6 Movies That Didn't Realize They Let the Villain Win

6

The Rest of the Aliens from Independence Day

In Independence Day, the film that inaugurated Roland Emmerich's obsession with seeing America destroyed, the bad guys are a "far more advanced" form of intelligent life that looks like something the Queen from Aliens gave birth to after getting drunk with Predator.

ALF just... stared.

These guys packed quite a lunch bag for their Independence Day barbecue: spaceships the size of Hawaiian islands, shields that could withstand the nuclear bombing of Houston, weapons capable of leveling Washington D.C. in a single blast, plus all the information about human anatomy they could possibly probe out of Randy Quaid's asshole.

But, after pancaking dozens of cities, a rag-tag group of humans cause each and every one of the alien ships to crash, the thousands of people who were no doubt crushed under each one a small price to pay for victory.

But We Forgot About...

Let's be generous and assume that every one of the alien city-destroying mother ships was downed. Do you have any idea how large a 15-mile-wide spaceship is? Each one is like a flying city, 1,000-stories high and about 100 blocks wide in every direction. And while New York may not have been designed to have giant spaceships fall on it, we have to imagine the space crafts had been designed with a contingency plan for gravity.

We're not sure how many troops and crew were on board each, but we know each one housed an entire air force worth of those little fighter craft.

Speaking of which, any aliens who happen to be sitting in one of those crafts is probably going to make it. We saw earlier that an alien shot out of the sky was able to survive. And by survive we mean it hot wired a human brain and had a conversation with the fucking President after going through a crash-landing, a cold cock delivered by none other than Will Smith, and being cut in half on an operating table.

"Wow, he went down really easy. It's almost like he wants me to take his unconscious body to my leader."

Take into account the weaponry the aliens will be able to recover from their downed ships, and we have a District 9 situation on our hands... only we're the ones herded into camps.

And we can't quite rock a red vest.

5

The Libyans from Back to the Future

Let's disregard for a moment all of the numerous problems we have with the "happy" ending of Back to the Future. Let's grant the filmmakers that everything wrapped itself up perfectly; Marty is happy, parents are happy, Biff is their slave.

All he wants is a case of Schlitz and time to forget.

It's so easy to get wrapped up in the Biff Tannens and time paradoxes as the main obstacles to be overcome that we forget the guys who should have kept Marty McFly up late at night.

But We Forgot About...

The Libyan terrorists Doc Brown ripped the plutonium from. You know, the armed, pissed off terrorists driving freely through Hill Valley, who wanted Doc Brown to build a nuclear bomb for them.

Ho-hum.

Take a close look at that VW van. These guys pack more wallop in there than the collected drug cartels in Breaking Bad and The Wire. These Libyans have AK-47s, RPGs, a shoot-first policy, tracking abilities that baffle even the guy who perfected time travel, and... oh, fucking plutonium.

This is some Tom Clancy shit right here.

OK, so Marty hooks up with his mom and warns Doc about the Libyans, which he takes as his cue to dig up a bulletproof vest capable of stopping assault-rifle slugs at point-blank range. Good for him. They then take off in their van and chase Marty in the Delorean. When Marty disappears back in time, the van crashes into a one-hour photo stand. Then... what?

...they back up, drive to Marty and shoot him in the face?

Nothing happens. Seriously, there are no terrorists flying through windshields; no RPGs going off; no big cathartic explosion to justify the use of the word "bomb" in the movie. All we see is the van kind of tip over, but sustain the abuse like any good, German-made car was built to. But when Marty returns from the past to check on Doc, they have an emotional reunion that completely ignores the fact that there is a dented van full of terrorists right over there.

If it can survive hippies, it can survive anything.

Hell, even if the van burst into flames and vaporized the gunmen, there's no way those few guys represented the entirety of their terror cell. This is a group serious enough to sneak into the U.S., obtain military-grade weapons and goddamned weapons-grade plutonium. You know, the stuff that no terrorists and only a few militaries have ever been able to get their hands on. If anything, Back to the Future is a cautionary tale about how disastrously vulnerable small U.S. towns were to terrorism during the Reagan years.

And how vulnerable the terrorists were to crimes of Chronomancy.

4

Death Proof

Tarantino's Death Proof is actually two stories: the story of the psychotic Stuntman Mike harassing a group of ladies, and the story of Stuntman Mike harassing a (different) group of ladies (who fight back and kill him). This is about the latter.

The former didn't last long.

This part of the story is a girl-power picture which focuses on a white 1970 Dodge Challenger that our heroines hope to borrow for a dangerous game called "Ship's Mast."

They borrow the car from a scary-looking dude, and eventually use that car to get their revenge on Stuntman.

But We Forgot About...

Mike is just one of two. That white 1970 Dodge Challenger our heroines have their sights on is being offered for sale by a hardcore Tennessee "son of the soil" named Jasper. Bear in mind that Jasper is played by Jonathan Loughran, who you may remember as the trucker who tried to rape Uma Therman in Kill Bill, Vol 1. He's basically the same character here, right down to his trademark pre-rape "heh heh."

Nothing can go badly here.

Our heroines have no intention of buying the car, but nevertheless finagle their way into getting Jasper to let them take the hog for a spin by offering their single hottest friend as collateral. To sweeten the deal, they even point out that she's a porn actress as a nudge-nudge that she might be down for some intercourse while they're out. Oh, and they never mention any of this to her. Oh, and she's wearing this:

And the last we ever see of her is this:

What the hell were they expecting to find when they came back, especially after that little porn actress lure they used? The cheerleader and the hillbilly playing chess?

