10 Movie Villains Who Caused Their Own Defeats

2. Norman Osborn (Spider-Man)

The Defeat: Facing off against one-another in a crumbling, abandoned building, the Green Goblin and Spider-Man stop throwing punches at one another when Norman reveals his identity to Peter, much to the hero's shock.

While Norman pleads for mercy and tries to explain his dastardly actions, he activates his spiky hoverboard and sends it flying towards Spidey's back, who dodges out of the way, sending the blade right into Normie's stomach.

How He Caused It: One of Spider-Man's many noble and likeable qualities is that he's capable of displaying compassion and mercy. Just look at his last solo film outing in Spider-Man: Homecoming, where he actively tried to save Vulture's life, despite the villain trying to kill him in a previous scene.

Tobey Maguire's portrayal of the character also carries this trait, and this means that the Spidey/Goblin face-off in 2002's Spider-Man would have played out very differently had Norman simply decided not to act after revealing his identity to Peter.

At that stage, the fighting was done, and Spidey had the Goblin cornered. Peter's next move would have been to subdue Norman peacefully and hand him off to the police (or maybe a psych ward). At worst, Norman would have been jailed. And who knows - with his power and influence, maybe he'd have been able to wriggle out of it somehow. But he just couldn't resist the chance to make the last move.

All he had to do was keep playing up the quiet moment he was having with Peter, but instead, he chose violence, and tried to kill the webslinger in the most cowardly fashion possible. In the end, he killed himself - rather painfully, too.