Great Movies with Plot Holes
 

What are those great/good movies that have plot holes that annoy you?

I mean you could be super analytical and come up with loads in just about any movie but what are the ones in films you love?

Lots of these plot holes could fall under bracket of plot device rather than plot hole but the writers should do better imo.

No point discussing bad films as they are basically one big plot hole.

Heat

The armoured car robbery at the start. Neil and his tight crew bring in an outsider, Waynegro for the job BUT they don't need a fifth man at all, Waynegro just sits in the truck with Mike then stands guard outside the truck with the others, everything that goes wrong in the movie for Neil and co can be traced back to this decision, now you could argue that this is a plot device or instigating incident to move the plot forward but it never made sense to me. Come up with a better reason for having a fifth man at least.

Gladiator

Maximus eludes his execution, but why doesn't he sneak back into camp, raise his loyal army and sort everything out then and there?

Re: Great Movie's with Plot Holes
 

Bullitt - never understood why the chain was off the door in the cheap hotel room.

The guy they are protecting unchains it no?

Some of my favourite plot holes are here.

Yes, but why?

A few spoilers

The Tenant: If he was so paranoid about the people in the apartment block, why didn't he just move out of the damn place?!

Locke: The whole reason he goes to the hospital is to be there when the baby is born, as he has some daddy issues about his own birth. Couldn't he just not go to the hospital and lie to the kid when he/she grows up that he WAS at the hospital when s/he was born?

Twelve Monkeys: In the main character's flashbacks, Brad Pitt is the one taking the bomb on the plane. But at the end of the movie, it's a random guy taking the bomb to the plane. WHAT?!

IIRC, didn’t he tell the mother of his child that he would be coming to the hospital? Are you suggesting he abandon her there & then lie to his own child later in its life?

Yes

Yes. His life wouldn't be ruined then.

In what way was his life ruined?

Re: Great Movie's with Plot Holes
 

Sure, but that doesn’t mean his life was ruined. He has a new baby that needs him. If he abandoned its mother, like you suggested, & later lied to this child, that would be hard for anyone to live with. That would ruin his life. He needed to man up & face the consequences of his adultery.

Because his priority was to get to his home in the hopes that maybe his family might still be alive. If you were in that situation, would you just take Quintus's word for it or would you do something to try to save them?

Re: Great Movie's with Plot Holes
 

Blade Runner - more of a continuity error but pretty big: When Leon is tested in the beginning he clearly answers "Let me tell you about my mother". Near the 3rd act, Deckard listens back to that same recording where Leon says "I'll tell you about my mother!" LET ME vs I'LL. Always put a kink in my neck.


Maximum Overdrive - The whole movie

Re: Great Movies with Plot Holes
 

90% of this thread will end up being people disagreeing about which things are plot holes.

They all have plot holes. It's the nature of the business.

Die Hard 2 -- Why didn't the planes just fly to other airports.

Terminator Salvation -- Why would Skynet build a cyborg that was electronically capable of overriding their system?

The Dark Knight -- Why did Gorgon fake his death to protect his family? If Joker wanted Gordon's family dead, he would go after them, whether or not Gordon was alive or not. So Gordon faking his death makes no difference.

The Thing (1982 version) -- Since the scientist character told everyone that the The Thing is able to imitate anyone perfectly, why do all the characters constantly split up all the time, instead of sticking together?

Because he is a double. Doesn't realise he is going to get killed.

But still deems faster to take over army, kill enemies and send word for family not to be harmed.

Re: Great Movies with Plot Holes
 

many things mentioned here are not plot holes, sorry but yoda already went ahead of me and said it....

Suppose could change thread title to, "plot devices that defy logic and irritate you" :)

That's not so much a plot hole as his character's fatal flaw: he sees himself as a man of honour (partially in defiance of a father he considered dishonourable) and going to the hospital is his idea of doing the honourable thing even though it ends up costing him everything because other people see his actions as dishonourable.

It's a false memory and a red herring. Willis' character only ever saw the red-haired man at the airport from behind (as seen in the first couple of flashbacks), so as the film progresses and he starts to suspect that Pitt's character was the terrorist, he briefly re-imagines that the red-haired man in his memory was Pitt.

They do decide to stick together. The problem then comes from how they're forced at different points to split up in order to take care of different tasks, hence why MacReady tells them to split into pairs so they can watch each other's backs (I'd have to double-check, but I think by the time they get to that point the group is already an odd number, which explains why Fuchs is left alone in the lab instead of being paired with someone else). Also, it's not too long after that the pairs start to distrust each other (as evidenced by Nauls cutting MacReady loose once he suspects MacReady is a Thing).

Oh my God, thanks. That really confused me when I fist saw the film.

Re: Great Movies with Plot Holes
 

The Thing is a good one. It's one of those films you watch and imagine how you would do things in that situation. If it's me in charge then we are all staying together in the same room from the moment we understand "the thing", though it's one thing to plan, another in practice.

Dawn of the Dead is another where you imagine yourself in the shopping mall scenario, what things you would do differently.

I disagree. That statement isn't about what plotholes are, which opens the door to more disagreements than just plotholes. Hm.

*edit*
I am joking btw.

Re: Great Movies with Plot Holes
 

I'll have to address one of the biggest plot holes I've ever seen, and sadly, it comes from one of my favorite movies, and the one my username/avatar is dedicated to.

Tombstone - At the end, when Wyatt is about to meet up with Ringo for their gunfight (facing certain death, as he knew he wasn't fast enough to beat Ringo). Doc Holiday beats Wyatt to the location, and subsequently kills Ringo. But my questions are - how in the HELL did Holiday know where Ringo was gonna be? And how in the Hell did he beat Wyatt to the location without Wyatt knowing?

