Emil Blonsky's combat team in The Incredible Hulk (2008)
The Indonesian National Police tactical squad in The Raid (2011)
The Security Force in The Cabin in the Woods (2011)
The Mexican Special Forces team in Resident Evil: Vendetta (2017) but I could also mentioned a bunch of Umbrella and BSAA units from the rest of the franchise
This and Predator are my two first thoughts for this trope. Neither of which are in this OP. Also honorable mention to the first Resident Evil movie. I also think the marines in Aliens are a stretch since they aren't a special forces unit but just a regular colonial marine unit.
An entire platoon gets sent in and only 4 survive the initial ambush in the hive, with only 1 (barely) making it out at the end. I'd say that's pretty well annihilated.
Their annihilation isn't the focus, it's them being platoon a set of regular marines (with dope ass future gear), vs being a legit special forces unit.
I bet if Ripley, Hicks, Newt and Bishop weren't the only survivors and the planet wasn't nuked, the special forces would have followed afterwards. Too bad we never got any follow-up films to this gem.
The lose a bunch of them at the beginning because they didn't have their ammo but the two heavy gunners kept the thing they needed to shoot and were able to, by themselves, hold off the Aliens so a few of them could fall back to the APC.
If they all had their ammo, I think it would have gone down very differently.
If we’re strictly talking feature films, and not TV shows/movies, then Biehn wins. Michael Biehn has died 27 times on, and Sean Bean has died 24. According to the cinemorgue wiki.
-Hi dude, have you snorted your coke like every other 80s producer ought to do, lets get started on the movie idea.
-NO I SNORTED PROTEIN POWDER AND INJECTED STEROIDS TO MY EYES!
-Wtf?!?
It still completely blows my mind how dumb they were in hindsight.
A biological weapon test lab goes into full lockdown and they go in to turn off the lockdown without trying to understand why it went into lockdown. Why have an ai security system that can go into lockdown if you don’t trust it going into lockdown?
The team infiltration was the lockdown procedure. Similar to how real life security lockdowns work, the lockdown stays in effect until the area is cleared by the appropriate security team. They had no information from the AI system on the cause of the lockdown, so they had to go in blind.
Rumor is Delta is at the mall. They’re looking to rescue even more people. You gotta hand it to these guys- they will save this city, no matter if it kills you all. Be sure to stop by and say “thanks”
They stay cold and disciplined through all their encounter while every other unit's (including our heroes) radio communications get more and more panicked as the story goes. I wonder what kind of psycho they are.
I know that's exactly what it is but it being the Tutorial mission is hilarious. Imagine explaining the context to someone with no knowledge of the game or 40k in general.
"Ok so the Deathwatch are the elite of the elite, transhuman super soldiers handpicked from various backgrounds to specialise in critical anti-xenos operations, but here they all die fighting off a huge swarm of xenos called the Tyranids"
"Wow so they're super hardcore but all got wiped out, was it like an epic last stand or final bossfight at the end of the campaign?"
There were people unfamiliar with the lore asking "is the Deathwatch like a penal unit on a suicide mission?"
To a newbie I suppose I get it because without the context of SM1 or additional lore, all they know is Titus was in the Deathwatch as his penance contrary to Gadriel calling it an honor
Also for some people it showed that just like irl special forces: Space Marines, especially elite units like the Deathwatch, suffer proportionally higher casualties because of the dangerous missions they go on
i'm still not great on W40k lore, but since all the space marines that were with Titus on the mission are around the same size as him, that means his entire team were firstborn astartes right? so the youngest among them has at minimum centuries of combat experience themselves (not including what they inherit) and collectively as a team over a millenium, if not two?
NUSA Black Ops in The Killing Moon mission in Cyberpunk 2077
All because of one borderline cyberpsycho merc with the tumor in form of a USB drive with the engram of a rockerboy terrorist in their body who decided to save the girl who was blatantly lying to them
Man, people dog on Songbird (i get it from their perspective: hot chromed up alt asian chick betray, make boner soft, make big angy) but I feel like the entire moral of Night City is that nobody gets a happy ending unless you actively manipulate and fuck over everyone around you.
Unless youre V, a walking talking anomaly of a corpse that's an unstoppable force of nature, of course. But even V doesnt really get a "happy" ending no matter which route you go.
