Movie villains are known for talking too much or underestimating the hero or just entering into conflicts they have no hope of winning. Some bad guys are given every opportunity and every planet-smashing super weapon necessary to win and still find a way to screw it up. In fact, looking back on it, it seems like these particular villains went into their dastardly schemes determined to fail — or to at least extend the story to feature length.

6

Skyfall‘s Villain Shits The Bed In The First 5 Minutes Of The Movie

Bond villains are megalomaniacs with huge, insane plans — plans far too large to include petty details like “prevent James Bond from killing me.” Bond villains forget this detail even in movies like GoldenEye where they know about and particularly hate James Bond. The point is, not including an anti-007 section of their plan is where they’ve all gone wrong.

Which is why it’s strange in Skyfall when the villain Raoul Silva fucks himself over before James Bond even hears about him.

Unlike the other bad guys in the series who want to ransom the world or cover every woman in gold or whatever, Silva is on a personal crusade to murder Bond’s cranky boss M. And he absolutely could have in the first five minutes of the film when he blew up her office but at the exact time he knew she wouldn’t be there?

“Oh no, did the office blow up? Right at the start of happy hour?”

At first one might assume he did this to torture her. But is blowing up someone’s workplace really the best way to do that? Most mornings, if you opened an email that said, “office just exploded. don’t bother coming in today,” you might consider it the greatest news you’ve ever received. But besides the fact that this would be a strange way to torture your enemy, it’s pretty clear Silva really wanted her dead and simply screwed up. Because for the entire rest of the movie, he makes attempt after attempt on her life in increasingly contrived ways. He’s not a man trying to destroy the things M loves most. He’s just bad at murder.

He continues to fail to kill her while she’s in locations way, way easier to rig with explosives than the headquarters of the most secret division of the British Secret Services. And this long saga of heavily planned assassination attempts ends when M is shot not in a personal confrontation with Javier Bardem’s weird hair, but because of a random stray bullet from a random henchman. It’s like setting up the ultimate laser death trap, waiting for days, then finding out your intended victim died of heart disease and their dying words were about how they didn’t remember you.

So yes, Silva’s misuse of a surefire way to kill his main target five minutes into the movie was pretty stupid. And all his failures after that were kind of stupid. But there is a silver lining! By underestimating M’s ability to survive random encounters with random henchmen, he succeeded in making Bond the completely disposable sex object in his own movie. Which is maybe the most poetic revenge any 007 villain has ever pulled off.

5

The Green Goblin Is Terrible At Picking Out Bombs

The Green Goblin from the first Spider-Man movie is an enhanced superhuman, which is already more powerful than, say, an overweight normal guy with robot arms. But in addition to his powers, he also has a sweet hoverboard and an arsenal of ludicrously lethal weapons. Seriously, look at this grenade he made:

Those guys got turned into collapsing skeletons by a bomb so powerful it didn’t even need to explode to turn them into dust. It kills human clothes, human flesh, and absolutely nothing else. It didn’t even get goo on that banner. When you saw that nightmare bomb go off, you knew Spider-Man was doomed. What’s the melt radius on it? Can Spider-Man jump away that fast? Spider-Man is going to die!

Except he obviously didn’t. Luckily for him, the Goblin is polite enough to never use that super skeleton bomb again in the movie. For the final showdown, he instead goes with a totally ordinary kind of bomb. Except we shouldn’t say ordinary. He used a bomb that absolutely exploded right on Spider-Man’s face and didn’t kill him.

The crappy firecracker bomb looks like it’s about the same size and weight as the amazing skeleton-making one, so why bother with it? A classic explosion is always handy, but this grenade seems barely able to cleave through a spandex face mask. It’s not like you could use it to blow the door off a bank vault. If it were a regular, not-exploding ball of metal it would have hurt Spider-Man more. Here’s his face mere days after it went off right on it:

Maybe you’re thinking, “Spider-Man is just really tough!” Well, fine. It seems strange for him to be grenade-proof and also have a special sense that warns him about grenades, but FINE. He should still be nude. Unless Aunt May was secretly sewing Stark Industries-grade fabric into Peter’s face mask and body stocking, it’s hard to explain why that goblin bomb didn’t shred his entire costume off. The conclusion is clear: Science and logic demand a fully nude Spider-Man climax.

4

The Kraken in Pirates Of The Caribbean Just Decides To Let The Good Guys Win

What do you think a normal boat fight is like for a Kraken? We’ll tell you: It comes up from the impossible depths and shatters your puny ship in about two seconds. Then its powerful tentacles crush the life from you the way Dead Man’s Chest crushed your love of pirate movies.

Maybe it was too late into the scriptwriting process when the writers realized they had created a creature that Jack Sparrow could never even dream of beating? Unlikely odds can be fun, but if Jack Sparrow had six weeks to hack at the Kraken with his cute little sword, there would still be enough Kraken left to turn him into a sack of wet bone splinters and drag into the abyss. The Kraken is so OP they had the villains in the sequel pointlessly kill it off just so audiences didn’t keep asking “Why don’t they just use the Kraken to win everything ever?”

Along with a line about their world getting less interesting — which we kinda figured out already, thanks.

But what about before the beast was conveniently killed by a thin premise? It was there and they still had to find a way for Jack Sparrow to deal with the fucking thing for an entire movie. So what did they do? They had the thing get lazier and lazier.

When the Kraken first appears it’s obvious no one in the ocean can deal with the thing. It wipes out a ship instantly. In its second appearance, the Kraken still takes out a ship in under a minute, but at least takes enough time to show audiences how he performs his disappearing-ship magic trick. But by the final battle, it’s like the Kraken has gone on strike or recently had its monster heart broken. It slowly and lovingly wraps its tentacles around Johnny Depp’s boat as if all the previously destroyed ships were misunderstandings. Maybe over enthusiastic hugs? Maybe something … more?

