Top 5 Craziest Movie Villain Schemes
Nonsensical, Weird, or Just Plain Bizarre
Often, you’re watching a movie and that time comes where the villain reveals their plan. This is when movies usually aim to be dramatic, shock you, or otherwise make you feel impressed to hear the end goal that the baddie aims to make happen (before they are usually thwarted). However, some movies have an issue where if you sit and actually think about the villain’s scheme, it is just doesn’t make sense. Here are five examples of just that!
5. Cruella de Vil in, “101 Dalmatians.”
Lots of Disney villains actually have a point or a plan that makes sense. Scar in, “The Lion King,” wants to take over the Kingdom and uses the disenfranchised hyenas to do so. Gaston in, “Beauty and the Beast,” somewhat reasonably thinks Belle has been brainwashed by a terrifying animal-man hybrid who must be stopped. Ursula in, “The Little Mermaid,” is just basically right about everything and that isn’t even a hot take, the internet agrees. Then you have Cruella de Vil, who wants to make a fur coat out of a bunch of Dalmation puppies. How can you even rationalize that? This woman literally wants to murder and skin 101 dalmatians so she can have a nice coat. Jafar was a jerk, but at least he had an understandable goal of wanting to control the Kingdom of Agrabah. Cruella just wants to kill some puppies, it makes no sense. Perhaps the upcoming, “Cruella,” live-action film that appears to want to make her some kind of anti-hero will help shed light on this irrational hatred of dalmatians, but for now, it’s just pretty odd.
4. Skynet in, “Terminator: Salvation.”
First, we are just going to ignore, “Terminator: Genisys,” because that plot just doesn’t make any sense. “Salvation,” at least tries to have a vaguely understandable plot as it takes place in the future after Skynet has taken over and tries to wipe out humanity. As usual, Skynet really wants to kill John Connor because he leads the resistance against the robots. In, “Salvation,” they kidnap a young Kyle Reese, the man who goes back in time in the first, “Terminator,” and gets Sarah Connor pregnant with John Connor–meaning even though Kyle Reese is younger than John Connor in the future, he’s his dad. The robots aim to use Kyle Reese (who Connor knows will be his dad) to lure Connor to their base so they can kill him. The thing is, why don’t the robots just kill Kyle Reese now? If Kyle Reese is dead he won’t go back in time and get Sarah Connor pregnant–problem solved. The movie never addresses this absurdly large plot hole.
3. Lex Luthor in, “Superman Returns.”
The plan of the 2006 Lex Luthor makes the somewhat odd plan the 1978 Luthor has in the classic, “Superman,” to turn a worthless desert into a new West Coast by blowing up the San Andreas fault look genius. In a nutshell, Luthor wants to cause a bunch of Kryptonite-irritated land that looks hideous to rise from the ocean so he can sell real estate. Even in the current high-demand housing market, it is doubtful people want to live on a pile of deadly rocks that can’t sustain any plant or animal life. This kind of, “Evil,” plan is just idiotic.
2. Laurel Hedare in, “Catwoman.”
The movie, “Catwoman,” is a mess as it is, but with the talented Sharon Stone as the evil CEO of a beauty corporation, you would’ve hoped they might have at least had her evil plan make a lick of sense. The big evil secret Hedare is hiding would be that a new beauty cream her company is going to sell basically disintegrates your skin if you stop using it and turns your flesh hard as a rock if you keep using it. Hedare wants to kill Catwoman because she knows this product is secretly flawed and Hedare wants to sell it…but why? People who buy the makeup will obviously discover the product is terrible and will sue Hedare to oblivion. Her company would go bankrupt for knowingly selling a deadly product and she’d end up in jail. Companies have countless products they shelve before they have a chance of getting to market for not working correctly, why not just cancel this one?
1. Annie Wilkes in, “Misery.”
“Misery,” follows an author named Paul Sheldon who is rescued from a nasty car crash by a deranged fan named Annie Wilkes. She then proceeds to become more and more psychotic towards him and upon learning, he killed off one of her favorite characters in his latest novel, she forces him to write a new book under the threat of extreme bodily harm (threats she does make good on at points). This plan isn’t nonsensical so much as it is just plain crazy that a rabid fan is holding the author they supposedly adore hostage due to not liking his latest story. The creepy thing is that you now see some fandoms that at times threaten the very creators/actors/etc. who make products they supposedly, “Love,” if the movie/game/television show isn’t made, “Correctly.” Perhaps the wildest thing about Annie Wilkes is how she predicted some of the modern fandom that we now see on the internet.
Crazy like a Fox, or Just Plain Crazy?
You may have noticed all these movie villains had schemes that failed. Whether this was because they had such outlandish plans or simply because they were up against powerful protagonists can be debated. We can all agree these plans were quite extra, however, that much is without a doubt.
David Bitterbaum is the longtime writer of The Newest Rant where he discusses how he loves all of popular culture, except for the stuff he hates. He often rambles about everything from movies, to music, television, and often comic-books. He lives in Saint Louis with his extremely patient wife and son.
http://www.thenewestrant.com/