Vote up the times the good guys' brilliant plans backfired spectacularly.
We expect movie heroes to win. Most of the time they do, but once in a while, they surprise us by failing - sometimes spectacularly.
While virtually all heroes win in the end (with one notable exception that you can read about below), they develop their character - and thus become more interesting - through trial and error. Here are 12 instances where movie heroes' plans failed instantly.
It takes until the very end of Inglourious Basterdsfor someone to outsmart Hans Landa. Until then, he is a constant foil for the film's revolving door of protagonists. One such example is when Allied spy Bridget von Hammersmark attends the premiere with three of the Basterds, who are disguised as Italian filmmakers in order to blow up the cinema and its Nazi audience. Landa is there, and before he even addresses the disguised Basterds, he notices von Hammersmark's foot cast and is clearly unconvinced by her mountain climbing explanation (in reality, she was shot in a gunfight where three of her undercover comrades were killed).
Landa then turns to her companions. Against all odds, he speaks to them in fluent Italian. Unable to respond in kind, the Basterds are reduced to stereotypical Italian gestures and greetings, with Brad Pitt's character, Raine, giving the funniest renditions. Landa toys with them, getting the Basterds to repeat their fake names with fake accents, before doing away with von Hammersmark and taking Raine prisoner.
In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indy and Elsa pose as Scottish Lord Clarence MacDonald and his lovely assistant, respectively, to enter Castle Brunwald, where Indy's father is being held captive. Making up in confidence what he lacks in a convincing Scottish accent, Indy insists that the butler show him the castle's famous tapestries, but the butler isn't having it. "If you are a Scottish lord, then I am Mickey Mouse!" he cries.
His plan foiled, Indy knocks the butler unconscious.
To help Rose and Finn disable the First Order's hyperspace tracker, Maz Kanata suggests they visit Canto Bight and solicit the Master Codebreaker. They reach the city with little fuel remaining, but that's not the worst part: They park their ship on a public beach. Later, after spotting the codebreaker at Canto Casino, they are arrested for a parking violation.
While in jail, the duo meets a different hacker, DJ, who helps them escape. After crawling through a sewer and riding on a fathier, they reach the beach where they illegally parked their ship. However, police speeders destroy the ship before they can board. Eventually, they take off on a stolen yacht.
In the final minutes of The Mist, David and the survivors run out of gas while in the vicinity of the titular mist's largest monster. Rather than meeting their demise in the jaws of a Cthulhu-like figure, they opt for David's handgun and its four bullets. There are five people, so David does the deed, offing his son and his friends, thereby sacrificing himself to the monster.
He gets out of the Jeep and faces what he thinks is the approaching monster, but the mist disperses and reveals it to be an Army tank. As the soldiers clear out the area and shuttle other survivors to safety, David screams in despair.
Gremlins 2: The New Batch culminates in a swing-style party involving all the gremlins and their rendition of the song "New York, New York." At this point, while all the gremlins are partying together in the lobby, Mr. Clamp prepares to drop the building's cover, which would expose them to fatal sunlight.
But before he can do it, storm clouds block out the sun. This turn of events necessitates a much grislier plan B.
The climactic hunt in Jaws goes about as well as any final battle in a monster movie. The giant shark rams the boat with such force and fury that the engine fails. Running out of options, Hooper dresses in scuba gear and descends into a shark cage, from where he plans to take out the shark with a strychnine-filled harpoon. After several seconds of ominous stillness, the shark rams the cage from behind, causing Hooper to drop the harpoon onto the ocean floor.
The shark proceeds to turn the cage into an abstract sculpture. Hooper manages to escape with his life, but likely without a clean wetsuit.
