The Dumbest Evil Schemes Ever Devised

Whether a ruler with a warped sense of reality, a robot overstepping its bounds, or some sort of nasty divinity trying to thumb a ride home, all villains eventually figure out an eeevil plot to bring the full force of their fury to bear and attempt to crush their adversaries under their thumbs. Sometimes, winning is as simple as putting forth a greater show of force or twisting the right nerve in an opponent. These adversaries, however, chose the path of most resistance, creating ridiculous, overwrought, or just downright stupid master plans.

In the first Thor film, the titular hero beat the crap out of the Norse Transit Authority (a.k.a. the Bifrost Bridge) to stop Loki from committing Frost Giant genocide. Even without the bridge, Thor manages to make his way to Earth in time for The Avengers, thanks to Odin's zappy powers. Meanwhile, his adopted brother has been busy, assembling an army of Chitauri warriors, making pacts with Thanos, and hopping to Earth thanks to a conveniently timed Tesseract wormhole, all in an effort, apparently, to rule the Earth ... or not.

The Norse adoptee uses to his Tesseract (which is really an Infinity Stone) to brainwash a bunch of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and Hawkeye, allowing himself to be captured and imprisoned in the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier. Later, his minions attack the floating football field, activating the Hulk. In the ensuing chaos, Loki escapes, opening yet another portal over New York City and unleashing the Chitauri warriors across the city. Fortunately, the Avengers prove they're at least as good slapping around alien intruders as they are at eating shawarma. Loki is defeated, and Thor takes his brother, along with the Space Stone, back to Asgard.

Hopefully, you're taking notes, because that's already a lot of plot. So, after all that hugger-muggery and alien invasion nonsense, what is Loki's true objective? Returning to Asgard so he can take it over. Seriously. Don't the Norse have Uber? He just trashed the Earth so he could scam a lift home with his bro? He had a friggin' Infinity Stone in his possession! Even without a universally powerful object, Odin's always guilt-tripping about his neglected son. Couldn't Loki have just had dad pick him up at the corner of Mercury and Venus?

Then again, as the god of deception and trickery, Loki's probably just messing with people's heads.

There are few movie tropes more irritating than a villain who compounds their own problems through inaction. Heck, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery even took the piss out of that particular cliché, when Seth Green (as Scott Evil) bemoans his father's refusal to simply kill Powers outright. Hollywood nemeses, have you learned nothing from Mike Myers?

Snow White and the Huntsman, yet another telling of the Brothers Grimm's "Snow White," brings one of literature's longest-running MacGuffins to action-packed life. Worried about being usurped by Snow White, the wicked queen Ravenna decides to lock up her young rival, rather than just killing her outright. Not only that, but the evil queen just lets the rightful heir to Tabor's throne grow up, and then waltz out of the castle, now strong enough to challenge her and lovely enough to give her magic mirror a liquid metal peeping tom moment.

So maybe she's soft on Snow White, but she certainly doesn't keep heavy security on her possible usurper, and when she escapes, only sends one dude after her. (True, that dude also happens to be Thor.) She's a huge threat to your power and ego, but not even a cadre of well-armed troops until she's run off into the woods? After all that stalk and kill stuff fails, Ravenna pulls the poison apple trick. Sure, "Snow White" invented that, but talk about passé. Plus, has that trick ever worked? Not to be an armchair antagonist here, but wouldn't it have been easier to stab Ms. White once she's within arm's reach, or just never let her even survive into adulthood?

Admittedly, logic isn't the first thing that pops to mind when considering a film franchise built off of a Disneyland ride. The actions of main baddie Lord Cutler Beckett, though, fall right out of the logic tree, hitting every "duh" branch on the way down.

Everyone loves a Kraken, right? Well, not exactly. In Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, the literally heartless and amoral Davey Jones controls the massive squid beastie, using it to take out anyone who pisses him off. Pretty cool asset, right? Heck, the gigantopus nearly wipes out the Black Pearl before they realize it's just got a hate-on for Jack Sparrow and sacrifice him to it. Point being, Kraken is a world-renowned ship-wrecker under the auspices of Mr. Jones.

In the follow-up, At World's End (not to be confused with Simon Pegg's pubs-and-aliens-romp The World's End), East India Trading Company's Lord Beckett seeks to rid the world of pirates. Now in possession of Davey Jones' heart, Beckett has control of Jones and anything in his power, i.e., the Kraken. So, the imperialist creep tells Jones to kill the great beast, sending Davey boy to wipe out the other pirates.

Why didn't he just use the Kraken? Hell, he could have used Jones and the Kraken. It's no wonder he gets sucked into a maelstrom — essentially the ocean's 2000 Flushes — because he definitely has ship for brains.

