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 ten 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
00:35The 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 well, 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.
00:57As 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.
01:58The 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 after being exiled there by Kirk and his crew 15 years earlier.
02:14When Captain Tyrell and First Officer Chekov arrive on the planet to test a terraforming device though,
02:19he 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?
02:29Well, it's a weird eel thing of course.
02:33The eels are the last surviving native creature on the planet,
02:37and Karn makes good use of their telekinetic powers.
02:40He 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.
02:50Now yes, Karn ultimately fails, but he and his wiggly assistants nearly caused a whole heap of trouble.
03:01A long-standing criticism of the Terminator franchise is that Skynet, for 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, then why not just send back a load of Arnies until the job is done?
03:17Those stupid machines.
03:19Well, as it turns out, no. Not stupid machines. Not stupid machines at all.
03:24In 2019's Terminator Darkfade, we actually find out that Skynet did send back more than one killer robot,
03:32as 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 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.
03:55Based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, Minority Report is set in a world where criminals are arrested
04:01before they've even broken the law.
04:03Through the use of clairvoyance, the pre-crime program determines that someone is going to commit a murder
04:09before they've actually done it, and 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 who 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.
04:44As the two visions were so similar, the team just wrote the actual murder off as an echo of the first attempted one.
04:54In an incredibly underrated film, Upgrade follows a man regaining the use of his limbs after being paralysed in a mugging.
05:00The guy in question, called Grey Trace, yes that is his real name,
05:04is implanted with a computer chip to help him regain his lost functions.
05:08This is STEM, and like all AI in sci-fi films, it's evil.
05:14However, STEM was placed inside Grey by Aaron Creed, 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.
05:46After Doc Brown yells at Marty about his kids, the teenager and his girlfriend Jennifer hop into the DeLorean to travel to the far-flung future of 2015.
05:55Whilst 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.
06:04See, 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 up until the year 2000.
06:16Past Biff then uses the book to make a series of bets, earning himself an outrageous fortune.
06:22He uses the money to then take over Hill Valley and rule over it with an iron fist.
06:27It's actually a genius plan, but we've got to give credit to the right person,
06:31as old Biff wasn't the one to come up with it in the first place. In fact, it was all Marty's idea.
06:41In the first Superman film from 1978, Christopher Reeve's Man of Steel goes up against his arch-nemesis
06:47to 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.
07:03See, Luthor used his considerable wealth to buy up large chunks of land in the desert.
07:08That way, when the original west coast sank into the sea, his land would take its place.
07:14So if we're keeping track, that means missiles plus land equals big bucks in land rights money.
07:20So many of the supervillains' plots boil down to just blow this thing up,
07:24and then maybe 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.
07:38Number 3. 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 than the human race.
07:55See, one day, the Earth gets some visitors in the form of giant weaponized tripods.
08:00These three-legged titans emerge from the ground up and begin laying waste to the Earth and its inhabitants.
08:06And 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 for a long time.
08:17Long enough that they were able to bury huge machines underground without anyone noticing.
08:22They took the world by complete surprise and would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for those meddling microbes.
08:29Number 2. 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 him.
08:47So, why is he so revered amongst MCU fans then? What did he actually do?
08:53Well, the 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.
09:09And that moment was the destruction of Asgard in Thor Ragnarok,
09:13following hot on the heels of the Avengers themselves starting to fight against themselves.
09:18See, this is genius, because with the planet decimated, Thanos knew that the Space Stone was now unguarded.
09:25After taking the Power Stone from Xandar, he then used it to retrieve the Tesseract from Loki,
09:30and now that he could travel freely throughout the universe, the rest of the stones would be pretty easy to find.
09:36Number 1. 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 takes power by becoming Chancellor.
09:55And he does this not through force, but through clever political strategy.
09:59Okay, maybe some force as well if you count all the stuff he did as Darth Sidious, but you know what I mean, there's Palpatine.
10:05As both Palpatine and Darth Sidious, the future Emperor could manipulate the events on both sides of the galaxy-wide conflict to suit his personal interests.
10:14And this comes to a head when his crispy fried version dissolves the Republic and forms the Galactic Empire.
10:20It took decades of deception to reach this point, but Palpatine exercised immense restraint while waiting for his plan to come together,
10:28and you know, hey, hats 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 off here?
10:43Let me know, and while you're down there, if you could, please give us a like, share, subscribe,
10:46and head over to whatculture.com for more lists and news like this every single day.
10:50Even if you don't thought, I've been Josh, thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you soon.