Villain Ball / Live-Action Films

• Nearly every ghostly/demonic antagonist in series like Insidious, Sinister, and Paranormal Activity. The monsters in these movies are invisible, ghostly/incorporeal, and many of the protagonists don't even believe they exist at the beginning, meaning they could not have more of an element of surprise for whatever goal they're aiming for. Instead of simply taking care of business right away, without anyone even noticing they're there, the ghosts/demons always opt to spend quite a long time simply moving and breaking things in the targets' homes, making noises, and drawing attention to themselves.
• Angst: The killer's incredibly impulsive nature, combined with an incessant need to inflict fear and pain on his victims, causes him to fail one of his murder attempts and nearly bungle his later triple homicide. His total inability to plan out his actions and total lack of knowledge about proper human interaction also directly causes him to get arrested before he can attempt a mass murder at a coffee shop.
• Terl in Battlefield Earth. Teaching your slaves everything to know about your civilization in an instant can only end badly, especially if you're supposedly doing it to help conquer their planet. Introducing your pet human to inspiring documents from the American Revolution will only make things worse. Holding your pet human's girlfriend hostage just makes things personal. Abusing your henchman only serves to set up the Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal in the final act. And not launching an all-out crackdown when the man-animals rebel and attack with air support... not a good idea Terl doesn't even notice an exploding collar Jonny straps to his arm in a melee, and proceeds to amputate his own limb when he triumphantly hits the detonator. His (non)reaction shot is priceless. He appears to read the Bizarro Universe inversion of the Evil Overlord List, telling him exactly what to do wrong.
• The plot of Beverly Hills Cop depends on the fact that Victor Maitland is an idiot. If he had just played dumb and told Axel that he had no idea who would want to kill Michael Tandino, that, yes, he uses bearer bonds in his business all the time, which is completely normal in the art world, and no, he has no idea why Michael would have brought bearer bonds with him to Detroit, that would have been the end of the movie, as Axel at that point had no real basis of suspicion against him. Instead, he calls in a group of thugs to his office to have Axel thrown out, as in thrown through a plate glass window, at which point Axel is certain that Maitland is behind it all. Then there's the fact that when Maitland catches Axel and Jenny in one of his warehouses, having discovered a crate of cocaine, instead of having them both killed then and there, when he has them completely at his mercy, he kidnaps Jenny, taking her back to his house, while leaving Axel there not to be killed, at least not right away, but first to be beaten up by two thugs. That leaves enough time for Billy to rescue Axel, and for Axel, Billy, and Sgt. Taggart to rescue Jenny. If Maitland had had a triple-digit IQ, the movie would have been much shorter.
• In Child's Play Chucky has the perfect disguise (the form of a doll) yet goes around killing random people in the most obvious ways to the point that people at first believe Andy is responsible, and then so much that people actually start to believe he's behind all of it (which is true). Apparently, he doesn't understand that he should just transfer his soul as quickly as possible, or that perhaps he shouldn't make his soon-to-be clean slate criminal-record-free shiny new body look guilty of murder before he's even gotten to take it for a test drive.
• In Conan the Barbarian (2011), Conan hangs helplessly from a bridge while the heroine Tamara is transforming into an evil sorceress. All Khalar Zym has to do, is keep his distance from Conan for about 30 seconds to win everything, and be unstoppable forever. So why exactly does he walk along the bridge, and get in Conan's face?
• The Dark Crystal: One of the Skeksis stabs Kira after she throws the Shard to Jen, even though holding her hostage is the one thing that might've stopped him from using it. Instead, they're reduced to pleading with him to stop when Kira's blood is fresh on their hands and he's got nothing left to lose; yeah, like that's going to work.
• In Dream House, Jack Patterson clutches the villain ball during the climax. First, he shoots his accomplice Boyce without making sure that he was dead . Second, he ties up Ann instead of killing her. Not only does Peter Ward rescue Ann, Boyce pours a flammable liquid onto Jack's escape path, resulting in Jack getting burned.
• In Drillbit Taylor, Filkins finally got caught only because he attempted to murder the protagonists with a samurai sword right in front of the police.
