Stupidity: Ground troops armed with semi-auto handguns, automatic rifles and even heavy artillery just keep wasting ammo, barrage-after-barrage, magazine-after-magazine, against giant robots and monsters 100 feet tall, long after it becomes obvious that the weapons have zero effect. This is an ongoing stupidity dating back to some of the earliest giant monster movies, and is still seen in giant monster and superhero films today.
Charles Austin Miller
27th Dec 2018
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Suggested correction: Surely in the face of a no-win scenario, doing something that may or may not work is better than doing nothing and awaiting your doom. They would be doing everything they could to stop the enemy in the hopes of saving lives. Even if it takes every last round of ammunition, it may eventually be enough to wear down the monster / robot etc.
I hate to disagree. I think one of the best examples is the latest Godzilla movie where they keep firing their hand guns on it knowing it would be better to just get out, there was absolutely no point to do that. Same goes for Man Of Steel.
In everything from old Godzilla movies to modern superhero and kaiju flicks, we see military forces line up and throw every bit of small arms and heavier artillery they have at the giant monsters or giant robots, with zero effect. The military always retreats, regroups, then lines up and wastes all their ammunition again, as if they learned absolutely nothing from the first experience.
In a no-win scenario, you beat a hasty retreat and live to fight another day, hopefully better armed and better prepared next time. You don't hold your ground, futilely trying to bring down a giant monster the size of a Hilton Hotel with small arms fire.
It's strange because I can understand why filmmakers still do this, even though it makes little sense. They are trying to show that the monster, robot, whatever is unstoppable by conventional means and honestly I don't know how you would do that without these kinds of scenes. Even though they are dumb. It's extra dumb to me when you hear the General yell "Stand your ground, men!" or something like that. Or when the cop runs out of bullets and throws his gun.
I've seen too many scenes where they keep shooting, apparently to no avail, BUT there is always the chance that hitting the "monster" in a certain spot could get it to retreat. Instead of just continuing to rapidly fire with the general intent of hitting the monster, it would make much more sense to focus on a possible soft spot, such as an eye. The "just keep firing" mentality does fall under "stupidity." The military should be using a strategy that is rational, and emptying machine guns isn't.
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