killing the villians, saving the day in the process.
  • Captain Sulu's ten-level Badass upgrade is completed with the final battle in Star Trek VI the Undiscovered Country. At the end of the movie he's reached full Badass status.
  • Star Wars: Luke Skywalker may have set the record for most levels in Bad Ass taken up in a single trilogy. He's a naive, whiny teenager who complains about having to clean droids at the beginning of the first movie and becomes the man who rescues a princess, nukes a Death Star, becomes an ace pilot and a celebrated war hero, amputates a number of bad guys, takes out a giant fucking Walker with a hand grenade, survives an endless fall with the use of only one hand, gets into several lightsaber duels, rescues his friends from Jabba the Hutt and Boba Fett, gives the Emperor the finger, and even brings his dad back to the Light.
    • And some credit where credit is due: Wedge and Lando, being a former rookie pilot and a former businessman, respectively, took out the second Death Star. In the Star Wars Expanded Universe Wedge takes the time to level up still further - from a squadron commander to a minor general, to a really good general, to the supreme commander of the Corellian fleets... and then to private citizen. Huh.
    • Anakin Skywalker takes a level in badass between Episodes II and III, becoming a full Jedi Knight (and losing the awful rattail). By the time of the original trilogy he has somewhat suffered Badass Decay though, being more ruthless as a cyborg but less powerful.
    • R2-D2 is mostly useless for all the movies except when in a starfighter. In Episode III, however, he takes on several battle droids and helps rescue the Jedi and the Chancellor from General Grievous. While Episode III is the last Star Wars film to be made, it is one of the first stories chronologically, which means R2-D2 somehow invokes this trope and Badass Decay.
  • Simba from The Lion King goes from a feisty young cub to the savior of the Pridelands, though it did take a Bright Slap from Rafiki and a pep-talk from his ghost dad to get him out of his Heroic BSOD.
  • Sgt. Powell in the first Die Hard. Munching donuts and relegated to desk duty in the beginning his gets a huge Crowning Moment of Awesome at the end when he shoots the final bad guy dead in the face complete with the Rousing Music playing in the background.
  • Evil Dead 2: "Groovy."
  • Done to Abe Sapien between Hellboy I and II. He goes from the geeky, psychic Non-Action Guy to someone that carries a gun and has enough martial arts ability to at least evade and stall a troll three times his size, if not actually damaging it. Still geeky and psychic, but a bit more power behind it.
    • Liz Sherman even more so. She goes from a scared, childlike woman who has no control over her powers to a fearless, SWAT-gear-wearing, room-torching, sharpshooting badass in the second. Of course, being a BPRD agent is incredibly Darwinistic; you basically either become a badass or you die.
  • Done in Paul Blart: Mall Cop where Paul initially manages to defeat the Le Parkour Totally Radical mall robbers through large amounts of dumb luck, upon learning that his daughter is amongst the hostages he takes a massive level in badass, setting up a fair amount of traps and managing to stealthily take out the remaining goons with a combination of disguises and using his location (IE getting them to come to the Rainforest Cafe and hiding amongst the animatronics).
  • Johnny 5 went this way in Short Circuit 2. After being nearly destroyed, he rebuilds himself as a crazy-ass punker robot and goes on a rampage.
  • In Gremlins 2 The New Batch, Gizmo, who has spent a good chunk of the movie being tortured by the Gremlins, decides to fight back in an homage to the Rambo series. The first order of business was to shoot the Spider Gremlin with a flaming arrow, killing it.
  • Between the second and third Back to The Future films, Doc Brown (of all characters) takes a level in badass. The third film sees him toting a big bad rifle, saving (and subsequently wooing) a damsel in distress, standing up to the local gunslinger, hijacking a train and driving it off a cliff (so it can hit 88 miles per hour and travel in time, not to commit suicide).
    • While we're on Back to The Future, let's look at George McFly. With an assist in the past from his as-yet-unborn child, he goes from a mousy, cowardly junior-level worker to a highly successful writer... and along the way, Mrs. McFly gets a little spillover badassery (or at least some weight loss and athletic skills).