• Zorg from The Fifth Element helps bring on the end of the universe, intending for his MegaCorp to make money cleaning up the damage despite the fact that he and anyone who could pay him would be destroyed with it.
• The sheriff in First Blood could have avoided a lot of death and bloodshed had he simply let the wandering Vietnam veteran get something to eat, but instead chose to throw his weight around and treat the guy like a criminal. Not a smart thing to do to John Rambo... Justified, Rambo never mentions that he's a returned Nam vet, so the sheriff doesn't know what he's dealing with. Plus, Rambo doesn't exactly look like an upstanding citizen. It may be more a case of Wrong Genre Savvy than anything else. It goes differently in the original book - the sheriff lets Rambo buy some food to go, and then gives him a ride out of town. He doesn't actually arrest him until Rambo turns up in town again after having been asked to leave (and escorted out) on multiple occasions.
• In George of the Jungle 2, Beatrice and Lyle's plan probably would have worked if they thought of hypnotizing Junior too.
• In Glass Onion, Miles Bron kills the threats to his empire (Andi Brand and Duke Cody) in ways that leave too much evidence he did it, with everybody knowing very well that he has the motive to do it, the very second he got close enough to do it. The only two reasons he is not suspected at first is because 1) Benoit Blanc (the investigator) suffers from Complexity Addiction (by his own admission) and does not thinks Bron is dumb enough to do it; that he is too obvious a culprit to have done it (suffice to say that Blanc got a conniption when he finally figured out Bron is that stupid); and 2) Bron has "The Disruptors", the only witnesses to his crimes, wrapped around his finger and they would rather fall in line with his Gaslighting than risk losing his patronage until the climax. For further Villain Ball points, the one murder Bron does that has any amount of thorough planning (the attempted shooting of Andi's twin sister Helen) was done following an idea Blanc casually tossed Bron at the beginning of the film (which only makes Blanc angrier).
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): The eco-terrorist leader Alan Jonah is for the most part one of the most fiercely and capable human antagonists of all the MonsterVerse, successfully staying one step ahead of the heroes. But once he decides he and his troops don't need the ORCA to manipulate the Titans anymore since Ghidorah is taking control of the Titans on its own and engineering global human extinction, Jonah keeps the ORCA around instead of destroying it, despite Emma Russell's express desire to use the device to disrupt Ghidorah's global Titan control and lure it to an evacuated city. Jonah and his men even leave the device unguarded when they all take a break at the same time (which enables Madison to steal the device from under their noses and complete her mother's plan). The novelization notes Jonah keeps the ORCA around rather than destroy it solely so he can taunt Emma with it.
• In Hancock, every character who refers to the title superhero as an "asshole":
  • When Hancock voluntarily admits himself to prison, he's surrounded by most of the inmates he helped bring in. All of these people know firsthand what he's capable of, and yet two of them persist in impeding him when he threatens to shove an inmate's head up the ass of another. Why were the other inmates surprised, anyway?
  • The French boy, Michel (who continually bullies Ray's son), has already seen Hancock demonstrate his powers on several occasions when he lands in front of Ray's home. When Michel keeps calling Hancock an asshole, he gets thrown miles up into the sky for his trouble. (In his defense, Michel probably thought that Hancock Wouldn't Hurt a Child.)
  • The bank robber who attempts to threaten Hancock with a dead man's switch detonator connected to C4 placed on all the hostages. He plainly sees Hancock taking off the metal shade off a lamp and turning it into a makeshift sawblade while he's calling the guy sent to stop him an asshole. Is it any wonder that he got his hand lopped off after ignoring repeated warnings?
    • Even worse considering that he's just witnessed Hancock take out his fellow bankrobbers one at a time, by flying in and grabbing them at high-speed before exiting out of the opposite window!
• In Hocus Pocus, the witches are tricked when Max and Alison rescue Dani, losing her and all but one dose of their youth potion. At this point, the witches are awash in children because Sarah has lured them there, and they have the two Jerk Jock characters in cages. They also have the magic book which allows them to make more potion, which Sarah points out. Winnie dismisses this plan and instead wants to go after Dani for insulting her. Even if Winnie is right in saying brewing more potion would take too much time, they could use the one dose they had on a captive, then make more and drain the youth from the children and go after Dani later. Instead, the witches go after Winnie and lose because they run out of time.
