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️Tue Mar 11 2025

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/HelmetsAreHardlyHeroic/LiveActionFilms

Helmets Are Hardly Heroic

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Played with in 300, in that most if not all of the Spartans go to battle at Thermopylae with their helmets on (and not much else, even though they're ostensibly a heavy infantry unit), and most of the attacking Persians have helmets (or at least some sort of head and/or face covering) as well. The helmets are usually only taken off between battles, if they get knocked off/too damaged to be functional, or in special circumstances such as the Captain going on a mad slaughter or Leonidas removing his helmet to get a clear view of Xerxes when he hurls his spear at the outset of the final "battle".
An egregious example is the end of Batman Returns where the Dark Knight actually tears the rigid plastic neck of his batsuit in order to remove the headpiece which was not designed to be removed without taking off the upper part of the suit. The suit, by the way, was already established to be bulletproof body armor. This leads to the question of how he gets the headpiece on in the first place. In general, Batman never sports his Irisless Eye Mask Of Mystery in any of his movies (or the live-action series) because it makes it too difficult for the actors to emote.
The Chronicles of Narnia: In Prince Caspian, when Peter and King Miraz are dueling, both start out wearing their helmets, and Peter's even saves him from a few blows. Peter's helmet gets wrenched off during the fight and he decides to keep it off when they restart due to the heat; Miraz sees this and refuses his own.
In Clash of the Titans, Perseus is given a magic helmet with the power to make him invisible. He uses it a few times early in the movie, then loses it during a fight about a quarter of the way through and never bothers using any sort of headgear for the rest of the film.
Played with in the 2012 Dredd movie. As in the comics, Dredd himself is never seen without his helmet (save for the opening scene, which shows him dressing for work. Since he's only depicted from behind and in shadow, his face is still not visible). The more idealistic (and female) rookie he's mentoring, however, eschews a helmet entirely. When he accuses her of forgetting it, she explains that it would interfere with her psychic abilities, so it's a justified example in her case.
Played With in Dune: Part Two: Despite the Harkonnen soldiers wearing fully enclosed suits of armor, the suits worn by Glossu Rabban and Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen do not feature any helmets. On the other hand, Paul tends to conceal his face like the rest of the Fremen with either their headgear or a hood, though there are a few times where he exposes his face either in casual moments or when he is inspiring his troops.
Dune (2021) and Dune: Part Two regularly have characters, including Fremen, walk around the desert without stillsuit masks. Characters in this movie regularly avoid losing water, even through tears or spitting, so wearing the masks which recycle breath water would be expected.
In Edge of Tomorrow, Major William Cage wears a helmet into battle initially but later stops doing so (saying that a helmet is a distraction). This is justified: Not wearing a helmet increases the likelihood that an injury will be fatal; Cage's ability to reset time upon death means that dying is actually preferable to serious injury. However, he does lose his visor on the first drop scene, allowing the camera to focus on his facial reactions. It stays on the following times, as he gets better at landing.
Played straight in Eragon, in which none of the main heroes bother with headgear.
In First Knight, when Lancelot is made a Knight of the Round Table, he is given a standard suit of armor. During his first battle under King Arthur's service, he quickly discards the helmet when he finds that he can't see a thing in it.
In G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, the hero gets a lot of flak during training for removing his head gear, but does the same thing later when wearing Powered Armor. In the second instance, at least, it might be justified by it having been damaged, as you can see large gash through the viewscreen just before he takes it off. Also in a flashback, Duke is seen to be helmet-less whilst all his troops have them during a particularly intense fire-fight.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies: None of the main characters wear helmets. The men of Laketown don't even seem to wear armor, so they might not have any helmets in the first place. Thorin and company put on helmets and heavy armor when prepping for a siege, but stick to light armor instead when they go out to fight to not be worn out by the weight, and may have abandoned the helmets for the same reason. Dain starts with a helmet, but loses it. Given that even without a helmet he can still headbutt Orcs who do have helmets, he arguably doesn't need one.
