In the first Austin Powers film, Doctor Evil’s demand of one million dollars comes across as hilariously absurd, not only because he doesn’t understand economic inflation, but because we’re all used to super villains acting like idiots. Despicable Me further illustrates this tendency by having the plot of the movie center on the attempt to steal the Moon.
But what about supposedly serious (or at least not intentionally spoofy) villains with awful plans? Can we chalk up complications and ridiculousness to insanity? Perhaps. But there are some super villains who actually seem at least a little bit sane, and still somehow manage to enact schemes that are flawed to the point of being silly. Here are five of the most absurd super villain schemes, complete with my advice on what these big baddies should have done instead.
(Spoilers for some stuff below.)
5. Palpatine Foresees… Unnecessary Complications
Though bashing the Star Wars prequels will provide endless entertainment for eons, we can always find solace in the wonderful performances from Ian McDarmind as Palpatine. And yet, Palps has done some awful, awful scheming throughout his entire career. The creation of a fake war in which he controls both sides seems like a reasonable enough way to obtain power at first. But he’s so obvious about it to the point of being sloppy. Palpatine also puts himself at a huge disadvantage by keeping up with the Sith Rule of Two. Converting Anakin was, in the end, not that hard, so why not do it with like 12 or 20 Jedi? Palpatine already sort of breaks the Rule of Two by courting both Dooku and Anakin at the same time. Plus, there’s no way Palpatine just randomly met Dooku the second Darth Maul died—he was probably texting with that guy too!
The point is, Palpatine sneaks around too much in order to get what he wants, which creates too many secrets and lies. There are a million things wrong with his manipulation of the Trade Federation, but the biggest problem is loose ends. If he was more up-front with his Evil Empire from the get-go, he could employ a bunch of Dark Jedi and manage the thing like a corporation. He wouldn’t have to decentralize his power to do this. If he claims he kept it down to the Rule of Two because he was really worried about his cronies ganging up on him well, that actually ended up happening. With one guy.
4. Voldemort’s Convoluted Cup
One of the strengths of the early Harry Potter novels was Rowling’s ability to throw in a massive twist at the end. The kindly Professor Quirrell has a freaky face growing out of the back of his head. Tom Riddle is Voldemort. Harry’s father was friends with this Sirius Black guy who was locked up in Azkaban and the guy is actually Harry’s godfather. And by The Goblet of Fire, we learn in the end that the Goblet Triwizard Cup itself was just a portkey to transport Harry Potter to a creepy graveyard where Voldemort snags some blood in order to be completely reborn.
Again: the entire point of everything Harry does is simply designed to trick him into touching a thing that teleports him somewhere. Is this really the best plan Voldemort could come up with? Why not turn Harry’s toothbrush into a portkey and just teleport him to the creepy graveyard right at the beginning of the book? Also, if he needs Harry’s blood, does he really need to have Harry present? Couldn’t Voldemort get one of his many spies to infiltrate Hogwarts and prick Harry with a pin? Better yet, send Malfoy to punch him in the nose, (which happens all the time anyway) and just get the blood from the resulting bloody nose. This would arouse zero suspicion from the staff at Hogwarts, and get Voldemort the blood he needs to come back to life. Hexing the Goblet of Fire Triwizard Cup seems pretty complicated when all you really needed to do was make Malfoy punch Harry in the face.
3. Goldfinger Misunderstands the Economy
With the aid of a lot of sexy pilots, supervillan Goldfinger plans to gas all the guards around Fort Knox, sneak in, and then set off a nuclear pulse, which will irradiate the main supply of gold in the United States. Called “Operation Grand Slam,” Goldfinger’s plot is one of monopoly; once the gold in Fort Knox is radioactive, it will make his giant supply of gold inherently more valuable, meaning the U.S. and other nations will have to do his bidding. The only problem here is the U.S. wasn’t technically on a strict gold standard in 1964, and by 1969, President Nixon ended it permanently.
This isn’t to say gold didn’t have value or at least partially backed the dollar, just that the U.S. economy wasn’t as reliant upon gold as Goldfinger seemed to think. The U.K., Bond’s country of origin, also vacillated for years after WWII about returning to the gold standard (perhaps they anticipated Goldfinger?) and around the globe alternative monetary systems were being created left and right, the most well-known being the IMF. The point is simple: the United States has never had a problem of going into massive debt in order to get what it wants. So, if Goldfinger had been successful in his plan (which involved gassing a bunch of people!) the American government would have likely sent out every conceivable assassin to kill him, and continued to base their economic exploits on what every western nation is really worried about—oil.
