If you have watched a few movies in your life then you are sure to have seen a few of the most annoying mistakes that the bad guys always make. When will they ever learn to not do these things?
Not Hang Around to Watch the Good Guy Die
So, after an hour or so of rather boring scene setting the bad guys have finally got our hero in their evil clutches. At this point you may find that the action takes place in an abandoned factory, a disused nuclear plant, a secret underground cave or some other sort of everyday building. We have usually already seen by this stage that the evil guy is a heartless fiend who will kill rivals without blinking. As our hero is the main threat to his plans you might think that he will finish him off swiftly and efficiently. Aha, at this point the villain decides to overcomplicate matters by constructing a devilish and frankly improbable way of killing the good guy. He then decides that instead of waiting there the three or four minutes it will take for his arch enemy to die it would be a far better idea to walk away and do something else. Surely the hero won’t find a key or a small chainsaw or some other way of escaping. I was first baffled by this in a James Bond movie and have seen this same weird plot twist in countless films since.
Not Take the Opportunity to Finish off a Fight
Sometimes it will come down a straight fight between the hero and the villain. If this happens then I can guarantee that the bad guy will have the upper hand at some point, probably through some sort of underhand tactic. No matter how it happens, there will be a moment in which the bad guy is bleeding badly, has a broken limb, is outnumbered and generally looks down and out. Is it time to finish him off? Of course not. The bad guy will inexplicably lose the initiative in a fight that looked done and dusted, with the good guy making a heroic comeback. A variant on his theme is the absolutely absurd “turn your back on the guy without checking he is really dead” plot twist, although this is something the hero usually does.
Explain Their Hideously Evil Plan While There Is Still Time to Stop It
If you had devised a hideously evil plan to destroy the world you would be pretty proud of it, wouldn’t you? You would probably be bursting to tell someone about it. In this case, can I humbly suggest that you don’t tell your plans to the one person who is capable of stopping you? If you really can’t resist the idea of doing this then you should at least wait until it is physically impossible for him to do anything about it. If you can build a giant nuclear bomb or an army of killer robots then keeping your trap shut for a couple of hours shouldn’t be beyond your abilities.
Employ Useless Henchmen
I have never understood why the bad guys in movies are so bad at choosing their henchmen. The villain might be a genius but he will also employ the worst murderous henchmen on the jobs market. Even worse than this, they will always choose an inappropriate henchman to do a crucial job like follow the good guy at the most vital moment of the whole plot.
