10 Movies Where The Villains BOTCHED An Easy Win
5. General Katana - Highlander II: The Quickening
Highlander II: The Quickening is hardly a bastion of water-tight storytelling or study characterisation, but even so, villain General Katana (Michael Ironside) threw away an easy victory he could've achieved by literally doing nothing and allowing nature to take its course.
Katana orders his two goons, Corda (Pete Antico) and Reno (Peter Bucossi), to head to the future and kill Connor McLeod (Christopher Lambert) to prevent him from usurping his plans on the planet Zeist.
This is despite the fact that McLeod is an extremely frail, mortal old man by this point, and Katana's goons remind him that McLeod will probably be dead within a matter of weeks. Not to mention that McLeod has no interest at all in returning to Zeist.
Katana has none of it, though, and repeats his order, which predictably results in McLeod killing both Corda and Reno. And because McLeod decapitates one of them, he regains his youthful vigour and immortality, setting him on a path to then kill Katana.
Had Katana simply listened to his lackeys, he would've surely won by sheer virtue of his only prominent rival dying of old age a short time later.