10 Smartest Villain Plans In Movies

Movie villains tend to concoct an overelaborate scheme to become rich, rule society, shape the world for their benefit, or cheat death. More often than not, the hero will ruin this dastardly plan before it comes to fruition.

Although the criminals in these stories are usually geniuses, a lot of their ideas rely on movie logic and don't make any sense when you think about it. As Dr. Evil's son pointed out, why would anyone place their enemy in a booby-trap when they can just shoot them? It's faster and cheaper! Because of lapses of logic like this, movie villains' masterplans seem foolish, even idiotic.

But every now and again, the antagonist of a story will devise a scheme that's actually really clever. Even if it doesn't work, the amount of effort the evildoer put into it is impressive. They don't waste time with "baddie monologues". They don't keep the hero alive. They prepare contingencies in case their initial plan goes belly up. Their actions may be deplorable but you have to tip your hat to how well thought-out some of these ideas are.

In The Incredibles, Syndrome plots to launch his destructive robot, The Omnidroid, onto a heavily populated city. After he swoops in to destroy it, he assumes society will perceive him as a superhero.

In most comic-themed stories, the villain has some sort of doomsday device which the hero ultimate destroys after exploiting an obvious weakness.

However, Syndrome is fully aware of this. He's been obsessed with superheroes since childhood and knows how resourceful they are at uncovering weaknesses in weapons and doomsday machines.

In fact, Syndrome used this fact to his advantage. For years, he "hired" superheroes under the guise of a mysterious benefactor and asked them to destroy the Omnidroid, which had supposedly gone rogue on an island.

If the superhero emerged triumphant, Syndrome rebuilt the robot so it was immune to the way it was defeated. If the Omnidroid won, that was one less superhero for Syndrome to worry about.

By the time the insidious supervillain believed he had killed every superhero on Earth, only then did he release the Omnidroid on the public, which by this point, was nearly invincible. Although Syndrome was beaten (by a baby), it was still a masterfully orchestrated stratagem.