Movie Villain Master Plans (That Would've Failed Spectacularly Even If The Heroes Hadn't Intervened)

[PapaPalpatine]

1) Clu (TRON: Legacy) was on the cusp of invading the human world with vast legions... of one hit point wonders: Clu's troops not only lack the most basic of self-healing ability, but are sure to shatter into a zillion pieces the instant they take so much as one good hard punch to the face (talk about having a glass jaw). They'd have a hard enough time surviving battle with humanity's civilian population, let alone prevail over soldiers, tanks, fighter jets, and anything else the various military factions around the globe could bring to bear against them.

[Antiboyscout]

I hate to bring up Big Bang Theory but...

2) Nazi's (Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark) Let's talk to God for some reason

You open the box, look inside, and die the end.

[J!!]

yeah, a bunch of nazis tried to use a jewish artifact to get the attention of the god of the jews. i wonder why that didn't work out for them.

[TGLS]

3) Nazis' (again) (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade): Let's steal the Holy Grail
You can't take the holy grail out of Petra without the whole place collapsing.

4) Soviet Russians' (again) (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade): Go talk to aliens for some reason.
They killed by the aliens anyway.

I'm pretty sure the only Indiana Jones villain that actually had a good plan was in Temple of Doom... Of course, I don't remember Temple of Doom.

[Mindworm]

I know it's literature, and not film but:

https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Harry_Dread

[cilantro]

I would say that Zemo's plan for Civil War would totally fail if the heroes didn't act on their own. But his plan was based on what he believed the heroes would act.

[Fianna]

The Nazis could have still made use of the Ark if Indy and Marion hadn't gotten it back to the Allies.

All the Nazis present for the Ark's opening would still have died, but when they didn't report in, some more soldiers would have been sent to their location to see what happened. They would have discovered all the melted bodies and deduced that trying to open the Ark is what caused it.

But that wouldn't have stopped their efforts. They'd have kept trying to open it, albeit with smaller numbers of soldiers nearby when it happens, and now with cameras recording everything so they can figure out how it works. After sacrificing several more people in these experiments, they could have eventually pieced together that you're safe from the Ark so long as you can't see it, at which point they would have devised some plan involving blindfolded soldiers carrying the Ark through Allied camps.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Fianna, that is all assuming that the Ark behaves consistently and predictably. Given that it's a relic driven by the inscrutable will of Yaweh, I think that's an unreasonable assumption.

[TGLS]

Building on that, it would be hilarious if the Nazis tried opening up near allied positions and all that happened was that the God-light came out and blasted the Nazis.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

that, or wiping out BOTH armies would be more in keeping with the themes of the series. Indiana Jones takes a very Lovecraftian approach to religion and sacred relics, as otherly, incomprehensible Things ungoverned by the silly limitations we think of as immutable laws of nature.