Epic Fail - Television Tropes & Idioms

The audience comes into a film—especially an adaptation—expecting certain things. We eagerly anticipate seeing that one scene, which will be awesome, even epic, when rendered on the big screen. This can include the defeat of major villains, a superhero showing off their really powerful techniques, a villain getting a proper and long comeuppance, etc. In a big-budget movie, a scene like this can finally get the spectacular treatment it deserves.

And then we come to that moment in the story, draw in a breath, and...nothing happens. The writers chose to skip it.

This is an Epic Fail—it could have been epic, but it failed. A type of Anticlimax.

A more malicious writer might do this as a Shaggy Dog Story, but often it happens because writers may tire of solving a big crisis with a big fight, and want to go for something more artsy.

See also Audience Sucker Punch, Coconut Superpowers and They Wasted A Perfectly Good Plot for specific versions of this trope. Compare What Cliffhanger and Noodle Incident, but not Epic Flail.

Examples:

Film

Peter Jackson cited The Lord of the Rings' Ent & Hobbit scenes as the most difficult to do well, simply because the premise sounds so objectively silly (talking trees), quaint, and nonthreatening at that point in the movie. Avoiding Epic Fail there meant he knew the audience would accept anything else afterwards.
- Interestingly, the Directors Cut includes a bit of the otherwise only alluded-to fight between Gandalf and the Witchking and storyboards of Sauron joining the fight at the Black Gate. Only the former got past storyboard, and even that was removed from the normal film run, possibly because of fans complaining Gandalf wouldn't have gotten such an early albeit interrupted beatdown.
  - It should be noted that Jackson has repeatedly insisted that the extended versions of the movies are not directors cuts or preferred versions, but alternates for people who appreciate the greater depth they provide and don't mind the added length. Some notable effects, like the trees at Helm's Deep, were created with the assumption they would not be in the theatrical cut.
- There is also a potentially awesome battle between Gandalf and the Nazgûl on Weathertop. It lasted an entire night; dawn weakened the nocturnal Nazgûl enough for Gandalf to fight his way out and escape. He retells it in one paragraph in the books; the movies don't mention it at all.
- Several fans of the book felt that Éowyn and Merry's battle against the Witch King in the film was an epic fail. The scene is far more dramatic in the book, with some really great lines, and was shortened down considerably. One might argue that including too much of the dialogue would make the scene less dramatic on-screen, but in this troper's opinion that is no reason to rewrite and shorten the lines they chose to keep.
The awesome kraken in Pirates of the Caribbean was killed off in the third installment. Offscreen. All we get to see is its beached corpse. Which, despite the hilarious shout-out to cryptozoology, is a bit of a letdown. And then there's the awesome promised battle between the fleet of the East India Trading Company and the Pirates' Gathering: only three ships get involved.
Many fans of the books consider the movie adaptation of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Epic Fail due to the omission of the Marauders' backstory - which left the end of the movie riddled with Plot Holes. (How Lupin knew what the Marauder's Map was and how it worked, the significance of the form of Harry's patronus, why Snape hated Lupin and Sirius that badly, etc.) In fact, a lot of Snape's scenes and backstory in general was omitted from the first five movies, period. Which might come back to bite the filmmakers in the butt when Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows are adapted for the screen.
- A more baffling example occurs in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, where the Quidditch World Cup is hyped as a major event throughout the opening scenes in both the book and the movie, of which we only see the beginning and aftermath, in a rather abrupt scene cut. Some fans explain this as Quidditch being the Novel Sport sort of filler that isn't as important to the story later on, in both the books and movies.
- For this troper (and others) it was the scene at the end of Goblet of Fire, where we finally get to see Dumbledore displaying his phenomenal magic power, and fully understand just why Voldemort was batshit terrified of him. In the movie however...not so much, as he simply hurls a Stupify spell. Same with the battle in Order of the Phoenix, which in the novels is far more psychological, and thus very tense. It was still pretty cool though.
Played with in No Country for Old Men. Both the film and book leave out an important, very emotionally charged scene that ostensibly should have been the climax of each work, featuring the final showdown of the villain and hero that the audience or reader has been waiting three-quarters of the work to see. This is, however, intentional on part of the author, generating the massive feeling of disappointment and annoyance that lesser artists could only hope to create by accident.
The film version of Clive Cussler's Sahara cut out the could-have-been-awesome desperate fight between the beleaguered UN special forces team and the Malian military swarm at Fort Foreau, as well as the Abraham Lincoln conspiracy theory, and was the worse for doing so.

