You Have Failed Me.../Film

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Examples of You Have Failed Me... in Film include:

  • The trope name comes from what is possibly the most famous instance: Darth Vader's "You have failed me for the last time" in The Empire Strikes Back, before choking Admiral Ozzel and promoting Captain Piett to replace him before the body hits the floor. True to form, Piett survives a number of failures, once Vader realizes the heroes may actually count as a legitimate challenge. It helps that he didn't take any foolish chances like Ozzel was punished for.
    • He does it again to the hapless Captain Needa before the film's even halfway done, even when Needa had the foresight to apologize to Vader for losing track of the Millenium Falcon (There's a reason Vader says "Apology accepted, Captain Needa"). The turnover rate for Imperial officers must be appalling.
      • And ultimately lampshaded by the end of the film, when the Falcon escapes to lightspeed. Piett visibly soils himself as Vader strides toward him, only to brush right past, apparently too depressed about losing his son to kill any more underlings today.
        • That, and because it wasn't Piett's fault. Exactly how callous Vader is about his suboordinates varies Depending on the Writer, but mostly he's said to go after underlings that he thinks are to blame. Usually. He also likes some of them more than others (Piett had been with him for a while, and according to Allegiance he already distrusted Ozzel).
        • Needa's expression when he tells his men that he's going to personally apologise to Vader tells the whole story. Needa knows Vader will kill him - but if he takes the blame, none of his underlings will.
      • Supplemental materials have also hinted that Vader was looking for an excuse to get rid of Ozzel, as he was considered to be incompetent, disloyal, and an extremely poor military commander, who advanced as far as he did because of Blue Blood status, and a well off family.
    • It's even noted in one of the novels that the fastest way to promotion in the Empire was to get yourself assigned to Vader's flagship, the Executor. One could say that the commander of the vessel is an example of Exactly What It Says on the Tin... A really BIG tin...
      • Lampshaded in Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina; an Imperial officer tells a local that he engineered his own demotions because "the mortality rate [under Vader] is phenomenal."
      • The flip side of that coin is, as Pellaeon says, that this meant the crew of the Executor was entirely staffed by people who were either hypercompetent or very lucky, since they were the only ones who survived. Which meant that when it went down at Endor, the Empire lost more than a really big ship.
      • Vader's tendency to do this is lampshaded again in the video game The Force Unleashed where there is an achievement for killing a certain number of your own men while playing as Vader in the prologue. Bonus points for it being an Actor Allusion as well (Matt Sloane, the voice of Vader in that game, also voiced Chad Vader, with the achievement being a direct reference to that series).
    • Not an Example, but worth mentioning: in Darths and Droids, where Vader complains when Obiwan tells him he has failed at Jedi Ethics, a call back to Yoda's remonstration of Qui Gon Jiin. See it here.
    • Parodied in this Irregular WebComic strip, where Vader strangles an officer, and then admits he hadn't even done anything wrong.
    • Parodied by Robot Chicken where it is revealed that the Imperial officers just pretend to be strangled by Vader. After suitable dramatics and "death" they are dragged out of the room where they put on a simple disguise and go back to work, with Vader none the wiser. They do this because Vader only thinks he can strangle people with his mind. He does, however, have a lightsaber which can cut people in half, so it's better for everyone involved to play along.
    • And again in Concerned: The Half-Life and Death of Gordon Frohman.
    • In Spaceballs, a hapless officer gets a Groin Attack rather than killed when he displeases Dark Helmet. For the rest of the movie, Helmet's subordinates cover themselves when reporting to him.
    • Bevel Lemelisk, lead designer of the Death Star, is a walking Lampshade Hanging of this trope in Star Wars. After the first Death Star was destroyed in the battle of Yavin, Palpatine summons Lemelisk and has him eaten alive by piranha beetles as punishment for overlooking such a massive design flaw . . . and then proceeds to bring Lemelisk back to life with a clone body and Sith Alchemy, because in spite of this mistake, Lemelisk is too much of an asset to throw away. Palpatine proceeded to make a point of executing and resurrecting Lemelisk every time something went wrong with the Death Star II's construction, with a new and unique method of execution every time. Hilariously, this gets to the point where, after one incident where Palpatine decided the Execution of the Week would be slowly dipping Lemelisk in molten copper, Lemelisk felt it necessary to ask why the metal was copper, and not some other metal. (Answer: It's what the smelter happened to be using that day.)
      • The New Republic eventually captured and (permanently) executed Lemelisk. His last words were "Just make sure you do it right this time..."
    • Not explicitly shown in Return of the Jedi, but Vader heavily implies that if the officer and the crew working on the second Death Star doesn't make sure that the station is fully operational by the time of the Emperor's arrival, the crew will end up suffering a punishment issued by the Emperor that is so horrific for their failure that Vader's use of the trope seems like a sympathy-enduced pat on the back in comparison.
