Man of Steel has plot holes all over the place but there is one that destroys the entire movie and nobody has figured this out thus far.
In this version, the root of Krypton's destruction was genetic engineering which removed free will and choice. It's also the the reason why Jor-El and Lara never go with Clark to Earth because they said they were products of the failures of their world as much as Zod was. So why, then, does Jor-El install the codex in Clark's body to have those genetically engineered Kryptonians co-exist with humans on Earth? That's what landed them in this mess in the first place!
I think the argument was that Indiana Jones had no real impact on the film's outcome, which isn't correct.
The other thing that is missed is that Indiana Jones' quests ultimately all fail, in that whatever "McGuffin" it is he is looking for, he loses possession of at the end, but...gains something more valuable instead. It's deliberate.
e.g. The museum doesn't get to keep the Ark as intended, but he finds Marion again. He doesn't get the Sankara Stones, but he manages to return the one that saves the village and the children. He doesn't get to keep the Grail, but reconciles with his estranged father.
Did the boffins who found the time displacement equipment in The Terminator not consider that if they wrapped up a phase plasma rifle in the 40 watt range within a bag of skin (which is what the Terminator was, metal under skin), they could send it with Kyle Reese?
The premise is fundamentally flawed, but I don't think it's a plot hole. It's an old theory that can never work in practice. Well, fair enough if we're talking about the relevance of certain characters, though. Such as the boyfriend. Still not a plot hole, though?
Sorry maybe I used the wrong term but yes the whole premise of "purge night" is bloody stupid . If you murdred your neighbours wife are you really going to look him in the eye the next morning and let bygones be bygones
Biggest ones in Gravity are the two unused spacecraft at the ISS and the Chinese space station.
There are no spare spaceships in space, astronauts have to go up and come back in one. All they do is swap over so the ones docked for emergency use are 'fresh' but there are no spare ones.
Originally NASA were going to have a proper lifeboat up on the ISS that would bring everyone back to earth. It got canned.
Biggest ones in Gravity are the two unused spacecraft at the ISS and the Chinese space station.
There are no spare spaceships in space, astronauts have to go up and come back in one. All they do is swap over so the ones docked for emergency use are 'fresh' but there are no spare ones.
Originally NASA were going to have a proper lifeboat up on the ISS that would bring everyone back to earth. It got canned.
That's not a plot hole. That's just realism/logic issues. A plot hole is something that happens within a film that contradicts the established rules of the narrative.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture - Why would they go to such trouble to refit practically every system on the Enterprise instead of just building an entirely new ship?
Cheaper? Starfleet budget cuts?
I know The United Federation of Planets sounds all posh, but they might not be made of money, y'hear?
This isn't so much a plot hole as a design hole:
Watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2003 remake (and it's not without its merits, btw), there's a scene, IIRC, wherein Leatherface runs amok in the large basement of the house. The grungy, dank surroundings are artfully backlit by some fierce dusty white light. All very pretty, but it's impossible to figure out the origin of this light. Expressive production flourishes I do enjoy. But this was a touch perplexing. It probably doesn't matter.
Then there's our old favourite King Kong. The Kong island natives are so concerned with keeping Kong out they build a giant wall - which thoughtfully includes a door big enough to let him through.
Sorry maybe I used the wrong term but yes the whole premise of "purge night" is bloody stupid . If you murdred your neighbours wife are you really going to look him in the eye the next morning and let bygones be bygones
It's indeed a ridiculous premise. In fairness, the film does address that issue through (I think) the boy, who asked questions about the purge.
Even so, it's the same with Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and similar stories, either you accept the rules of each premise's universe or you don't. Obviously, with The Purge, you and I don't.
I do think The Purge offers an interesting idea because it reflects some aspects of our society, such as a typical legal system where poor people are more likely to be convicted than rich people, due to the affordability of hiring the best. In The Purge, rich people are more likely to survive the night than those who couldn't afford the best security system possible. In other words, it's the night the 'undesirables' will be culled. It's a sanctioned act of amorality, imo.
