It took the brain the size of a planet to come up with these genius schemes.
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00:00A really good plan can turn your fortunes around on a dime.
00:03It can deliver you everything you ever wanted and more, including the entire universe if you aim high enough.
00:10And not only did these 10 villains from across sci-fi movies have the ambition to turn effective plans
00:16into truly evil plots, but they also had the skills to pull them off as well.
00:21Well, with varying degrees of success.
00:24I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com, and these are the 10 smartest villain plans from sci-fi movies.
00:3010. A Super Realistic Simulation – The Machines – The Matrix
00:34The idea of living in a simulation is present throughout sci-fi history,
00:39but nothing quite does it as well or as famously as The Matrix.
00:43And the sequels, yes, but let's just stick to the first one for argument's sake.
00:48In this movie, through the eyes of Thomas Anderson, aka Neo,
00:52we learn that the world we believe to be real is actually a load of baloney.
00:56As Morpheus explains in an iconic expository sequence that was hilariously kind of incomprehensible
01:03to some audiences of the time, but pretty straightforward in our current age of multiversal crossover events.
01:09After a war between humanity and machines in the early 21st century,
01:14the super intelligent robots started placing people in stasis and draining their life force to use as energy.
01:21To keep them occupied, they projected an image of life in the year 1999 into their brains,
01:26and convinced them that this was reality.
01:29Of course, this all falls apart when you factor in the whole resistance movement thing,
01:33and yes, it would have been even smarter to have another layer of Matrix simulation
01:38for those who thought they were quote-unquote free,
01:40but hey, it was still a pretty good plan in pretty good execution.
01:439. The Eels – Karn – Star Trek II – The Wrath of Karn
01:48It's quite impressive how much of a following Karn has built up amongst Star Trek fans,
01:52considering he's only appeared in two films and one episode of the original series.
01:57The leader of a race of genetically altered superhumans,
02:01Karn's most famous role was as the main antagonist in the second Star Trek film, The Wrath of Karn.
02:06This big bad lad is revealed to be living on a barren planet
02:10after being exiled there by Kirk and his crew 15 years earlier.
02:14When Captain Tyrell and First Officer Chekov arrive on the planet
02:17to test a terraforming device though, he sees a chance at revenge.
02:21He captures the Starfleet men and implants a mind control device in their bodies,
02:26and what sort of device is this you might ask? Well, it's a weird eel thing of course.
02:33The eels are the last surviving native creature on the planet,
02:36and Karn makes good use of their telekinetic powers.
02:39He then uses his new pawns to infiltrate the Enterprise from the inside out.
02:44Using Kirk's trusted ex-crew against him is a pretty great way of exploiting his trust.
02:49Now yes, Karn ultimately fails, but he and his wiggly assistants
02:53nearly caused a whole heap of trouble.
02:568. If At First You Don't Succeed – Skynet Terminator Dark Fate
03:01A long-standing criticism of the Terminator franchise is that Skynet,
03:05for all of its advanced intelligence,
03:07only sent one Terminator back at a time to kill John Connor.
03:12I mean, if you had time travel,
03:13then why not just send back a load of Arnies until the job is done, those stupid machines?
03:19Well, as it turns out, no, not stupid machines, not stupid machines at all.
03:24In 2019's Terminator Dark Fate, we actually find out that Skynet did send back more
03:30than one killer robot, as one of them actually gets John in the year 1998.
03:36So they did it then, pop the champagne, or eh,
03:39motor oil, or whatever the hell it is these machines drink.
03:42Well, again, not quite, because there's always another kid for them to have to kill,
03:47but still, their first plan did come through big time.
03:517. The Copycat Killing – Lamar Burgess Minority Report
03:55Based on a short story by Philip K. Dick,
03:58Minority Report is set in a world where criminals are arrested before they've even broken the law.
04:03Through the use of clairvoyance, the pre-crime program determines that
04:07someone is going to commit a murder before they've actually done it,
04:10and then they can be arrested and taken into custody without any loss of life.
04:15Unfortunately, the whole thing is controlled by a corrupt director,
04:18who used pre-crime to cover up a murder of his own.
04:22Lamar Burgess, who's played by Max von Sydow, so you know he's a rotter,
04:26killed the mother of one of his sidekicks after she tried to take her daughter back.
04:31The way he did it was kind of ingenious for a villain though.
04:35See, he orchestrated an attack on the woman that was thwarted by his own pre-crime team,
04:40and then had her murdered in the exact same fashion.
04:43As the two visions were so similar,
04:45the team just wrote the actual murder off as an echo of the first attempted one.
04:506. Breaking Grey – STEM Upgrade
04:54An incredibly underrated film, Upgrade follows a man regaining the use of his limbs
04:58after being paralysed in a mugging. The guy in question, called Grey Trace,
05:03yes that is his real name, is implanted with a computer chip to help him regain his lost functions.
05:09This is STEM, and like all AI in sci-fi films, it's evil. However, STEM was placed inside Grey
05:16by Aaron Kreen, a brilliant scientist who helped develop it in the first place.