      • Specifically "The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am." This is coming from Lord Darth Vader!
  • Years before Star Wars, in the Hammer Horror Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, Dracula (Christopher Lee) uses this line in a snarl to the hapless Zena (one of his pretty victims) before vampirising her to death and having her remains burnt in a baker's oven.
    • It was also implemented in the 1931 Universal film when Renfield accidentally leads Dr. Van Helsing and Jonathan to Dracula's lair and Dracula strangles Renfield to death. It's worth noting that Dracula doesn't even say a thing; he just gives Renfield an evil glare before Renfield goes into hysterics and is then killed.
  • Played straight in the first Austin Powers movie, when Dr. Evil dumps several underlings into a fiery pit for failing to kill Austin Powers. It is then parodied when he tries to do the same thing thirty years later...and the minion survives, and is very noisy. Dr. Evil gets someone to go down there and shoot him, and that does the trick... eventually.
  • In Desperado, after Bucho's gang repeatedly fails to find and kill the Mariachi, Bucho demonstrates what they're supposed to do by saying "Look! I don't know him! He has a gun! That must be the guy!" and shooting one of his henchmen. "How hard is that?"
  • In The Fifth Element, Zorg apparently has all of his men (or all public phones) wired with explosives, and, in one scene, where a minion fails to impersonate the heroes, he types in the code to blow him up (with just barely contained rage) just as the heroes get away, not even knowing the mook had been there.
  • The exact same scenario depicted in The Fifth Element, above, occurs in Casino Royale 1967 in which Le Chiffre likewise detonates a minion in a phone booth, remotely.
    • And he was on the receiving end of this trope in the 2006 Casino Royale. Mr. White walked in on him while he was torturing Bond. Chiffre tried saying to him, "I'll get you the money." But White replies, "Money is not as important as knowing who to trust." And he shoots him.
  • The Rider in The Dark Is Rising (movie) actually said "You have failed me for the last time".
  • Nicely subverted in Die Hard 2, when the Card-Carrying Villain puts the barrel of his gun to the Mooks' forehead and pulls the trigger. The gun doesn't fire, the Mook breathes a sigh of relief as the villain tells him that next time, the chamber won't be empty... and then happily goes back to work doing his evil Mook duties.
  • In Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Shao Kahn does this twice. The Outworld "ninja" Rain, who failed to sufficiently torture a pair of Earth Warriors (specifically, by making them beg for their lives before destroying them) he captured quickly, offscreen, and with no chance of escape, is knocked into a lava pit with a big whacking hammer. Jade, Kahn's mole in the ranks of the heroes, suffers an even more ignominious death after she too fails to destroy them when following Kahn's plan—she's fed to a monster carving in a wall, which lets out a great big burp after it's done with her. Sindel is threatened with this as she tries to back Jade up, despite Sindel being crucial to the plot and one of the most powerful generals.
  • "Suicide, or be shot by someone else" was the option given to the losing Soviet general at the start of Enemy at the Gates.
  • "No. YoU haVe FAileD yoUrsElveS."
  • "Would you be killed in your sleep like an ailing pet?"
    • Considering the alternative...YES!
  • Slightly debugged for Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, when Captain Barbossa shoots one of his own crewman, Pintel, to see if they're all still cursed with immortality, and Pintel survives. The screenwriters Elliot and Rossio remarked in the DVD commentary that this was the only way a villain could repeatedly achieve You Have Failed Me moments without ever running out of henchmen. It also nearly leads to the crew mutinying on the spot, only averted by the heroes' escape attempt.
    • In the third film, Jack Sparrow hallucinates dozens of clones of himself crewing the Black Pearl. When one of the Jacks displays sub-par performance, the main Jack stabs and kills him, then proceeds to lecture the rest of his imaginary crew about discipline.
  • Non-lethal version shows up in Shoot Em Up. After the first time Smith thwarts Hertz's men, Hertz is seen talking with one of them who was wounded in the buttocks. The guy says something to the effect of, "It won't happen again. I've got a piece of metal in my butt to remind me." At this point, Hertz pulls out his pistol, shoots him in the posterior once again, and quips, "And let that be a reminder never to fail me again," as the Mook collapses yelling "AAH! MY ASS!"
  • In the film Peter Pan, Hook shoots two of his pirates for annoying him.
  • In The Untouchables, Al Capone beats one of his goons to death with a bat.
    • This is actually based on a real event. Capone hosted a dinner to let one of his henchmen, Antonino "Joe Batters" Accardo, kill two other henchmen with a baseball bat.