So I was sorry to see that the story didn't go down a route of, say, the poor turning tables on the rich to prove the purge is elitist, selfish and amoral, or just simply doesn't work. Instead it's executed just as a standard home invasion film. Boring.
More of a continuity error than plot hole, but it suddenly turning from day to night during the final battle in XMen The Last Stand. It was so ridiculous and such a needless error as they could have explained away with one scene in which Jean Grey/Phoenix uses her powers to blot out the sun.
Not really a plot hole...one could say that the battle went on for hours.
However, there is one logic flaw - why didn't they just use the cure on Jean? At one point Wolverine even gives her a head's up as the army attempts to shoot her with it!
The same with Bladerunner: no matter what Deckard did, all the replicants were going to die anyway, apart from Rachel, who was saved by Gaff. All the human characters Deckard could have saved also ended up dead so all he actually accomplished was to get beaten up a lot.
That's not a plot hole though, is it? You're simply describing elements of the plot.
That's not a plot hole. That's just realism/logic issues. A plot hole is something that happens within a film that contradicts the established rules of the narrative.
Exactly. Like Clooney's character trying to get Bullock's character to conserve what little oxygen she has left by constantly asking her questions. Not talking to her, which would have made sense, but forcing her to use ever more oxygen to answer his inane questions.
Not a plot hole as such, but it always bothered me that in Titanic, Paxton's character and his crew are portrayed as profit motivated plunderers searching the wreck for treasure, yet they happily spend an eternity listening to a silly old bat tell her life story that has eff all to do with what they're there to do, as if every hour spent on the mission isn't costing them tens of thousands of dollars ! Why, at no point, does the fat guy go "Yeah, this is a real sweet story Grandma, but where the f*cks the diamond!!"
Well, it does make the whole movie (which I love, incidentally) pointless.
Does it being pointless make it a lesser movie? It doesn't make points, it asks questions. What is existence? Is there a point to it? And if there is no point to existence, does it make it a lesser experience?...which takes us back to the initial question.
Well, it does make the whole movie (which I love, incidentally) pointless.
Frankly, I'm staggered!:o
Bladerunner is about what it means to be human, it's a meditation on human existence; it explores the meaning of life, our fear of death, our responsibilities to each other.
Bladerunner is about what it means to be human, it's a meditation on human existence; it explores the meaning of life, our fear of death, our responsibilities to each other.
And you think it's POINTLESS???:D
I meant the plot (what there is of it) is ultimately pointless in that no one really achieves anything: the events would have happened. i.e. almost everyone dies) without Deckard's involvement, as with Raiders.
No one, including me, ever watched Bladerunner for the plot; it's everything else which makes it a masterpiece.
- Why would breeding dinosaurs be a problem? Why not just cull them when their numbers got too large?
- Why didn't every enclosure have an independent backup generator?
- Why would the helipad and docks be so far away from the visitors centre, thus making escape virtually impossible in a crisis?
- Why wouldn't InGen have a private heavily armed security force present on the island as a backup in case any of the animals escaped?
- Why is Hammond's claim that all the problems of Jurassic Park are correctable so quickly dismissed when fundamentally he's right?
- Why are the InGen team in The Lost World considered villains, considering that their plan for a mainland based Jurassic Park with smaller, more managable enclosures was far more logical than the original idea of having the park on a distant island in a hurricane prone part of the world?
- Why is Hammond's team in The Lost World considered heroic when practically every death in the film is caused by them?
- If no one knows that Isla Sorna exists in Jurassic Park III, why is the paragliding company at the start of the film called "Dyna-Soar"? Seems like an incredible coincidence.
- Why does Tea Leoni think it's a good idea to scream constantly and run into the jungle on an island filled with lethal predators, to such an extent that even the other characters IN THE FILM point out her stupidity?
Surprised no one has mentioned Skyfall. Not just one of the most commercially successful Bonds of recent years plus one of the most critically acclaimed, despite the fact it is riddled with plotholes that completely ruined it for me.
Loads to mention, incuding:
Baddie blows up MI5 so they have to go to back up digs because he knew he was going to be caught and so could escape !
