10 Dumbest Villain Plans In Movies
Lex Luthor's plan was... what now?
We've all seen so many movies that it's rare for a film to deliver a villain plan that's genuinely ingenious and original, but even the most ordinary and familiar of plots at least establish the villain as basically competent, right?
Yet every so often a bad guy will out themselves as a few cans short of a six pack given how easy it is to poke holes in their plan, which inevitably falls apart like wet papier-mâché.
These 10 movie villains, though mostly menacing in their own right, become considerably less so when you break down the mind-bogglingly inane particulars of their ploy.
Whether needlessly giving the hero an advantage, getting way too ambitious for their own good, or just doing something that any reasonable person could see backfiring, these villains all screwed the pooch with some spectacular self-owns.
In some cases that stupidity is very much the point, while in others the filmmakers clearly didn't give audiences enough credit and underestimated their ability to see through the utter nonsense of their scheme.
Whether entertaining or headache-inducing, these are among the stupidest, most needlessly high-concept villain plans in cinema history...
10. Palpatine Broadcasts His Return... Because Reasons - Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker
Nothing signifies the fact that the most recent Star Wars movie was a cobbled-together, reactionary mess than the sudden reintroduction of Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) in the film's opening title crawl.
Out of nowhere, we learn that not only has Palpatine been inexplicably resurrected, but for some reason he's decided to loudly broadcast this fact to the entire galaxy.
Really all this does is alert the Rebels to his presence and eventually allow them to prevail, by denying the Final Order the crucial element of surprise and ensuring they're never even able to leave Exegol.
Fans have certainly tried to contort Palpatine's logic into something half-way plausible, but the sad reality is that The Rise of Skywalker's story continued to receive major revisions until late into production, and this was likely a result of that.
Rather than find a believable way for the Rebels to find out about Sheev's existence, why not just have him literally broadcast it, and make it part of a Fortnite tie-in for "good" measure?
Though Order 66 was a strategic masterclass, Palpatine seemingly lost his tack-sharp mind during all that time he spent in the existential abyss.