Video Games

The Playstation 2 Star Ocean game sets some kind of record. *ahem* Mankind is doomed. A generation ago all creation was sentenced to death for meddling in forbidden knowledge. Today, angelic invaders the size of planetoids are heading for inhabited planets and swat battlefleets without slowing down. Snazzy organ music plays on the background. The party members discover their lives' purpose: their parents unwillingly turned them into weapons with that same knowledge, giving them the ability to escape a dying universe and go Mano a Deus with its doom. Then the invaders reach Earth. Billions die in stunned silence (and stunning CGI). The party escapes the husk, and their Cool Ship buys them time with an overtly suicidal You Shall Not Pass moment. The party crosses dimensions as an act of braven defiance from people who have already lost everything. Then they find themselves in an ordinary futuristic city, and a little kid walks up to say (paraphrased): "Hey, you're from a virtual reality!"
- In the second Star Ocean game a ruler sends the party off to four entire dungeons to become stronger. Four dungeons later, the party protests that they haven't strengthened at all - and the ruler remarks that no, they have. Surprise, the plot went on pause to require several hours of Level Grinding! For comparison purposes, Tales Of Eternia also sends a character to gain power, except that this power requires tests of moral character and chatting with the local equivalent of Metatron. His new abilities look like what they are, someone throwing around the primoidal forces of creation in a fairly low-magic setting, are all usable in battle, and enable him to deflect the usual endgame instakills attacks that, contrary to tradition, aren't survivable.
In Okami we are repeatedly told of how powerful Amaterasu was in her prime, and that even with this it cost her life in her initial battle with Orochi. Then, when you travel back in time, you are treated to a very easy battle against Orochi all by yourself, after which the past version of Ammy shows up... for all of three seconds, only to be crushed by a large rock.
Metal Gear Solid 2: The Big Shell falls apart as Arsenal Gear breaks free. Then a few hours later Arsenal Gear crashes into New York, causing even more destruction. But the master discs were burned on September 12, 2001 so it all happened off-screen, making the ending even more disjointed.
Xenosaga Episode I hyped a possible future where KOS-MOS, using a special armor, would destroy the world, and that it was Shion's responsibility not to let that happen. That scene was planned for Episode II before the writer and the guy who had thought up the whole Saga were kicked off. Thus, Episode II was considered Epic Fail for many.
The climactic "showdown" with General Scales in Star Fox Adventures is abruptly cut off before a single blow can be exchanged to reveal The Man Behind The Man. Cue the real, rather underwhelming final battle with a villain who pretty much just came out of nowhere.
- The new character Krystal was hyped extensively, was originally the main character before the game had anything to do with Star Fox at all, and when the game came out was confined her to a crystal for almost the entire.
The trailers for Kingdom Hearts II promised to breathe new life into the franchise with a new Dual Wielding main character who seemed to act as a mysterious counterpart to Sora. What we got instead was the Longest Prologue Ever, followed by said character rather cruelly getting a bridge dropped on him so that the action could return to the real star of the show: Sora. When the much-anticipated fight between Sora and his counterpart finally happens, it's a Dream Sequence Cutscene; fortunately, it gets upgraded to a proper boss battle in the Limited Special Collectors Ultimate Edition... which was only sold in Japan.
The recent Mega Man 9 has a huge example of this: while it's obvious who's behind the plot's shenanigans, the twist here is that the robots were scheduled for scrapping due to mandatory expiration laws, and Wily talked them into rebelling in order to prove to the world that they were still useful. Read in the right context, it could be the definitive link between the regular and the X series...had they carried the plot twist through, instead of ditching it after the eight Robot Masters are beaten in favor for a Lampshade Hanging of Wily's "begging for mercy" every game.
In the first and second titles of the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney series, we learn a few details about Mia and Maya's mother and Master of Kurain Village, Misty Fey, who, in the first game, had been missing for 15 years. In Trials and Tribulations, we meet the mysterious picture book author Elise Deauxnim, and she dies later that night. Only after the first day of court do we learn that she was Misty in disguise. So much for finally meeting the long-lost Kurain Master.
Mortal Kombat Deception built up a massively awesome Xanatos Gambit by the then-mysterious One Being, using Onaga and others to orchestrate its revival, which would cause The End Of The World As We Know It, as a result. Fan anticipation was high that the titular "Armageddon" of the next game would be just that, with the characters banding together to take out a semi-revived One Being for the final boss. Instead, we get a horrendously unceremonious off-screen end to this plan, a completely different Xanatos Gambit by the Elder Gods, and a Joke Character being elevated to the One Being's suspected position as the final boss. Not surprisingly, the fans were not amused.

