Plotholes Thread - Page 5

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance: Ryu takes a Polaroid of the girl, then gives her the necklace. But she's already wearing it in the photo. I wouldn't care, except that it kind of matters later when her father sees the necklace, then sees it in the photo, and makes a connection from that. I don't remember exactly how crucial it was in helping him figure out what happened, but I remember being very annoyed.

Um, a few years ago maybe.

Batty does spare his life, but he already has one and a half feet in the grave before that happens.

Flesh and blood? There must be some mechanics involved. The replicants perform several feats that are not possible for humans, even strong ones.

A major plothole (maybe) that has bothered me was George Romero's Dead Trilogy. If all movies are taking place in the same universe,with Tom Savini's character showing up zombified on Land of the Dead, wouldn't technology have stopped advancing? With the world becoming all fucked up and all. Also, with so many years dealing with the undead, wouldn't everybody (army and so forth) have been dressed in better protective gear to avoid getting bitten by the undead?

This isn't a plothole, it's Romero's style of film-making. He's always said that the four films aren't linear A-to-B-to-C-to-D sequels, and that the zombie plague is the branching-off point for each particular story he wanted to tell. That's why there's never been any connective tissue between each film aside from the zombies themelves.

Besides, Zombie-Savini could just as easily be the resurrected flesh of Sex Machine from FROM DUSK 'TIL DAWN.

Inside Man (SPOILERS highlight to read)

Not so much a plothole but more illogical plot devices that bothered me somewhat.

-Why spend hours digging a hole in the concrete to use as a toilet, when he might as well could have used the sealed empty paint cans that they brought with them?

- I would say it´s a bit risky to shorten a room by 5 feet and then just hoping that no one would notice. The janitor would see it immediately.

- What kind of stupid man would keep his darkest secrets in an envelope covered with swastika in a bank vault? Why even keep them in the first place?

other than that I loved this movie.

For your third comment, I thought the same thing. Just burn it and be done with it.

The replicants were genetically engineered to serve whatever purpose their creators saw fit. Hence Batty has geater strength than a normal human because he was designed for manual labour in off-world conditions.

Pris' extraordinary athletic abililities were presumably to serve her status as a 'pleasure model'.

Rachel was the ultimate in human replicant reproduction. The whole point of the Voight Kamph test was that it was virtually impossible to tell replicants apart from humans, and it took Deckard far longer to detect her than the simpler Nexus Six models.

The technology of the replicants isn't explicit, but the movie makes it pretty clear that they are synthetic organic, not mechanical.

Yet Batty smashes his head right through a wall with no ill effects, which probably isn't possible for a purely organic being. They must at least be some sort of bio-mechanical hybrid. I haven't read it in a while, but the novel's title, er, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (I think), seems to imply a mechanical aspect.

Or... why doesn't Picard stop Soran (McDowell) on the starbase (an hour earlier in the film) before they ever get to the planet's surface?

Loomis knew that Michael Myers is a dangerous man and did everything to keep him locked up.There´s no need for anyone to teach him how to drive.

Sorry Charlie (har-har) but that doesn't cut it for me. I know they establish that Jean blocks Nightcrawler, that's part of the plot hole. Is Jean too stupid to realize the others could help or is she just suicidal? It's not the ocean, it's a lake. I figured at the time "well, Iceman isn't experienced enough to freeze a wall big enough to block all that" but the more I thought about it the less sense it makes. In the same movie we've established that Storm is able to create multiple cylcones, that's plural. Shitload of wind in those from what I understand. No way, within the rules of the movie, that she wouldn't be able to summon a stiff enough breeze to help jean hold the water back long enough for Nightcrawler to get Jean out. For fuck's sake, they didn't even try. "Too bad Jean had to die, bummer." Hence, plot hole.

I think she's suicidal. The film establishes that she knows that there's something wrong with her, and in the end she's just doing what she feels is the right thing to do. Plus, they don't just have to stop the water; they have to power up the X-jet as well - which she apparently wasn't able to do while inside the jet. It may be fuzzy logic, but it doesn't break any of the rules set up within the film.

Just seeing Thank you for Smoking, I can't help but think Rob Lowe here:

Jeff Megall: Sony has a futuristic sci-fi movie they're looking to make.
Nick Naylor: Cigarettes in space?
Jeff Megall: It's the final frontier, Nick.
Nick Naylor: But wouldn't they blow up in an all oxygen environment?
Jeff Megall: Probably. But it's an easy fix. One line of dialogue. 'Thank God we invented the...you know, whatever device.'

