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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,
00:06including the entire universe if you aim high enough.
00:10And not only did these 10 villains from across sci-fi movies
00:13have the ambition to turn effective plans into truly evil plots,
00:18but 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,
00:25and these are the 10 smartest villain plans from sci-fi movies.
00:30Number 10, 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.
00:56As 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.
01:20To 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.
01:43Number 9, 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
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 to test a terraforming device,
02:19though, 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?
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.
02:39He 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.
02:50Now, yes, Karn ultimately fails,
02:52but he and his wiggly assistants nearly caused a whole heap of trouble.
02:56Number 8, if at first you don't succeed, Skynet Terminator Dark Fate.
03:01A long-standing criticism of the Terminator franchise is that Skynet,
03:05the thrall 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 Arnie's until the job is done?
03:17Those stupid machines.
03:19Well, as it turns out, no, not stupid machines.
03:22Not stupid machines at all.
03:24In 2019's Terminator Dark Fate,
03:27we actually find out that Skynet did send back more than one killer robot,
03:31as one of them actually gets John in the year 1998.
03:36So, they did it then.
03:37Pop the champagne, or motor oil,
03:39or whatever the hell it is these machines drink.
03:42Well, again, not quite,
03:44because there's always another kid for them to have to kill,
03:47but still, their first plan did come through big time.
03:50Number 7, the copycat killing.
03:52Lamar 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
04:01before they've even broken the law.
04:03Through the use of clairvoyance,
04:05the pre-crime program determines that someone is going to commit a murder
04:09before they've actually done it,
04:10and then they can be arrested and taken into custody without any loss of life.
04:14Unfortunately, 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,
04:25so you know he's a rotter,
04:26killed the mother of one of his psychics
04:28after 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
04:37that 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.
04:50Number 6, Breaking Gray, Sten, Upgrade.
04:54An incredibly underrated film,
04:55Upgrade follows a man regaining the use of his limbs
04:58after being paralyzed in a mugging.
05:00The guy in question, called Gray Trace,
05:03yes, that is his real name,
05:04is implanted with a computer chip to help him regain his lost functions.
05:08This is Sten,
05:10and like all AI in sci-fi films,
05:13it's evil.
05:14However, Sten was placed inside Gray by Aaron Creed,
05:18a brilliant scientist who helped develop it in the first place.
05:21So after helping Gray track down his attackers
05:24and giving him enhanced mental and physical power,
05:26Sten eventually overrides its host,
05:29taking full control for itself.
05:31It convinces Gray that everything that happened after the mugging
05:34was just a dream,
05:35and as such the character is psychologically broken
05:38by cohabiting with an evil computer chip.
05:41Number 5, The Almanack, Biff Tannen, Back to the Future Part 2.
05:46After Doc Brown yells at Marty about his kids,
05:49the teenager and his girlfriend Jennifer hop into the DeLorean
05:52to travel to the far-flung future of 2015.
05:55Whilst trying to save Marty Jr. from making a dumb decision though,
05:58the group ultimately opened the door for an older version of Biff Tannen
06:02to run riot in the past.
06:05See, old man Biff steals the DeLorean
06:07and travels back in time to talk to his younger self.
06:10There, he gives him an almanac containing the results
06:12of every major sporting event up until the year 2000.
06:17Past Biff then uses the book to make a series of bets,
06:20earning himself an outrageous fortune.
06:22He uses the money to then take over Hill Valley
06:24and rule over it with an iron fist.
06:27It's actually a genius plan,
06:29but 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.
06:35In fact, it was all Marty's idea.
06:38Number four, the good investment, Lex Luthor, Superman.
06:41In the first Superman film from 1978,
06:44Christopher Reeves' Man of Steel goes up against his arch-nemesis
06:47to stop him from blowing up the west coast of the United States
06:51with nuclear missiles.
06:53Now, any old villain could probably just blow up a chunk of America.
06:56That'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
07:05to buy up large chunks of land in the desert.
07:08That way, when the original west coast sank into the sea,
07:11his land would take its place.
07:14So if we're keeping track,
07:15that means missiles plus land equals big bucks in land rights money.
07:20So many of the supervillain's plots boil down to just blow this thing up
07:24and then maybe blow something else up because we've got no endgame.
07:28But Luthor did have foresight.
07:31And so, in the end, Lex was just a greedy landlord.
07:34By far, the most evil thing in the world.
07:38Number three, burying the tripods.
07:40The Aliens' War of the Worlds.
07:42Steven Spielberg's Tom Cruise fronted adaptation of H.G. Wells' seminal novel
07:47is far from a classic,
07:49but it does get one thing right
07:50in how it portrays its villains as far more advanced than the human race.
07:55See, one day, the Earth gets some visitors
07:57in the form of giant weaponized tripods.
08:00These three-legged titans emerge from the ground up
08:03and 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 were Martians in Wells' original book,
08:14have been plotting this attack for a long time.
08:17Long enough that they were able to bury huge machines underground
08:20without anyone noticing.
08:22They took the world by complete surprise
08:24and would have gotten away with it too
08:26if it weren't for those meddling microbes.
08:29Number two, watching, waiting.
08:32Thanos Avengers Infinity War.
08:34Look, how hard can it be to find six rocks,
08:37put them in a special glove, and then snap your fingers?
08:40Well, Thanos had ages to do this,
08:43sitting in his big chair whilst everyone else did the work for him.
08:47So, why is he so revered amongst MCU fans then?
08:51What did he actually do?
08:53Well, the answer to that is, he waited.
08:56The 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,
09:16starting to fight against themselves.
09:18See, this is genius, because with the planet decimated,
09:22Thanos knew that the Space Stone was now unguarded.
09:25After taking the Power Stone from Xandar,
09:27he then used it to retrieve the Tesseract from Loki,
09:30and now that he could travel freely throughout the universe,
09:33the rest of the stones would be pretty easy to find.
09:36Number one, infiltrating the Republic, Palpatine, the Star Wars prequels.
09:41Sheev Palpatine might be more of a meme than a Sith these days,
09:44but he was a very clever bloke.
09:47Beginning as a lowly galactic senator on Naboo,
09:50Palpatine slowly rises up the ranks and eventually takes power by becoming Chancellor.
09:54And 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,
10:02but you know what I mean, there's Palpatine.
10:05As both Palpatine and Darth Sidious,
10:07the future emperor could manipulate the events on both sides of the galaxy-wide conflict
10:11to suit his personal interests.
10:14And this comes to a head when his crispy fried version dissolves the Republic
10:18and forms the Galactic Empire.
10:20It took decades of deception to reach this point,
10:24but Palpatine exercised immense restraint while waiting for his plan to come together.
10:28And you know, hey, hats off.
10:30Patience is a virtue, and this Sith Lord had it by the bucketful.
10:34So that's our list.
10:35I want to know what you guys think down in the comments below.
10:38What did you think of these sci-fi movie villain plots?
10:41And are there any smarter ones I missed off here?
10:43Let me know.
10:44And 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.
10:51Even if you don't though, I've been Josh.
10:52Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you soon.
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