Literature

In the final chapter of the Warhammer 40000: Gaunt's Ghosts novel Sabbat Martyr, the narrator speaks of a week-long battle supposedly more intense than any other recorded in the narrative, but we do not get to read it. Admittedly, it came on the heels of a final confrontation, but still...
In A Series of Unfortunate Events, the second-to-last book in the series spends most of its time building up an epic battle between good and evil. Then, when the last book finally arrives, the three main characters completely miss the grand battle and spend all of the book on some random desert island. An enormous disappointment to fans of the series.
- The grand battle did happen, in the twelfth book, which was explicitly intended to be the denouement to the series. The heroes failed. Granted, a considerably more epic battle really did happen off-screen.
Played with in No Country for Old Men. Both the film and book leave out an important, very emotionally charged scene that ostensibly should have been the climax of each work, featuring the final showdown of the villain and hero that the audience or reader has been waiting three-quarters of the work to see. This is, however, intentional on part of the author, generating the massive feeling of disappointment and annoyance that lesser artists could only hope to create by accident.
In A Storm of Swords, blacksmith Donal Noye leads a defense against a group of giants while Castle Black is under siege. The readers only get to see the outcome, all the combatants were killed, and Donal and the giant king Mag killed each other. Sure, the chapter is told from the viewpoint of Jon Snow, who didn't participate in that fight, but the author could have just written one chapter told from Donal's perspective so that the readers could have taken in the awesome.

Western Animation

The 'Best Friends Forever' episode of South Park openly revels in this trope, as the ending of the episode is essentially a huge battle between the forces of heaven and hell - which is not seen at all. However, heaven's force commander describes it, along with wishing he had a camcorder, and calling it "...like ten times bigger...!" than the final battle in the Lord of the Rings movie.
In the Codename Kids Next Door movie, Operation Zero, Father gets REALLY pissed off at Grandfather and looks like he's about to lay a major smackdown on him, but then suddenly loses interest and goes inside to eat ice cream. It was supposed to be funny, but all it ended up doing was deny the viewer a massive fight scene.
Katara's bloodbending was made out to be a big deal when it was first introduced, and was giving a whole episode of set up, but it is only used in one inconsequential instance later.
Winx Club has a few Epic Fails in season 3:
- The season premiere introduces us to a new fairy from a different school, who also takes pot-shots at the Winx girls' Alfea; plus her two cohorts. But then her cohorts don't show up again; her character arc immediately gets relegated to that of Stella's dad announcing his plans to marry the new fairy's mom; that arc is put on the backburner for a LONG time; and she doesn't even put up much of a fight in the episode where that plotline is resolved. All without ever showing either her school or her fairy form.
- Tecna gets her Enchantix without anyone even mentioning her homerealm. (A fairy is supposed to get it by saving someone from her homerealm.)
- One episode ends with Diaspro swearing revenge against the fairies (Bloom in particular) after breaking her spell on Sky and Brandon getting captured by Diaspro's guards. Many episodes and plotlines later, Sky and Brandon pop up again, and Sky says that Diaspro has been banished, and Brandon says he was locked up in a dungeon until Sky saved him.

Tabletop Games

The End Of The World As We Know It that finished off the old World Of Darkness game lines is thought by a number of people to have been poorly-handled at best: in a game line (in)famous for its all-encompassing metaplot, the various "armageddon" books didn't actually give a single canon way for the world to end. Instead, each book offered up a grab bag of different "choose-your-own" endings; some of these were awesome, many were decidedly less awesome, and a couple were just out of left field.
- In all honesty, White Wolf's hands were tied. Any definitive ending to the setting would have suffered exactly the same problem. (And there is a "final" ending - the last fiction portion in Time of Fire.)
Recent plot events in the Legend of the Five Rings roleplaying setting definitely qualify. First, Big Bad Daigotsu has after over a year (real time) of excellently written, dramatic-tension-building work, finally gotten everything in place for his master plan to subvert the empire and seize the empty throne during the succession wars. And then after he has won, at the last instant his prize is snatched away because the gods come down from Heaven and declare that the new Emperor shall be chosen by a 'Mortal Kombat' - style tournament. Daigotsu immediately adjusts to this horrendous setback, as well as completely off-the-rails genre violation for the setting, by unhesitatingly declaring his intention to enter the tournament and win it. Given that Daigotsu is the champion of the evil god Fu Leng, the god rejected by all his divine siblings and whose servants are under sentence of genocide by the entire Empire of Rokugan, this means that Daigotsu intends to walk alone into a gathering of all the mightiest heroes and champions of the gods still existing in the land and singlehandedly beat them all down. And you just know that he could (or at the very least inflict so much damage that the emissaries of the gods themselves would have to jump into the brawl to save everyone)... you can taste the Crowning Moment Of Awesome about to be born... until the next story comes out, and its revealed that despite what Daigotsu said in the last story, he just sent some nameless mooks in disguise to the tournament, who of course don't even make it past the first round.

