10 Dumbest Villains In Movie History

9. Skynet - Terminator: Salvation (2009)

Terminator Salvation
Columbia

It'€™s something to be expected from the visionary director of the Charlie€™'s Angels movies, but Terminator: Salvation wasn€™'t the greatest of additions to the long-running Terminator franchise. It€™ wasn't just the poor quality of the film, but the decision to base the entire thing in 2018 and disregard the selling point of the films up until then; the €˜cyborg killer from the future travels back to murder the man who leads the Resistance€™ conceit.

Whatever €, if we could place McG on this list, we would, but it€™'s enough that he succeeds in making Skynet, the all-powerful defense computer turned world dictator into a shoeless buffoon of an antagonist in this film. How this Skynet managed to enact the machine apocalypse is a mystery. Let'€™s leave aside the fact that the time travel paradoxes, already iffy from the events of the three previous entries in the series, are almost entirely disregarded here (hello again, McG), Skynet€™'s plan hinges on prototypical T-800 cyborg Marcus luring Resistance leader John Connor to his death and, almost incidentally, wiping out the Resistance.

It'€™s never clear why the artificial intelligence thinks it has to do this, as the events of the film make it pretty clear that Skynet is winning the war. There€™'s also the point that the disguised Terminators were created to infiltrate the Resistance, just as Marcus successfully does in the film€. Why the elaborate €˜luring€™ plot is necessary, when Skynet could just have Marcus activate and kill him then and there, is a mystery for the ages.

It gets worse, though. Once Connor and Marcus are inside the trap, Skynet decides to pay lip service to the whole cyborg-stalk-and-slash concept it helped pioneer with three other failed attempts on Connor€™'s life by sending one (1) T-800 to kill the pair of them. That€™'s right: in the heart of its own base, with an assembly line full of robot killing machines, and in the springing of its own trap, Skynet€™'s big plan is to send in one Terminator to kill them both. Even when the fight escalates, the T-800 assassin doesn'€™t get any more assistance.

We also have to ask ourselves why Skynet decided to lure its greatest enemy into the heart of its base and provide him with easy access and myriad ways to blow up its production line€ like, for example, the Terminator power cells that Connor jury-rigs into giant bombs.

Contributor
Contributor

Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.