  • Jason Tripitikas takes several levels in badass in the movie The Forbidden Kingdom after he trained with Lu Yan and the Silent Monk. It isn't enough for him to take on The Dragon (Ni Chang), but it's still a vast improvement. Then again, it's Jackie Chan (Lu Yan) and Jet Li (Silent Monk), the two of them combined could grant a 90 year-old grandmother several levels in badass.
  • In Moonwalker, Michael Jackson mostly does shit like running through a field of flowers with some children. However, at one point, he takes a level in badass by grabbing a Tommygun and mowing down a bunch of ghetto stormtroopers. Toward the end, he takes another level in badass and turns into a giant fucking robot and blows the shit out of a bad guy's evil lair.
    • Only through the amazing power of children's wishes!
  • The character of Hudson in AlienS goes from whiny soldier to Level A Badass with a moment of You Shall Not Pass.
    • And Ripley as well, transforming from the Final Girl in the first film to a full Action Girl in the second.
  • Optimus Prime in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Despite having a cool Curb Stomp Battle with Bonecrusher, the first film had him get mostly trounced by Megatron. The sequel shows him for what he truly is. Pure. High-Octane. Badass.
    • Simmons definitely took a level in badass. In the first movie, he was a annoying, irritating strawman without any form of Genre Savvy. In the second film, he becomes a fiercely competent, rather intelligent, gutsy human warrior who takes on Devastator and wins.
  • Rocky Balboa, the titular character of the Rocky series of films must always have a mandatory Montage in the films where he trains hard...and I mean HARD. Pushing the absolute limits of his body, will, and even expectations of him...these montages always end up with Rocky gaining a new "power" and thus...a new level of his already noteworthy badass status. You can even visually see his badass level go up. Set to the song Gonna Fly Now, this montage is one of the most famous film conventions of the modern age. If you don't feel pumped up and ready to cheer by the end of at least one of these, you're not alive.
    • In the first he gets the dedication and conditioning necessary to "go the distance" with Apollo Creed.
    • The second sees Rocky gain some speed and the ability to switch his dominant fighting hand.
    • Third gives Rocky a tremendous boost in speed and offense.
    • The fourth gives Rocky the ability to show Russia just how awesome he is by training in the snow by pulling chains.
    • The sixth (we'll skip the fifth) sees an aged Rocky gain overwhelming power to compensate for his eroded speed due to age.
  • Over the course of District 9, Wilkus from goes from sweater vest wearing pansy to badass who single-handedly breaks out of a fortified government facility and then later chooses to break back in.
  • In 28 Days Later, main character just barely flees the soldiers about to execute him, and sees jet trail above, realising there's still civilisation intact from Zombie Apocalypse. Before, he was wimpy bike courier boy, but when he leaves Heroic BSOD caused by this realisation, he switches into utter badassmode, wreaking havoc, killing with bare hands, performing Offscreen Teleportation and spouting oneliners. While to us, the audience, this is a good example of Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass, Jim's friends are so surprised by his sudden acts of badassery that they think he's become Infected.
  • Daphne from the Scooby Doo movie mentions how she is sick of being the Damsel in Distress and thus takes kung fu lessons to defend herself. This pays off when she defeats a masked wrestler guy, even taunting him. "Now who's the Damsel in Distress?"
  • In Apocalypto when Jaguar Paw reaches the forest while being chased by the bad guy Mayans: "I am Jaguar Paw. This is my forest. And I am not afraid."
  • Morgan Sullivan from Cypher starts out the movie as a timid, cuckolded house husband who's looking to make his life a bit more interesting by becoming a corporate spy. By the end of the movie he's sat through an intensive brainwashing session without batting an eyelid, escaped from an ultra-high security data centre and blown up a small army of Mooks. Subverted in the sense that he's been a badass all along and didn't know it.
  • During Firefly River Tam spent most of the action scenes she is involved passively crying or running away (with a couple of notable exceptions that she might not have quite registered as fights in the first place "No power in the 'verse can stop me."). In the movie Serenity, however, she is quickly upgraded to a killing machine who defines Waif Fu, and can take out roomfuls of armed assailants without breaking a sweat -- sometimes brainwashing has awesome results.
