Movie history is full of some of the finest villains ever conceived of. They’ve all had plots that can go from as small as trying to ruin a spouse’s life to taking over the entire galaxy by orchestrating a war that you play from both sides. While there are hundreds of great bad guy plans from the movies, there are only a few that count as the best of the best. These are the villain plans that are so great that you almost want them to win.
Most of the time, these are complex plans that include hundreds of moving parts and back-up plans that only someone truly obsessed with achieving their goals could conceive of. Other times, the brilliance is in their simplicity. Either way, only the greatest villains in all film history could conceive of plans this ingenious. Here are the best evil plans ever conceived of in film!
20 The Bathroom Game – Saw
Jigsaw, or John Kramer, is one of those evil geniuses where the more the filmmakers want to make him seem brilliant, the more to overall story becomes convoluted. The best of Jigsaw’s plots is undoubtedly the simplistic game from the very first Saw. In that movie, he simply has two men chained up with a pair of saws and a lesson he wanted them to learn. Once all the carnage was completed, he pulled off his most notorious feat by showing he was there to witness the entire event, posing as a body in the room.
Sure, Jigsaw and the subsequent copycats all had much more inventive traps in the sequels, but the brilliant simplicity of this first plot that is the one most often referenced when people discuss his placement as one of the greatest villains of all time.
19 Scar Takes Over – The Lion King
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In The Lion King, Scar has little chance of ever taking over the Pride Lands. His brother Mufasa is a much stronger lion who is popular among not only the other lions, but even the animals the lions hunt for food. It seems like Scar will have to suffer his entire life as the lion version of Loki, always in his brother’s shadow. That is, unless he can form his own army and exploit Mufasa’s greatest weakness. By setting a trap using young Simba, positioning himself as the leader of the hyenas, and throwing his brother into a horde of stampedeing wildebeests.
Unfortunately, Scar learns the hard way that ruling the Pride Lands isn’t as easy as it was to take them over. His hyena army eats everything in their path, making his home a wasteland. Maybe Mufasa had a reason for exiling them after all…
18 Hans Landa’s Conversation – Inglourious Basterds
Few villains have ever made the impression that Hans Landa from Inglourious Basterds did in the opening moments of the film. He interrogates Monsieur LaPadite at his dairy farm in the most polite interrogation scene ever put to film. Only through the art of conversation and intimidation does he slowly break his foe down until he is forced to tearfully admit that he is hiding Landa’s prey under the floorboards. While Landa is a formidable presence throughout the rest of the movie, none of the rest of it compares to how utterly terrifying he is in the first scene.
Since that movie, Christoph Waltz has played a series of dastardly villains but none have lived up to that conversation over a glass of milk.
17 Hannibal Lecter’s Escape – The Silence of the Lambs
It is wild to discover that Hannibal Lecter is barely in The Silence of the Lambs. Whenever anyone discusses the film, the conversation usually centers on his character as if he were the lead. Buffalo Bill might be a terrifying presence in the movie, but Lecter is the real criminal mastermind. The way that he manipulates the police, the political system, and even Clarice herself into setting up his escape using little more than a pen to free himself.
Once he is free, we quickly discover why he’s the most terrifying monster the FBI has ever taken down. He leads the guards on a terrifying chase which ends with them realizing too late that they put him in an ambulance instead of another guard. It’s a shame that we never got to see Mads Mikkelsen take on this exact moment on his show, Hannibal.
16 The Riddler Uses Batman – The Batman
A ton of villains have taken Batman on the big screen. None have ever used Batman as the main player of their own scheme. In The Batman, the Riddler figures out the major conspiracy behind everything in Gotham City. The only problem is that he doesn’t have the power to bring any of it to light. Instead, he leads Batman to all of these answers using a few moments of focused violence. Batman then does the heavy lifting by initiating car chases with the Penguin, fighting through leagues of bad guys, and breaking into Carmine Falcone’s Iceberg Lounge like fifteen different times.