In this way, Bond super villain Elektra King from The World is Not Enough had the right idea: forget the gold; control the oil. Fake ecologist Dominic Greene from The Quantum of Solace was also all about oil, even homaging Goldfinger’s style of execution with the substance. Obviously Goldfinger is a much cooler Bond film than either The World is Not Enough or Quantum of Solace, but in those two, the super villains have their shit together. Goldfinger doesn’t.
2. All of Megatron’s attempts to steal natural resources
In the early episodes of The Transformers most of the conflicts revolve around Megatron’s attempts to get natural resources and convert said resources into Energon Cubes. The Decepticons always seem to be running low on Energon, presumably because their base is underwater, and they waste a lot of power because they’re greedy bad guys. Why the Autobots seem okay on Energon in the early episodes isn’t clear, but I suppose we can infer it has something to do with having their base inside of a volcano. (The conversion of lava to Energon seems likely enough.)
But Megatron is always raiding army bases or digging into the Earth’s crust for oil to get what he wants. Most of his targets are seemingly small potatoes and almost always within DRIVING DISTANCE of the Autobot’s hangout. In later seasons, all of the Transformers would randomly be able to fly, but in the early episodes, only the Decepticons could fly. This is important because Optimus Prime has to use a jetpack in certain episodes, and the introduction of the aerialbots is a big deal. The point is, the Decepticons have the advantage of flight, and the Autobots do not. They could have been flying around the globe, stealing various resources, while the Autobots were stuck dealing with 80s travel agents.
Further, there aren’t very many powerful transforming robots on Earth, putting the Decepticons in a unique bargaining position. What about legitimate negotiations? Megatron doesn’t actually have to fire his giant death ray in order to get what he wants; the simple fact that he and all of his friends have death rays is enough to get most nations talking. The Decepticons biggest mistake: try diplomacy.
1. The League of Shadows Drives a Crazy Train
Though technically extreme vigilantes, Ra’s al Ghul and the League of Shadows get the award for All Time Most Unnecessarily Convoluted, Ridiculously Silly Super Villain Scheme. The climax of Batman Begins essentially boils down to Batman trying to prevent a train getting all the way to Wayne Tower in the center of Gotham City. On the train is a microwave transmitter thingamabob, which will vaporize the crazy looney-serum in the city’s water supply, turning everyone into a maniac. When this happens, the League will sit back as “Gotham tears itself apart.”
Now. This seems pretty silly for a lot of reasons. First, the notion of an entire city suddenly turning into homicidal maniacs and killing each other will look pretty suspicious to any outside entity. The FBI or the NSA or somebody is going to look into that. Which seems contrary to the very concept of the League of Shadows being super clandestine. There is nothing clandestine about unleashing unnaturally occurring crazy-town gas on a bunch of people. Even after Scarecrow declares a few test-subjects insane, people start to get suspicious. A whole city? Furthermore, why not just manufacture a version of the toxin that is already airborne? At least this would take out one complicated part of the plan: the driving of the train with the magic stolen transmitter.
Then, Ra’s al Ghul betrays even more dumbness when he reveals to Bruce that the League of Shadows has destroyed Gotham a few times before. Once with FIRE and another time with an ECONOMIC DEPRESSION. Both of these sound like pretty good plans to me, and it seems like all the ninjas are really good at setting fires. (They burn down Wayne Manor!) Fires happen all the time and are hard to trace, also, cheap to manufacture. Sure, there is no guarantee of permanent success, but this whole drive a train to set off crazy-gas scenario has even more variables than saying “Ninjas! Burn everything you see!”
What do you think readers? I am wrong? Are all of these super baddies actually smart? Who has even WORSE schemes?
This article was originally published May 25, 2012.
Ryan Britt is the author of Luke Skywalker Can’t Read and Other Geeky Truths out this November from Plume(Penguin) Books. He’s written (and wept) about dinos since before he can remember.
Lex Luthor destroying California with earthquakes. Just bad.
I actually think Palpatine wasn’t that wrong in keeping his secret operation … as secret as possible. Who knew Palpatine and Darth Sidious were the same? No more than 2,3 people at the same time, and one of them was Palpatine himself! Spread that secret too much and one of these persons might tell the truth to the Jedi or other Republic politicians and Palpatine wouldn’t be Chancelor anymore, there would be an inquiry, all the plan would fail.
And to say he was not succesful can also be argued. OK, he didn’t rule for eternity or until he died of old age, but he ruled the galaxy for 20 years and killed 99.99% of the Jedi population. His plan was not an absolute success, but it was a partial sucess. Unlike a lot of the other villain’s plans.
Well, sure Megatron does not have to shoot people with his arm cannon, but where is the fun in not doing so? Remember the rule zero of all crazy deranged villains, from Ming the Merciless all the way to Dick Cheney. Evil is its own reward.