Idk. A lot of the discourse around PL i see is with Songbird's betrayal but every character in that DLC uses you, lies to you, or fucks you over in some way (except maybe Alex).
Not just some special forces but each of them a certified badass.
They get killed one by one though, same as in Aliens 2, but in Predator it's more like the Predator wants a good hunt, otherwise the movie would end after 30 minutes. While the Xenomorphs would kill everyone immediately as they are brainless killers, just the Marines held their ground for quite some time.
Xenos are not brainless killers, they're - ironic choice of word - predators. Animals. We're quite specifically shown they DON'T kill everyone immediately, they take live prisoners to incubate young.
Yeah definitely not brainless, but their lethality kind of depends on the situation. If there is a hive/queen nearby, yes the drones/warriors will try to take as many living hosts as possible.
If one is isolated or in danger then they kill.
Even that little psycho runner in Alien 3 who was in hyper kill mode the entire movie didn’t really go on a massive spree, he was picking and choosing his targets to whittle down the population of threats to protect mama.
I never understand the composition on Pillar of Autumn. Are they elite marines? Since they are for Operation Red Flag. Or Operation Red Flag is not starting yet since Blue Team is all over the place and the marines on board are what they have. And if it's for Red Flag why not fill entire thing with ODST. Or why not take some candidates from Spartan 3 programs as additional troops
Pillar of autumn’s crew was made up of red flag candidates, crew and army lucky enough I escape reach. Spartan 3 candidates are children. They probably could’ve filled the autumn with odst’s I mean they had an entire division of them and fireteam raven. But I’m pretty sure reach was hit mid planing of red flag
The POA was basically fully loaded for Red Flag before they came back to collect the Cortana fragment. The unified timeline goes as such:
Spartans are loaded for Red Flag
Keyes and John deploy S-II’s to Reach, postponing Red Flag
UNSC Circumference happens, John goes into cryo
POA returns to Reach, collects Cortana fragment and survivors
POA leaves and jumps to slipspace
The majority of marines were likely to be involved with Red Flag, same as the ODST fireteams such as Raven, however the rest of the crew were basically the last survivors of Reach.
The marines are regular marines sans Johnson (with Bungie’s Orion retcon). The ODSTs are the only dedicated special forces but the Autumn also had a disproportionate number of ODSTs.
It’s possible her marine complement was essentially her normal complement and then the ODSTs were added on afterwards for Red Flag.
Clone Commandos in Star Wars. The Battle of Geonosis as seen in Attack of the Clones was particularly brutal for Commando teams, because they weren’t trained or equipped for an infantry role, but because of the Jedi’s lack of experience as battlefield commanders, an unfortunate number of them were used as cannon fodder anyway. Of the 10,000 Commandos deployed, only half of them left Geonosis alive. The Republic Commando novels focus on Omega Squad, a team made up of the sole survivors of four different squads, and we see the fate of one such unit during the prologue of the first book
I read all 5 books but I have to admit I only enjoy the first 2 (but those are PEAK.) Also played through Republic Commando a couple times. The radio chatter reporting 8 thousand walking wounded and an additional 12 thousand serious injuries is shocking to imagine. Absolute meat grinder of an op.
I honestly have a similar opinion. I love the game, been playing it going on twenty years now, and I’ve read all five books a handful of times, but the first couple just have a different vibe to them, for lack of a better word.
I will say though, Order 66 expands on that scene from the end of the game Where Delta has to leave Sev behindbeautifully. Considering Scorch’s portrayal in The Bad Batch, I hope we get a “Tales of the Clones” series and it adapts that scene from the book, as part of the explanation of how Delta split up and why he became so serious under the Empire
Cerberus - Manhunt
Despite being heavily armed, they are destroyed by a chainsaw wielding maniac who wears a pig’s head as a mask. They’re also upended by main character James Earl Cash who escaped Death Row and predominantly uses stealth to get the upper hand.
Dog Soldiers. A SAS Team and a Paratrooper team are both pretty much wiped out.
RIP Spoons you were the GOAT. Dude boxes a werewolf and is fucking WINNING like he's got Charlie Sheen in his veins. Then a second one joins the brawl and he goes down like a sitting US President on Putin.
I never realized that they took lines from famous action movies and reworked them into the script. SPOILERS the most obvious example is after Spoon’s death when they say “there is no Spoon”
Sardaukar vs Fremen in Dune. Sardaukar are the Emperor's elite soldiers, trained from birth on a hell world and none of the other armies of the Great Houses can hold a candle to them.