I'm not sure if we're talking TV here, but there are tons of plot holes in Buffy. Vampires don't have breath, but Spike chokes out Dru in one episode. Though I suppose when you're dealing with Vampires and Zombies you're taking a lot on faith as it is.

Batty is reaching the end of his life, and is no longer feeling pain (as demonstrated by the part where he pushes the nail through his hand). Why could it not be possible to bio-engineer stronger humans? Gorillas are stronger than us, and they are not robots.

As for 'Do Androids', the replicants (I think they call them Andys) are entireley organic there, too. The title is ironic.

Well, if I may drag this thread even further off-topic, neither the term 'android' nor 'robot' explicitly describes a machine. Something is 'android' if it is somehow like a man, and the word 'robot' was coined from the Czech word for worker.

As for 'electric sheep', you're on your own...

Batty pushes it through his hand to feel the pain and to help losen it up (it was seizing closed).

This is more lazy writing than a plot hole, but I'll mention it anyway. In A.I., if stuff getting down inside the androids fucks up their system, why is it necessary to have a hole in the throat that would allow stuff to get inside?

I always took it that he knew he was winding down, and was testing his responses.

If they were in any way mechanical, you wouldn't need the Q&A test to detect them. No, they're basically indistinguishable from humans, Cylon-style.

In the beginning of the movie, her powers are acting up during the trip to the museum, and it causes the electrical interference with the monitors on the wall behind her. Her powers are steadily rising throughout the movie, and I guess they hit the "point of no return" during her struggle with Cyclops. Therefore, they couldn't power up the jet and take off with her in it - she was the cause of the power problems they were having.

I wouldn't call her suicidal, but she was doing what she felt was right, and making the ultimate sacrifice for her friends. The jet couldn't take off with her in it, and no one else could stop the oncoming water (I don't care how powerful Storm is, conjuring up a powerful enough wind to push back the force of all that water and not damage the jet at the same time is just not reasonable - it's like saying "Why didn't Storm just use her powers to lift the jet up and glide it to safety?").

Getting off topic for a bit, I'm wondering if the crew working on X-Men 3 were smart enough to make the connection between Jean's increase in power, and the events of the first movie on Liberty Island. If you watch the first movie again, Jean is most definitely affected by Magneto's machine. Then, it's subtly reference again in the beginning of the second movie by Cyclops. I think Singer and crew fully intended for Jean's second mutation to be the result of Magneto's machine.

edit: I'd also like to thank the dude who corrected me on the first page about the baby T-Rex in The Lost World. I'd totally forgotten that the baby was flown in seperately. It makes that whole plot hole that much worse.

But a gorilla would have at least a concussion if not some sort of spinal injury if he drove his head through a wall. Also gorillas are notoriously lousy chess players, so the scene with Tyrell wouldn't work.


Your honor, I object!
Judge: Why?
Because it's devastating to my case!
Judge: Overruled.
Good call!


Maybe they're built with super-strong plastic?

Wasnt the building very old and falling apart.

You're on a sinking boat, Desslar. It's pretty obvious from everything in the film that replicants are biological, and are, in every important way, indistinguishable from humans. They are machines only in the same way that the human body is a machine. No plastic, no metal, no wires.

By the way, the word "android" comes from the root "andros", which I believe is Greek for "man". Therefore, an android is simply something similar to a man.

But this ship can't sink!

Not obvious, but I think we've probably kicked this one around enough. On to the next debate.

Hmm... in War of the Worlds, how can a race as scientifically advanced as the aliens fail to account for the possibility of harmful elements in the atmosphere?

I think someone else pointed this out above, but that question becomes even more of an obstacle in Spielberg's movie than in Wells' book when it's shown that they've been here before. I think that little revision was a mistake.

Ah, OK. Flightplan then. How the heck is it that no one saw Foster's daughter?

And what was with the guys staring at Jodie Foster through the window in the beginning of the movie?

Clearly just a red herring to through us off the real culprits, but it was still never explained.

What a terrible movie.

Re: the LOTR thing. I guess I just thought that all the men with black cloths over their faces fighting for Sauron were the same people. You're right about the metal armor, though, and there are two distinct names in the books, so I guess you're right.

