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This thought came to me recently, while watching Wonder Woman.


So, there is a stock Hollywood scene, where in an Evil Commander hears some bad news from one of his officers, usually something an inability to meet production quotas, and the Evil Commander shoots the officer dead in order to show how evil and powerful he is.

Now in Wonder Woman, there is a soldier with a rifle with the bayonet fixed standing right behind Ludendorff (the Evil Commander) who looks shocked at this turn of events. For a fleeting moment I thought that he might object and turn his gun on Ludendorff, or at least try to detain him (and then get killed for his troubles), though I suppose that would have humanized the Germans a bit too much for the movie.

My point is, I think it would be an interesting twist to see that sort of scene play out in a couple of different ways.

1. The soldiers of the murdered officer react immediately and either shoot back, or attempt to arrest the Evil Commander (I'm picturing the EC looking angrily at a ring of bayonets and growling/yelling something about mutiny and insubordination), with one of the murdered officer's subordinates smoothly sliding up and saying something about either the EC being clearly insane or an enemy agent.

Or

2. The murder of the officer sets off a conspiracy to resist the EC either with basic stuff like sabotage, willful misinterpretation of orders, and general sub-par performance; or with more extreme resistance like conspiring to murder/frag the EC.

I was wondering, does anyone know of any movies where something like those two outcomes occurs?

In star wars episode seven opening scene Finn the stormtrooper refuses to shoot the villagers and decides to desert.

This would work for a sequel - have the villain of the first movie be a ruthless underling murdering psycho, and then in the next movie have a more calculating villain arrange for such an occurance, off the original villain, and then be the new antagonist.

GuppyShark wrote: ↑2017-08-15 05:46am This would work for a sequel - have the villain of the first movie be a ruthless underling murdering psycho, and then in the next movie have a more calculating villain arrange for such an occurance, off the original villain, and then be the new antagonist.

I think this is what happened with Scorpius and Crais in Farscape at the tail end of season 1. By the end of season 1, Crais had become so deranged and crazy that his crew was starting to worry about him, and Scorpius, within a couple days, shifts the loyalty of the entire crew who go on serving him instead, in addition to the fact that Crais killed his XO to keep his disobeying orders secret.

Not quite the same but Crashdown seems likely to attempt it early Season 2 but Gaius Baltar shoots him instead.

Crashdown wasn't evil, just really bad at command.

There's a variation of this in Better Call Saul, where it's a druglord that has a penchant for killing his underlings. One of them decides to do something about it as a result.

Napoleon the Clown wrote: ↑2017-08-16 01:34am There's a variation of this in Better Call Saul, where it's a druglord that has a penchant for killing his underlings. One of them decides to do something about it as a result.

Which one do you mean? Because I can think of two possibilities, and with the second one it wasn't really threatening his underlings that prompted it if I remember right.

Ralin wrote: ↑2017-08-16 01:47am

Napoleon the Clown wrote: ↑2017-08-16 01:34am There's a variation of this in Better Call Saul, where it's a druglord that has a penchant for killing his underlings. One of them decides to do something about it as a result.

Which one do you mean? Because I can think of two possibilities, and with the second one it wasn't really threatening his underlings that prompted it if I remember right.

Tuco. Hector probably has had underlings killed, but he's not nearly so arbitrary and impulsive.

I'd suspect that if the CO is gonna go anywhere near a combat zone, there will an "enemy ambush" that by some "miracle" only kills the CO and any loyal goons that he has. There's a reason why real life field commanders aren't a cavalier with the lives of their men as the ones in WH40K.

I don't think this is quite what you're looking for, but in King Lear, the Duke of Cornwall is betrayed while plucks out the eye of the Duke of Gloucester. A servant tells him to stop, and when Cornwall refuses they fight. That servant is killed, but Cornwall is later killed offstage by other servants because he was going to pluck out Gloucester's other eye.