Even if they come back and the cheerleader is, somehow, still intact, there's the little matter of her girlfriends leaving her behind as collateral. You know, in case something bad happens to the Dodge Challenger, like maybe an on-and off-road duel with a homicidal stuntman.

By the end of the film the car is completely totaled, so what does that mean? Does the hillbilly get to keep the cheerleader (or her mutilated corpse, as the case may be)?

3

The Fashion Industry from Zoolander

After narrowly avoiding death in a freak gasoline-fight accident, male model Derek Zoolander finds himself in the middle of the single largest international conspiracy in history: the fashion industry. It is revealed that male models are genetically perfected to serve as human weapons, meaning they're basically like Jason Bourne with an eating disorder. Zoolander is brainwashed by fashion mogul Jacobim Mugatu (Will Ferrell) to assassinate the Prime Minister of Malaysia at an upcoming fashion show.

But We Forgot About...

But Jacobim Mugatu, according to David Duchovny's character, is "just a punk-ass errand boy working for an international syndicate of fashion designers."

It turns out the fashion industry has been behind every major political assassination in history, from the Tory Conspiracy to Mother Teresa of Calcutta. When peace-mongers like Abe Lincoln and JFK threatened the industry's enormous supply of cheap, third-world labor, they hired eligible bachelors like John Wilkes Booth to take them down.

The Prime Minister of Malaysia? Just another thorn in the side of this super-secret global fashion industry conspiracy of evilness. So while Mugatu and his deadly shuriken are stopped by this face:

...and he presumably goes to jail thanks to some evidence Jerry Stiller had on his Zip Disk, the movie kind of forgets that the murderous fashion industry is still in power. The whole global conspiracy is still in place and Mugatu likely replaced by Donatella Versace. For a silly, slapstick action comedy, that is one dark, fatalistic ending right there. Ultimately, the heroes are powerless. Just like you!

2

It's a Wonderful Life

In It's a Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart plays George Bailey of the Bailey Building and Loan Association. It is a thankless job which George never wanted and frankly was never all that good at. Things run afoul for George after his mentally-ill Uncle Billy loses the $8,000 their bank needs to stay afloat, and George suddenly finds himself accused of fraud and chased by the law. As a result, he decides to add a number to the phony statistics and kill himself on Christmas.

George's primary antagonist is the evil Mr. Henry F. Potter, who knowingly takes Uncle Billy's "missing" $8,000 and keeps it to himself, despite owning doorknobs that cost more money.

Of course this is when George has either a religious experience or an acid flashback, which results in him running back to his family and being saved by his friends. Everyone he knows breaks their wallets to help him out, and then that super-rich friend he never mentioned to anyone sends him a money order for $25,000.

All is well for George and his family. Except for one small detail.

Uncle Billy still lives.

But We Forgot About...

Mr. Potter is not only still in power, he's actually $8,000 richer. The man responsible for the whole ordeal suffers absolutely zero reprisal. He is still there to make life hell for the entire Bailey family, just as he did to George's father and just like he will do to George's children and grandchildren (probably using a new cyborg body since he can afford it).

Ultimately, all the problems that George started off with are still very much on the table, and possibly even worse than before. Not only does the man still hate his job, but he is now more married to it than ever. Even his worthless Uncle Billy is still in the picture, waiting to shit all over everything.

He is a human cancer.

1

SPECTRE from the James Bond series

In the Bond franchise, as badass as Alec Trevelyan was and as persuasive as Pussy Galore's methods could be (there is a hint in the name), James Bond's greatest adversary will always be SPECTRE: the Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion.

A Halliburton subsidiary.

They have shown up in no less than seven James Bond films, with evil plans to instigate nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviets, engineer global famine, poke holes in the planet's ozone layer with "lasers" and photograph James Bond's boners (presumably with the intent of synthesizing the STDs in his body to unleash them as a deadly new virus).

The man is a walking plague.

Not only is SPECTRE James Bond's oldest nemesis, its head Ernst Stavro Blofeld (also known as "Number 1") stands as one of the most iconic villains in cinematic history.

Each time, of course, Bond thwarts their plan for one more movie.

But We Forgot About...

Last time we saw Blofeld, he was using his motorized wheelchair to control a helicopter with Bond in it. Sure enough, our favorite promiscuous government employee finds a way out of the mess, and eventually drops Blofield (and his wheelchair) down a smokestack.

The end of the evil organization, right? Well, yes... if Blofeld was the only person left on SPECTRE's entire criminal payroll.

The cat alone could do some damage.

From as far back as From Russia, With Love we see that SPECTRE functions on a strict, number-based system. It's a simple formula: if Number X dies, Number X+1 takes his or her place. How often does this happen? Every damn movie. If anything, Blofeld's death meant that every single member of SPECTRE just got a promotion.

Not to mention that Blofeld was pretty shitty at his job, since every encounter he ever had with Bond probably ended with SPECTRE suffering quarterly losses. With Blofeld dead, SPECTRE might actually get a leader who could cause MI6 some real headaches. You know, maybe someone with a business degree...

It isn't hard to find uses for this picture.

For more analysis on fictional villains, check out 7 Badass Cartoon Villains Who Lost to Retarded Heroes and The 8 Least-Threatening Comic Book Villains.