The baddie could, by his own admission, have taken out M at any time but instead decides to take her in in the middle of court !
The said court, containing the head of the secret service, seems to have very little security.
Finally after a 10 minute chase through London, including in and out of tubes etc the very moment Bond has him, the baddie sets off a bomb. How the hell did he manage to pre-plan to put a bomb there !! He certainly did not have time or equipment to set it up himself whilst being chased. On top of which he plans it so bomb goes off just as a tube train arrives - mysteriously empty of passengers !!
Surprised no one has mentioned Skyfall. Not just one of the most commercially successful Bonds of recent years plus one of the most critically acclaimed, despite the fact it is riddled with plotholes that completely ruined it for me.
Loads to mention, incuding:
Baddie blows up MI5 so they have to go to back up digs because he knew he was going to be caught and so could escape !
The baddie could, by his own admission, have taken out M at any time but instead decides to take her in in the middle of court !
The said court, containing the head of the secret service, seems to have very little security.
Finally after a 10 minute chase through London, including in and out of tubes etc the very moment Bond has him, the baddie sets off a bomb. How the hell did he manage to pre-plan to put a bomb there !! He certainly did not have time or equipment to set it up himself whilst being chased. On top of which he plans it so bomb goes off just as a tube train arrives - mysteriously empty of passengers !!
Completely ruined the film for me.
Agreed
Every part of Skyfall is what's called "Xanatos Gambit" where the villain has planned for every single minute detail in the film, including random occurances and actions that he cannot possibly anticipate. The Nolan Batman movies also follow this pattern, most absurdly in The Dark Knight. It seems to be a growing trend among movies where the villain has accounted for absolutely everything, minus some dumb contrived detail at the end of the film which allows the hero to improbably win the day.
It's not a plot hole but it ruined the film for me.
Hellboy 2, it's revealed early on that when one of the twin elf people suffers an injury the other suffered it too meant I immediately knew how the story would be resolved. I also couldn't work out why twin elf lady didn't simply threaten to kill herself if Luke Goss didn't just stop being evil. Could have saved everyone a lot of bother.
In final destination 3, there is a crash on a rollercoaster caused by someone dropping thier camera into the wheels of the rollercoaster. However this happens as a premonittion first, and the guy who drops the camera and a few others are taken off the coaster. it still crashes
- Why do the vampires even bother going to school? They could all easily pass for adults, and surely going to school everyday would increase the chance of being exposed as non-human.
- Why does no one else notice that the Cullens have shining yellow eyes?
- If the Cullens go to school on an overcast day, and it gets sunny later, do they just run out of the school? Wouldn't their teachers be suspicious at such behaviour? Same applies to Carlisle Cullen, who apparently maintains a medical career only on days when it's cloudy. Wouldn't all the Cullens be under suspicion for being absent from school and work so often?
- How does Jasper manage to control his vampiric urges despite attending a school filled with menstruating girls?
- How did Edward Cullen's sperm survive 100 years in his testicles? Did his sperm turn into vampires too?
- How come the wolf boys not arouse suspicion when they walk around in the cold Pacific Northwest wearing no shirts?
- Why didn't the Cullens simply kill the red-eyed vampires on the baseball field? They outnumbered them nearly 3 to 1.
The one in that film where they all had to go underground and she as newspreader and she got picked but there was a small boy who I think was elijah wood
The one in that film where they all had to go underground and she as newspreader and she got picked but there was a small boy who I think was elijah wood
Biggest ones in Gravity are the two unused spacecraft at the ISS and the Chinese space station.
There are no spare spaceships in space, astronauts have to go up and come back in one. All they do is swap over so the ones docked for emergency use are 'fresh' but there are no spare ones.
Originally NASA were going to have a proper lifeboat up on the ISS that would bring everyone back to earth. It got canned.
Were they "unused spares", or was it just that the crew had already died before being able to use them to return to Earth?
Plus the one at the ISS had been used, just not successfully. I'd assume the crew that survived all crammed into the one that managed to leave.