Bond movies are a wealth of ludicrous gambits. By far one of the worst convoluted schemers, and the main inspiration for Doctor Evil, is head SPECTRE honcho Ernst Stavro Blofield, the guy who strokes the cat and practically invented the shadowy, chair-twist reveal. Blofeld terrorizes Mr. Bond on several occasions, but perhaps his most absurd plan comes during his second major outing, in George Lazenby's sole 007 flick, On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Blofeld insane plane involves brainwashing a dozen beautiful women from around the world, known as the Angels of Death, before sending them off to contaminate the globe's food supplies, based, in an ethnically insensitive way, on their country's dietary staples.

While Blofeld is charging the world a hefty little ransom to halt his devious designs, his real objective is to get his criminal record expunged and attain the aristocratic title of "Comte Balthazar de Bleuchamp." Doesn't he worry the world will call his bluff? And even if he isn't bluffing, what good is having a clean slate and a fancy-pants title when there's absolutely nothing to eat? Nice thinking, Blofeld.

It must be frustrating for old no-nose, because even though he's the most powerful dark wizard in the Harry Potter-verse, he keeps getting his butt handed to him by a nebbish, tween wizard-in-training. Sure, Harry is descended from superstar sorcerers, but lineage alone doesn't excuse the wicked warlock from his mind-numbingly dense plan from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

The main objective in this case is to attain some of that powerful Potter blood to rehydrate the bad lord. First Voldemort has his man on the inside, Barty Crouch Jr., mystically redressed (by Polyjuice Potion) as Hogwarts professor Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody. Then, Moody drops Harry's name into the hat for the Triwizard Tournament. As the twitchy-eyed professor later reveals, he pulled the strings during the competition, making absolutely sure that Harry won. You see, Harry has to win so that he can touch the Triwizard trophy ... which is actually a portal straight to the creepy cemetery where Peter Pettigrew is skulking about.

Peter wants some of Potter's powerful blood to conjure up moldy old Volde again. That's right, all that elaborate maneuvering for a freakin' blood sample. In the long run, wouldn't it have just been easier to have "Mad-Eye," who's a certified instructor, sneak into the Hogwarts' nurse's office and swipe a blood sample? Apparently, wizards just like doing things the hard way.

As America's first major female superhero, Wonder Woman faced all sorts of maniacs and unholy threats in her early days. Of course, the most nefarious evil forces of the '40s were Germany's National Socialist Party. And what was the Nazi's most diabolical conspiracy, you ask? Taking control of American milk production. You're shaking in your lactose-intolerant boots, right?

Sensation Comics #7, from way back in 1942, featured a story called "The Milk Racket of Paula Von Gunther." Fascist super-spy and all-around evil genius, Gunther was Diana Prince's primary recurring foe back in the day, and remains an occasional adversary to this day. One of her least-impressive schemes, though, involved a dastardly ploy to destroy America by jacking up the price of milk. Yep. After a whole mess of trouble, including breaking out of a tank of milk and being chained up, Diana discovers the nasty Nazi's plan is to monopolize milk production, thereby starving America's youth of their calcium — making the country easier for the Nazis to conquer in 20 years.

Gunther assumes, of course, that Americans have no other source for protein and calcium aside from milk. For that matter, if the Nazis gained control of all the nation's milk, why wouldn't she just poison everyone, instead of waiting 20 years for the "thousand year Reich" to attack the milk-starved citizens? Something tells me the Wonder Woman writers were infiltrated by the Dairy lobby.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier had a lot of problems from the get-go, including introducing wackadoo elements new to the franchise (beyond William Shatner's girdle and mad, old dude mountain-climbing skills). For instance, nobody ever mentioned Spock's brother, a great space barrier reef, an offbeat, illogical Vulcan religious sect, or the mythical being Sha Ka Ree. The crew also meets "God," who lives at the center of the galaxy, is a big jerk, and concocts really stupid plans.

Audiences are introduced, out of left-field, to Spock's brother Sybok — which sounds like the name of a goofy '80s cyborg flick — and his unique Prozac-like mind-meld. After taking out the pain and the religious skepticism of just about everyone aside from Kirk and Spock, he hijacks the U.S.S. Enterprise, heading for the mythical galactic center place no one ever bothered to mention before. Upon breaching the supposedly impenetrable barrier, they meet the crappy special effect, God. He confronts Sybok, Kirk, and crew, demanding access to their starship, probably so he can flee the crappy matte painting he's stuck in.

So yeah, this goofball alien convinces a confused Vulcan to start a cult, stage a hippie cult takeover of an entire planet, and then carjack the Enterprise, just so he could hitch a ride. Apparently, this crabby "deity" forgot to bring his towel.

The first two Terminator films are so enjoyable because they keep the complicated time travel stuff to a minimum. Sure, both films offer a few Keanu Reeves "Whoa" moments, but they manage to escape the unintentional clusterfudge of temporal meddling that happened when Paramount decided to reboot the series in Terminator Genisys.

