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
01:07multiversal crossover events, after 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
01:19to use as energy. To keep them occupied, they projected an image of life in the year 1999
01:25into their brains and convinced them that this was reality.
01:29Of course, this all falls apart when you factor in the whole resistance movement thing and yes,
01:34it would have been even smarter to have another layer of Matrix simulation for those who thought
01:38they were quote-unquote free, but 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, Karn's most famous role was as
02:02the main antagonist in the second Star Trek film, The Wrath of Karn. This big bad lad is
02:08revealed to be living on a barren planet after being exiled there by Kirk and his crew 15 years
02:13earlier. When Captain Tyrell and First Officer Chekov arrive on the planet to test a terraforming
02:18device though, he sees a chance at revenge. He captures the Starfleet men and implants a
02:23mind control device in their bodies. And what sort of device is this you might ask? Well,
02:29it's a weird eel thing of course. The eels are the last surviving native creature on the planet,
02:36and Karn makes good use of their telekinetic powers. He then uses his new pawns to infiltrate
02:42the Enterprise from the inside out. Using Kirk's trusted ex-crew against him is a pretty great way
02:48of exploiting his trust. Now yes, Karn ultimately fails, but he and his wiggly assistants nearly
02:54caused a whole heap of trouble. 8. If At First You Don't Succeed – Skynet
03:00Terminator Dark Fate A long-standing criticism of the Terminator
03:04franchise is that Skynet, for all of its advanced intelligence, only sent one Terminator back at a
03:09time to kill John Connor. I mean, if you had time travel, then why not just send back a load of
03:15Arnies until the job is done? Those stupid machines. Well, as it turns out, no. Not stupid
03:21machines. Not stupid machines at all. In 2019's Terminator Dark Fate, we actually find out that
03:28Skynet did send back more than one killer robot, as one of them actually gets John in the year 1998.
03:36So they did it then. Pop the champagne, or motor oil, or whatever the hell it is these machines
03:41drink. Well, again, not quite. Because there's always another kid for them to have to kill. But
03:47still, their first plan did come through big time. 7. The Copycat Killing – Lamar Burgess Minority
03:54Report Based 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 someone is going to
04:08commit a murder before they've actually done it, and then they can be arrested and taken into
04:12custody without any loss of life. Unfortunately, the whole thing is controlled by a corrupt director
04:18who used pre-crime to cover up a murder of his own. Lamar Burgess, who's played by Max von Siddow,
04:25so you know he's a rotter, killed the mother of one of his psychics after she tried to take
04:29her daughter back. The way he did it was kind of ingenious for a villain though. See, he orchestrated
04:36an attack on the woman that was thwarted by his own pre-crime team, and then had her murdered
04:41in the exact same fashion. As the two visions were so similar, the team just wrote the actual
04:47murder off as an echo of the first attempted one. 6. Breaking Grey – STEM Upgrade
04:54An incredibly underrated film, Upgrade follows a man regaining the use of his limbs after being
04:58paralyzed in a mugging. The guy in question, called Grey Trace – yes, that is his real name – is
05:05implanted with a computer chip to help him regain his lost functions. This is STEM, and like all AI
05:11in sci-fi films, it's evil. However, STEM was placed inside Grey by Aaron Kreen, a brilliant
05:18scientist who helped develop it in the first place. So after helping Grey track down his attackers
05:24and giving him enhanced mental and physical power, STEM eventually overrides its host,
05:29taking full control for itself. It convinces Grey that everything that happened after the
05:33mugging was just a dream, and as such the character is psychologically broken by cohabiting
05:39with an evil computer chip. 5. The Almanac – Biff Tannen – Back to the Future Part 2
05:46After Doc Brown yells at Marty about his kids, the teenager and his girlfriend Jennifer hop
05:51into the DeLorean to travel to the far-flung future of 2015. Whilst trying to save Marty Jr
05:57from making a dumb decision, the group ultimately open the door for an older version of Biff Tannen
06:02to run riot in the past. See, old man Biff steals the DeLorean and travels back in time to talk to
06:09his younger self. There he gives him an almanac containing the results of every major sporting
06:14event up until the year 2000. Past Biff then uses the book to make a series of bets, earning himself
06:20an outrageous fortune. He uses the money to then take over Hill Valley and rule over it with an
06:26iron fist. It's actually a genius plan, but we've gotta give credit to the right person, as old Biff
06:32wasn't the one to come up with it in the first place. In fact, it was all Marty's idea.
06:384. The Good Investment – Lex Luthor – Superman In the first Superman film from 1978,
06:44Christopher Reeve's Man of Steel goes up against his archnemesis to stop him from blowing up the
06:49west coast of the United States with nuclear missiles. Now any old villain could probably
06:54just blow up a chunk of America. That's not the smart bit here. What's smart is what Lex Luthor
07:00planned to do after the missiles hit. See, Luthor used his considerable wealth to buy up large
07:06chunks of land in the desert. That way, when the original west coast sank into the sea, his land
07:12would take its place. So if we're keeping track, that means missiles plus land equals big bucks
07:18in land rights money. So many of the supervillains' plots boil down to just blow this thing up and
07:25maybe blow something else up because we've got no endgame, but Luthor did have foresight.
07:31And so in the end, Lex was just a 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 classic,
07:49but 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,
08:24and would have gotten away 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
08:39fingers? Well, Thanos had ages to do this, sitting in his big chair whilst everyone else did the
08:46work for him. So why is he so revered amongst MCU fans then? What did he actually do? Well,
08:54the answer to that is, he waited. The mad titan perfectly calculated the exact moment to strike,
09:00giving himself the best chance to secure all six infinity stones in quick fashion,
09:04so he could then use them to wipe out half of all life in the universe. And that moment was
09:10the destruction of Asgard in Thor Ragnarok. Following hot on the heels of the Avengers
09:15starting to fight against themselves. See, this is genius, because with the planet decimated,
09:21Thanos knew that the space stone was now unguarded. After taking the power stone from Xandar,
09:27he then used it to retrieve the tesseract from Loki, and now that it could travel freely throughout
09:32the universe, the rest of the stones 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 bloke.
09:47Beginning as a lowly galactic senator on Naboo, Palpatine slowly rises up the ranks and eventually
09:52takes power by becoming Chancellor. And he does this not through force, but through clever
09:57political strategy. Okay maybe some force as well if you count all the stuff he did as Darth Sidious,
10:02but you know what I mean, there's Palpatine. As both Palpatine and Darth Sidious, the future
10:07Emperor could manipulate the events on both sides of the galaxy-wide conflict to suit his
10:12personal interests. And this comes to a head when his crispy fried version dissolves the Republic
10:18and forms the Galactic Empire. It took decades of deception to reach this point, but Palpatine
10:25exercised immense restraint while waiting for his plan to come together, and you know, hats off,
10:30patience is a virtue, and the 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
10:42ones I missed off here? Let me know, and while you're down there if you could please give us a
10:45like, share, subscribe, and head over to whatculture.com for more lists and news like this
10:49every single day. Even if you don't though, I've been Josh, thanks so much for watching,
10:54and I'll see you soon.