Best Movie Plot Holes

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28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
This is a thread for you to post plot holes that either ruined a movie for you, made it better, you found funny or you just simply want to share.

Warning, may contain spoilers.

Not all of them are meant to be taken seriously.

Here are some that I thought about while watching these flicks.

Planet of the Apes (2001) - The apes evolved, the humans were descendants of the original crew....but the horses? The planet was uninhabited.

Jurassic Park: The Lost World - How do the men on the ship get killed? The T-Rex was inside the cargo bay in the ship, everyone was dead outside the ship.

Jurassic Park: How does the T-REX, this giant dinosaur that people hear coming a mile away, get inside the building at the end? Walk right through the human size door? Wear his sneakers?

Spiderman 3 - Everything on him turns to sand when he falls into that hole, his clothes, belt buckle, etc...yet his locket remains intact.

Independence Day: Will Smith knows how to fly their ships because he saw them fly them? That makes sense....or the biggest problem being the virus they upload to an Alien system. I have trouble transferring stuff from PC to MAC

Will Smith can knock out an alien....even though we later find out that the alien we see was just an outer shell for the real alien inside.
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Tales from the crypt, 1972.

One of the stories involves one of the characters who dies as a result of a wish gone awry, he is then wished back to life after he was embalmed and left in a state in which he was unable to die, yet it is revealed that all of the characters are remembering past events and are on their way to Hell, which doesn't make sense because he would have been trapped in his body forever according to the wish.
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Jurassic Park: The Lost World - How do the men on the ship get killed? The T-Rex was inside the cargo bay in the ship, everyone was dead outside the ship.
I know there's been a lot of speculation with this one, and I'm not even sure there's an answer to it. I know a lot of people just assume that some other dinosaurs got on board and did it. The way that they found the hand on steering wheel is almost identical to the way Ellie found Arnold's arm in the original, which leads me to believe that some raptors snuck on board and killed the crew. There's still some problems with that answer, though, like where did the raptors go?

Jurassic Park: How does the T-REX, this giant dinosaur that people hear coming a mile away, get inside the building at the end? Walk right through the human size door? Wear his sneakers?
No offense, TUS, but I really hate when I hear people mention that. If you're paying attention well, or maybe it's just because I've seen it like over 200 times, there's a huge chunk of the building that isn't finished yet that gives enough space for the T-Rex to sneak in there. There's a big clearish plastic material there instead of a wall. There's been a lot of talk about this one, though, and people post pictures of that space all the time to show people, but I'm too lazy to go find a picture.




STAR WARS
1977, George Lucas

In the original classic film, there is a huge plot hole in the final act. As you no doubt remember, Vader and Tarkin allow the main characters to escape from the Death Star in the Millennium Falcon so they can track them to the hidden base of the Rebel Alliance. The plan works and the fully operational Death Star follows them to a moon of the planet Yavin. After analyzing the plans smuggled out in R2-D2, the Rebels find a small structural flaw in the design of the massive battle station and small teams of fighters are sent on a mission to destroy the Empire's ultimate weapon. Tarkin is unworried by a frontal attack and cockily stands on the bridge waiting for the moon containing the base to orbit around the planet. But just before the moon orbits around to be obliterated, young Luke Skywalker turns off his targeting system, uses The Force, and blows the Death Star into little bits.

I saw this movie nearly thirty times in the theater as a young lad from 1977 to 1980. It wasn't until I had seen it a dozen times before the seven-year-old me asked what seemed like an obvious question that had escaped my attention until then: if the Death Star can travel the distance the Falcon went through hyperspace to Yavin in such relatively short order, WHY IN THE FART WOULD THEY THEN PARK IT IN A SPOT WHERE THEY HAVE TO WAIT FOR THE MOON TO ORBIT AROUND TO THEM BEFORE THEY DESTROY IT?!? That question then had a natural follow-up: Wait a second, if the Death Star possesses a laser powerful enough to destroy an entire planet, WHY IN THE FART ARE THEY EVEN WAITING FOR THE MOON TO COME AROUND IN THE FIRST PLACE WHEN THEY CAN SIMPLY DESTROY THE PLANET, THUS THE ORBITING MOON AND REBEL BASE ON IT?!?

The answer, of course, is simple: they don't do it only because that wouldn't allow time for the Rebel attack. That, my friends, is a plot hole.

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Dawn of the Dead '04 - the whole idea of them choosing to abandon the mall near the end of the film for no particularly good reason seems like a very obvious attempt to engineer an action-packed climax to the film.

I Am Legend - yeah, can one average woman and her pre-teen kid fight off New York's vampire population while trying to pull an unconscious Will Smith out of an upside-down SUV? That's probably the biggest plot hole - I love the theory I found on IMDb that everything afterwards was a deathbed fantasy as Smith died.

Near Dark - I like the film, but there's some stuff in the third act of the film that makes it a little hard to take seriously.