05:21So after helping Grey track down his attackers and giving him enhanced mental and physical power,
05:26STEM eventually overrides its host, taking full control for itself.
05:31It convinces Grey that everything that happened after the mugging was just a dream,
05:35and as such the character is psychologically broken by cohabiting with an evil computer chip.
05:415. The Almanac – Biff Tannen – Back to the Future Part II
05:46After Doc Brown yells at Marty about his kids,
05:48the teenager and his girlfriend Jennifer hop into the DeLorean to travel to the far-flung future
05:54of 2015. Whilst trying to save Marty Jr from making a dumb decision though,
05:59the group ultimately open the door for an older version of Biff Tannen to run riot in the past.
06:05See, old man Biff steals the DeLorean and travels back in time to talk to his younger self.
06:10There he gives him an almanac containing the results of every major sporting event
06:14up until the year 2000. Past Biff then uses the book to make a series of bets,
06:19earning himself an outrageous fortune. He uses the money to then take over Hill Valley
06:24and rule over it with an iron fist. It's actually a genius plan,
06:29but we've gotta give credit to the right person, as old Biff wasn't the one
06:33to come up with it in the first place. In fact, it was all Marty's idea.
06:384. The Good Investment – Lex Luthor – Superman
06:41In the first Superman film from 1978, Christopher Reeve's Man of Steel goes up against his arch
06:47nemesis to stop him from blowing up the west coast of the United States with nuclear missiles.
06:53Now any old villain could probably just blow up a chunk of America, that's not the smart bit here.
06:58What's smart is what Lex Luthor planned to do after the missiles hit. See, Luthor used his
07:04considerable wealth to buy up large chunks of land in the desert. That way, when the original
07:09west coast sank into the sea, his land would take its place. So if we're keeping track,
07:15that means missiles plus land equals big bucks in land rights money. So many of the
07:21supervillains' plots boil down to just blow this thing up and then maybe blow something else up
07:26because we've got no endgame. But Luthor did have foresight. And so in the end, Lex was just
07:33a greedy landlord. By far the most evil thing in the world.
07:383. Burying the Tripods – The Aliens – War of the Worlds
07:42Steven Spielberg's Tom Cruise fronted adaptation of H.G. Wells' seminal novel is far from a
07:48classic, but it does get one thing right in how it portrays its villains as far more advanced
07:53than the human race. See, one day the Earth gets some visitors in the form of giant weaponized
07:59tripods. These three-legged titans emerge from the ground up and begin laying waste to the Earth
08:05and its inhabitants. And it's up to old Tom to keep his kids safe as the destruction continues.
08:11Now the Aliens, who are Martians in Wells' original book, have been plotting this attack
08:16for a long time. Long enough that they were able to bury huge machines underground
08:20without anyone noticing. They took the world by complete surprise and would have gotten
08:25away with it too if it weren't for those meddling microbes.
08:292. Watching, Waiting – Thanos Avengers Infinity War
08:34Look, how hard can it be to find six rocks, put them in a special glove and then snap your fingers?
08:40Well, Thanos had ages to do this, sitting in his big chair whilst everyone else did the work for
08:47him. So why is he so revered amongst MCU fans then? What did he actually do? Well, the answer
08:54to that is he waited. The Mad Titan perfectly calculated the exact moment to strike, giving
09:00himself the best chance to secure all six Infinity Stones in quick fashion so he could then use them
09:05to wipe out half of all life in the universe. And that moment was the destruction of Asgard in Thor
09:12Ragnarok, following hot on the heels of the Avengers themselves starting to fight against
09:17themselves. See, this is genius because with the planet decimated, Thanos knew that the Space Stone
09:24was now unguarded. After taking the Power Stone from Xandar, he then used it to retrieve the
09:29Tesseract from Loki, and now that it could travel freely throughout the universe, the rest of the
09:33stones would be pretty easy to find.
09:361. Infiltrating the Republic – Palpatine – The Star Wars Prequels
09:41Sheev Palpatine might be more of a meme than a Sith these days, but he was a very clever
09:46bloke. Beginning as a lowly galactic senator on Naboo, Palpatine slowly rises up the ranks and
09:52eventually takes power by becoming Chancellor. And he does this not through force, but through
09:57clever political strategy. Okay, maybe some force as well if you count all the stuff he did as
10:01Darth Sidious, but you know what I mean, there's Palpatine. As both Palpatine and Darth Sidious,
10:07the future Emperor could manipulate the events on both sides of the galaxy-wide conflict to suit
10:12his personal interests. And this comes to a head when his crispy fried version dissolves the
10:17Republic and forms the Galactic Empire. It took decades of deception to reach this point, but
10:24Palpatine exercised immense restraint while waiting for his plan to come together. And you know,
10:29hats off, patience is a virtue, and this Sith Lord had it by the bucketful.
10:34So that's our list, I want to know what you guys think down in the comments below,
10:37what did you think of these sci-fi movie villain plots, and are there any smarter ones I missed
10:43off here? Let me know, and while you're down there if you could please give us a like, share,
10:46subscribe, and head over to whatculture.com for more lists and news like this every single day.
10:51Even if you don't thought I've been Josh, thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you soon.