• In Home Alone, Marv delights in going that extra mile to Kick the Dog for a field goal after running a touchdown by plugging all the drains and turning on all the faucets in the homes they rob, leaving the already ransacked houses flooded. Even Harry calls him out for how dickish and pointless it is, but Marv just insists he does it because they're "The Wet Bandits". When they get arrested in the end, their calling card served to provide the police a list of every single home they robbed and kept them from otherwise being able to reasonably deny robbing any home other than Kevin's where they were caught red-handed.
• In Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Harry and Marv plan to rob Duncan's Toy Chest at midnight on Christmas Eve. When they stumble upon Kevin, they pick it up by attempting to kidnap him and grasp it even further by telling him their exact plans. This comes back to bite them when Kevin foils their robbery that night. Granted, Kevin is just a kid, but you'd think they'd know better after what happened in the last movie. What makes this worse is that Kevin had absolutely no way of knowing they were in New York nor did they stand to gain anything from bothering him other than revenge.
• In Jagged Edge, Jack Forrester has literally gotten away with murder thanks to manipulating lawyer Teddy Barnes into falling for him (including sleeping with him) not to mention sending her anonymous typewritten notes saying "He's innocent" - Jack leaves the typewriter that he used to write the anonymous notes proclaiming his innocence in his house, where Teddy (who as his lawyer/lover has easy access to to his house) finds it...oddly enough he doesn't get rid of it once he's gotten away with killing his wife!
• In the film adaptation of James and the Giant Peach, James' aunts attempt to take him back by pretending to be kind guardians, but it doesn't take them long to drop the act and attempt to kill James with axes right in front of a large crowd, including at least one cop. Though the cop really doesn't do much in response to this.
• It does not always happen to the Big Bad in many James Bond films:
  • In Thunderball, Count Lippe, alias "sub-operator G", was handed the ball and attacked an unsuspecting off-duty Bond, tipping him off about what was happening in the fitness center. As a result, he was properly dealt with by his boss.
    • The novel version, at least, has Count Lippe trying to kill Bond because he (mistakenly) believed that Bond had penetrated his cover and was there to take him out. However, like the movie version, he fails and is "properly dealt with" for his failure. Ironically, Bond never figures out that Lippe was working for SPECTRE at all, although Felix Leiter eventually puts the pieces together.
  • In another Bond film, Octopussy, Bond finds himself trapped in a Knife Outline by Grishka, the remaining half of a pair of knife-throwing twins, whose brother Mishka had been killed by Bond earlier. Grishka has one knife remaining, so what does he do? He tells Bond "And this is for my brother!", and charges towards Bond! Bond manages to take one of the knives out of the outline and throws it at Grishka, adding "And that's for 009!" ^note  the Double-0 agent killed at the start of the movie.
  • In From Russia with Love Grant could have easily shot Bond at any point, killed Tatiana, made it look like a murder-suicide and carried out the plan without a problem. Instead he chose to gloat and be greedy, letting Bond trick him. Even if he hadn't, his initial plan of shooting Bond until Bond kissed his feet would have probably put the plans in serious danger. This is what you get when you hire a semi-intelligent sadistic psychopath to be your primary assassin, KGB.
  • In general, the James Bond villains are bad enough to name a whole separate trope — for instance, instead of simply killing Bond, they beat him up and leave him in a somewhat easily escapable cell, leave him in the middle of an alligator farm, and shoot a mook that failed them instead.
• In Jurassic World Dominion, Dodgson orders his bio-engineered locusts to be burned alive to cover his tracks with the worldwide havoc they were wreaking on farmers' grain supplies (instead of simply using insecticide—they were in a sealed enclosure, so there was no danger of pollution). This causes the burning locusts to break loose and set Biosyn's dinosaur refuge ablaze, leading to the staff letting the dinosaurs into the compound to save them. But for this, Dodgson probably wouldn't have had to deal with those three Dilophosaurs that ended up blinding and devouring him in the train tunnel.