There are bigger things than that to be picky about, such as how the orbits of the ISS and HST would mean they couldn't have gone from one to the other as they did in the film. Or you could nitpick the fact that the Shuttle was actually retired in 2011, a few years before Gravity was set.
Comments
In this version, the root of Krypton's destruction was genetic engineering which removed free will and choice. It's also the the reason why Jor-El and Lara never go with Clark to Earth because they said they were products of the failures of their world as much as Zod was. So why, then, does Jor-El install the codex in Clark's body to have those genetically engineered Kryptonians co-exist with humans on Earth? That's what landed them in this mess in the first place!
The other thing that is missed is that Indiana Jones' quests ultimately all fail, in that whatever "McGuffin" it is he is looking for, he loses possession of at the end, but...gains something more valuable instead. It's deliberate.
e.g. The museum doesn't get to keep the Ark as intended, but he finds Marion again. He doesn't get the Sankara Stones, but he manages to return the one that saves the village and the children. He doesn't get to keep the Grail, but reconciles with his estranged father.
There are no spare spaceships in space, astronauts have to go up and come back in one. All they do is swap over so the ones docked for emergency use are 'fresh' but there are no spare ones.
Originally NASA were going to have a proper lifeboat up on the ISS that would bring everyone back to earth. It got canned.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/ISS_Crew_Return_Vehicle.jpg
That's not a plot hole. That's just realism/logic issues. A plot hole is something that happens within a film that contradicts the established rules of the narrative.
I know The United Federation of Planets sounds all posh, but they might not be made of money, y'hear?
This isn't so much a plot hole as a design hole:
Watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2003 remake (and it's not without its merits, btw), there's a scene, IIRC, wherein Leatherface runs amok in the large basement of the house. The grungy, dank surroundings are artfully backlit by some fierce dusty white light. All very pretty, but it's impossible to figure out the origin of this light. Expressive production flourishes I do enjoy. But this was a touch perplexing. It probably doesn't matter.
Then there's our old favourite King Kong. The Kong island natives are so concerned with keeping Kong out they build a giant wall - which thoughtfully includes a door big enough to let him through.
It's indeed a ridiculous premise.
Even so, it's the same with Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and similar stories, either you accept the rules of each premise's universe or you don't. Obviously, with The Purge, you and I don't.
I do think The Purge offers an interesting idea because it reflects some aspects of our society, such as a typical legal system where poor people are more likely to be convicted than rich people, due to the affordability of hiring the best. In The Purge, rich people are more likely to survive the night than those who couldn't afford the best security system possible. In other words, it's the night the 'undesirables' will be culled. It's a sanctioned act of amorality, imo.
So I was sorry to see that the story didn't go down a route of, say, the poor turning tables on the rich to prove the purge is elitist, selfish and amoral, or just simply doesn't work. Instead it's executed just as a standard home invasion film. Boring.
Not really a plot hole...one could say that the battle went on for hours.
However, there is one logic flaw - why didn't they just use the cure on Jean? At one point Wolverine even gives her a head's up as the army attempts to shoot her with it!
That's not a plot hole though, is it? You're simply describing elements of the plot.
Well, it does make the whole movie (which I love, incidentally) pointless.
Not a plot hole as such, but it always bothered me that in Titanic, Paxton's character and his crew are portrayed as profit motivated plunderers searching the wreck for treasure, yet they happily spend an eternity listening to a silly old bat tell her life story that has eff all to do with what they're there to do, as if every hour spent on the mission isn't costing them tens of thousands of dollars ! Why, at no point, does the fat guy go "Yeah, this is a real sweet story Grandma, but where the f*cks the diamond!!"
Does it being pointless make it a lesser movie? It doesn't make points, it asks questions. What is existence? Is there a point to it? And if there is no point to existence, does it make it a lesser experience?...which takes us back to the initial question.
Frankly, I'm staggered!:o
Bladerunner is about what it means to be human, it's a meditation on human existence; it explores the meaning of life, our fear of death, our responsibilities to each other.
And you think it's POINTLESS???