I got the feeling in GoF that (beside the obvious following in the tradition of putting a big sports event into a school story) Voldemort gets Harry into the tournament because Showing People is a big part of his motivation. Whether Harry died during the tournament, lost, or won but ended up in the graveyard, he’d be Showing That Pipsqueak Who Was Boss.
@2 just to add to that, clearly his legacy lingers decades later in EpVII, so if that’s not success I’m not sure what would be. The only part he failed was to have Anakin succeed him (i’m sure he suspected Vader would kill him eventually, that seems like a given for the Sith), but the system he built, appears to have kept on ticking, at least in part, for quite awhile anyway. I’d also argue that until he had whittled down the Jedi in the Clone Wars and then Order 66’d the rest, there was no way he could come into the open. They’d have crushed him. He was still, after all, just one guy. Speaking of, note that, the cartoons prove that the Rule of Two is perhaps more of a technicality anyway — the Inquisitor in Rebels is definitely a Dark Side force user and minion, he’s just not an official ‘apprentice’ apparently. (or Yoda was just passing on ancient rumor of dubious accuracy)
Hahaha, the Goblet of Fire and the Batman Begin plots are definitely high on my list, so I’m glad you mentioned them. The other thing that bugs me about Batman Begins is that he even mentions that Bruce’s father had started to turn things around (I can’t recall, but possibly subtly admitting he had something to do with his death)…so wouldn’t that then mean Gotham is no longer a cesspit that needs to be destroyed? Not to mention, the things that made it even more of a cesspit (all the police corruption, etc) were themselves being carried out by people working out al’Ghul’s plot…
I am so excited that this all started out with praise for Ian McDiarmid though, as I love almost all of his scenes (the exception being the one where Anakin becomes Vader and he speaks in this completely bizarre gurgly voice).
For me the worst movie villain ever is the guy from Vin Diesel´s “XXX.” The guy runs the Prague underworld, lives in a castle, has Rammstein play one of his many clubs on his birthday, and is untouchable by the law. So, of course, he decides to detonate a biological weapon in his hometown because anarchy.
One point re: Quantum of Solace; it wasn’t about oil, it was about water. The villains only wanted to make it seem like it was oil, to get a better bargain.
As for Goblet of Fire, given that it was the first Harry Potter book I had ever read, my head-canon was that there couldn’t be any unauthorized Portkeys on school grounds. That’s not really a foolproof headcanon; the Cup was ultimately on school grounds. As for blood…maybe Voldy needed it fresh? It is weird, dark magic.
Agree with all who defend Palpatine: so what you want about him, but he actually does seem to have most of his bases covered in the end. He obviously does not follow the Rule of Two in the ideological way a Jedi would (part of what blinded the Council to his plans is his political practicality combined with his Dark Side usage), and continues to prove he almost always has a backup plan. If anything, I think he was so successful with his intriguing that it became a blind spot for him by Return of the Jedi; he, unlike Vader, is not a warrior, he’s a wily politician who believes everything can be overcome if you’re clever enough.
Also: yes to @1. I *heart* the original Superman for many reasons, but Lex Luthor’s plot is just plain nuts. Although I have to say, Kingpin in Daredevil has the highest rating on my “huh?” meter for insane schemes. Most of what he wanted to accomplish can be accomplished through perfectly legal means (unethical & immoral perhaps, but legal none the less).
Actually, I think the downfall of most villians you’re seeing on this list is the same their real-life counterparts have: hubris. Napoleon was a brilliant military conqueror (and a “villian” to the Brits) and after being crowned Emperor of Europe you’d think he’d settle down and, well, enjoy the spoils of victory. But he couldn’t resist taking on Russia. Why? Because he’s not a political leader like Robespiere was, he’s a military campaigner who enjoys taking on big challenges. You don’t get to a certain level of power (villainous or not) without ambition and just a touch of a god complex. The same forces that buoy you up can as easily trip you up when you’re out of your depth or get to caught up in your own visions of glory; say, if you were to attack Russian in the middle of winter without adaquete supply lines.
Villains, by their very natures, can’t help dreaming of being the best. If they wanted to settle for reasonable success, they might be used car lot owner, local drug lords, sleasy politicians, or crooked lawyers. Instead, they want to be the “Napoleon of Crime,” as it were. Fame is as much a part of the equation as actual gain.
Finally: honorable mention should be given to Dennis Nedry of Jurassic Park infamy. The people who pay him off have a simple enough plan: steal us stuff, here’s where you can put, we’ll have a ship standing by, then it’s a big pay day for you. Nedry’s the one who comes up with the idea to clandesdinely shut down multiple security systems all at the same time to mask his escape, including the ones with actual, dangerous DINOSAURS in them, and then gets in a jeep to drive through the area he just released these dinosaurs in.
