5 Movie Heroes Who Caused Their Own Huge Problems

5 Iron Man 3 -- Tony Stark Gives His Home Address to Terrorists, Takes No Precautions Whatsoever

Early in Iron Man 3, Tony Stark gets pissed at the international terrorist known as the Mandarin and calls him out on live TV. Tony says he isn't scared of no tiny-orange-sounding motherfucker, and to prove it, he even gives the Mandarin the address to his house.

A few hours later, Tony is bantering with two of his attractive lady friends when, holy crap, the Mandarin's minions show up in helicopters and blow up his house! Who could have seen that coming?

The Mistake:

Everyone, of course. But let's give the guy some credit. Let's assume Tony was just too angry/intoxicated to think straight when he gave his address to a man who can turn people into bombs -- this is still Tony Stark we're talking about. He's got a super-advanced talking house full of technology, he has literally dozens of flying robot bodyguards (that can attack autonomously, as we see later), and he's friends with a Nordic god and Samuel L. Jackson. So what precautions does he take after voluntarily making himself a target for a terrorist organization? He locks his front door. Which, incidentally, is the one thing he said he wouldn't do.

As a result, a missile blows up in Tony's face and nearly kills his girlfriend, Pepper, which frankly is like the least that could have happened in this situation. If those new Iron Man armors didn't respond to Kinect commands, allowing Tony to put one on Pepper by moving his hands in midair, she would have ended up as a cute splatter on a wall.

But maybe Tony was setting up the defenses when the attack happened? Nope: He was getting ready to depart for Tennessee ... thus leaving Pepper completely alone and unprotected in a house that's bound to blow up sooner or later. So this is less a case of "conflicted protagonist with a death wish" and more a case of "protagonist who really, really wants his girlfriend dead, for some reason."

Avoiding the attack would have been as easy as telling his suits to hover around the house looking out for threats, which, again, is a thing he can totally do as of this movie. Or, at the very least, he could have given the Mandarin the address to his other place, the one that Hulk now lives in, and if some terrorists end up getting humped by a giant green wang until their bones disintegrate, so be it.

4 The Amazing Spider-Man -- Spidey Writes His Real Name on His Camera, Leaves It With a Villain

If you've watched a single Spider-Man cartoon or movie, you know that the reason Peter Parker doesn't just cash in on all his fame and powers (those song royalties alone would make him filthy rich) is to protect his loved ones. It's why he wears a mask that doesn't even have breathing holes in it -- protecting his identity to make sure his friends aren't squashed by Doctor Octopus is the #1 thing for him. That's what Spidey is all about.

Anyway, in The Amazing Spider-Man, the ever well-meaning Peter is trying to prove that Dr. Curt Connors has invented a serum that turned him A) evil and B) into a huge-ass mutant lizard threatening New York. Since the police don't believe a word of this (to their credit), Peter decides to take some pictures of Connors in lizard form as proof. To do this, Peter uses the old "sticking a camera to a wall with web fluid while you fight the villain as Spider-Man" technique, which will become his main source of income once he starts working for the Daily Bugle.

The Mistake:

Apparently Peter is still working out some kinks on this technique, because when Connors scares him away and picks up the camera, he sees this written behind it: "PROPERTY OF PETER PARKER."

Yep, the secret identity Spider-Man works so hard to protect is openly displayed on the back of the camera he left behind. And it's not like the thing was super well-hidden, or even slightly hidden. Look at the scene again -- how exactly was Connors supposed to miss the thing that's loudly shooting bright flashes at his face in a dark sewer? This is starting to sound like a plot that got cut out of Superhero Movie because it was just too stupid, even for the makers of Meet the Spartans.

Thanks to Peter's oversight, not only did the Lizard find out Spider-Man's identity, but he attacked his school and probably injured several students in the process.

And finally, let's say someone who isn't a crazed scientist finds Peter's camera ... how are they supposed to return it? How many Peter Parkers could there be in New York? The answer is at least 30, probably more, since Spidey lives in a world where the name doesn't have the stigma of being associated with a comic book character.

3 X-Men Origins: Wolverine -- Wolverine's Girlfriend Forgets to Use Her Power on the Bad Guy

In X-Men Origins: Wolverine, we learn all the details of the past of everyone's favorite sideburn-having mutant (up yours, Beast). Halfway through the movie, Wolverine gets so distraught over the murder of his girlfriend, Kayla Silverfox, that he makes some questionable decisions and lets Colonel William Stryker replace his skeleton with metal. Then it turns out that not only is Kayla alive, but she's been working for Stryker the whole time. Their relationship was a plan to make Wolverine so upset that he'd go and put some metal inside him.

In yet another twist, Kayla reveals that she betrayed Wolvie because Stryker had kidnapped her younger sister, promising to free the girl only if Kayla did as he said. Eventually Kayla dies helping to free her sister and other captive mutants, who are left safely in the care of Weirdly Photoshopped Professor X.