• Kreese and Silver from The Karate Kid Part III lose quite everything because they just have to have Barnes torture Daniel during the tournament by deliberately landing foul hits and losing points in order to prolong the match. Barnes would have DESTROYED Daniel 3-0 had he just not screwed around and pragmatically won the match with clean moves, and with that victory their Cobra Kai dojo would have gone international, but that just wasn't good enough for Kreese and Silver: they had to make Daniel hurt as much as possible and, naturally, he eventually gets a Heroic Second Wind and manages to win the fight which costs Kreese and Silver everything.
• Every decision Zod makes in Man of Steel. He threatens to kill everyone unless Clark Kent reveals himself instead of just coming peacefully and telling him that they need a blood sample to revive their people. He kidnaps Lois Lane just to annoy Superman which leads to his escape and he insists on terraforming Earth instead of travelling to another planet that is unoccupied or at least lacking a Superman.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Weaponized In-Universe by Iron Man in The Avengers (2012), when he points out that Loki's entire plan of making personal enemies of every single force on Earth that could stop him is this in order to buy enough time for his new suit of armor to be ready for deployment.
    Tony Stark: You're missing the point. There's no throne. There is no version of this where you come out on top. Maybe your army comes, and maybe it's too much for us, but it's all on you. Because if we can't protect the Earth, you can be damn well sure we'll avenge it.
  • At the climax of Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ultron kidnaps Black Widow for no reason except that he wanted someone to gloat to. This gives her the opportunity to transmit the location of his humanity-destroying device to the other Avengers, allowing them to show up and stop him. He also has a chance to escape Sokovia in a stolen Quinjet, but is caught by the Hulk after stupidly deciding to circle back for one last futile attack on the Avengers.
• In The Matrix when Smith is fighting Neo in the subway, he pummels Neo to the point the poor guy is sprawled on the floor in a stunned stupor. Had he just hauled off and stomped the guy's head, or snapped his neck, or really any number of things, the movie would be over, The Oracle was wrong, the humans lose, Smith wins, tune in next week for another exciting episode of That Wacky Matrix. Smith, being Smith, hears an oncoming train and decides it'd be more poetic to drag Neo to the tracks, pin him down in front of the train, and indulge in some Evil Gloating. Naturally this gives Neo ample time and drive to snap out of it, drop a Bond One-Liner, and hurl Smith off into the path of the coming train.
• A Nightmare on Elm Street: Rather than kill his victims outright, Freddy prefers to draw out their torment for his own amusement, overconfident in their inability to effectively fight back. This has given many of his victims a chance to escape or find the means to defeat him, and Jason stole one of his kills because of this. Seeing how he always finds a way to come back, and over the course of the franchise has successfully murdered all the teenagers in Springfield, his lack-a-daisical approach can be justified.
• Willy Bank and Terry Benedict in Ocean's Thirteen. The former's outright betrayal of Reuben leading to Ocean and co. seeking justice is the impetus for the plot; knowing full well their reputation as capable of beating the odds. The latter in his insistence to betray them and get several diamonds.
• In The Omen (1976) and Damien: Omen II, the first two movies of The Omen series, Damien seems unstoppable and unbeatable. Then comes Omen III: The Final Conflict, where his plan to prevent the Second Coming ends in an Epic Fail and he's finally taken down because he takes the completely wrong approach, assuming Christ will return to the world the same way he did the first time. Simply reading the Book of Revelations could have tipped him off to the rather huge flaw in his plan. The interesting thing, is that Damien found out he was The Antichrist by reading the Book of Revelations.
• The protagonists of Pain & Gain are fucking morons. If you were to make a drinking game out of every mistake they make, you'd die of alcohol poisoning by the end of the movie. Even worse, this is one of those 'based on a true story' films that is actually fairly accurate most of the time. The real life criminals really WERE that stupid, something the film itself has to stop at least TWICE to explain, yes, THEY REALLY DID DO THAT.
• Blackjack and his band of outlaws in Purgatory. They ride into a weird little town whose pacifistic, religious inhabitants give them food and drink including alcohol, stable their horses, put them up in the hotel, and doctor their wounds all without payment. Said inhabitants really don't want trouble, to the point of not doing anything when the outlaws steal ammunition. The outlaws could just take the hospitality and go, stealing stuff on the way out. Was it really necessary to keep trying to kill people, wreck stuff, and rape the women, to the point where the townsfolk, who are actually dead famous outlaws, finally decide it's enough?