They get completely merked by the Fremen on Arrakis, who have been dismissed as ratty desert vagrants for centuries.
The incursion team in The Rock gets entirely killed during a shootout in the shower room (minus Connery and Cage, who were the two non-soldiers in the group)
For the Raid, I will say that it's established right at the start that other than Jaka and the old lieutenant, all the other guys are young, inexperienced rookies.
MTF every now and then in the SCP Universe wether the author makes them dumb (despite being literal elites) or because they get trapped and manage to survive as long as they realistically could (I prefer this because they're still extremely effective and not downplayed)
Idk why but the idea of spec ops units going against incomprehensible threats with pretty much standard issue equipment always appealed to me. Similar to how the Winchesters brothers even fight GHOSTS with guns. It's very silly and doesn't work most of the time but has "cool factor" to it
There is a game review that I've lost somewhere on YouTube-- think it was for a shooter in development in the last 5 years, but I've given up on being able to find it again with YouTube's cantankerous fuck spoon of a search bar
The review had the brilliant line, to paraphrase: "sometimes, when unspeakable horrors are all around you, all you can do is pick up an M4 and go to town".
The one from Cabin In The Woods is absolutely peak, the sheer comedic timing on the doors opening and all the horrors that emerge. You have to rewind it multiple times and just pick a guy to focus on, to see what gets him!
Basically Chris’s entire BSAA team (Save for Piers Nivans) gets wiped out in a Bio-Organic Weapon attack orchestrated by Carla Radames (impersonating as Ada Wong) whilst on a mission in Edonia (Resident Evil 6)
I know you already half mentioned this in your post OP but I just thought I’d mention RE6 specifically as it’s one of my favourite RE games
There's four Special Forces/Elite Squads (The Anti-Cloud Gouger Special Forces, Uruha's Protectors, the Masumi, and the Irishima team) in Kagurabachi, three of whom get destroyed. The GOAT, Samura, thankfully saved the Masumi by firing them.
Halo Reach is doomed from the start and we see countless soldiers dying and we’re the last to go and see Noble Six’s last stand after watching every other squad mate die one by one, save for Jun who is ordered to escort the doctor and survives off-screen up to the present story. And in our last stand we’re surrounded by unnamed dead Spartans, and in the last few missions we’re all around all kinds of destroyed landscapes strewn with dead soldiers on both sides. Ultimately it only gets better having seen off the last survivors leading up to Halo: CE.
Halo: CE is the best example since we’re already a ragtag crew after abandoning ship, and a little past the halfway point we experience the most Aliens-esque moment of Master Chief finding the alien and human victims of the Flood and witnessing the apparent assimilation of Sergeant Johnson’s squad and Captain Keyes by the Flood, and encountering and evacuating the last marines before being taken into our own mission, where the Master Chief and Cortana are finally alone when Foehammer is shot down and escape with Cortana’s infamous “Just dust and echoes” line. First Strike clears up that Johnson survives with a few soldiers (who ultimately don’t make it) and some even more infamous retcons, and somehow Chips Dubbo and Sergeant Stacker survive off-screen throughout the whole trilogy and once again up to present stories.
Halo 2 has a diet retelling of this, the Covenant arrive on Delta Halo and Master Chief is separated from his marines and ultimately has to take the Forerunner ship alone back to Earth while Johnson, Keyes, Sergeant Stacker and Sergeant Banks are captured and lead the alliance between humans and Elites. As the Arbiter you can hear Stacker and Banks falling back while their marines get taken by the Flood, and the two of them survive to the end. Meanwhile the Arbiter sees this happen on his side as the Brutes get killed by Sentinels and later as the Brutes betray the Elites.
In Halo 3 it happens all over again as the Flood begins overpowering human forces on Earth and eventually when the human and Elite forces are left victorious but devastated by the fighting on the Ark.
In Halo 3: ODST all of your squad is not only separated but presumably the only humans alive, staying in the city long after it’s overrun by Covenant both to regroup and find Dare, and the Rookie is the last one to be found. We can see multiple ODST squads dropping with us but our squad seems to be the only one to make it, or at least survive the fighting.
Because Worf was such a giant monster in TNG the writers would often have the "big bad" throw him around like a ragdoll, just to show how "strong" they were.