Played straight in the Judge Dredd film adaptation. And yet criminals recognize him primary by his chin.
A Knight's Tale takes this up to eleven: Will is injured just before the final lance, which will determine who wins the world championships. Not only does he opt not to wear his helmet, he takes off all his armour, saying he "can't breathe with it on." You won't breathe if you take it off either, Will, because you will be dead. In the commentary, the director talks about the convenience of cutting from the actor slamming down their visor to the stunt man in full armor and helmet.
The Last Samurai: Most of the main samurai characters forgo helmets for the final battle. Ujio wears one during the cavalry charge, but loses it almost immediately.
Frequently seen in The Lord of the Rings movies, from Elrond in the opening battle, to Aragorn and Legolas at Helm's Deep and Pelennor Fields. Gimli, on the other hand, hardly ever takes his helmet off at all, and many other important good guys do wear helmets into battle.
In Man of Steel, when Jor-El armors up to defend his home from Zod and his followers, he stops short of donning a helmet. The ensuing duel with Zod has them both firmly in the grip of this trope, armored from throat to toes in heavy, very functional armor... but with heads completely exposed (which leads to each of them punching the other in the face — a lot).
Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- In Thor, the eponymous character keeps his incredibly cool helmet on for maybe three seconds at a ceremony. Apparently this was due to tests that they did where they determined that the helmet was too heavy for Chris Hemsworth to wear on a consistent basis. (Although it's averted in the gladiator fight of Thor: Ragnarok, where both Thor and the Hulk wear helmets.) Jane Foster also only uses a helmet in her first scene as Mighty Thor in Thor: Love and Thunder. His devious brother Loki wears his helmet far more frequently, though he goes without it for large stretches of The Avengers. He doesn't wear it at all in Thor: The Dark World. According to Tom Hiddleston, it weighed about seven pounds, and he channeled the frustration into his performance.
- Inverted in Iron Man 2. In the final battle, the heroes wear helmets but Vanko takes his off. Tony tries to shoot him. It automatically pops back on. Then he takes it off again. However, having the helmet down when he thinks he's got Tony and Rhodey on the ropes leaves him vulnerable to Stark and Rhodes' finishing move, which he never saw before. The Iron Man series generally averts this with Tony keeping his faceplate down in most situations, but makes up for it by inter-cutting shots of Tony's face from inside the helmet in the form of a Heads-Up Display, which still allows him to emote and react to what's happening. Ditto for Rhodey. In later films, the helmet becomes fully collapsible, able to show Robert Downey Jr.'s whole head instead of just his face, though he keeps it up in combat.
- Zig-Zagged in Captain America: The First Avenger and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, where Steve Rogers often goes back and forth between being helmeted and helmetless for decent periods of time.
- It's been noted that on the theatrical posters for Captain America: The First Avenger◊, The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy◊, none of the characters wear their masks or helmets. Even Iron Man, who wears a suit of Powered Armor, goes helmetless so that the audience can see Robert Downey Jr.'s mug.
- In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Steve wears his helmet for most fight scenes, but ditches it for the final battle, and the reason why got cut from the actual release — on arriving in Sokovia, the first thing he sees is graffiti of his old look with "fascist" written on it.
- In Captain America: Civil War, Black Panther's helmet has to be manually removed whenever he wants to show his face. It's hard to escape the conclusion that a major reason for updating him to a suit of Nanotech Instant Armor in Black Panther is so that he can simply make the helmet vanish whenever the actor needs to emote, even in the many, many situations in which it would be safer to leave it on. The suits Iron Man makes for himself and Spider-Man in Infinity War have the same advantage.
- Although he's not a hero (unless you see him as the main character of the movie), Infinity War was widely mocked online for the fact that Thanos never wears his iconic golden helmet — or any armor at all, for that matter — when actually fighting, sticking with a sleeveless shirt and going for a bareheaded look that some fans described as "high school gym coach" or "your fat uncle on casual Friday at work".
