10 More Movie Villains Who Would Have Won By Doing NOTHING

2. Professor James Moriarty - Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows' primary villain is, of course, Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris), who conducts a series of murders and terrorist attacks which put Sherlock (Robert Downey Jr.) on his trail.

As it turns out, Moriarty's plan involves causing enough international conflict to instigate a world war, which after acquiring significant shares in companies that would profit from war, would ensure he'd become filthy rich.

Moriarty's climactic plan, to attack a peace summit in Switzerland, is ultimately foiled, but as Moriarty himself subsequently points out to Holmes, world war is ultimately going to happen no matter what. He even straight-up says to him:

"You see, hidden within the unconscious, there is an insatiable desire for conflict. So, you're not fighting me, so much as you are the human condition. All I want to do is own the bullets and the bandages. War on an industrial scale is inevitable. They'll do it themselves in a few years. All I have to do is wait.

For such a smart man, it's outrageous that Moriarty couldn't appreciate he was better off just letting nature - human nature, even - take its course, rather than impatiently prodding things and, ultimately, putting himself in Sherlock's crosshairs to be foiled.

If Moriarty just sat tight for a few years, he would've been minted, rather than getting thrown over the Reichenbach Falls by his nemesis.