• The cheeseball starring vehicle for musician Billy Ray Cyrus Radical Jack has a pretty silly one at the end. Billy Ray has already crashed the illegal arms deal and killed the bad guys when, what do you know, the real villain turns out to be the guy who recruited him to stop the arms deal, and he was using Billy Ray to wipe out his competition. What makes this so stupid is that our be-mulleted hero never suspected a thing about the guy, never stumbled across any evidence of his criminal dealings, and no indication was ever given that the other weapon smugglers knew of his involvement, either. The baddie could have "apprehended" the last wounded villain, quietly disposed of him, and gotten away scot-free, but he apparently couldn't resist pointlessly giving himself away by gloating in Billy Ray's face.
• RoboCop (2014): Despite being skilled at shifting anything into his or the company's favor earlier in the movie chief executive officer of Omnicorp Sellars catches this and runs home with it.
  • Sellars could have simply kept Murphy at bay with the Restraining Bolt that stopped important assets from being attacked and stuck to the story that Murphy was going rogue. Murphy's family may have even believed it at this point after seeing him storm the roof and attempt to attack Sellars. Instead Sellars picks up a pistol and brags about how Murphy is just a machine and how he could kill his family, which gives Murphy the resolve he needs to break programming and shoot him.
• In The Running Man, Killian convinces Richards to go on the show by offering to spare his rebel friends. When Richards agrees, Killian backstabs him and sends them into the arena anyway. However, without the rebels Ben Richards could never have found the hidden base and escaped the arena, and without Richards the rebels would have been immediately killed. All of them together were able to ultimately bring down the show and (it is implied) the entire government.
• In Serenity, the Operative killing all of Mal's contacts, and especially Shepherd Book, is what galvanizes Mal into taking action and finding out the secret the Alliance is trying to hide.
• Khan in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan escaped exile, stole a starship, and marooned its crew in his place. As his right hand man points out, they can do anything they want. But Khan is determined to have his revenge on Kirk, an agenda which leads to his own death. Khan himself is aware of this, and lampshades it with his frequent Moby-Dick quotes.
• Singin' in the Rain Lina plans to force Kathy (her rival both for the adoring public and for Don's affections) to keep dubbing her voice for the next five years, due to Kathy's contract. Lina thought that she could go on fooling audiences and derail Kathy's career...but even if the studio had been behind her in hopes of still being able to use her star power, and Kathy had been willing to forgo her own dreams by settling for the easy dubbing pay check, Lina couldn't have kept up the charade forever as her whole plan hinged on no one finding out that the voice they were hearing in the films wasn't hers. While R.F. Simpson, as head of the studio. wasn't able to tell all for fear of getting sued, other people lower down in the business such as film crews or extras could still talk anonymously to the papers or spread rumours. And if Lina hadn't shot herself in the foot on opening night by improvising her speech, she would still have been expected to speak unscripted for interviews or sing live sooner or later (with no excuse to bring Kathy along or keep her behind the scenes anywhere) especially since she played up her vocal talents in the publicity for The Dancing Cavalier. The truth would inevitably have gotten out and Lina's career would have been over regardless. Ironically, Lina probably would have been better off reinventing herself as a comedienne, using her squeaky awkward voice as a source of humor; it may not have been as glamorous as the regal leading lady image she had grown accustomed to, but it would have kept her in the spotlight.
• Shinzon in Star Trek: Nemesis, after successfully convincing Picard that he an his people want peace with Federation, then uses Mind Rape on Troi, which has nothing to do with his plan and alerts Picard and the Enterprise crew he is up to no good.
• Multiple Star Wars examples:
  • The only reason Han Solo could shoot first in A New Hope was because Greedo took the time to gloat instead of shooting when he had the chance.
  • While it is mostly relegated to Expanded Universe media, it is pointed out that blowing up Alderaan pissed people off greatly rather than instilling fear into them, driving them to support the Rebellion (that said Rebels blew up the Death Star and thus showcased that there was still hope helped, too). This is not the first time the Tarkin Doctrine backfired, but it sure was the greatest (and for Wilhuff, it was the last).