- Done to an especially silly degree in Endgame. When the version of Thanos from an Alternate Timeline arrives on the field of the Final Battle, knowing that all the Avengers are there (and have already killed him once before), the first thing he does is remove his helmet while waiting for them. He puts it back on when the actual fighting starts, only to tear it off in a rage after Cap damages it. Then when all the resurrected heroes who died in Infinity War, none of whom are anywhere near as tough or durable as Thanos, arrive on that same battlefield, they also immediately remove their helmets, and are rarely seen wearing them in the ensuing battle outside of landscape shots. Anytime they're in a close-up shot, even one that only lasts for a few seconds, off comes the helmet.
Averted in the Rocket Man film serials by Republic Pictures, where the Jet Pack-wearing hero wears a bullet-shaped full-face helmet that streamlines his head, shields his face when he's flying, and conveniently hides the stuntman playing him.
Played with in the opening battle of Saving Private Ryan. One soldier has an enemy bullet glance off his helmet, he takes it off to marvel at his luck, and catches a sniper round between the eyes.
Near the start of The Siege of Jadotville, shortly after arriving at Jadotville, Commandant Quinlan and his Company Sergeant-Major are inspecting the equipment provided by the United Nations. They discover the iconic sky-blue helmets are flimsy plastic and provide about as much protection as a cloth beret, so they choose not issue them (actual, real helmets, like the steel M1, came years later as armies started switching to composites such as kevlar).
Played straight in Snow White & the Huntsman. Snow White rides into battle in full armour but no helmet, in a battle where they are Storming the Castle and getting a lot of things dropped, poured and thrown on them. However Snow White is the leader and symbol of the rebellion, so she has to be recognizable to give hope to her fellow rebels and the oppressed population.
Star Wars: Downplayed in general, since main characters do at times wear helmets, but only villains or heroes disguised as bad guys wear helmets that conceal the face. In the case of Darth Vader and Kylo Ren, the face-concealing helmet is a fearsome part of their image and was adopted after a Face–Heel Turn. The Clone troopers in the prequel trilogy are an outlier in terms of wearing face-covering helmets despite being both competent at fighting and initially on the "good" side; after Order 66 you never see a clone trooper take off their helmet, and their successors the Storm Troopers are for the most part disposable Faceless Goons.
Most of the Redshirts from The Super Inframan wears helmets, except the hero, Rayma. Incidentally, Rayma's helmet is the reason he survived the movie, when he gets a drill to his head by one of the monsters, destroying the helmet while his cranium remains intact.
Downplayed in Top Gun: all pilots do wear helmets, but none of the named characters ever have their sun-visors down over their eyes while flying (not even "by the book" pilots such as Jester or Viper). Conversely, the helmets of all the unnamed MiG pilots cover the entire head. The sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, would avert this, showing all the pilots wearing sun-visors while flying.
Achilles removes his helmet just before fighting Hector in Troy, remarking that this time, Hector is sure of who he's fighting. Previously, Hector killed Achilles' cousin, who was wearing his armor and posing as him. Hector also removes his helmet to fight fair.
In Underworld: Blood Wars, a fully-armored army of Nordic Vampires are fighting Lycans, except for their leader Lena who is not wearing a helmet. Justified since it was used to demonstrate Lena has become a Daywalking Vampire after drinking Selene's blood, as the vampires were fighting during daytime and really needed protection.
In Willow, Madmartigan dons a full suit of armor complete with helmet in preparation for the battle of Tir Asleen, only to lose the helmet about a minute into the fighting, and never bothers to retrieve or replace it.
The X-Men movies are rather infamous for making sure Hugh Jackman never wears Wolverine's iconic mask/helmet from the comics. Interestingly, the mask was supposed to finally debut at the very end of The Wolverine, but this idea was scrapped. On the other hand, Magneto does wear his trademark helmet in each of the movies he appears in, but it tends to fulfill its primary purpose of keeping Charles (and Cerebro) out of his head.
Magneto: (to Pyro) This "dorky-looking helmet" is the only thing that's going to protect me from the real "bad guys"!