Since there’s basically no one left on the island and he has full admin access to everything, why not instead distract everyone with some innocous things going on the fritz (lights blinking, screens flickering, cameras pointed in the wrong direction), scoop up the embryos, then come back and save the day by “fixing” what he just caused to happen. Then he could have quietly made his exit once the storm was over. In fact, he could have kept working for the park with the added bonus that everyone now thinks he’s a savior for keeping things together in a tight spot.
But that wouldn’t have gotten anyone eaten, would it? :)
Even if Voldemort needed fresh blood and needed to make a show of it in front of the Deatheaters, he could have arranged to kidnap Harry at any other time, kill him, then hide the body the way Barty Jr. did his Dad. There are people who say, “it had to be during the tournament so the death would seem like an unfortunate accident”, but if Harry had simply disappeared in the middle of the school year, the Ministry and their allies in the press would have been more than happy to simply portray Harry as a kid who went nuts from the stress and messiah complex and just ran off.
@8 I think it’s accurate to say that portkeys aren’t allowed in the school grounds, but that the tri-wizard cup was a portkey because it was supposed to teleport the winner back to the start of the maze (which it did, eventually) and that Crouch had to wait for Dumbledore to put that part of the portkey in place (since Dumbledore has control over these things) and then he could sandwich the graveyard as a layover.
The Skyfall villain’s scheme was ridiculous (and I still don’t know how he figured beforehand to plant the bomb in the tunnel because he knew that Bond would catch up to him there right at the same time that a subway car would be coming overhead).
Speaking of the League of Shadows’ convoluted scheme in Batman Begins, their plot and motivees in The Dark Knight Rises is even more nonsensical. By this time, it’s clear that Gotham had really brought its crime rate down due to legislation passed in the aftermath of Harvey Dent’s death. Which is what the League wanted: less corruption. But then they want to nuke Gotham, I guess, as revenge for Ra’s death? So what message will that send to the world: yeah, clean up your streets, and then we’ll still blow you up because it wasn’t done our way. And I may be wrong on this, but when watching TDKR I had the impression that they were planning on being in the city and going down with it when the bomb detonated (I may be wrong; I only watched it once). So how would they expect the event to move forward their cause of justice at all? Especially if they’re all dead after Gotham’s destroyed.
I thought the exact same thing about Voldemort’s scheme with the goblet of fire. There were so many places it could have gone wrong, but somehow it worked perfectly. Though I think the reason the goblet had to be the portkey was because Hogwarts has protection against portkeys in general, and this protection was probably weakened for the purpose of the Triwizard Tournament. Still, all he had to do was have Barty intercept Harry and force him to touch the portkey, instead of making sure all the other contestants were out of the game…
I still don’t buy the Sith rule of two. If the Master gets hit by a bus or chokes on a hot dog, the whole edifice crumbles, moreso if the Apprentice is Skippy the Newb who has just learned how to turn on his light saber. Now I can buy that there are multiple Sith Masters out there; that would only be logical given that there are thousands of Jedi. That said, Palpatine depended heavily on the Jedi’s stupidity; my grandmother could’ve figured out Palpatine was the bad guy.
@@@@@ 1 Speaking about Lex Luthor, Superman Returns also has a terrible plan (create a new landmass to control it), but my impression was that Lex was very much insane at that point, and wanted nothing more than to kill Superman. But if he was still sane, that plan would make no sense. OK, maybe it would kill Superman, but does Lex really think he would control the landmass he created? Society would break down after the death of billions, his money would mean nothing and the more upstart of his goons (who work for his money) could kill Lex in his sleep to try to take his place in the post-apocalyptic world as leader of his band. Really, insanity is the only way it can be explained Lex, a very brilliant and rich man, adopts some of these plans.
I don’t think we can dis Palpatine’s plan that much, considering that it was 100% successful. Every single thing he did worked, every plan succeeded without a single setback. The Jedi were utterly, totally, and completely oblivious to Palpatine’s planning. Hell, they only found out that Palpatine was Darth Sidious when Anakin told him, and Anakin only knew because Palpatine told him, and by that point, he’d pretty much totally succeeded.
At no point in the prequel trilogy did the Jedi ever win. Even when they thought they won, they were just furthering the bad guy’s plan.
So maybe it was insane, but it totally worked….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
There are two main things underlying Voldemort’s plan. First, the formidable protections surrounding Harry, and second, Voldemort’s desire to assert his dominance over Harry once he had “overcome” those protections.