A lot of the clever simplicity of his schemes comes apart when he recruits a ton of like-minded people to go on a rampage against the citizens of Gotham after he floods the city. It really undercuts his point that he’s the victim in all of this.
15 Verbal’s Story – The Usual Suspects
Keyser Söze is just as much of a boogieman to the criminal underworld of The Usual Suspects as John Wick is in his film franchise. He is the kind of monster that even the most hardened criminals fear. While he likely has planned out some of the greatest schemes ever conceived of, the only one we really get to see is how he makes up the plot of the entire movie in just a few minutes by putting the details together from a wall full of possible suggestions. He takes on the character of Verbal Kint and even gives himself a heavy limp. Then he leads Detective Kujan through a wild story before disappearing completely.
Söze may have been a criminal mastermind, but he definitely started out as a theater major. The man “yes anded” the plot of an entire movie together, while staying in character. His Hamlet must be amazing.
14 Hans Gruber Plays the FBI Like a Fiddle – Die Hard
There’s a reason no list of the finest movie villains is complete without Hans Gruber from Die Hard. It isn’t just because this is the performance that introduced the world to Alan Rickman either. Hans Gruber is a dapper thief who poses as a terrorist for reasons that are hard to figure out through the first half of the film. Eventually, you discover that the entire ruse is in place to trigger an FBI standoff that will result in them inadvertently opening the vault at Nakatomi plaza. Then he planned on blowing up the building so that it seemed as though he and his crew had been taken out in the explosion. There’s no need to chase after criminals that are assumed to be deceased.
He would’ve gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for that pesky New York cop who was crawling through Nakatomi’s air vents…
13 Baron Harkonnen Retakes Arrakis – Dune
In the Dune universe, Emperor Shaddam IV pits his two greatest rivals against one another by giving the most valuable planet in the galaxy, Arrakis, to House Atriedes. This is a massive slight to their sworn enemy, House Harkonnen. He does this because he knows that Baron Harkonnen will gladly destroy House Atriedes with no real effort. This faith is rewarded too, because Harkonnen easily infiltrates the inner sanctum of Leto Atriedes and manages to invade their territory with a little help from the Emperor’s greatest fighters.
Even when Leto Atriedes and Doctor Yueh attempt to get revenge on Harkonnen, it proves to be all for naught. Taking someone like him out is no easy task. As the Dune franchise continues, it will be interesting to see how Paul finally does get the upper hand over the man who took his father’s life.
12 Zemo Defeats the Avengers – Captain America: Civil War
Several villains have taken on The Avengers using things like a robot army, giant alien monsters, and the remnants of SHIELD now taken over by HYDRA. None of that compares to how Zemo decided to take them on in Captain America: Civil War. Instead of assembling an army of another team of super powered people, Zemo decided that the best way to take the team down would be to turn them against each other. He wisely figured out that the biggest weakness was the rivalry between Captain America and Iron Man. The key to exploiting that was none other than Bucky Barnes, Steve’s best friend and the assassin of Tony Stark’s parents.
Even the assassination of King T’Chaka was inspired. If Iron Man wasn’t enough to put the hurt on Captain America, certainly the Black Panther would be. Hopefully this isn’t the last evil plan Zemo stages a movie around.
11 The REAL Amy – Gone Girl
One of the most surprising villains ever seen in cinematic history is Amy Dunne from Gone Girl. Initially, it seems like she’s the victim of the story. It appears as though she has either been kidnaped or even brutally slain by her husband Nick. As the story unfolds, and the evidence against Nick mounts, we begin to realize that all of this has been Amy’s master plan from the beginning. After catching Nick cheating on her with a student, Amy decides to frame her husband and destroy his reputation.
Even in the end, when Amy returns to Nick and lets him off the hook, she gets ultimate control over his life. She gets herself pregnant and breaks the last bit of his spirit against her. The audience is left with a terrifying image of their long life together in miserable suspicion of one another. There’s just no way that kid is going to have a happy childhood.