Live Action TV

This is spoofed in the Stargate SG-1 episodes involving Martin Lloyd.
In the second season of Heroes, we hear an awful lot about the legendary adventures of samurai Takezo Kensei. When we finally meet Kensei, and find out that Hiro has to help him live those adventures, it's not unreasonable to assume that the adventures will actually be, y'know, seen, right? One episode actually starts in the middle of a giant samurai battle, then goes back to talk about the leadup to the fight, then goes directly to the aftermath.
Buffy and Angel, reunited after she returned from the dead! It must have been intense! Well, yes, apparently it was. She said so. But that was all she said about it, and the encounter wasn't shown on either of their respective shows (probably because they aired on different networks).
HBO's Rome. Any battles the characters are going to, they either get shipwrecked or we only get to see some blurry images. Of course, action costs money!
- Except for the season 2 episode "Philippi" where 15 minutes in they gear up to begin the battle, and you assume they're just going to skip it like every single other battle, right? No, the rest of the episode is the Battle of Philippi in all of its glory (which is pretty glorious as it's two battles in real life condensed into one for the show).
  - Of course this pretty much blew their budget so the Battle Of Actium, a battle that depending on how your count those these things is still a contender for largest naval battle ever, is depicted in its entirety with a scene of Mark Anthony fleeing in a row boat with smoke in the background.
  - Of course, Rome was unbelievably expensive to make even without the action scenes, so you can forgive the producers for drawing a line through scenes that would have increased the cost yet further while adding little to the plot.
Probably one of the worst offender in recent history is Enterprise's series finale. The whole episode builds tension about the Captain's final speech that will inaugurate the creation of the Federation, only to skip it at the end! The cast themselves repeatedly took shots at the episode in interviews during filming.
The Firefly episode "Objects in Space" played Epic Fail for extreme laughs. Psycho For Hire Jubal Early and Simon are struggling, and Jayne, who's been asleep the entire episode, wakes up to hear the noise. He looks up, grunts, scowls, and pulls off the blanket to expose his Wall Of Weapons. Battle music begins playing....and then Jayne pulls the blanket over him and goes back to sleep.
In the first season of Gossip Girl, Serena's mother takes her to meet the parents of the boy she "killed", something she was so wracked with guilt over that she fled New York to become a different person. It takes place completely offscreen.

Anime

During the Johto arc of Pokemon, one episode ends with Ash getting transformed into a Pikachu for several days via a magic spell. Rather than take an episode or two to explore the concept, the next episode starts just seconds before he turns back.
Devil May Cry The Animated Series: in the final episode, Dante finally pulls out his Devil Trigger Super Mode... Offscreen. He's grappling with the Big Bad, the camera zooms in on his face, he starts glowing, his eyes widen and his voice deepens. The camera cuts back to show an explosion on the roof they are fighting on. When it comes back to them, the fight's already over.
The last episode of Lucky Star has the cast doing the OP theme dance as part of a school festival. We're shown the cast doing a rehearsal, then later, them getting ready for the actual performance. Just the curtains rise and they get ready, the screen whites out and the series ends.
Parodied twice in the The Law Of Ueki, with characters describing how awesome a Dangerous Forbidden Technique was, after it was used off-camera. The Narrator then explains that it was the result of a lacking special effects budget.
In Koi Koi 7 everything is set in place for an obviously awesome boss battle—only to skip it completely and have all the characters wind up on a beach in the next episode.
In Digimon Frontier, Takuya and Koji have been floored by the Royal Knights for the past 10 episodes effortlessly. The previous fight with them had the heroes get close to defeat them. So when it got to the final fractal code spot, one would think that we would get an epic battle between Takuya and Koji VS the Royal Knights. What happened was 20 seconds of DBZ style punch trading, followed up by Takuya and Koji hitting the ground defeated. Then when the heroes finally win against them, it's a Curbstomp Battle. Thank you, Digimon Frontier.
In Sailor Moon Super we never even get to SEE the final epic battle against the big bad. There's no awesome Sailor Saturn throwdown, no Super Sailor Moon pulling some awesome new attack out of thin air. There's just a big black shell that the battle happens inside of and we never get to see. The worst part? then they use up another couple episodes to wrap the season. They had time to give us a long drawn out really cool ending and instead we got filler.

Real Life

After a long struggle, the Ancient Athenian fleet was finally destroyed by a Spartan fleet catching them beached on shore and burning them all in a matter of fact way, without a battle. Some accounts state that the Spartans accidentally set the fire while cooking.
After the epic "middle act" that was the Alamo, the Texas Revolution was concluded at the Battle of San Jacinto, where the Texans snuck up on the Mexican soldiers and massacred them while they were sleeping.
- Not massacred, just captured . Although this doesn't change the fact that Santa Ana picked a really, really bad time to take a siesta.

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