Neither Voldemort nor his servants can access Harry when Harry is at home; the protection wrought by his mother’s sacrifice and Dumbledore’s aid is clearly too potent for them to overcome, as demonstrated by the plotting around the ending of that protection in book 7. That protection does not extend to Hogwarts, but Hogwarts has its own protections, including a general ban on apparition and similar magics, with exemptions only when Dumbledore provides them.
Furthermore, I don’t think Voldemort had any desire whatsoever to make Harry’s death look like an accident (a proposed defense mentioned above); he wanted to kill Harry, personally, and then publicize the event! That would require time, which necessitates the blindsiding of Dumbledore plus any of the numerous people who might have been willing and able to alert Dumbledore that Harry was in danger. The plan was designed to bypass the formidable protections surrounding Harry and deliver him into Voldemort’s hands while delaying Dumbledore’s realization that Harry was in immanent danger. That’s a pretty tall order, and the plan of inserting an extra “stop” into the portkey enchantment on the Triwizard Cup was a pretty good solution. To the person who proposed forcing Harry to touch the cup earlier, I ask: when? The cup was not a portkey until it was placed into the maze the night of the final trial.
I’m not saying there might not have been a simpler solution, but I haven’t seen one proposed so far that would actually work. Add in Voldemort’s penchant for the dramatic, and I don’t have any problem with the scheme we ended up with.
@14: I really want a comics line about Darth Skippy now. Can someone at Disney get on that?
@12 No, you misunderstand both the schemes at play in TDKR. First is the open one: they use the threat of the bomb as leverage and class warfare as a mechanism to keep the city under their control and isolated (this is the part the hench-people know about). The second, secret scheme is Talia’s – she and Bane are the only ones who know the bomb will go off, no matter what, and that’s purely revenge on Bruce and the city. They don’t intend to stick around for it (though they obviously don’t care about escaping too much either since she stays to try to make sure it goes off when under attack).
Plus, I don’t know if it’s all that much less convoluted, but the post gets the details of Batman Begins wrong. The scheme isn’t that the train will contaminate the water, the water is already contaminated. It’s mentioned in the movie that it won’t reach many people that way, exactly for the reason stated, because the PD’ll just warn people not to drink it. The train and the microwave emitter machine thing are sent at the water lines (that converge beneath Wayne Tower) to break open the mains and vaporize the water to turn it into Scarecrow gas.
One point re: Quantum of Solace; it wasn’t about oil, it was about water. The villains only wanted to make it seem like it was oil, to get a better bargain.
My thoughts after watching that were: “So the Bond villain’s devilish scheme was to… manipulate the privatisation process of the Bolivian national water utility? I miss the days when they were stealing cruise missiles and hijacking spaceships. This plan might even be legal. At worst, he probably only needs to worry about the Bolivian SEC.”
I don’t think we can dis Palpatine’s plan that much, considering that it was 100% successful.
My personal headcanon would say “…both times he did it.”
What is the overarching plot of the first three? Senator Palpatine wants power. How does he get it? He drums up a fake threat to the Republic that will convince the Senate to make him Chancellor and allow him to raise an army. Ultimately he uses the army to dissolve the Senate (between III and IV; we hear about it right at the start of IV) and rule directly. But it’s been him running both sides, all along.
Then what happens? The only remaining obstacle to absolute power is the Imperial armed forces, who are showing signs of independent thought (being rude to Vader, bossing him around, mocking the Force etc). As every dictator knows, the main threat is not a popular uprising; it’s a mutiny from inside your own security forces. Hitler knew it (and murdered Roehm and the SA). Stalin knew it (and wiped out Tukhachevsky and most of the Soviet general staff). Palpatine knows it too. So he thinks: fine, if it worked on the Senate it’ll work on the Navy. I’ll do the fake war thing again.
He authorises the construction of a huge, prestige warship, the Death Star. He starts a rebel movement, the Alliance, and leaks the plans to them. And, when Peter Cushing and all the other feisty generals are on board, it gets blown to shreds (right after his henchman, Vader, has just happened to leave in his own personal ship).
The argument is won. The Navy’s hierarchy has been decimated; Vader is the only surviving choice for overall command. The incipient revolt of the admirals has been wiped out. The only thing remaining is to replace the ageing, half-machine Vader with a much healthier substitute – his son – and to clear the remaining rebels off the board by enticing them into a trap.
“Everything that has occurred has done so according to my design.”
I thought Ra’s al Ghul meant that they were behind the great fire of London and the Great Depression. I mean they must be even worse schemers if they keep “saving” Gotham from corruption and it never sticks.
