Having just watched Battleship, where they were forced to use on old remaining nearly decommissioned ship to defeat the high tech aliens, I feel like I've seen the same theme occur in many movies, but am totally blanking on them right now...

TVTropes: Rock Beats Laser

I think this was in Star Wars somewhere...

The computer virus in ID4.

Does BattleStar Galactica count?

Pacific Rim, kind of.

"War of the Worlds"

"Mars Attacks."

Anytime the action hero shoots down or kicks a door as opposed to waiting for the nerd sidekick to hack into it.

In a roundabout way - Rocky XXXXIIII (or whatever one had the Russian).

Rocky worked out on a farm lifting rocks, pulling sleds, chopping trees, running in snow, climbing mountains... while the Russian had all that fancy-ass high-tech training equipment and steroids.

I think Rocky won the fight, no?

Real Steel (junk-heap robot versus state-of-the-art robot)

Also Star Blazers/Space Battleship Yamato (old battleship refitted to fight highly advance aliens ... which sounds an awful lot like Battleship)

The comedy Down Periscope with Kelsey Grammer had an old WWII submarine up against a state-of-the-art nuclear sub.

Didn't they also use a biplane?

Does Back to the Future 3 count?

In the deleted alternate ending they did. Not in the actual movie though.

"Really, Dinoboy? A stick?! Against a Transmetal? Face it Dinobot, you're old technology, obsolete, what can you possibly do?"
"Improvise."
Beast Wars: Transformers, "Code of Hero," still badass after all of these years.

"Not everything. Gypsy is analog. Her core's nuclear."

And of course, it's the premise of the whole movie...
"Ah, poor John McClane. The Timex watch in the digital age."

Any movie where the hero flattens the villain with a mighty punch.

Like Will Smith in ID4.

War Games. Chess beats a super computer.

It was tic tac toe that defeated David/WOPR.

They Live, Small Soldiers, Johnny Mnemonic off the top of my head.

Morse code seemed to be used a lot when communication systems are down, i.e. Transformers.

The Ewoks in Jedi.

The Wizard Of Oz. Witches with magical powers and flying monkeys beaten by a house falling on one and water being splashed on the other.

How about Terminator 1, using 80's tech to kill a futuristic robot? Or T2, using a futuristic robot to kill an even more futuristic robot?

Realistically speaking, is morse code a back up? I find morse code interesting and know where it is known but like in TF. Would that person know it?

Um...what? I couldn't understand a sentence you wrote.

Is morse code a back up for when communications are down? Would the characters that use it as the only alternative literally be learned in that, within a real life scenario? This mostly applies to military and communications people, my questions.

Predator

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