The "I didn't think this through" Thread (spoilers)

[Ahriman238]

How about the other Star Trek Romulan villain, Shinzon? You know, the brilliant tacticians who can casually assassinate the government of the most paranoid state in Trek but can't pull off a surprise attack on the peaceful Federaiton with a perfect cloak and a doomsday weapon?

The guy who needs Picard's blood to live but makes no effort to secure his active cooperation and farts around for what seems like days before making a move to abduct him? And gets suckered by his own android trick? And probably laid the groundwork for the off-screen genocide of the Remans after the Romulan military assumes control? Or... you know what? Listing everything stupid and wrong Shinzon did is going to take a while.


Lando Calrissian. I'm running a settlement with an illegal gas mining operation, so I'll easily sell out my friends without so much as an attempted warning (unless the cloud-cars taking potshots at the Em Falcon and his bizarre behavior at the landing pad count) to the Empire for freedom to continue my operation. And be surprised when the Dark Lord of the Sith reneges, despite literally millennia of history saying that is exactly what Sith do.

While we're on the original trilogy, Leia was pretty sure the bad guys let them escape the Death Star, but still must have told Han how to fly to the hidden Rebel base, thus leading the Empire and Death Star directly there instead of passing on the information or arranging for an ambush scenario someplace less precious.

[Kuja]

In fairness to Lando, when an Executor-class star destroyer shows up in orbit and the Emperor's right-hand man comes down to hold the metaphoical gun to your head and offers you a deal, it's not hard to understand why he takes it, especially since he does show genuine concern for the people of Cloud City who, if he didn't take the offer would likely all go on the chopping block.

Final Fantasy 13: God-like Fal'cie tells us that killing and Orphan will destroy the world. Defy him by doing exactly what he wants us to do; save the world by killing him and Orphan.

Don't forget about how the fal'cie are so far beyond humanity that the best they can communicate with us is to show us images of what they want and leave us to interpret them for ourselves...except then Bart can speak english because fuck you.

[FaxModem1]

To be fair, Lando did trying warning Han by trying to spook him AND acting very odd on the spacedock/landing pad.

Blue Milk Special first try

Blue Milk Special second try

He tried, at least, as much as one with stormtroopers hiding everywhere in the city he could try.

[Adam Reynolds]

One that hasn't been mentioned yet is Serenity, the movie sequel to Firefly. It wasn't until The Operative started coming after them that Mal and crew began to investigate what River was saying that led them to Miranda. In fact, it wasn't until she was activated that the memory triggered that led them to even know of the existence of the planet. To top things off it was the one thing that could have broken The Operative and his unshaken belief that he was creating a better world(though in fairness no one could have known that).

[Simon_Jester]

Er... how does this fall under "does not think this through?"

Sending an assassin after Firefly could not logically be expected to cause them to start investigating the Alliance's dirty secrets. From the point of view of Alliance brass, they're a bunch of criminals. Criminals who know you're chasing them either die or go into hiding; they don't start playing "the truth is out there" and try to out your classified Greatest Mistakes.

Likewise, I doubt that anyone could have expected that activating River would cause her to start remembering her knowledge of Miranda in a semi-coherent state so that they'd get enough evidence to do an investigation at all.

[TheFeniX]

How about the other Star Trek Romulan villain, Shinzon? You know, the brilliant tacticians who can casually assassinate the government of the most paranoid state in Trek but can't pull off a surprise attack on the peaceful Federaiton with a perfect cloak and a doomsday weapon?

That was originally an example in my OP but the entire fucking movie qualifies as "did not think this through." I could have just written paragraphs about how short-sighted and idiotic the plans of the bad guys were even though Shinzon is played up as awesome-sauce. The Enterprise crew weren't thinking all the straight either. It's like they took everything that made Khan awesome and caricatured the shit out of it. The whole movie reeks of Hollywood executive meddling anyways. I hope the cast at least had fun filming it, because it's painful to watch.

Insurrection was about as bad: Dougherty doesn't seem like a bad guy, just desperate having found a veritable Fountain of Youth. Rather than coming to the Baku first (citing the Prime Directive), he instead deals with the Sona, unwittingly getting involved in a Blood Feud. The problem is that he's then dooming the Baku to a slow death (even if it would be natural otherwise) by trying to ferry them off the planet while they sleep. That seems like a huge Prime Directive violation to me.

Once Data blows the lid off the whole thing, he still doesn't try and negotiate with the Baku, merely taking them by force. Seriously, put the choice to them "trade the immortality of ~200 to advance the quality of life for trillions" and make them look like the bad guy if they refuse. Instead, we get to hear Stewart spews lines about the Trail of Tears, which doesn't play at all given the circumstances.

[Thanas]

A good IRL analogy would be the Nazi foreign policy after 1938. You just enlarged your territory to previously unseen heights, you are being feted as the "get-shit-done" power in Europe, you got two large colonial empires bending to your will. Obviously the next step is to go full Idiot and conduct a policy that could be best described by "Imma go over there and hit everybody, let's see what they will do next".

All the while being told by your professional soldiers that such a war is not possible and if you absolutely have to go to war you'd better wait till the late fourties.

[TheFeniX]

The wife and I have just had time to start catching up on Game of Thrones, and there was a pretty hilarious mental breakdown by one character that you could see coming from a mile away. I'll actually spoiler it since that season is still going and I'll ignore the whole "this chick just gave me a dragon! Of course it will obey me for no good reason!" bullshit from last season: Spoiler

You and you merry band of thugs have been raping your way across the land for months. You're in a tavern going about your raping ways and The Hound walks in wearing full armor. You decide to try and procure his services. He tells you to fuck off. You have a group of men with you and you're pretty sure The Hound has gone soft because hearsay is always credible, but you've decided The Hound must now die.

You're within stabbing distance. of. The. fucking. Hound. Your men are 20 feet away and drunk and probably haven't seen any real action in months.
Do you:
A. Back off a bit, round up your men and attack as a group?
B. Just walk away and let The Hound get liquored up then attack when an opportunity presents itself?
C. LET'S DO THIS (incredibly cliche' payoff)

While a hilarious scene, the impact is lost because this shit happens way to much in every medium ever. Just because I've got 5 armed guys vs your 1 doesn't mean this is a good idea to attack. Even worse than this, the idea of "we're about equally matched, so we should totally fight" is way to prevalent as well. But the most damning part of the whole ordeal was how monumentally stupid nameless bad guy #546 had to be to think that, even if his men won, he was he going to survive starting combat that close to a god damn killing machine?

[Simon_Jester]

True; a lot of glorious one-on-many fights in fiction start with a few of the many guys doing something utterly stupid.

On the other hand, it's not like the confidence of numbers doesn't lead thugs and morons to do moronic, thuggish things in real life. For every really deadly, skilled, experienced killer out there, there are probably at least five or ten men who only think they are deadly, skilled killers... but whose skill is all in their own minds.