@21: All I can say to your headcannon is, “Brilliant!” It’s entirely plausible, even adding up things from the few SW novels/comics I’m familiar with. In face, looking at it from this perspective, Palpatine is the master of the rule of two, just on a far more massive scale than most Sith ever dream of. Instead of settling for pitting one person against another to achieve dominance, he pitts entire systems/organizations/governments against one another to stay on top. Got to give him props for sheer gall, if nothing else.
How about Die Hard 2, where the plot depends upon closing an airport – in a city that has 3 international airports?
@21 – ahahahaha, I love it. Based on some of the deleted prequel scenes I am not sure he directly started the Rebel Alliance, but I can definitely buy that he let them win when convenient for him…
Howard: not just that, but closing an airport because of a blizzard, which happens in the D.C. area maybe once a decade. (If it was an airport in Buffalo, it would totally work….)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
For a good example of a villanous scheme so crazy that it might just work (and did), you can check out Watchmen (the graphic novel, not the film). So many things that could go wrong, and nearly did.
Ra’s never said they tried burning Gotham. He only mentioned doing the economics thing. At any rate, it still points to how crazy he is, because his motives are inconsistent.
And yeah, I’m going to have to say, portkeys are probably normally blocked on Hogwarts grounds. It’s part of why Malfoy had to find and repair that vanishing cabinet in the 6th one. He can’t get Harry out from Hogsmeade since Hogsmeade trips were cancelled that year due to the tournament. So I think it’s a matter of getting a way to get him alone where he can be whisked away.
@21: Seems a bit of a stretch. Especially when we had Vader choking admirals with no consequences, I think by the time of IV, Palpatine could afford to just outright kill upstarts for treason. No doubt he was manipulating a lot of things still, but it seems unlikely he was behind the whole rebellion. Plus then it fails as a literary device. The point of the first trilogy and the rebellion was the idea that the power of the human spirit and your good motives and strong will could overcome overwhelming odds. Making the good guys being totally manipulated by the Emperor and only winning because he allowed them to not only cheapens their existence and victories, it completely eliminates their legitimacy and agency. The author of Star Wars is George Lucas, not George Martin. The point of the rebel victories is for the audience to feel good and uplifted. So the idea that they are hollow victories does not seem to fit into his narrative.
In the prequels, the remaining good guys have their hands tied and are being swept away by the tide of the majority, who are being completely manipulated. The good guys spent most of their time thinking that the Republic was still the good guys for the most part and redeemable, if corrupt. They didn’t see until too late the extent and source of the corruption. In the original trilogy, it is the Empire that is complacent (and remember that the Empire is made up of people who were manipulated and content to go along with the crowd). Now the good guys see what’s really up, and they can take a more direct stand against the evil. These are the people who are willing to fight. Even the Emperor himself might be a little complacent by this point (“Your overconfidence is your weakness.”). Recall the utter glee of Palpatine during his fight with Yoda, when he thinks he’s won. Heck, he even lets Yoda get up and fight him instead of just killing him because he wants to gloat. Now he’s letting his own arrogance blind him, as he’s said to Yoda. Also realize that without the Jedi Order, there is no need to practice Sith rituals specifically aimed at clouding the Jedi vision with the Dark Side of the Force. So Palpatine, being overcome by the ecstasy of his victory, is no longer even actively doing the things that helped the Dark Side grow. Thinking the Light Side is no more allowed the Light Side to come back into balance.
I am not sure he directly started the Rebel Alliance, but I can definitely buy that he let them win when convenient for him…
Oh, sure. Maybe he just prodded them in the right direction. He didn’t start the Trade Federation either, so it would be more in keeping with his known strategy to take advantage of an existing rebel movement.
After all, the good thing about there being a highly visible rebel movement against your rule is that you can be fairly sure that any dissatisfied subjects are going to head for it, rather than starting their own less visible one. So as long as you secretly control it, or at least have agents inside it, you’re fine. It’s a Roach Motel for subversives. (Like the Brotherhood in Nineteen Eighty-Four.)
Instead of settling for pitting one person against another to achieve dominance, he pits entire systems/organizations/governments against one another to stay on top.
Exactly. Look at the climax of the entire series: Luke vs. Vader, with the Emperor in the background, egging them on and saying “winner gets a job as my Chief Operating Officer!” It’s a massive hint to the audience that “Hey, this is how this guy does business”.
Seems a bit of a stretch. Especially when we had Vader choking admirals with no consequences
But we don’t, do we? Not at the start of IV. Vader starts choking the guy, and Peter Cushing tells him “Release him, Lord Vader” in the same tone of voice you’d use to a disobedient dog. And Vader drops him. It’s very obvious who’s in charge in that room and it’s not the guy in the cloak. Episode V-Vader would have choked out Peter Cushing as well.