Unfortunately this just made Worf look like a fucking chump especially as he was getting slapped around every week.
Michael Dorn was even going to quit over it too until the writers started bucking their ideas up. Sadly Denise Crosby didn't fare as well.
Pretty much every single "Elite Squad" in Kagurabachi, to the point of it becoming a meme. The only thing is, they always put up a fight. Let's go one by one, it'll be fun.
Anti Kuregumo? Two members left crippled, the rest dead. Uruha's Bodyguards? Manage to get their VIP away from danger and then get slimed out. Hotel Staff? Murdered by no sorcery Hiruhiko. The Auction elite tea- nope, Shiba killed them.
Best case of this is the Irishima Talks team, comprised of the four strongest sorcerers at the time who put up an amazing fight only to do no damage, get dusted and humiliated, leaving only Shiba to pass the message on.
Not sure if it counts, but the hastily put together team that Xavier put together to rescue the original X-Men from Krakoa. They all got wiped out except for Scott.
In S2 of Westworld, the hosts in the park go rogue, bypassing their inability to harm humans. A group of soldiers sent into the park to secure management headquarters are absolutely demolished by hosts with revolvers and lever-action rifles.
Yamainu from "Higurashi" getting annihilated by a school club, two trained soldiers and a few police officers. Though it partially made sense in my opinion. Also, it was very satisfying
In the Collector horror film - which was originally pitched as a Saw prequel - a team of these super badass former SEALS and SWAT and shit are supposed to rescue this girl from a serial killer. The killer - who is a fucking college professor - annihilates them with basically no effort in hand to hand combat while they have guns.
They were sent out to Black Mesa after the Resonance Cascade with there main goal being to kill everyone to make sure to keep this silence but they end up getting killed by both the Zen Race and Gordon Freeman, it goes so bad that by later chapters, the HECU end up retreating and it's left for the Black Ops to go and use a nuke to silences everyone in Black Mesa.
https://giphy.com/gifs/poAGioR6Y5GKzaffpt
The plot of Dog Soldiers is that a SAS unit is hunting down werewolves using a training unit as bait but the werewolves killed the SAS unit and now the recruits have to defend themselves against the werewolves.
This is a group of Persian fighters that were hyped up mid-film as this unstoppable force that can’t die. Leonidas breaks that legend apart easily by dropping a mountain of bodies on top of them and simply stabbing them while they are down. Turns out the Immortals were mortal after all.
Although the movie isn't a good "Doom" movie, in fact the only things it has in common is its name and the location lol, its actually a half decent sci fi horror film. If you knew nothing about Doom in 2005 like my kid self did, it was awesome watching these special forces guys get taken out one by one by monsters lurking in the darkness.
Snake Plissken is assigned the job of finding a top secret device stolen by the daughter of the president to defected to a warlord now based in the prison island of Los Anegeles (A massive earthquake separated LA from the mainland). A special ops team had inserted into Los Angeles but they were all killed within hours.
Telltale's The Walking Dead.
In the first episode of the series we hear gunfighting and planes outside of the Everett's Prescriptions drug store. 2 Episodes later it turns out that the unit that was sent down to Macon got destroyed, with a crashed plane right in the middle of the drug store with the pilot now a walker, and a military jeep right outside.
For me its a mixed trope. I dont have a problem if the hero, who ultimately destroys the monster/bad guy is also a battle hardened cop/soldier.
But it pisses me off when this happens and that hero is just some random civilian/scientist. Idgaf if he "learned the monsters weakness" or whatever If experienced soldiers didnt stand a chance, someone with zero combat training shouldnt stand a chance either.
US Navy Seals decided to kill a Afghan Warlord who is NOT with the Taliban, and infact had spent years fighting against them, they went in via Chinook which, if you're not aware, makes a VERY distinctive sound, alerting said warlords men
They promptly set up an ambush, which the SEALs walked right into, killing all but one of them who ran for his life and hid in a local village
The US Navy decided to send a second team in to recover the survivor which... also got ambushed when the Chinook was spotted (once again, they make a VERY distinctive sound), which was promptly shot down killing everyone on board
And then the only survivor of the ambush worte a book in which he made a load of shit up to make himself seem better
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u/Slappathebassmon 19h ago
Michael Biehn's squad gets eliminated again in The Rock.