Skynet's reputation precedes it, as it's without a doubt the first evil AI referenced whenever a technophobe is confronted with a wacky new intuitive app for their iPhone. For the evil architect of a future robot-topia, though, Skynet is pretty crappy at winning. As the future's Luddite brigade nears victory in the fight against the machines, Skynet seeks a way to halt their impending defeat. In order to wipe out the human rebellion, its physical embodiment, disguised as a resistance member, infects resistance leader John Connors with a nanovirus. Cyborg John then travels back in time to save his mother, Sarah and his buddy/dad Kyle Reese, and then kill them in 2017. Wait, what?

First off, because Kyle has a wacky vision, she, Sarah, and nice-guy terminator Arnold leap from 1984 to 2017 to fight her robo-son. But if they never got their time jump on and conceived John, how can he fight them in the first place? Major plot hole aside, let's suppose they somehow managed return to the past and give birth to John. Even if all this time-jumping doesn't totally mess up the future, Skynet will send John back in time to kill his parents, and he'll never be conceived in the first place to execute himself ... gah. It makes your head hurt.

More importantly, assuming Skynet managed to create these crazy infiltrator dupes and get in with the resistance, why didn't it just kill everyone before they won? Talk about artificial un-intelligence.

One of Spider-Man's oldest foes, Doctor Otto Octavius (also known by his squiddy moniker Doctor Octopus) is considered one of the most brilliant villains in Marvel comics. Throughout the years, he's plagued Peter Parker and his Spider-clan with numerous nefarious schemes. However, that one time he tried to marry Pete's Aunt May wasn't one of his most well-developed evil ploys.

The story arc, which wraps up in 1974 Amazing Spider-Man #131, began several issues earlier, when Octavius hires May Parker as a housekeeper in one of his rare kindly moments. Later, he discovers a letter informing Aunt May that she'd inherited a nuclear facility. Seriously, she had some Canadian kin who owned an abandoned nuclear plant, and no one in any government thought it would be weird to gift an old lady a radioactive nightmare.

In any case, rather than simply breaking into this abandoned nuclear plant (on an island in the middle of nowhere) and using it for his own devices, Octavius chose another route. He courts Peter's aunt — the 80-year-old one, mind you, not Marisa Tomei — so he can inherit the nuclear facility himself. Fortunately, Spider-Man tags along to the plant and rescues Aunt May just before Hammerhead charges Doc Ock into the reactor and blows up the whole island. Both men somehow managed to survive to scheme another day.

Comic books may be known for their everything-but-the-kitchen-sink schemes, but they're far from alone in their goofball plots. M. Night Shyamalan, who rose to prominence with The Sixth Sense, is no stranger to schlock. Before he downward-trended in Hollywood during the mid-2000s, one of his last well-received outings was the critically lauded and generally pretty freaky-deaky sci-fi flick, Signs. Unfortunately, the film also had one of the most poorly planned alien invasions of all time.

Mel Gibson — before he went off his drunken, racist rocker — plays a one-time preacher man whose oddball son likes to stash glasses of water throughout their abode. A string of events, including a crop circle near his house, invisible objects hovering in the Mexican skies, and wiry figures popping out of alleyways and cornfields (this time, it's not Pumpkinhead), he begins to suspect he's in danger of a probing. After a tense night when a bunch of terrain-camouflaging E.T. creeps attack their house (no, they're not Predators), his son spills an inexplicably placed glass of water on the invader's flesh, burning it like acid.

So, basically, water kills the aliens. Seriously, did these cosmic trespassers even check with their planetary conquest tourism bureau? Grand alien poohbah just woke up one day, threw a dart at a planet, and boom: "Let's invade this place, which happens to be 70% covered in stuff that kills us." One rain storm could wipe out the entire force. They can build advanced vessels, travel through space, and disappear into the local terrain, but can't Google "what's Earth made of." Sheesh.

Back in 1987, a scummy little Apokoliptian lackey named Sleez concocted one of the DC's most ludicrous — and creepy — cash grabs ever. Essentially, Sleez is pretty pissed off about being booted from his home world by head cheese Darkseid, who has tired of his creepy antics, surprise surprise. The one-time henchman seeks revenge against his former boss, not by telling the DC heroes how to kill the near-deity (a fun-fact he's apparently privy to), but by making a bawdy film to raise some funds. Yep. In Action Comics #593, he decides to hypnotize New Goddess Big Barda, then film her while she dances suggestively. His name is Sleez, after all.

Shilling her slinky dance to creeps in flasher jackets apparently didn't pay enough to pick up a couple of nukes. His next grand idea involves entrancing Superman and matching him with Barda, the first officially licensed attempt to make a superhero porno. Admittedly, the money from those sales would have been quite impressive. Nevertheless, it's not like Jenna Jameson or Ron Jeremy can sling their wallets around enough to purchase an elite army of super soldiers. Bad plan, creep.