10 smart movie villains who don’t deserve to lose

In most movies, it is assumed that the villains will be defeated and the hero will be victorious, but there are some villains who do not deserve this outcome. A good villain should be just as complex and layered as the protagonist, and writers can sometimes make a villain so compelling and intelligent that it seems To be no way for them to lose. In these cases, villains often lose thanks to a stroke of luck, simply because that’s what the movie requires.

On the surface, this might sound like bad writing, but there are plenty of great movies that dispatch their villains with luck or outside forces. Sometimes, this is used intentionally to highlight the chaos of life, and that luck can often play a bigger role than people like to admit. Many memorable movie villains did everything right, but since the good guys had to win, they fell in the last ditch through no fault of their own.

10

Professor Quirrell

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)

Professor Quirrell spends the entire school year at Hogwarts operating in the shadows, with Harry and his friends failing to identify him as the true villain. As they set their sights on Professor Snape, Quirrell edges closer to get the Sorcerer’s Stone. Harry is shocked to find him waiting beyond Fluffy, the devil’s trap, and the other obstacles, proving how effectively he kept his true mission a secret.

Ultimately, the battle for the Sorcerer’s Stone comes down to a fight between Quirrell and Harry. That’s not exactly the plan, though Voldemort and Quirrell would probably have favored themselves in a physical altercation with an 11-year-old boy. The only reason Quirrell can’t get the stone and bring Voldemort back to life is that it disintegrates when Harry touches it. But he had no way of predicting this, and neither did Harry. It remains to be seen how the HBO reboot of Harry Potter will portray Quirrell.

9

Russ Kargil

The Simpsons Movie (2007)

The Simpsons Movie Introduces a new character to play the villain. Although Mr. Burns could easily have been the one to plunge Springfield into chaos, much as he does in the classic Simpsons Episode “Who Shot Mr. Burns?,” introducing Russ Cargill allows the writers to provide a fun moment where the villain is killed off. After seeing his plan to contain Springfield in a giant dome fall apart, he is dispatched when Maggie pushes a boulder onto his head.

Russ’ plan is cruel and deranged, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t work. The only way that the dome is shattered is by Homer riding a motorcycle upside down on the glass. The Simpsons Has always had a strange relationship with cartoon physics. For the most part, it remains relatively grounded for a cartoon, and it just journeys on Looney tunes Territory for a quick joke, not an important story beat. The Simpsons Movie is an obvious exception, as Russ is defeated when Homer pulls off something that would be completely impossible in real life.

8

HAL 9000

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Stanley Kubrick 2001: A Space Odyssey was one of the first movies to use an artificially intelligent villain, and HAL remains the gold standard many decades later. In keeping with their primary objective, HAL tries to eliminate the astronauts on Discovery One’s mission to Jupiter, seeing them as inefficient and potentially damaging. HAL kills all but one of the astronauts, and they almost make a clean sweep.

HAL strands Dave outside the ship in a small pod and refuses to open the pod bay doors to allow Dave to re-enter. The only way Dave manages to find his way back inside is by launching himself through the vacuum of space without a helmet. It is incredibly fortunate that this risky maneuver pans out. Had it failed, Dave would have died before getting the chance to disconnect HAL.

7

Hans Gruber

Die Hard (1989)

Alan Rickman’s first movie role produced an iconic action movie villain. Hans Gruber has some of Die hard‘s best quotes, enhanced by Rickman’s unmistakably deep voice, but he is most memorable for being a truly well-developed antagonist who pushes John McClane to the limit. This is relatively rare for an action movie, as so many of the villains aren’t as complex as the heroes.

Gruber’s plan to steal from the Nakatomi Plaza vault is brilliant, and he knows exactly how to distract law enforcement, even tricking them into disabling the safe’s electromagnetic lock. He is only stopped by a hero cop with seemingly supernatural amounts of luck. John McClane is one of the few people who may ever have a chance to stop Gruber, and he just happens to be in the building on the day of the heist.

