"Good guys" committing perfidy (fake surrender) and it's treated as a clever heroic ploy instead of a war crime or something morally dubious

[u/AporiaParadox]

1. Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Anakin pretends to surrender to the enemy multiple times during the Clone Wars. And no, it's not used to indicate that Anakin is falling to the Dark Side, other characters like Obi-Wan do it too.
2. The Iliad. The Trojan Horse was a real dick move, a fake surrender compounded by a fake peace offering, followed by a massacre. I get that it was a different time, but still, most modern adaptations just treat it as a cool thing. One thing I'll give Nolan's The Odyssey credit for is that Odysseus recognizes that what his "clever plot" was wrong.

Perfidy is a serious war crime, because morality aside, in exchange for one victory, you're dooming all of your allies who might want to legitimately surrender in the future because now the enemy is just going to execute them, not to mention that now the enemy won't surrender to you and will just fight harder.

[u/Ok_Work1615]

in defense of star wars, while the scene was used humoursly, it also served to show the watchers that something is seriously wrong with anakin even from that point (even as a kid, i didnt like that scene at all) and the others did seem reluctant to go with it.

but yeah i got nothing for the illiad.

[u/NwgrdrXI → u/Ok_Work1615]

The Illiad thing is hardly an "heroic" thing. It is a smart thing.

Odysseus is many thing, some of them good, hero is not one of them.

He was never meant to be an example of a virtuous man, just one that gets things done.

He is the man of many ways, "paladin" of athena, goddess of smart war, not honourable war.

[u/Arctic_The_Hunter → u/NwgrdrXI]

He’s a good Greek hero, since Greek heroes weren’t generally required to be heroic. Rather, they were required to be impressive.