10 John Doe’s Upper Hand – Se7en
David Fincher’s Se7en is what happens when there’s a Batman villain in a movie but no Batman to take him down. Sure, detectives Somerset and Mills do all they can to catch John Doe as he commits a series of grizzly crimes that depict graphic displays of the seven deadly sins. No matter what they do, or how many enormous libraries they visit, John Doe constantly has the upper hand on the pair. Even when they find his apartment or when they actually have him in handcuffs, John Doe is in complete control.
The movie ends with one of the most chilling twists in movie history where it’s revealed that John has made Mills and his wife a part of his master plan. Mills falls victim to his anger and gives John Doe the exact ending to his crime spree that he intended. That’s the exact sort of scene where having a Batman would’ve come in handy.
9 Russell’s Heist – Inside Man
There have been a lot of heists in movie history, but none are as great as the one depicted in Inside Man. Dalton Russell makes Danny Ocean and his crew look like hacks by comparison. His heist plays the entire city of New York with complete ease. Not only does he manage to hold the bank hostage, but he succeeds in ruining the reputation of the bank’s owner, Arthur Case. When the smoke clears on the heist, no one is able to tell the robbers from the victims and Russell is nowhere to be found.
The big reveal shows that he was prepared to live in the bank for an entire week behind a fake wall. He is truly one of the greatest criminal masterminds in all film history. Unfortunately, that sequel showing Russell’s next heist has never managed to come together. Maybe one day Spike Lee and Clive Owen will manage to top themselves with an even bigger job.
8 Voldemort’s Horcruxes – Harry Potter
Voldemort gets a lot of hate when it comes to movie villain comparisons due to the fact that he repeatedly fails to take out a teenager who isn’t even a master Wizard. That may be a giant black mark on his bad guy record, but the preparations he made before the movie series shouldn’t be overlooked. It’s made explicitly clear in the series that creating Horcruxes to prolonge your life just in case of fatal injury is a very advanced, forbidden form of magic. The fact that he was able to do this not once, not twice, but SEVEN times is nothing short of genius. Though it is ironic that he ends up passing away after only living for 71 years when wizards often live for over 100.
Sure, he’s able to conquer the wizarding world and can stand toe-to-toe with Dumbledore in a duel, but the work of Tom Riddle to become Lord Voldemort makes him the Mozart of Dark Magic in the Harry Potteruniverse. Of course, that means the Grindelwald is the Salieri.
7 General Chang’s Plotting – Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
The Star Trek movie franchise has a ton of incredible villains. Khan from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan may be the best villain from the movies, but his plans were largely corrupted by his need for vengeance against Captain Kirk. General Chang from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is the one who had the real genius plan. He constructed a scheme to unravel the coming alliance between the Federation and the Klingon Empire that included the assassination of Chancellor Gorkon, a string of secret agents across both intergalactic nations, the framing of Captain Kirk, and the invention of a new Klingon Bird-of-Prey.
If it weren’t for the Sherlock Holmes-style detective work of Mr. Spock, he definitely would’ve gotten away with it. Then the entire Star Trek universe we see in Star Trek: The Next Generation would’ve been changed forever.
6 Vader’s Revenge – Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back
Few villains in cinematic history have had more of an embarrassing defeat than Darth Vader did in the original Star Wars. Right when the Empire was about to obliterate the Rebel Alliance with the Death Star, the Millennium Falcon soars in out of nowhere and shoots him right out of the sky. Then a kid who turns out to be his long-lost son destroys his giant space station. For a guy like Vader, this kind of humiliation cannot be forgotten.
When we next see Vader in The Empire Strikes Back, he comes to play. From the first scene where he leads an invasion of the Rebel’s base on Hoth to the finale when he is able to take over Cloud City by intimidating Lando Calrissian, he is completely in command of the conflict. He very nearly succeeds in capturing Luke Skywalker in carbonite, but Luke force jumps out of his trap at the last second. Most notably, Vader sets an entire meal for Han and Leia just to make his reveal more dramatic. And people think that Vader doesn’t have a sense of humor.
