10 Badass Movie Villains Defeated Way Too Easily

4. ED-209 (RoboCop)

Robocop Vs Ed 209
Orion Pictures

During a demonstration in 1987's RoboCop, the ED-209 crime-fighting machine brutally guns down the unfortunate Mr. Kinney, penetrating his skin with bullet after bullet to such an extent that his corpse resembles a piece of Swiss cheese dunked in jam.

The moral of the story? Once ED has a target, it won't stop until that target is turned into mush.

Later in the film, the droid comes face-to-face with RoboCop, and the two characters engage in a no-holds-barred beatdown throughout OCP tower. Here, ED gives RoboCop a real run for his money, damaging his suit and forcing him to flee. In fact, ED has its foe pretty much beat, but fortunately for RoboCop, he has an incredibly powerful ally waiting to bail him out: a set of stairs.

When ED tries to follow RoboCop down to the garage, it trips and falls down these stairs, lands on its back, and is unable to climb to its feet again. RoboCop is able to escape because of this, and he later returns to defeat ED for good, destroying it with a few well-placed bullets.

Having ED be foiled by some stairs is basically the writers admitting that RoboCop didn't stand a chance, forcing them to plant a little deus ex machina in the script so that the title character could live through to the finale. And yeah, it's pretty pathetic to see the tough-as-nails droid fall on its back and squeal like a pig.

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Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!