5 Movie Villains With Really Stupid Master Plans

3 The Godfather Part II - Michael Sends a Big Shot on a Suicide Mission

Throughout the entire Godfather trilogy, the members of the Corleone Family are consummate murder professionals. They always act discreetly, minimize any possible link to the Family when they kill, and send the right guy for the job. The movies show us time and time again that the Corleones have an endless supply of eager young goons willing to prove themselves, so they know there's no need for the important people to put themselves at risk ...

... except for one murder in The Godfather Part II, when everyone involved decides to launch the worst plan possible, for no apparent reason.

When compared to some of the more elaborate murders in the franchise, Michael's hit on the treacherous Hyman Roth is almost disappointingly simple. A guy just walks up to the heavily-escorted Roth in an airport and shoots him point blank. It's a suicide mission, and is treated as such by the assassin, who barely makes any attempt to get away before he's turned into a human bullet catalog by the police.

To be fair, the movie does explain why the plan is so dumb and suicidal: it's the only shot they'll have at Roth in between when his plane lands and when he's put into highly secure police custody. However, it doesn't explain why they decided to send Rocco Lampone for the so-simple-an-armed-monkey-could-do-it hit. If for some reason you haven't committed the entire Corleone family to memory, here's a handy chart:

2 Equilibrium - No One Frisks the Gun Master for Guns

In Equilibrium, a fascist government under the rule of the all-powerful "Father" forces citizens to take an emotion-suppressing drug. Anyone who fails to do so is met by the government's trained killers, the Grammaton Clerics, who use their nearly-superhuman "gun kata" abilities to murder the "sense offenders" and then burn any books or art they're hiding. It's basically Fahrenheit 451 disguised as The Matrix for the sort of audience that spells "Fahrenheit" phonetically.

Christian Bale's John Preston is the highest-ranking Cleric, and a legend in the government for his gun-wielding skills. But after he has to kill his partner for sense offending, he goes off his meds and secretly joins a resistance movement. They hatch a plan: Preston will betray their leaders, which will earn him a meeting with the elusive Father, whom Preston will then kill. This brilliant plan somehow goes off without a hitch and Preston is granted an audience with Father. He's told to give up his ceremonial sword, which he does...

1 Terminator Salvation - Skynet Lures John Connor to a Terminator Factory, Attacks Him with One Terminator

After years of throwing murderbots directly at John Connor, the genocidal Skynet comes up with a sneakier plan. It sends a Terminator who thinks it's a human to lure Connor into a Terminator factory. The plan works perfectly, and Connor winds up in the heart of Skynet's territory, alone and cut off from his allies. Skynet then executes the final brilliant step in its master plan: sending a single, unarmed Terminator to kill Connor. Wait, what? Connor dispatches the Terminator within five minutes, because of course he does. He's been terminating Terminators his entire adult life. His skill at it is the entire reason Skynet wants him dead.

Keep in mind that this movie takes place completely in the future, so there's no "only one robot can be sent back" time travel etiquette. There's no reason Skynet couldn't kill Connor by literally burying him in robots. We even see another Terminator in the very same scene that's preoccupied with trying to murder Ensign Chekov and a little girl, instead of, say, the most important target in the entire war.

But why did Skynet bother with the whole bait-and-switch when it managed to get a Terminator right next to John much earlier in the movie? Remember, John only went to the factory on the advice of a Terminator who thought it was human. If Skynet can make a Terminator pass for a trustworthy human, why not just have one kill John as soon as it gets close enough? If you're thinking the only reason it got so close in the first is because it had no active intention of killing Connor, sure. That's a point. So put a Terminator next to Connor that makes killer "your mom" jokes, put a fucking bomb in its chest, and make it trigger on high-fives.

For more head-scratching plans, check out 6 Terrible Plans in Movies That Just Sort of Work Out and 6 Evil Corporations in Movies (With Terrible Business Plans).