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

[cilantro]

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.

Lovecraftian, you don't say:


youtu.be/iiE5mE0ZorA

[CharlesPhipps]

I don't think Lovecraftian remotely applies.

Cthulhu doesn't care about humanity anymore than bacteria on his skin.

The God of Abraham, whether you approve or not, very-very much does.

Remember when the Ark burns off the swaztica from the crate.

[FaxModem1]

Terminator 3. Skynet wipes out most of humanity, but also wipes out all of it's infrastructure, servers, manufacturing, etc. Skynet being on the Cloud could be clever, but when most of the Cloud is nuked away, it's going to run into problems. This probably gave humanity enough time to regroup and organize into a coherent fighting force while Skynet became operational again.

[CharlesPhipps]

Terminator 3. Skynet wipes out most of humanity, but also wipes out all of it's infrastructure, servers, manufacturing, etc. Skynet being on the Cloud could be clever, but when most of the Cloud is nuked away, it's going to run into problems. This probably gave humanity enough time to regroup and organize into a coherent fighting force while Skynet became operational again.

In the original movies, most of it was underground and Skynet used a lot of slave labor. I wonder how he pulled that off in this one.

[Nessus]

Remember when the Ark burns off the swaztica from the crate.

Good point. I had forgotten about that detail. In my defense, I don't think I've re-watched any of the movies in at least 15 years.

I don't think "maybe you have to be Jewish to see the details" is a good defense though. On the one hand I don't think "the nazis were dumb to try to use the power of the God of the very people they were trying to exterminate" is a particularly complex theme that requires cultural nuance to see or communicate. All you need is a couple of little bits like the aforementioned burning the swastika off the crate thing to tip the audience. And on the other hand, it would seem unwise to design the film so such a major idea would be obscured to anyone not steeped in a specific background. That sort of thing is good in smaller films meant for specific demographics, but in a big mass market film, and with a message like "the nazis were wrong" that you really wouldn't want to be ambiguous... I think Spielberg would've known better (as he apparently did, and I just forgot).

I don't remember if there are cues like that in LC, but since it's ostensibly the same God as in RotLO (or at least, it would be from the Christian perspective of LC), it's grandfathered into that interpretation anyway.

Is there something similar in ToD? The way I remember it, the stones didn't "turn against" Mola Ram in the end. Indy recited something in Hindi that "activated" the stones, causing them to burn through his bag. Mola Ram broke his grip on Indy to try and catch them, and burned his hand, causing what appeared to be his own brainwashing to be broken by the pain (as Indy's was earlier). In this instant of tragic confusion he lost the rest of his grip and fell.

Indy lambasted him for perverting the power of Shiva before he recited the thing, but the rocks actually responded to the recitation. Since I don't know Hindi, I don't know if what Indy said there was something significant, or just some kind of incantation.

It is also possible that these films are not intended to be analyzed as such to begin with. After all, we have here a world in which the Judaeo-Christian cosmology apparently coexists with the Hindu cosmology. There are ways to resolve that, but not to the satisfaction of all religions involved, I think.

[SlackerinDeNile]

2. Pretty much all of Weyland Yutani's plans for the xenomorph as there's a reason the Army doesn't train tigers. The xenomorphs are incredibly effective apex predators but they're also things you can't possibly train and are incredibly difficult to control. Turning them into dogs is a very questionable action even with advanced science and you'd be better off just training dogs.

Okay, I agree with your argument morally but I feel I need to point out several flaws in your thinking.

The army doesn't train tigers nowadays because it's pointless, they would just be shot or blown up before they could do any real harm.
I'm not sure if they have ever been effectively used offensively in the past.

The aliens however could potentially be reverse engineered, cloned and trained or simply bred and trained if the scientists doing this did all the necessary research and took all the necessary precautions. Yes they are extremely dangerous and loyal only to each other and their own instincts, but if you were able to engineer whatever factors make the aliens not harm each other and remain loyal to their Queen you might be able to train them to do your bidding that way.

Plus they have more uses than just 'dogs', just launching them in boarding pods against your enemies would be enough to royally screw them.