5 The Joker’s War for Gotham’s Soul – The Dark Knight
Batman may be the superhero that has a reputation for having back up plans for his back-up plans, but when he has villains like the Joker, what other choice does he have? Throughout The Dark Knight, the Joker is never out of control of each situation. Even when it seems like he’s losing, it turns out that this was all part of another scheme to break out Lau from prison or turn Harvey Dent into a super villain.
All of this is supported by the popular fan theory that the Joker is either from the CIA or is some sort of Black Ops agent. His monologue about how no one cares when soldiers die, his deep knowledge of brutal interrogation tactics, his completely hidden real identity, and his experience with heavy weaponry all point to him having a background in overthrowing countries or assassinating world leaders. It would explain why even Batman is nowhere near his league for most of the film.
4 Sauron Takes on Middle Earth – The Lord of the Rings
You’ve gotta hand it to Sauron. He may have ultimately lost in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but you can’t say that he didn’t have an excellent plan to conquer Middle Earth. By conquering the mind of the greatest wizard alive, Saruman, and enlisting him as his right-hand man, he was able to create two enormous armies. He then planned on attacking the world of men from two sides. Saruman’s Uruk-hai would conquer Rohan and then unite with the Orcs from Mordor to do a giant pincer move on Gondor. If that wasn’t enough, he also poisoned the minds of Denethor and Théoden to give him an even greater chance over both enemies.
Ultimately, he was defeated by the greatest hail-mary in all of Middle Earth. Who could’ve possibly predicted that a weak Hobbit would be able to cross all of Middle Earth and destroy his Ring of Power. He was so close.
3 Thanos Completes His Mission – Avengers: Infinity War
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Thanos represents the ultimate boss battle in the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far. While you could remark upon his incredible willpower and fighting strength in Avengers: Infinity War, it doesn’t really seem like there’s much of a master plan at work. Marvel fans have spent a great deal of time uncovering the real plan beneath the entirety of the Infinity Saga. It’s no accident that Thanos attacks when the Avengers are broken up, Asgard is destroyed, Odin is gone, and the Guardians are away from Xandar. He uses servants to test his potential enemies like Loki and Ronan, but only jumps into the fray himself when his enemies are at their weakest. It definitely works because there has never been a smack down this bad in all of cinematic history.
The only real issue with his brand of evil genius is that it’s easy to see many ways in which he could solve the over population problem of the universe with the Infinity Gauntlet without erasing half of all life in existence. A little more brainstorming may have been helpful before he went on an intergalactic rampage.
2 Ozymandias’ Utopia – Watchmen
As far as comic book villains go, there’s no one who has played the game quite like Ozymandias from Watchmen. He is the smartest man in the world, even in a world that features a glowing blue god. He manages to manipulate all his old superhero buddies into a complex conspiracy that takes them the entire movie to solve. Once they do, they make their way to his frozen lair only to find out that they are too late. Instead of waiting long enough to allow the heroes to defeat him, he initiates his plan early. Sure, he obliterates several cities, but he does succeed in bringing about the utopia he planned on. So did he save the world or did he ruin it?
What makes Ozymandias even more compelling is the television show that catches us up with Ozymandias long after he succeeded. Jeremy Irons’ take on Ozymandias is just as compelling as the movie’s, even if they aren’t technically connected.
1 Palpatine’s Empire – Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
In the history of movies, no one has ever had the game that Emperor Palpatine did in Revenge of the Sith. In those films he orchestrates an intergalactic war that he plays from both sides, creates an entire clone army capable of subjugating the galaxy, ingratiates that very same army with the Jedi, manipulates the senate to give him incredible political power, and turns the Jedi’s prodigal child into his apprentice. He then destroys the Republic that stood for centuries and obliterated 90% of the Jedi Order. Aside from some light facial scarring, he made it out of the prequels the undisputed victor.
His plans in the original trilogy and the sequel trilogy weren’t quite as iron-clad. He just couldn’t let go of that Death Star master plan even though it failed the first time. Then his clone antics and the failure of his new Empire, The First Order, really hurt his villain reputation. He really missed the moral of the tragedy of Darth Plagueis…