These Movies Wouldn't Exist If The Villains Were Smart

You would think by now that villains would have their stuff together. Instead, time and time again, we're given villains that veer into trope-land with overly complex agendas that end up biting them in the ass. Movie villains are constantly overlooking something, underestimating the protagonist, or simply getting themselves in ridiculous situations because they weren't playing smart (we're looking at you, Boba Fett). In fact, some movies wouldn't even exist if their villains had made better decisions. Without further ado, here are a few movies that wouldn't exist if the bad guys had a bit more brains.

Harry and Marv aren't the brightest duo by a long shot. The entire movie revolves around them being outsmarted by a prepubescent boy. A child. In Home Alone, the pair are set aflame, smashed in the head with bricks, scared by fireworks, burned by hot doorknobs, and more. But Harry and Marv are supposed to be hardened criminals, and have been able to roam the streets without capture for months. Somehow, they can't defeat an eight-year-old boy who is home...alone. The smarter thing to do would be to simply just go into the house while young Kevin McCallister is sleeping, use some duct tape, and then ransack the house.

As part of her plot to kill young Snow White, the evil queen creates a poison apple that will put the young princess into a coma until she's awakened by "love's first kiss." Of course, actually killing Snow White wouldn't be very Disney-like, but the fact remains that the Queen's plot to murder the princess isn't very strong. She uses a poison with all of these side effects and stipulations, instead of just using a normal poison that would, you know, kill her.

We all remember Deacon Frost's ridiculous plan to wipe out all of human existence by turning them into vampires in the first film in the Blade Trilogy. But it simply doesn't make sense. Frost would wipe out the entire food supply for vampires, leaving not a single food source to ensure their continuance. It's made abundantly clear in the earlier scenes in the movie that vampires need human blood to live. So with Frost's attempt to change the entire human race into vampires, he's also sentencing his fellow vamps to starve.

Sure, Voldemort looks terrifying, but he's certainly not the smartest villain. How many times does Voldemort have young Harry Potter in his clutches and simply fail to pull the trigger? In the graveyard, Voldemort has Potter trapped, alone and ready to die, but he doesn't kill him. Of course, his overly focused mind that's set on an unnecessarily complex and rigid plan to destroy Potter ultimately leads to his demise.

Bane's only reason for existence in The Dark Knight Rises is to destroy Gotham City by any means possible, fulfilling Ra's al Ghul's mission. But instead of threatening to nuke the city, thus setting off a chain of events that ultimately results in his defeat, why doesn't Bane just, well, nuke it? Instead, he needlessly crafts an elaborate plan—an admittedly evil one—to trap all police officers underground, release all of the prisoners of Blackgate Penitentiary, and take down the Gotham Stock Exchange and the banks of Gotham. Wouldn't it simply be more efficient to just use that nuclear bomb to wipe out Gotham in the first place?

Agent Smith should've brought a hundred versions of himself to the original Matrix movie, thereby overwhelming Neo before Neo could even have a chance to kill him. He had that power all along, right? There's nothing in the films to suggest that he just one day suddenly gained this ability. Instead, we're dragged on for three movies. For a super-intelligent computer program, Smith is pretty much a dope.

Even though the Wicked Witch of the West would melt with a splash of water, for some reason, she keeps a bucket of the stuff in her home. That's not smart. If she had the good sense to keep the toxic liquid that would kill her out of easy reach, she probably would've made it out alive. Instead, she melts, like a dummy.