10 Smartest Villain Plans From Sci-Fi Movies

8. If At First You Don’t Succeed - Skynet (Terminator: Dark Fate)

Superman Lex Luthor Gene Hackman
Paramount Pictures

A long-standing criticism of the Terminator franchise is that Skynet, for all its advanced intelligence, only sent one Terminator back at a time to kill John Connor.

If you have time travel, then why not just send back loads of Arnies until the job is done? Stupid machines.

As it turns out though, not stupid machines. Not stupid machines at all.

In 2019's Terminator: Dark Fate, we find out that Skynet did send back more than one killer robot, as one of them actually gets John in the year 1998.

So they did it then! They killed the little brat and are now free to rule the world in the future! Pop the champagne! Or motor oil, or whatever it is hyper-advanced machines drink.

As it turns out, no, because there's some other kid for them to kill, but their first plan came through big time.

Skynet making full use of time travel is something Terminator fans had been longing for ever since the first movie came out. This was a joyous moment, which feels weird to say about a scene where a kid gets brutally murdered in public.

Contributor
Contributor

Jacob Simmons has a great many passions, including rock music, giving acclaimed films three-and-a-half stars, watching random clips from The Simpsons on YouTube at 3am, and writing about himself in the third person.