  • Happens in Eragon, where Durza executes the head Urgal for failing to kill the title character then immediately promotes a random Urgal, whose look implies that he is not happy with the promotion.
  • James Bond has a few examples. Ernst Blofeld wasn't kidding when he said "This organization does not tolerate failure":
  • Happens to several mooks in Banlieue 13. Eventually the mooks band together and kill the Big Bad.
  • Upon awakening in Transformers, Megatron reunites with Starscream who reveals to him that the Allspark, the very reason they are on Earth and the ultimate power source of Megatron's obsession, is in the possession of the Human soldiers who are attempting to keep it away from him. His response is quite a ticked off; You have failed me yet again Starscream. GET THEM!
  • In Tim Burton's Batman, The Joker immediately executes his top henchman after his master plan is foiled:

The Joker: "My balloons. Those are my balloons. He stole my balloons! Why didn't anyone tell me he had one of those... things? Bob? Gun."
Bob the Henchman: hands the Joker a gun, who promptly shoots him

    • Honestly, Joker does this all the time, but it's less about failure and more about the fact that he's the Joker.
  • Drucker, the Big Bad in The 6th Day does this to his henchman Wiley. A fairly justified version of this trope. Not only has Wiley been screwing up the most, but he also accidentally shot Drucker just before, which apparently was the last straw.
  • Henry Carver, the Big Bad in Push, Mind Rapes an agent to shoot himself for letting a girl escape, who also Mind Raped the agent to shoot his own partner.
    • Unusual for this trope, Carver is willing to let the guy go back to the States with a reprimand. Unfortunately for he agent, he decides to claim that he can't be Mind Raped again. Carver proves him wrong. So this is more like "You have failed me and don't know when to shut up".
  • The Jade Warlord in The Forbidden Kingdom kills a soldier with his own dagger for bringing bad news, while he was in the process of choosing a girl for the night.
  • Framed hilariously in Six-String Samurai, with the Big Bad starting to deliver the usual "You have failed me for the last--" then pauses, looks down, and says, "nice shoes..." Next cut shows the Big Bad and his minions walking off with the failures' shoes.
  • Tank Girl. Kesslee, the Big Bad of Water & Power, has a subordinate who has failed to stop the Rippers. He forces the subordinate to walk across broken glass barefooted, then drains all of the blood out of his body, converts it to water and drinks it.
    • Kesslee is so fond of this trope that, by the end of the film, his entire army is under the command of a sergeant.
  • Lethal Weapon 2. After Rudd's henchman Hans loses a million dollars worth of gold Krugerrands, Rudd has his The Dragon Pieter execute him.
  • In the otherwise forgettable Masters of the Universe movie, Skeletor Took a Level in Badass and obliterated one of his Goldfish Poop Gang when they screw up their assignment. Details can be read here [dead link].
  • Inverted in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, where Commander Kruge kills his gunner for failing to not destroy the USS Grissom. Kruge only wanted to disable its engines so he could take prisoners, but the gunner had a "lucky shot" and destroyed the whole ship.
  • Played straight in the Green Lantern movie. When Parallax arrives on Earth, his first action is to kill his human minion for failing to kill Hal Jordan before Parallax arrived.
  • Red Skull, after the Howling Commandos led by Captain America managed to destroy one of HYDRA's bases in Captain America: The First Avenger, has an officer brought to him, to which the officer stated that they fought to the last man. Red Skull, not in a forgiving mood, states "Evidentially not!" and then uses his Tesseract/Cosmic Cube-powered handgun to vaporize the officer.
  • Herod does this to Ratsy in The Quick and the Dead after Ratsy oversteps his authority and breaks Cort's hand before the big gunfight. Herod does give Ratsy a running start, however.
  • Bill Cox does this in Firewall. "We all make mistakes, Willy. Just not as many as you do. "
  • In Lone Star State of Mind, a pizza delivery guy who's secretly a drug runner reports to his mob boss that he was robbed. The boss orders him to run away... in a zig-zag pattern. The boss waits for a few seconds, then shoots him in the back.
  • In Sholay, Gabbar plays a variation of Russian Roulette with 3 of his mooks because they were defeated by the heroes. He fires away 3 bullets off a loaded six shooter and spins the cylinder. He pulls the trigger on each of the 3 mooks, and extraordinarily all 3 survive the game. After laughing evilly he shoots all 3 of them. Because he could.
  • In a deleted scene from the Apocalypse film series movie Judgment, Antichrist Franco Maccalusso sends Amoral Attorney Victoria Thorne and the judge from the court case in the movie to an uncertain fate after failing to give him the desired verdict.
    • In Tribulation, Calvin Canboro was choked to death inside the Day Of Wonders program by the Antichrist's Digital Avatar when he failed to convert his brother.
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