10 Most Nonsensical World Domination Plans In Movie History
One of the most enduring plot elements in movies is a plan to take over the world. This phenomenon is, of course, most often seen in science fiction movies of various kinds, but it also emerges in superhero movies and, as some of the most nonsensical plans reveal, also in spy thrillers.
While some of these make at least a sort of sense–within the universe of the movie in question if nothing else–there are others that can only be described as absolutely nonsensical and with almost no chance of actually succeeding, either inside the movie or outside of it.
James Bond is inarguably the most famous spy in the history of movies, and many of his adventures are highly regarded. Unfortunately, Moonraker is not one of the best movies, even if it does have the inimitable Roger Moore in the role.
In large part, the movie’s failings stem from the sinister plot by the villain, Hugo Drax, to eliminate life on Earth and create a master race. It’s hard to say which is stranger–the desire to destroy most life or the desire to rebuild it–but it is one of those plans that struggles to attain any amount of credulity.
Scooby-Doo is rightly regarded as one of the most iconic animated characters in the history of TV. However, his appearances in movies have been rather less consistent, and the movie Scooby-Doo from 2002 is an example of how things can go awry.
In particular, the character Scrappy-Doo’s power-hungry nature doesn’t make a great deal of sense, either in terms of the character’s already-established biography in earlier iterations or in the movie itself. His plan is also unnecessarily complicated, so it makes sense that he is finally defeated.
The 1950s was something of a golden age for B-movies, and many of these were in the genre of science fiction. That includes Plan 9 from Outer Space, which involves a group of aliens resurrecting dead humans in an effort to stop humans from creating a device that could destroy the universe.
Though the movie is clearly expressing the nuclear concerns of the era, it has to be said that the aliens’ plan is nonsensical in no small part because it shouldn’t take animating the dead to get the people of Earth to listen to them.
Given that this movie was released in 1996 when the internet was rapidly becoming a fact of everyday life, it makes sense that the central plot would revolve around the villains trying to control virtual reality and thus the world. Unfortunately for the movie, and for audiences, the way in which the movie tries to put all of this together into a coherent plot doesn’t work very well.
In fact, the plan becomes nothing more than a plot point rather than a fully-developed scheme and this, combined with the other weaknesses, means that the movie ultimately fails to cohere.
Like the 1950s, the 1970s also saw a number of notable science fiction movies, not all of which were very good or entailed world conquest plots that made sense. Futureworld is definitely in the latter category.
While it is a sequel to the highly-regarded Westworld, it lacks that movie’s imagination. What’s more, the central plot, to clone the world’s leaders in an attempt to attain dominance, is one that feels both incomprehensible and a betrayal of the earlier movie’s thoughtful engagement with larger philosophical issues.
Given that this movie, like its predecessor, is in fact a parody of the science fiction movie, it makes sense in a strange way that its world-domination scheme would be utterly nonsensical.
As with the previous movie, it focuses on the efforts of a mad scientist to take over the world with the titular tomatoes. Unfortunately, this plan doesn’t make a great deal of sense–even within the movie’s own universe–and it doesn’t help matters that the movie itself is so obsessed with its own cleverness that it doesn’t even try to make it make sense.
Little Shop of Horrors can be seen as one of the better movie musicals, and there’s no question that its numbers are very catchy. What’s more, the idea of a sinister plant that eats human flesh and is trying to take over the world is rather chilling.
At the same time, however, it has to be admitted that this plan to conquer the world is also idiotic, especially since the plot doesn’t go into a great deal of detail about just who the aliens actually are.
There are some superhero movies that do not even try to make a pretense of making their world domination plots make any kind of sense, and The Shadow is one of those.
While it’s easy to see where this movie might have gone in some interesting directions, the fact that its central villain is a descendant of Genghis Khan and wants to take over the world as some sort of fulfillment of his ancestor’s desires means that it never becomes anything other than glorified pulp.
Given that this movie stars the Beatles and that it is intended as a comedy, it makes sense that its central world domination plan would be nonsensical.
However, even by that standard, the central plot strains the ability of the audience to make sense of anything of what is happening, much of which revolves around a seemingly magical ring. The fact that the movie moves along at a frantic pace makes its plot even more difficult to follow.
There have been many examples of successful video games that have been made into successful movies, but Super Mario Bros. is not one of them.
In large part, the movie fails to make the central world domination plot–in which Koopa, a dinosaur-like creature from an alternate dimension wants to control earth–make any kind of sense. To make matters worse, the movie tries to merge the mythologies of the video game with a new one created for the movie, and the results simply do not work.