Great Movies with Plot Holes

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).

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

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

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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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