10 Movie Villains Who Made One Wrong Move
6. Bane/Talia Al Ghul - The Dark Knight Rises
The Wrong Move
Both Bane (Tom Hardy) and Talia al Ghul (Marion Cotillard) had ripe opportunities to kill Batman (Christian Bale) and destroy Gotham City, but due to their twisted penchant for theatricality, they let their goals get away from them.
In Bane's case, he opted to keep Batman alive and make him suffer in a manky prison while forcing him to watch Gotham tear itself apart, because it was oh-so-important that he annihilate Bruce's soul and raze Gotham before giving him permission to die.
On the other hand, Talia hatches an hilariously drawn out plan to blow up Gotham City with a neutron bomb, with the reactor core taking five months to deteriorate, giving Bruce Wayne a ripe opportunity to, you know, escape his confines, get back to Gotham and foil their plans.
With the help of Catwoman (Anne Hathaway), Bane is eventually killed, while Batman takes out Talia and safely detonates the bomb off-shore.
What They Should've Done
Clearly, it would've made a ton of sense for Bane to just kill Batman during their first encounter, which he decisively wins. Is it really worth keeping such a slippery, resilient hero alive for the mere satisfaction of making him watch Gotham be decimated?
Without the presence of Batman, Bane and Talia's plan to destroy Gotham would've almost certainly succeeded unchallenged, but Talia's fetishistic desire for a slow-turning knife and Bane's clear status as her lap-dog ensured they both thoroughly played themselves.