Look, movie villains' plans never make perfect sense. That's the price we pay so we can watch our heroes foil them with explosions and clever witticisms, and it's a price we pay gladly. But while we don't expect our bad guys to be infallible geniuses, we at least expect them to not be actively tripping all over themselves like Super Dave Osborne. And yet ...
#5. The Dark Knight Rises -- Talia Al Ghul Lets Bruce Wayne Walk Out Of Her Prison Camp
Warner Bros. Pictures
In the MTV Movie Awards' 2012 best shirtless performance nominee The Dark Knight Rises, the villainous Bane and his League Of Shadows punch Batman's spine into dust and take over Gotham City, with the plan to blow the bustling metropolis to kingdom come (DC references!) with a nuclear bomb. But Batman manages to overcome his powdered spine bones with the therapeutic power of motivational chanting and returns to Gotham to save the day, because this movie is fucking stupid.
Warner Bros. Pictures
"If I hit this just right, it'll depunchify the unspineification process. I am a doctor."
How They Screw Up Their Plan
When Batman returns to Gotham, he reunites with his trusted allies, including Fox, Joseph Gordon-Robin, and Wayne Enterprises board member/Batman sex receptacle Miranda Tate, to discuss how to foil the League's plans. Unfortunately, Tate is secretly Talia al Ghul, the true leader of the League Of Extraordinary Villainy. So when Batman comes to her for help, she ... just sort of lets him walk right out of their prison camp to go thwart her evil plan.
Warner Bros. Pictures
"And hey -- good luck."
Sure, we get she's still trying to keep her involvement a secret, but at this juncture, what's the point? The person she knows is Batman has suddenly returned to the city and is leaving to organize a massive resistance against her and the League Of Shadows. Miranda was totally planning on revealing herself as Talia eventually -- why not do it then? All she had to do was call out to the guards, "Yo, this motherfucker is Batman!" And that would've been it. They'd have shot him 14 times before he had the chance to get the drop on them and escape.
What, did she want to give him a sporting chance at destroying her entire life's work because revealing her deception would've been slightly less hilarious at that point? She basically put her entire legacy in jeopardy just to achieve the heartiest Batfrown possible.
Warner Bros. Pictures
"No, you have to wait until the hero is dangling from a ledge or something
to double cross him. That's Supervillain 101."
#4. Terminator 2 -- The T-1000 Tries To Get Sarah To Trick John Instead Of Doubling Her
TriStar Pictures
Before three sequels rendered the entire movie pointless, Terminator 2's T-1000 was a genuinely terrifying killing machine. The villainous automaton warlord Skynet sent a shapeshifting, liquid-metal deathbot back in time to destroy future human resistance leader John Connor when he was still an obnoxious teenager. The T-1000 can perfectly mimic any human being it touches, it can assume the shape of any non-mechanical object (even the goddamned floor), and it can make its hands into swords. In the film's climax, all the cops in Los Angeles go home for the night and the T-1000 chases the heroes to a steel mill for what we expect to be an epic battle.
How They Screw Up Their Plan
The T-1000 corners Sarah Connor and stabs her in the shoulder with one of its liquid-metal dagger fingers. With its mortal foe at its mercy, it then ... asks her to call out for John.
TriStar Pictures
"Call him. Then put some compression on that wound, get some fluids
in you, and take it easy."
We already know that the T-1000 can shapeshift into any human being it touches. It has done this several times already, and it transforms into Sarah in the very next scene. So what in the future-destroying tittyshits is it doing here? Why does it need Sarah to lure John? Why doesn't it just lop Sarah's head off, doppelgang her, and call out to John itself? As if this couldn't get any more baffling, Sarah somehow manages to escape, reclaim her shotgun, and sneak up behind the T-1000 in time to blast it in the back while it's trying to trick John with its "I'm your real mother" routine.
TriStar Pictures
It was the least thought out idea until greenlighting Terminator Salvation.
So, not only did the T-1000 not just go straight to "I can duplicate any human being I stab" instead of trying to torture Sarah into calling out to John, it inexplicably let Sarah go. Robots are pretty dumb sometimes.
#3. Tangled -- The Villain Celebrates Her Child Hostage's Birthday
Walt Disney Studios
Motion Pictures
In Tangled, an evil career woman named Gothel kidnaps the infant princess Rapunzel because the princess' hair can make people immortal for some reason. Over the next 17 years, Gothel imprisons Rapunzel in a tower and raises her as her own daughter, while filling her with fear about the outside world so she'll never be tempted to leave.
However, Rapunzel's true parents release a bunch of lanterns into the sky every year on her birthday, because their grief is an eternal spring of tragedy. Rapunzel is understandably curious why the air lights up with a thousand floating lights every time she turns a year older, so she disobeys Gothel's instructions and leaves the tower to find out what they are. After some wacky shenanigans, Rapunzel discovers that her entire life has been a psychotic lie and watches Gothel (the woman she grew up believing to be her mother) die horribly.
Walt Disney Studios
Motion Pictures
"And they all lived happily ever after, apart from the times that Rapunzel woke up
in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, reeling from emotional trauma."
How They Screw Up Their Plan
Rapunzel was essentially a child slave. Her entire world was defined by what Gothel said, and Gothel was ruthlessly adept at manipulating her. She tells Rapunzel the land outside their tower is infested with more venomous creatures than real-world Australia and more ruthless brutes than Mad Max Australia. Also, she's constantly putting Rapunzel down about her appearance -- Gothel slings more passive-aggressive insults than a friend-zoned men's rights activist. She shows the bare minimum of love and kindness so Rapunzel will stay in line and not doom Gothel to a fate normally reserved for Grail-stealing Nazis, but she's not about to win any Fake Mother Of The Year awards.
Considering all of this, it makes absolutely no sense that Gothel would give Rapunzel a birthday to celebrate, and it's flat-out mind-boggling that Gothel would celebrate Rapunzel's actual birthday. Why does she even bother to explain the concept of birthdays? Gothel is the only other human Rapunzel has ever known, the source of all her worldly knowledge. She could tell Rapunzel that children grow from magic fucking beans and Rapunzel would have no reason to doubt it.
Walt Disney Studios
Motion Pictures
"No birthdays? I may have kidnapped and emotionally abused
a child for nearly two decades, but I'm not a monster."
Remember, it was the whole "Why do mysterious lights appear on my birthday?" thing that eventually convinced Rapunzel to escape. Gothel could have told Rapunzel the lanterns were sun rays, giant fireflies, or literally anything other than "magical lights that mysteriously appear in the sky every year on your birthday." Shit, lady, you had to know that at some point in her life she was at least going to start finding the whole thing a bit curious.
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