HUGE plot hole, but doesn't stop me from loving the film.

Commodus's men would've already been on their way to kill Maximus's family. Taking the time to kill enemies would've just ensured that his wife and kid were already dead by the time anybody got to them to stop those men. The only hope was to try to get to them before anybody else did.

And this is ancient Rome we're talking about. "Sending word" means sending somebody on horseback. It's not exactly an instant thing. It's not like they could just send out a text or call people up on their cell phones.

Well then I suppose the plot hole is why didn't maximus beat them? As he was clearly rushing and the executioner s had no need to rush?:)

I just felt that the them splitting up to take on different tasks, wasn't worth the risk. For example, there was one point, where one of the members tells MacCready that they should eat out of cans from now on to be safe, and McCready says okay and leaves. Why did he leave?

Or when MacCready tells the two of them to go on ahead, and that he is going to go up to his shack to check why the lights are on. Why didn't they all go with him?

Or even after he decided that no one gets out of his sight and then he decides to test everyone's blood, once he found out which one of them was not human, and they had to kill that person, he then has everyone split again, not too long afterward.

I guess I don't have an airtight explanation for that one - it's been a couple of years since I've seen the film. I figure a fair few of the problems that happen in the film can just be put down to human error as a result of the relentlessly nightmarish situation the characters are in - tying everyone to the same couch for the blood test and then not having the flamethrower ready when it's time to actually torch one of the Things isn't exactly a plot hole either.

As I recall, he takes Nauls with him to the shack, which is why Nauls finds the shredded clothes with MacReady's name on them and decides to cut MacReady loose under the assumption that he's a Thing.

MacReady leaves Childs behind in case Blair (who's been locked in the toolshed for much of the movie) has escaped and is going to cause trouble because he's either a Thing or insane. Then the remaining three need to split up to plant the explosives all over the generator room, so at least that's not without purpose.

I thought that MacCready would take all of them to his shack, so no one would accuse each other of being the Thing, when they got back together. I didn't think that the flamethrower being ready was not a plot hole. I though it was a flamethrower error, since they needed it to heat up the blood.

As for splitting up to plant explosives, I thought it would make more sense to stick together to plant explosives, that way, they know the Thing will not get to any of them without them knowing.

It doesn't make it a bad movie necessary, I just have to suspend my disbelief more than usual while watching it. But I think maybe it could have been a better movie maybe, if they all chose to stick together from the start and it turns out that The Thing had already infected everyone accept for perhaps Chiles and MacCready in the end. That way everyone is logical enough to stick together, and The Thing has still already gotten to all the same characters beforehand.

The Prestige has really irritated me lately.

The Great Danton goes through untold suffering, killing himself a 100 times to perform the best trick ever.

BUT

Why not copy yourself once and do what Bales character does?,No one has to die, he is a Lord so has the means to pay for 2 lives, new identity, new place to live etc.

Re: Great Movies with Plot Holes
 

Aside from the matter of how he treats it as a means of punishing himself over and over again, there's also the matter of him having trouble trusting a double after his bad experience with the drunken lookalike he hires earlier in the film and also his steadfast belief that Borden's version of the trick has to involve something more elaborate than just a double so he believes he has to match or improve upon it.

Re: Great Movies with Plot Holes
 

The thing about The Prestige I didn't get was, why not just show the audience that you are able to make copies of yourself? That's a much more impressive trick than making your self disappear and then reappear again.

If Angier made several copies of himself, then Borden will be thinking "How am I suppose to top that!?". Borden only has one twin to compete with where as Angier could show an audience 20 copies of himself if he wanted to.

Angier would have had Borden beat by miles and miles ahead. So why did Angier keep such a magic trick like that a secret from his audience?

As for The Thing, I always did kept thinking why don't they just stick together, rather than constantly splitting apart as well.

Re: Great Movies with Plot Holes
 

Because by this point Angier's obsessed with figuring out and replicating Borden's trick rather than trying to outdo it (to the point where he is convinced that Borden uses the cloning machine rather than just an existing double). Besides, the practical considerations of a trick such as you describe is that it arguably breaks an audience's suspension of disbelief further and runs a far greater risk of exposing the cloning machine's existence.

Re: Great Movies with Plot Holes
 

But since Angier wants to get back at Borden I thought he would want to do outdo the trick even more than just match it only. I mean he's sitting on a goldmine of a magic trick that no other magician in the world could do, forever, and he just lets it go, just because he wants to match a trick only, and not outdo it.

Fair points but still not strong enough motivation to literally drown yourself 100 times, or taking the gamble that you will be the one drowning. The trust issue is important though, he is a cruel bastard so how would he trust his cruel copy not to kill him at some point, whereas twins growing up and bonding have no such trouble.

Show the world that you have a copying machine, and every time you do the trick you have another copy.


The World would implode after such an invention.

Re: Great Movies with Plot Holes
 

What can I say? He's insane like that.

Well he would have to keep the machine safe of course and not show anyone but I thought he could do a trick where he brings out 20 of him on stage at the same time. Where as Borden could only bring out his twin and that's it, to compete.

It is a theme in the movie that people aren't ready for "real" magic, and you have to "dress it up a little, give them reason to doubt it". If 20 of the same person ran on stage he would be burned in the 19th century as a witch or something :)

Re: Great Movies with Plot Holes
 

Oh okay. I thought he could still explain it's just a trick in the end and not to worry.

Re: Great Movies with Plot Holes
 

Lol