  • In Enchanted, Giselle goes from helpless Disney Princess to climbing a building and slicing a dragon's tail with a sword.
  • In the Laurel and Hardy film Way Out West, Ollie becomes surprisingly forceful and effective at movie's end in getting the deed to a gold mine back to its rightful owner away from the couple who conned it from them earlier.
  • In The Princess Bride, Westley goes from a poor farm boy to Dread Pirate Roberts level of badass, immune to iocane powder. Small Fridge Logic here, where the viewer realizes that Westley has better sword skills than Inigo Montoya after only practicing for five years aboard the pirate ship Revenge. Inigo has been practicing swordplay for twenty years.
    • Actually Fridge Brilliance, when you stop to consider that 1) five years of sword fighting as part of a pirate crew is probably more than equal to twenty years of sparring and studying theory and 2) Westley may have more innate talent than Inigo for swordfighting to begin with--he just never had the opportunity as a farmboy to put it to use.
      • In the movie, though, it is revealed that Inigo has been searching for his father's killer for a long time, and his fencing skills were no longer at their peak ability
      • And in the book it's made clear that on a level playing field, Inigo has the edge; fighting over rocks and broken ground is enough to give the advantage to the guy who spent the previous five years fighting on the pitching deck of a pirate ship, instead of on the flat.
      • Also worth pointing out that Inigo is a recovering alcoholic, and that he was deliberately holding back for most of the fight because he was so desperate to have a good swordfight again. By the time he realized he had actually underestimated Westley, it was too late.
  • Angelica Chaste, in Angels Dance, starts out as a repressed mortician who thinks a doll is her baby. When she finds herself the target of an aspiring hitman learning the trade by assassinating a randomly picked individual she gets scared...then she gets mad. By the end of the movie, she's levelled-up in Badass to the point that she's as much of a threat to her pursuers as they ever were to her.
  • This happened to Cinderella of all people in her third, and possibly last, movie. The Prince also gets a fair amount of this, turning him from a Shallow Love Interest to a Deadpan Snarker with skills that rival Eric.
  • Mystery Team. Duncan can apparently only aim his slingshot properly in a poorly lit room.
  • While the film version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix hinted at the Badass that Neville Longbottom would become, it's only in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 that we get to see his true nature. His speech to Voldemort refusing the Dark Lord's offer of amnesty was as eloquently phrased a "Fuck You!" as any seen on film before.
    • Heck, more than that, even. Neville went from being picked on by Malfoy (jelly-legs jinx, ring any bells?), to being wailed on by Cornish Pixies (albeit freshly caught), to supplying Harry with gillyweed (in the movie, not in the book), to running Dumbledore's Army in Harry's absence, with Luna and Ginny. As in - he was running The Resistance within enemy walls, under scrutiny of Lord Voldemort's frigging lapdogs. If Umbridge was permitted to use corporal punishment, imagine what the Death Eaters did. The Crowning Moment of Awesome in Deathly Hallows - Part 2 was just the icing of the cake.
    • However, it could also be said that he didn't take any levels in awesome, he just let his awesome show. Think about it - from the start, he's been amazing! Standing up to the trio like that when they were going after the Philosopher's Stone? His 11 year old badassery was only overshadowed by Harry, Ron, and Hermione's right after!!
  • In Help!!, it's oddly George. After doing Funny Background Events for most of the film, he leaps aboard a moving car towards the end of the film to rescue a kidnapped Ringo who's been stashed in the trunk.
  • In the first The Mummy film, Evie is a timid librarian firmly stuck in her Damsel in Distress role. By The Mummy Returns, she has become an Action Girl who can fight off Mooks on her own using awesome martial arts skills that she didn't know she had, as well as a few of Rick's more straightforward moves. It turns out she is rediscovering her Secret Legacy as a spiritual reincarnation of an Ancient Egyptian princess who was well-trained in combat. Her brother Jonathan too, to an extent. He is a pretty good shot with a rifle and proves it during the ambush of the cultists. He also tries to take on Anck-Su-Namun and manages to hold her off long enough for Alex to revive his mother.