I meant the plot (what there is of it) is ultimately pointless in that no one really achieves anything: the events would have happened. i.e. almost everyone dies) without Deckard's involvement, as with Raiders.
No one, including me, ever watched Bladerunner for the plot; it's everything else which makes it a masterpiece.
- Why would breeding dinosaurs be a problem? Why not just cull them when their numbers got too large?
- Why didn't every enclosure have an independent backup generator?
- Why would the helipad and docks be so far away from the visitors centre, thus making escape virtually impossible in a crisis?
- Why wouldn't InGen have a private heavily armed security force present on the island as a backup in case any of the animals escaped?
- Why is Hammond's claim that all the problems of Jurassic Park are correctable so quickly dismissed when fundamentally he's right?
- Why are the InGen team in The Lost World considered villains, considering that their plan for a mainland based Jurassic Park with smaller, more managable enclosures was far more logical than the original idea of having the park on a distant island in a hurricane prone part of the world?
- Why is Hammond's team in The Lost World considered heroic when practically every death in the film is caused by them?
- If no one knows that Isla Sorna exists in Jurassic Park III, why is the paragliding company at the start of the film called "Dyna-Soar"? Seems like an incredible coincidence.
- Why does Tea Leoni think it's a good idea to scream constantly and run into the jungle on an island filled with lethal predators, to such an extent that even the other characters IN THE FILM point out her stupidity?
Loads to mention, incuding:
Baddie blows up MI5 so they have to go to back up digs because he knew he was going to be caught and so could escape !
The baddie could, by his own admission, have taken out M at any time but instead decides to take her in in the middle of court !
The said court, containing the head of the secret service, seems to have very little security.
Finally after a 10 minute chase through London, including in and out of tubes etc the very moment Bond has him, the baddie sets off a bomb. How the hell did he manage to pre-plan to put a bomb there !! He certainly did not have time or equipment to set it up himself whilst being chased. On top of which he plans it so bomb goes off just as a tube train arrives - mysteriously empty of passengers !!
Completely ruined the film for me.
Agreed
Every part of Skyfall is what's called "Xanatos Gambit" where the villain has planned for every single minute detail in the film, including random occurances and actions that he cannot possibly anticipate. The Nolan Batman movies also follow this pattern, most absurdly in The Dark Knight. It seems to be a growing trend among movies where the villain has accounted for absolutely everything, minus some dumb contrived detail at the end of the film which allows the hero to improbably win the day.
Hellboy 2, it's revealed early on that when one of the twin elf people suffers an injury the other suffered it too meant I immediately knew how the story would be resolved. I also couldn't work out why twin elf lady didn't simply threaten to kill herself if Luke Goss didn't just stop being evil. Could have saved everyone a lot of bother.
- Why do the vampires even bother going to school? They could all easily pass for adults, and surely going to school everyday would increase the chance of being exposed as non-human.
- Why does no one else notice that the Cullens have shining yellow eyes?
- If the Cullens go to school on an overcast day, and it gets sunny later, do they just run out of the school? Wouldn't their teachers be suspicious at such behaviour? Same applies to Carlisle Cullen, who apparently maintains a medical career only on days when it's cloudy. Wouldn't all the Cullens be under suspicion for being absent from school and work so often?
- How does Jasper manage to control his vampiric urges despite attending a school filled with menstruating girls?
- How did Edward Cullen's sperm survive 100 years in his testicles? Did his sperm turn into vampires too?
- How come the wolf boys not arouse suspicion when they walk around in the cold Pacific Northwest wearing no shirts?
- Why didn't the Cullens simply kill the red-eyed vampires on the baseball field? They outnumbered them nearly 3 to 1.
is this 'iphone-speak' ?
Were they "unused spares", or was it just that the crew had already died before being able to use them to return to Earth?
Plus the one at the ISS had been used, just not successfully. I'd assume the crew that survived all crammed into the one that managed to leave.
There are bigger things than that to be picky about, such as how the orbits of the ISS and HST would mean they couldn't have gone from one to the other as they did in the film. Or you could nitpick the fact that the Shuttle was actually retired in 2011, a few years before Gravity was set.