  • Rogue One also showcased a very good example with Tarkin ordering the destruction of Scarif (the place where all of the Empire's research was stored) when the Imperial security forces on the ground had already killed almost all of the raiding Rebels and Vader's task force was already seconds behind the Death Star to wipe out the forces in space, just for the hell of it (and killing Krennic, maybe). If not for this, then the Imperials would have figured out what the stolen plans were without being forced to chase after Princess Leia, causing the original trilogy to happen. The novelization even adds an additional moment of irony with Krennic figuring out the weakness in the battle station a split second before being vaporized by the Death Star's beam.
  • In Revenge of the Sith, this is exactly what happens to Anakin after being warned by Obi Wan that he can't win because of the higher ground, and (though he leaves this unsaid) through his own experience, knows (how) not to waste this advantage, like Darth Maul did.
  • Also in Revenge, Palpatine almost got hit by one of the senate platforms during his battle with Yoda because he was busy laughing maniacally.
  • In Return of the Jedi, after Luke refuses to turn to the Dark Side, Palpatine tries to kill him slowly and painfully with Force Lightning (rather than, say, quickly with a lightsaber or something), right in front of Darth Vader, who has a tendency to go nuts when you target his loved ones. While Vader and Sidious agreed beforehand to kill Luke if he refused to join them, Vader has been slowly turning away from the Dark Side due to the love for his recently discovered son and Palpatine is too deluded to see it and as a result, Vader fully rejects the Dark Side and throws Sidious to his death.

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014):
  • Sacks and his mentor the Shredder pass it between them, possibly due to one raising the other, with Bad Boss tendencies (most notably killing a loyal mook to explain a nefarious plan to the turtles moments before they planned to exsanguinate the lot) or just stopping mid fight perhaps out of pride.
  • Let's discuss the evil plan: use a chemical weapon on New York so you can sell them the cure you haven't tested yet with a 15 year old chemical disbursement system that comes directly from your headquarters in the biggest and most modern metropolis in the world. So you can make money. No trials, no production set up, and no one thought that everyone would notice that your skyscraper was at the heart of all of it.
• The plot of each of The Transporter films doesn't kick-off until someone higher in the criminal food-chain than the Protagonist grabs the Villain Ball and doesn't let go until they've done something horribly cliche'd.
• Under Siege, of all films, manages to avert this trope. Both Krill and Strannix manage to keep their wits about them. The only things that could possibly qualify are when Krill decides to chuck Ryback in the meat locker for no reason (though Krill has been established as enough of an asshole that it has already torpedoed his career, so it's petty and cruel but not out of character) and Strannix only sending two men to deal with Ryback when they take the ship (not being able to figure out that Ryback is played by Steven Seagal). After that, they do everything exactly right, including ordering their men out in large groups, maintaining radio contact and picking their fights. It pays off for them too, Ryback (unusually for a Steven Seagal-flick) spends most of it on the back foot.
• In The Untouchables (1987), Mafia hitman Frank Nitti murders Jimmy Malone by writing his apartment address on a matchbook. Unfortunately for him, he forgets to dispose of it after his hit. When he bumps into Eliot Ness, he offers the matchbook to light his cigarette with. Ness sees the address, and putting two and two together, chases Nitti and pushes him off a roof onto a car.
  • Nitti also can't leave well enough alone! Ness pulls him up to the roof after considering shooting him when he's hanging by a rope but then Nitti starts gloating about killing Malone, saying that he "died screaming like a stuck pig" which is what finally makes Ness throw him off the roof.
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Judge Doom had a perfect chance to stab incapacitated Eddie with his Sword Cane, but he just had to go for the slower and more gruesome road roller option, which gave Eddie time to escape. The Reveal regarding Doom should tell you exactly why he went for the more Looney Tunes-esque manner of taking him out as opposed to the quick way.
• X-Men: Apocalypse would have been over in a few hours (at most) if Apocalypse had just used his Story Breaker Powers to do things himself. Instead, he spends much of the film gathering followers, causing destruction, and generally giving the heroes every opportunity to fight back. Given he sees himself as a god, theatrics and arrogance can probably be blamed for this.

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