On this subject, another villainous plan that would have likely failed no matter what was Burke's plan in Aliens to smuggle the gestating xenomorphs in Ripley and Newt back to Weyland-Yutani. There's no telling how quickly the chestbursters would have grown, he would have been better off stealing and hiding one of the Facehuggers being kept alive in those containers (while it was still in the container of course.)

[chaos42]

GoldFinger in the movie of the same name. His plan is to irradiate the us gold supply in fort knox but gold isn't actually that rare or valuable plus irradiating it isn't going to change what it is or what it mean plus by that point most economies in the world where no longer using the gold standard the way it used to in 1933 it stated going off it with it being totally to what we have now in 1971 granted it was a few years before this but it still wouldn't make much difference. Just accelerating the process

[CharlesPhipps]

GoldFinger in the movie of the same name. His plan is to irradiate the us gold supply in fort knox but gold isn't actually that rare or valuable plus irradiating it isn't going to change what it is or what it mean plus by that point most economies in the world where no longer using the gold standard the way it used to in 1933 it stated going off it with it being totally to what we have now in 1971 granted it was a few years before this but it still wouldn't make much difference. Just accelerating the process

I think Goldfinger had a "pump and dump" philosophy with the idea that gold will be ten times as valuable, which he'll sell. Despite how much he loves gold, he's not at all exaggerated enough of a character that he won't sell it for cash money.

Mind you, the BIGGER flaw in his plan is that it's very likely the Chinese will be blamed for this and it might trigger a nuclear war with them as Washington reduces it to ash and crashes the world economy or the end of the world happens if the Soviet Union retalliates.

Which is the same flaw with Blofeld's plan in You Only Live Twice.

"What use is money in a post-nuclear war world."

[clearspira]

GoldFinger in the movie of the same name. His plan is to irradiate the us gold supply in fort knox but gold isn't actually that rare or valuable plus irradiating it isn't going to change what it is or what it mean plus by that point most economies in the world where no longer using the gold standard the way it used to in 1933 it stated going off it with it being totally to what we have now in 1971 granted it was a few years before this but it still wouldn't make much difference. Just accelerating the process

I think Goldfinger had a "pump and dump" philosophy with the idea that gold will be ten times as valuable, which he'll sell. Despite how much he loves gold, he's not at all exaggerated enough of a character that he won't sell it for cash money.

Mind you, the BIGGER flaw in his plan is that it's very likely the Chinese will be blamed for this and it might trigger a nuclear war with them as Washington reduces it to ash and crashes the world economy or the end of the world happens if the Soviet Union retalliates.

Which is the same flaw with Blofeld's plan in You Only Live Twice.

"What use is money in a post-nuclear war world."

I've got an even bigger flaw with Goldfinger: they handcuffed Bond TO THE BOMB. A bomb that has a simple on/off switch within reach. Sure, Bond didn't know it was there, but Goldfinger didn't know that. If they cuffed him on the other side of the room he would have still died. A few feet would have made no difference.
I like to think that Oddjob worked out how foolish that was pretty quickly given his facial expression.

[Mindworm]

I feel this is one of those movies that is affected by your background in religion sort of like how Ken Levine got a bunch of his programmers to quit on him because he didn't understand how Baptism or Rebirth worked in Christianity.

Could you go into this more? I'm curious exactly what happened.

Basically, Ken Levine thought the whole "wipe away sin" element of Christianity was kind of ridiculous and made it a central point about Comstock that he's this former US calvaryman who got baptised after Wounded Knee and more or less thought he didn't have to deal with any of the horrible atrocities he'd committed. Basically, he saw the entire thing as akin to the fact Darth Vader gets away with 20 years of genocide and into Force Heaven.

One of his programmers threatened to quit because it was severely insulting to his religion. Especially since Comstock runs a religiously themed racist tyranny where they plan to commit genocide against all other people. Eventually, Ken softened the treatment of religion after talking with them a bit and made it clear Booker needed forgiveness just as much as Constock.

https://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/03/how-o ... al-themes/

To be honest Levine simply got his era wrong with his idea of baptism washing away all sin. For most of the first millenium that was pretty much the idea of baptism (no matter the denomination or heresy)*. It's only when the rcc invented the idea of indulgence (paying to absolve past sin) that the idea that baptism didn't wash away all sin become prevalent.

*Hence why most early christians were only baptised at close to death.