10 More Movie Villains Who Would Have Won By Doing NOTHING

Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalbán) is the consensus pick for Star Trek's all-time greatest villain, despite the fact that he ultimately snatched victory from his own mouth through his incessant quest for revenge.

By the third act, Khan has both captured the starship Reliant and taken receipt of the Genesis Device - an immensely powerful piece of technology capable of rapidly terraforming planets or, if one wishes, destroying them.

Basically, it's a near-unstoppable superweapon in the wrong hands - and certainly in Khan's hands.

But rather than relish his success, Khan's thirst to kill Captain Kirk (William Shatner) - who previously left him exiled on a remote planet to die - overpowers him.

And so, Khan decides to follow the Enterprise into the Mutara Nebula, where the Reliant's combat advantages are nullified and the Enterprise is able to defeat it.

This leads to Khan's demise, and though the incident also (temporarily) claims the life of Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Kirk lives to fight another day, so it was all for naught anyway.

Had Khan simply realised when he'd won and not chased the Enterprise, he would've been able to use Genesis to do basically anything he wanted.

And on another level, you could even argue that Khan escaping Kirk's exile in the first place amounts to winning, enough that his own henchman Joachim (Judson Scott) even points this out to him.

But Khan, obsessed with revenge, can only offer the immortal reply - "He tasks me, and I shall have him!"