I've talked a couple of times about liking the device where the hero beats the villain because they're not just morally right but more correct about the world. IE, Batman knowing why the ships didn't blow up in "The Dark Knight". Tricky tho b/c you also need the hero to matter...

If the villain's plan is just inherently doomed like uh, every "Jurassic Park" or "Indiana Jones" villain, then why does the hero need to do anything? OTOH, if the villain is right about the world, then why shouldn't they win? So I think the best plots walk this line.

One approach is "collateral damage". In "Into The Spider-Verse", the Kingpin's plan is inherently doomed because he's wrong--Spider-Man didn't take his family, he lost them himself--but also, if the heroes don't show up, he's going to kill a lot of people finding this out.

It's similar in the ASOIAF books, I think, where it is none-too-subtly suggested that the Boltons, Freys, and Lannisters are somewhere between politically doomed and literally cursed, but there's still (many years later) the question of how long that takes/what the fallout is.

Now that I think about it this is also like "The Lion King".

Another approach is to combine the two, "the villain is wrong BECAUSE the hero will do something", IE, Hans is wrong BECAUSE Anna loves Elsa and can save herself by being the giver of love, not the recipient.

(This is actually what I think is clever about that ending, not that the love is between the sisters, but that the act of true love is active rather than passive.)

But yeah, I think you want to avoid both "the hero wins because he punched the villain real good", but also avoid "the villain was so doomed the hero had no agency or effect on the outcome". (Unless those are the stories you want to tell, I mean. They can both work too.)

I feel like some movies have somehow managed to do both of those things, for that matter.

And of course this is all within the hero/villain you know, "children's-plus entertainment" genre system.