6

The colonel

War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)

Woody Harrelson delivers a menacing performance in War for the Planet of the Apes Like a rogue military commander who makes a bold stand against the new variant of simian flu. His methods are extreme, but the colonel sees himself as the last hope for the future of humanity. He accepts that some collateral damage will be necessary, and he understands that even then, his odds are slim.

The colonel finally succumbs to the mutated strain of simian flu while his army is under attack. It’s a stroke of poetic luckBut he stands by his principles with his own life. The colonel does everything in his power to achieve victory, even though he knows he is facing the might of the US. it. Army, violent apes and a deadly virus at the same time. Ultimately, his obstacles prove to be too great.

5

Shooter McGavin

Happy Gilmore (1996)

Shooter Gavin is a great sports movie villain, as someone who represents the closed-minded attitude of the golf world. Not only does he see Happy as a threat to his sporting aspirations, but he also believes that his unorthodox style and brash personality undermines the prestige of Golf. Shooter does everything he can to defeat Happy, including hiring people to hack him and hit him with a car, but he still loses.

Happy’s winning shot on the final hole could not have been luckier. After a television tower collapses between the ball and the hole, Happy is forced to make a putt that bounces around the wreckage like a makeshift game of crazy golf. Shooter comes to a position where his victory is all but certain, but he could not possibly have anticipated this miraculous path. Shooter will get a chance for revenge in the upcoming Happy Gilmore 2.

4

Mr. Business

The Lego Movie (2014)

Lord Business wants to control his whole world with the power of the Kragle, and he almost defeats all the master builders to make his dream come true. Lord Business has everything in place, and Emmett is only able to defeat him by taking a leap of faith into the abyss, which transports him to the human world. There, he sees his entire existence for what it is, and he retrieves the piece of resistance before returning to defeat Lord Business.

There is no way that Lord Business could have prevented or even foreseen Emmett traveling to a realm beyond his reality and gaining help from a human, who essentially has the powers of a god in the story of The Lego Movie. This tips the balance in Emmett’s favor, however Mr. Business would have easily won if the events had been kept to the only plan of existence that he knew.

3

Ed Rooney

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)

Ed Rooney has hilariously bad luckBut he’s smart enough to know the truth about Ferris Bueller’s truance. If he makes a mistake, he is taking the whole thing too seriously. However, he is right to trust his instincts, even though it gets him into a series of comedic mishaps while Ferris is away with his friends having the biggest day of his young life. Ronnie must be cursed in some way.

Ronnie is always the butt of the joke, is chased by dogs, falls down the stairs and is laughed at by his students. It’s easy to see why he’s so obsessed with catching Ferris. He gets it right when he says that Ferris is a bad influence because he also drags two of his friends along on his misadventure in Chicago. If Rooney had been even slightly lucky on one occasion, he might have rammed Ferris.

2

Angry Bill & Ted

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)

The first Bill and Ted Sequel sends the two slackers on a journey through the afterlife. They are killed by two evil robotic versions of themselves, sent from the future to prevent them from winning a battle of the bands contest. Evil Bill and Ted get rid of their targets almost immediately after arriving in the past. They don’t know at this point that there is no way for Bill and Ted to come back to life.

Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey is a proudly silly comedy, and it comes up with one plot contrivance after another to try to get Bill and Ted back down to Earth so they can win the Battle of the Bands contest. In a fair fight without the use of a Deus Ex Machina, the evil robots would win easily, but that’s not what the spirit of Bill and Ted is about Considering the tone of the movie, it’s the robots that never stand a chance.

1

Good

Ghostbusters (1984)

Guzer The Guzer is called when Zul and Wintz, the gatekeeper and the keymaster, unite in the secret temple on top of a building in Manhattan. She is an evil being from another dimension, coming to wreak havoc on New York City, and the Ghostbusters seem powerless to stop her. Whether she takes the form of a human woman or a giant stick puffed marshmallow man, Gozer is impossible to contain.

Gozer is eventually defeated when Egon Spengler instructs the group to go against his previous instructions and cross the streams of their proton packs. Since he warned that crossing the streams could cause a disastrous explosion, It is safe to say that the idea is a Hail Mary When he sees no other options. Without such a lucky break, Gozer would remain in New York City to rain down destruction forever.