  • The El Mariachi trilogy starts off with the main character as an Action Survivor in a Stern Chase plot. By the time of the second movie, he has a habit of going into bad guy bars and shooting up the place. By the third movie, he's a legend.
  • "Happy learned how to putt... uh-oh!"
  • Godzilla Junior in the second Godzilla series. During his first two appearances, he was much like his Minilla, and was actively disliked for it. Then along comes Godzilla vs. Destoroyah and Junior has become a Badass Teenzilla, who despite being a Gentle Giant and totally overpowered by the titular villain, hands Destoroyah's penultimate form its ass after a long, brutal fight where he gets to demonstrate just how much of a Determinator he is. Destoroyah's freaked out enough that after it's resurrection into its final form it goes after Junior first, despite the adult Godzilla having arrived. Temporarily killed, he is resurrected by Godzilla's death as the new Godzilla and, assuming that he is the Godzilla who appears in Final Wars, may now be even more badass than his dad.
  • The protagonist in Layer Cake spends the first half of the film thinking he's absolutely on top of his game; he's repeatedly proven wrong when people turn out to have been plotting against him and playing him, resulting in his life spiralling out of control. After he decides to kill his boss, who has been siphoning off his money and is about to rat him out to the police, he becomes much more ruthlessly efficient and starts setting up gambits of his own.
  • Prince Charming from Cinderella goes from a handsome and good-hearted but otherwise boring guy with ten lines and whose greatest piece of Character Development is yawning boredly at the ball in the first movie, to a Determinator who leaps from his horse to a moving ship, slides downs the sail using his sword, and uses that same sword to block magic spells, as if he was Prince Eric reincarnated. All of this, to make sure that his beloved Cindy won't be shipped away from him..
  • Po from Kung Fu Panda. Also Ascended Fanboy.
  • In Up, Carl Fredericksen is a 78-years grumpy, sour, etc., old man who is completely obsessed by his house, which he considers as the last remnant of his late wife, who he feels he "betrayed". He even goes as far as to let the Big Bad capture a rare bird he earlier swore to protect to save the same house (and gets a "What the Hell, Hero?"). But when a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming makes him realize at last that the house is nothing but a house, that his memories are what are keeping his wife alive within him, and that he never "betrayed" her, he immediately goes from old grumpy selfish almost-Jerkass to happy and brave Badass Grandpa, recovers the energy and strength of his youth, and sacrifices the remnants of his house to be able to go and save the bird. Never underestimate The Power of Love!
  • Megamind's Megamind was half-joke in the beginning of the movie: a super villain who always loses, can't even impress his lady hostage with his instruments of doom anymore, and isn't really evil so much as really enjoying the endless game of being the villain to an invincible hero like Metroman. But look at him in the final battle! He's not completely different - even during the battle he's hilarious - but he pulls off some really cool moves, especially for the climax of the movie.
  • Gru from Despicable Me. He goes from Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain to Papa Wolf with a Bald of Awesome who PUNCHED OUT A SHARK AND DODGED A Macross Missile Massacre
  • Hiccup goes from being a weak workshop assistant at the beginning of How to Train Your Dragon to an aerial combat tactician and takes on a dragon the size of the USS Enterprise ALONE. AND WINS.
  • The character Johnny English is a secret agent who can be best described as a Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass...with a considerable emphasis on "moron". After a disastrous mission in Mozambique, English is sent to Tibet to undergo a special training. Not only did he take a level in badass, he acquired Balls of Steel as well.
  • Loki seems to have taken a few--possibly traumatic--levels in badass between the events of Thor and The Avengers. While he was ostensibly the main antagonist in the former, his return in the latter is accompanied by a shiny new spear of doom, an army of alien cyborgs, and a new plan to rule the earth. The scariest part is that he seems pretty capable of carrying out this plan.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Took_a_Level_in_Badass/Film?oldid=2025185"