The Mistake:

Oh, one thing: Kayla is a mutant, too. Apart from faking orgasms and death, she has the power to persuade anyone to do anything just by touching them. It works on any human ... including Stryker, as we find out right at the end of the movie when she is about to die and tells him to "Walk until you bleed." Which he does.

Wait a second ...

Kayla didn't even have to touch his skin to make Stryker obey her. Just lightly putting her hand over his pants was fine. She has one of the most terrifying powers in the entire X-Men universe -- she could trigger World War III if she wanted to, or convince Bruce Willis to release another album. So why the hell didn't she use her power on Stryker before to force him to release her sister? It's not like she didn't have any opportunities: There's a scene where Stryker is crapping his pants because Sabretooth is pissed at him, and Kayla is just standing right behind the guy, not doing anything.

Instead of doing that, she trusted that this extremely shady military guy who kidnaps teenagers would keep his word (which of course he didn't) and agreed to lend herself for a long plan that involved spending several months having sex with Hugh Jackman. What woman would ... OK, yeah, never mind.

Predators is the 2010 Predator sequel that finally adopted the confusing naming convention of the Alien/Aliens saga (we're looking forward to the dumb prequel, Predatheus). In it, a bunch of random people composed of soldiers, mercenaries, and Topher Graces wake up one fine morning to find out that they are on a strange alien jungle planet, where they are hunted by a group of obviously very bored Predators. Um, as in alien murder machines, not sex offenders.

Eventually Isabelle, the Michelle Rodriguez character (played by Not Michelle Rodriguez), reveals that she has heard of such Predators before, from a 1987 historical document starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to the lone survivor of that incident, he managed to live because the Predators apparently have thermal vision, so he used mud as a camouflage in order to block out the alien's heat signatures. Awesome! So now they have an easy way to beat the ugly things and the movie is over, right?

The Mistake:

Nah. Here's what the group's de facto leader (Adrien Brody) decides to do immediately, and we mean immediately after hearing the "we can become invisible to them with mud" thing: "We set up a defensive perimeter. Make it look like we are holing up. That'll bring them to us. We force them into a choke point. We get them in overlapping fields of fire. It can be done."

This is the point where everyone should have dropped to the ground and started fighting over that sweet, precious mud, before realizing there's plenty for everyone. The whole planet is a muddy jungle, presumably. But no, they just ignore that extremely important bit of information and try a plan that actually entails being seen by the Predators, which naturally gets everyone murdered. It's like when video game sequels tell you "Oh no, you can't kill the villain with the same item again because !" only without the part.

It was only at the end that Adrien Brody decided to give that mud thingy a shot, and of course it worked for him. The dude managed to kill the toughest Predator without even using a gun, simply by lubricating his body with wet dirt.

1 Pacific Rim -- They Scatter the Jaegers Thousands of Miles from Where They Know the Monsters Are Coming From

Pacific Rim shows us a half terrifying, half awesome future where humanity is constantly getting badgered by huge-ass monsters called kaiju that arise out of a portal in the Pacific Ocean. Since these kaiju just shrug off whichever nuclear weapons we throw at them, the nations of the world unite to build a group of giant robots that apparently we could have made at any time: the Jaegers.

Every major nation has a Jaeger protecting its shores against the kaiju, a system that works pretty well for a while ... until our governments shut it down, because it turns out that robots the size of mountains are kind of expensive. Instead, they all decide to build a big wall around the Pacific to keep the kaiju out forever.

The Mistake:

Shockingly, the "Let's put up a wall" plan isn't the dumbest decision here. Yes, it's not a very well-thought-out strategy, as demonstrated by the part where a kaiju walks through Sydney's wall like it's papier mache ...

... the fact still remains that the kaiju should never have gotten that far in the first place. Why? Because scientists have known since the beginning that the kaiju are coming out of a single tiny portal in the Pacific Ocean, and for some reason the Jaegers have been stationed all over the world instead of at that single point.

Not a single Jaeger was patrolling that portal -- they all just wait to see which way the kaiju goes and then say, "Eh, screw it, it's China/Canada/Peru's problem."

At one point, there used to be more than 30 Jaegers, and it only takes one or two to punch a kaiju to death. Instead of waiting for Godzilla's cousins to start wiping their asses on our cities, wouldn't it be simpler to leave a few Jaegers near the area of the portal? Then, whenever a kaiju rears its head up, they all gang up on it, saving everyone a lot of money and grief. All those resources from the extra Jaegers that are no longer necessary could be used to build a base where the Jaeger pilots can rest or do repairs while they wait for more kaiju. Humanity has spent over 10 years fighting these monsters, and no one thought of this idea.

But, you know, when your main scientist is Charlie from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, we guess you get what you pay for.

Related Reading: Speaking of screwing themselves, these movie characters sure did waste awesome superpowers. And did you know the hyenas in The Lion King must have been painfully devoured after the credits? We're serious. And we're also serious about calling some of Hollywood's smartest characters out for some of film's dumbest lines.

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