Making the good guys being totally manipulated by the Emperor and only winning because he allowed them to not only cheapens their existence and victories, it completely eliminates their legitimacy and agency.
But that’s the point – ultimately the good guys manage to break free of the Emperor’s plan. Luke refuses to join him. Vader turns against him. His final move was going to be forcing Luke to go dark by making him kill his father; what actually happens is that Vader goes light because he can’t face killing his son. The good guys have been manipulated and out-though throughout the series even if you don’t accept my headcanon (Tricked over Alderaan, trapped in Cloud City, ambushed over Endor…) But at the last minute, they win through.
The author of Star Wars is George Lucas, not George Martin.
I always get confused between those two. Which is the one that has the expert swordsman whose father was the evil overlord’s second in command, and his hand gets cut off, and he falls in love with his sister? And everyone’s favourite character is the smuggler captain?
Quoth a1ay: “The good guys have been manipulated and out-though throughout the series even if you don’t accept my headcanon (Tricked over Alderaan, trapped in Cloud City, ambushed over Endor…)”
Not just in the first trilogy, but the prequel trilogy is a lengthy and endless chronicle of abject failure by the good guys. The Jedi not only don’t win any victories in the prequel trilogy, they’re not in any danger of winning any victories in the prequel trilogy. The closest Palpatine comes to defeat is when Mace Windu turns him into a raisin, and he even manages to make that into a benefit.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
If Malfoy had popped Harry in the nose and gotten the blood there might have been snot in it, and Voldemort would have grown a nose. Sometimes, simple is best.
After the prequels, it’s part of my head canon that Yoda’s the villain. I’m pretty sure after the what, 800 years or so he’s had dealing with Jedi, that he’s decided the whole thing needs to be razed to the ground and rebuilt his way. So he misdirects the Council away from the clear signs of the return of the Sith, allows Anakin to be trained while subtly encouraging his anger and turn to the Dark Side, and runs off and hides once the poop hit fan. Then he tries to isolate Luke from his friends and family in Empire, and argues he shouldn’t save them (though, note, one of the people Luke saves is his sister, and in theory, their last hope should Luke fail), so he can mold Luke into Yoda’s version of what the Jedi should be.
Which is very different from what we see them as in the prequels, really.
@30: But it just doesn’t fit that the first Death Star victory is being manipulated by the Emperor, if according to your theory, Vader was meant to survive. There were too many circumstances that lead to that outcome. Either Vader should’ve died with the Death Star, or he would’ve successfully defended it (if not for the Falcon, not to mention having Luke Skywalker be a key pilot in the battle). So part of the plan would’ve failed. It makes little sense for his plan to have the Death Star be destroyed but Vader survive.
Tarkin tells Vader to release him, but he doesn’t punish him for it. He actually kind of then punishes the Admirals by saying their bickering is pointless and then reassuring everyone that “Lord” Vader will come through for them. He still allows Vader to make his point about how badass and untouchable he is. You might also read some things into the scene in the way Vader releases him as though he’s totally cool with that, and how Tarkin hesitates for while before telling him to stop. All this scene does is establish that Tarkin also has authority. Is this an authority the Emperor is afraid of? Probably not. Tarkin is probably rightly afraid of the Emperor, and again, I maintain, he does not need to blow up the whole Death Star if he wants to get rid of Tarkin. This scene kind of just establishes that Tarkin is in charge on board the Death Star, but not explicitly in charge of Vader. In fact, Vader flat out tells him later that he’s going to go fight Kenobi by himself, so poo on what you think. Also, the plan with the homing beacons is Vader’s idea, and Tarkin states that he is uneasy about it. So if he were completely in charge, he could’ve said “no.” It seems clear from this film that while Tarkin is in charge of the Death Star, he still treads carefully around Vader, knowing he is the Emperor’s right hand. The scene in the briefing room telling Vader to stop is his attempt to maintain order at his business meeting.
The rebels have been manipulated and out thought when the films have explicitly shown that this is the case, and the purpose in the story is to show a bad turn of events for the rebels. In addition, these manipulations were done by the Emperor with the express purpose of a failure for the rebellion, not a sneaky non-victory. My point is that having the victories that are not explicitly stated to be manipulations in fact being manipulations cheapens the victories. And it’s kind of a moot point because if you think about it, the rebels don’t actually have that many victories. But my point is, it seems rather unfitting that the destruction of the first Death Star (and even the stealing of the plans) is a manipulation by Palpatine, and that seems to be the major point of your theory. I think this fits to the stealing of the plans battle as the extra-story opening crawl explicitly states it as their first victory.