“Is the Kraken attacking or giving us a massage … Oh no. Oh dear god, no!”

The Kraken is just a monster, so it’s hard to believe he was taking longer to crush the ship because he was enjoying watching the heroes (and shitty Jack Sparrow) devise and put into practice a plan so half-assed that not even Sparrow on his drunkest day or Johnny Depp on his most regular day would have ever believed it could hurt the Kraken. A movie really shouldn’t end with the main enemy gently letting the heroes win.

3

Voldemort Acts In A Totally Non-Voldemort-ish Way At The Worst Possible Moment

Lord Voldemort is arguably the deadliest wizard in the world of Harry Potter, especially when he’s in possession of the Elder Wand, which in Deathly Hallows Part 2, he totally is. He has spent his entire life concocting schemes to become immortal which includes eliminating anyone who he considers a threat. He’s not shy about murdering his enemies, very much including children enemies, but in the final deciding battle he suddenly changes his policy.

Up until then, every spell Voldemort throws at least tries to kill its target. Sure, he does some possession and things like that, but usually just as a more complicated way of killing people. So it’s pretty strange that during the battle of Hogwarts, the showdown of the entire series, Neville Longbottom comes at him with the very sword he’s specifically worried about, and Voldemort decides to use a non-lethal shove spell.

Weirder still, the books specifically tell us that master wizards like Voldemort don’t need to loudly pronounce words like regular wizards in order to cast spells. So while it makes no sense for him to not kill Neville, it makes even less sense that he’s screaming a bunch of crap while he doesn’t do it. The obvious solution, his trademark green death zap, would have been easier, faster, and more instinctive. It’s the Wizard Finals — get your head in the game, Voldemort.

2

Gaston Brought A Bow To A Gun Fight

We’ve covered before how Gaston managed to get dealt one of the most brutal deaths ever to befall a Disney villain. But, then again, he was basically going up against a gorilla-wolf-bear with the intelligence of a man. He never really had a chance. He couldn’t have killed Beast even with all the skills the townspeople sang about — his wrestling, his biting, his shooting, his expectorating, his antler decorating … wait, what was that middle one? Shooting?

Yes, in the middle of his musical number about how great he is, we very clearly see Gaston fire his musket three times in a single second without needing to reload. All three bullets go into a beer barrel across the room and he’s such a famously good shot that all of the men, standing right fucking next to it, are completely used to it. This is so normal for them they catch the escaping beer before it splashes onto the counter. So this is a man not only good with a gun, but also willing to shoot it often and for any possible occasion. He uses his gun to open beer. So of course, when it comes time for him to hunt a creature strong and fierce beyond reason, he takes … a bow and arrow?

Walt Disney Pictures
You dumbass.

Are we expected to believe he only uses his gun for serving drinks and not killing supernatural monsters? Let’s assume for a minute it’s some kind of hunter thing — like it’s better sport to use a bow. Fine, hypothetical devil’s advocate. Then how do you explain this painting of him in his chamber of gruesome animal heads? Behold, definitive proof Gaston is just a dumbass:

Walt Disney Pictures
Also, where did he find a bald eagle and a turkey to shoot in France?

He absolutely used that rifle to kill all those animals, and is proud enough of that he had a painting made about it. So it would make no sense to use a bow to hunt the biggest game he’d ever come across? And it’s not like he has any issues about fighting dirty. His own theme song has a line about how he bites during wrestling matches, and he stabs Beast in the back later in the movie. It happens right before he accidentally loses his grip and falls to his death like a stupid bitch.

If he’d had his rifle with him at any point, he could have shot Beast in the head from across the roof and called it a day. Of course, then it would be a movie about how handsome, clever, popular men are better for women than monstrous kidnappers who talk to furniture.

1

In Rogue One, The Empire Prefers To Mess With The Rebels, Not Stop Them

The Empire’s troops might not be able to hit anything with their lasers or block stick attacks with their armor, but they at least seem to want their enemies dead. That’s not exactly the case in Rogue One. In the final scene, we see Vader himself being sent to deal with the rebels desperately trying to get the Death Star plans to Princess CGI Monster Organa.

In an awesome, awesome scene, Vader mercilessly wades through the rebels and then suddenly gets stopped in his tracks by an ordinary space door. It’s an obstacle that wouldn’t have stood up to several seconds of casual light-sabering, but it holds him there long enough for the rebels to escape. Not by zipping into hyperspace, but by slowly flying away from Vader as he grumpily watches.

The pace of the whole thing gave us enough time to notice that the Empire knew exactly what the rebels had stolen, what they were planning to with it, and exactly which ship held it. Why send Vader at all? For a fun light saber fight? Thanks, but why not blow the thing up from space? It’s just a CR90 Corellian Corvette! You think its adorable little pair of turbo lasers are going to hold off a star destroyer? Or even a single TIE interceptor? Fucking Cornelius Evazan and Ponda Baba could have taken out that Corellian Corvette.

Or, you could have used the Death Star’s laser on it, considering how much it stood to benefit from not getting blown up by information leaks. Instead of, you know, using it on a comms station after it had already served its purpose and been retaken by your own forces. The Empire made so many goddamn willfully bad decisions, and for what? To make sure to set up a sequel that already happened 40 years ago? Have you lost your mind, CGI Monster Moff Tarkin?

For more bad guys who probably should’ve worked at a Taco Bell or something, check out 6 Villain Plans That Make Absolutely No Sense and 6 Famous Movie Villains Whose Evil Schemes Make Zero Sense.

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