Total Recall - where do I start?
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Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
As far as Star Wars goes, the Death Star is run by bureaucratic asswipes who want to maintain their position in the pecking order and keep their union job, so that "plot hole" is actually documentary realism.

As far as Total Recall goes, you better start somewhere...
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On second thought, I guess these are less plot holes than extremely unbelievable lapses in logic...

How do people who get exposed to Mars' harsh atmosphere to the point where their tongues swell up and eyes bulge from the vacuum miraculously end up going back to normal with no side-effects when a massive rush of air manages to envelop the entire planet in a breathable atmosphere in the space of a minute?

How is Quaid capable of pulling a bug the size of a golfball out through his nostril with no ill effect (and of course there's the questions of how it got in there in the first place)?

When a bunch of guards open fire on a hologram of Quaid, how come the bullets don't pass straight through and hit the guards on the other side?

Of course, you could put it all down to the whole idea of it being the role-playing fantasy Quaid asks for at Rekall, but yeah.



So many good movies, so little time.

I love Casablanca, but why would the Germans or the Vichy officials honor the Letters of Transit signed by General de Gaulle who was the head of the underground Free French movement?
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I love Casablanca, but why would the Germans or the Vichy officials honor the Letters of Transit signed by General de Gaulle who was the head of the underground Free French movement?
It sounds like General Weygand to me, which would make more sense.
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28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
I know there's been a lot of speculation with this one, and I'm not even sure there's an answer to it. I know a lot of people just assume that some other dinosaurs got on board and did it. The way that they found the hand on steering wheel is almost identical to the way Ellie found Arnold's arm in the original, which leads me to believe that some raptors snuck on board and killed the crew. There's still some problems with that answer, though, like where did the raptors go?

No offense, TUS, but I really hate when I hear people mention that. If you're paying attention well, or maybe it's just because I've seen it like over 200 times, there's a huge chunk of the building that isn't finished yet that gives enough space for the T-Rex to sneak in there. There's a big clearish plastic material there instead of a wall. There's been a lot of talk about this one, though, and people post pictures of that space all the time to show people, but I'm too lazy to go find a picture.
Well, get UN-LAZY and prove me wrong.

I always remember it being a hand on the control, not an arm. Even so, that would be no indication of it being Raptors.

How about Fantastic Voyage, where they get the scientist out of the man's body just before they return to normal size....but what about all the wreckage left inside his body?

Spiderman 2 - Doc Ock is told that if he wants Spiderman, he should to talk to Peter Parker, he doesn't know the Peter is Spiderman, so according to him the most logical thing to do is to throw a car at the one person who knows where to find spiderman.

Blade - The ending ceremony needs 12 pure bloods, this is mentioned several times. Yet Frost's girlfriend kills on of these vamps and the thing still works. Did they have backups? This is never shown or explained.

Shawshank Redemption - I always wondered this, how does Andy, who goes head first into his tunnel manage to re-tape the poster to the wall?

Minority Report - A friend told me this one and I haven't watched the film in a while to remember much about their visions...but...the pre-cogs can see the future right? So how can they see murders when the future is those murderers getting arrested? Wouldn't they just see these people getting arrested and not the murder?

One can attribute the last on to them seeing the future and telling the cops who ultimate "change" that future, but I liked it so I included it.



28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
Ocean's 11 - Where do those hooker flyers come from?

King Kong - How do they transport Kong from Skull island to New York?

Terminator 3 - The Terminator checks for keys under the sun visor, this is something that John Connor taught him in Terminator 2, yet he specifically states that he is a new model and John Connor says that he has to teach him everything all over again. Continuity with other film more then a plot hole, but it can work both ways.



Shawshank Redemption - I always wondered this, how does Andy, who goes head first into his tunnel manage to re-tape the poster to the wall?
Kind of a spoiler here:

I noticed this as well and I remember trying to figure it out myself and coming to the conclusion that he must have left the top half attached, gone into the hole and then reattached the bottom via some tape at the back or something. He's a smart guy, I'm sure he figured a way to do it. At least that's the conclusion (I think - it's been a while) that I came up with and I love the film so I stuck with it. I don't know if I'd classify it as a plot hole though, more of a goof.



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I think TUS' point was that Andy had no room to turn around in the tunnel and what you're describing appears to require some fiddling.
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Hmm, you are correct it would be more difficult to move around, but still not impossible to attach them back. I'd use string or something (hey, I know I'm reaching but I don't care). But then if he didn't get the poster back up again we wouldn't have that excellent scene when they discover what has happened. If I watch it again sometime soon I'll come back to this thread.



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Not so much a plot hole as a contradiction by a later instalment in the series, but if the Terminator has power cells that are capable of causing massive explosions (as demonstrated in T3), how come it doesn't use that at any point in T1 in order to kill Sarah Connor (especially in the factory towards the end)?



Hm. Speaking of Shawshank. Doesn't Andy hang the poster on one of the side walls? Wouldn't there be a neighbor cell?
Not necessarily, I take it you've never been in prison.