10 Sci-Fi Movie Villains Who Encountered Something Worse
Because there's always a bigger... mutant squid.
The sci-fi genre is full of memorable villains both terrifying and sublime, but sometimes they end up biting off more than they were ever capable of chewing, leaving them facing off against something so much more powerful, savvy, or downright insane than themselves.
As a spin-off from our recent articles on horror movie villains who encountered something worse, we take a shift to sci-fi cinema to consider the very same subject.
These 10 sci-fi movies all featured villains who found themselves on the wrong side of a force, a creature, or even a mere human being, who thoroughly schooled them in every way that one can be - that is, usually killing them.
In a few select cases, the emergence of an even more terrifying villain caused some antagonists to recognise the error of their ways, but for the most part, they didn't have much time to react at all, given the oft-fatal smackdown they got speedily administered by said villain.
All in all, these sci-fi baddies just didn't factor in the possibility of a bigger, badder enemy materialising to challenge them. Oops...
10. Sybok - Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
The William Shatner-directed Star Trek V: The Final Frontier may not be a great or even particularly good Trek movie - arguably the worst of the lot, even - but it does offer up a relatively unique motivation for its primary antagonist.
The main villain is Sybok (Laurence Luckinbill), the Vulcan half-brother of Spock (Leonard Nimoy) who plots to travel to the planet Sha Ka Ree because he believes that he can find God there.
Sybok eventually succeeds in his plan, coming face-to-face with "God," who actually turns out to be an evil alien entity which was sealed on the planet in the distant past. It's at this moment that Sybok realises he has effectively been duped into bringing a starship to the entity which it can use to escape.
Upon taking stock of this, he apologises to the Enterprise's crew, cites his own arrogance, and ultimately sacrifices himself to ensure that Spock and company can flee. In the very least, Sybok was an interesting, well-acted villain trapped in a woefully uneven movie, and one who got the opportunity to redeem himself once he realised what he was going up against.