Also, the Cloud City trap was not a manipulation of the organization of the rebellion by a higher up who was secretly working for Palpatine as Dooku was. They figured out where they were headed (partly due to Boba Fett following them), were able to get there first, and then used Lando, a third party, to trick the heroes into a false sense of security. Vader then tortured them knowing that Luke would see it through the Force and figuring he would come to rescue them, with full knowledge of what he was running into. The rebellion as a whole really is no where in this scenario; they are regrouping the fleet at the rendezvous point. And again, the victories here are not manipulations. Did the Emperor plan for Lando to then turn on Vader and free Leia and Chewie? You could maybe convince me of his intention that Luke would escape Vader, but who exactly did he manipulate in the rebellion for that? Did he manipulate R2-D2 in the figuring out the hyperdrive was deactivated (which I see as part of covering their bases rather than an outright plan of letting them THINK they were escaping first, then saying, “Ha ha! Fooled you!”)?
@35: I don’t think anyone (no matter how powerful) can ever plan/manipulate every single detail, nor do I think Palpatine is responsible for everything the Rebellion does or even is secretly in charge the way he was with the Separtists in the prequels. But I could buy a scenario where Palpatine allows the Rebellion to organically develop, making sure he has good intelligence on what’s going on and using it as a bogeyman threat to keep his hold on power, not to mention as a justificatio for further armament and militarisation of the government. Every Rebel victory is not a direct result of Palpatine’s actions; that’s not the way I think he works. Instead, he molds “heads I win, tails you lose” strategies so that no matter who comes out on top, he’s got an edge and a plan.
The one situation he did not plan for was the idea that two people he pitted against each other (Luke and Vader) would both choose to lose rather than play his game. As a thoroughly selfish creature, he couldn’t forsee or even contemplate the idea that both would comit acts of selflessness.
Every Rebel victory is not a direct result of Palpatine’s actions; that’s not the way I think he works. Instead, he molds “heads I win, tails you lose” strategies so that no matter who comes out on top, he’s got an edge and a plan.
Just like Miles Naismith!
The other problem with Goldfinger’s scheme is that you can still trade the gold reserves even if you don’t have physical access to them. You know how big they are and where they are so you can transfer ownership. The Yap islanders worked this out. Rai the stone disks they use as money can be up to 4m in diameter so are far too big to easily move. So they started trading ownership without moving them. One Rai was lost at sea while being transported to Yap it existed and the owner was known so the fact that it was totally inaccessible was no obstacle to using it for trade.
Dooku was always just a “stand in”. Palpatine was using him for his resources. He would have been killed in favor of another apprentice anyway.
Good point on the Goblet of Fire plot. It was always way too convoluted. To those defending Voldemort’s plot, we are told apparating is blocked at Hogwarts (and that the headmaster can adjust this protection, like allowing older students to apparate in the Great Hall to practice), but Port Keys are never mentioned. It is mentioned that Port Keys are regulated by the Ministry, and creating an unauthorized Port Key is some type of violation, though it is unclear how this is monitored and enforced. Dumbledore himself creates a Port Key on the spot to take Harry & the Weasleys to Grimmauld Place following the attack on Mr. Weasly in the Order of the Phoenix, though one could argue that he was the only one that could do so, due his position as Headmaster. The plot definitely makes more sense if Port Keys do not work at Hogwarts without the Headmaster’s permission.
I agree that Palpatine does not really belong on this list. Besides having a fortuitous string of Apprentices lined up, I don’t think his plan was all that strange. The rule of Two worked really well for him, particularly since Anakin could not challenge him after his duel with Kenobi due to the fact that his life support system/armor could be easily overcome by Palpatine’s force lightning.
@36: That kind of thing I think seems plausible. What I thought was a “stretch” was the original supposition that the Rebel Alliance and the Galactic Civil War were direct formations of Palpatine precisely analogous to the Clone Wars and the Separatists. I also find it difficult to accept that the destruction of the first Death Star was just a ploy to kill all the Admirals (who, now that I think about it, may NOT have been on board at the time of the destruction. We see them at the briefing and then never again. We don’t really have anything to tell us that they didn’t go back out on their fleet assignments prior to the Death Star’s destruction).
The “heads I win, tails you lose” thing I think is exactly what he did in Phantom Menace. While some people might see it as ambiguous, I think we’re meant to believe that Palpatine did not intend for Queen Amidala to succeed in liberating Naboo. But he totally made the most of it.
Any type of discussion along these lines is incomplete without a nod to Dr. Doofenshmirtz (from Phineas and Ferb). I know he’s a spoof of the evil villain trope, but they do him so masterfully. He’s this absolutely perfect storm of technical genius, emotionally scarring backstories, and evil plots completely devoid of a well thought out cause to effect path.