I never caught that about Jean's "second mutation" being caused by Magneto's machine. That is such a cool way to introduce the Dark Phoenix thing into the relatively grounded world of the films. It's too bad stupid Bryan Singer had to jump ship from such a promising franchise to make a movie about the least interesting superhero there is. (grumble grumble)...fuckin' Ratner...(grumble)

That was briefly explained in the commentary, but, er, I don't recall exactly what was said. Something like the neighbors were watching because they knew about her husband's suicide and were concerned.

I can almost buy that no one saw her since they were the first ones on the plane. However, I don't think I can buy that no one saw the luggage being taken out of the compartment.

Dirty Dancing -- okay, aside from the fact that the final song sounds nothing like a song from the time period (they show needle hitting record, so it's supposed to be something they'd be able to hear back then), I have a hard time buying Jerry Orbach accepting the fact that his barely legal daughter got nailed by Patrick Swayze simply because he turned her into a heck of a dancer.

I've got to disagree with you here, Flightplan was a great flick. For me the biggest plothole was how were the culprits able to kidnap Julia at all?. When I finally bought the movie I was surprised to hear the main culprit explain in brief how it was done - I can't believe I didn't notice it the first time.

Wrong. Flightplan starts of well and all but then it veers into dreck territory. Especially the shot near the end of her walking out from a plane that just exploded.

Oh come on. Let's see, stay with a franchise where you've been given a small budget (for a summer blockbuster), virtually no time and help, and you've been ridden by the studio, or go to a studio where they're willing to give time and money to you to make a sequel to two of the best superhero movies ever?

Not a hard decision.

Stargate. The air force hires Dr. Jackson because apparently they don't know just what the hell the Stargate is or what it does, yet when they actually show the gate to Jackson they clearly knew that it: a. was a transportation device of some sort b. required seven symbols to activate, and c. knew what the first six symbols were. Why, exactly, did they need Jackson again? They could have just tried punching in all the remaining symbols until they found the right one, or, since they must have known that the symbols were constellations, punched in the one symbol that didn't match any constellation.
Also, when he saw the kid drawing on the wall, how did he know that the three moons connected was the right symbol for the planet they were on?

I know Singer had his reasons, I just happen to think the X-men are infinitely more interesting than I-Can-Do-Absolutely-AnythingMan.

I thought about War of the Worlds, and something occured to me. The martians knew all about germs and disease, etc., and took all the necessary precautions when they came to bury the tripods. Cut to, what? At least 100 years later, right? And in the last 100 years, germs have drastically changed due to the advent of antibiotics and other medical innovations. So the martians come back, thinking their old innoculations or whatever will still protect them, only to find that the germs are radically different from what they previously encountered. Then they die. Plot hole closed.

If you have to close their plot hole for them, they still didn't do their jobs. Therefore, plot hole not closed.

This thread is about plot holes. Plot holes are problems with a movie. Sometimes, a bit of conjecture on the viewer's part can make them go away. I thought that's what this thread was about. If the WOTW had made what I said clear, or even suggested it in any meaningful way, I would've said it wasn't a plot hole. But it was one, which is why I said it was closed. I don't even like WOTW very much, I was just throwing out an explanation that isn't contradicted by anything in the movie.

Not to jump off track, but just to respond: I believe Spike uses a sleeper hold to knock Dru out. The purpose of a sleeper isn't necessarily to cut off a victim's air supply. It can also be applied to pinch off blood flow into the brain. I always assumed, since vampires don't breath, that Spike was cutting off Dru's bloodflow, thus knocking her the fuck out.

Re: X-2. One of the above posts mentions that the jet is malfunctioning because of Jean's off-kilter powers. I haven't seen it in a while, but I thought it was Rogue's rough landing that knocked something (stabilizers?) off line.

Another addition: I've always found the climax of The Exorcist to be somewhat of a plothole... something you guys might be able to clear up. Father Karas flips out and starts to choke Regan, forcing Captain Howdy to leap into him. With what little self-control he has left, he then throws himself down the steps, killing himself with Captain Howdy inside of him. BUT, it's the freakin' devil, what's to stop it from jumping right back into Regan?

It's not the devil, it's a demon called Pazuzu. When he dies, he kills the demon inside. It's also a metaphoric ending for faith destroying evil.

Carras doesn't die. He's alive and he's a priest and, for Pazuzu, a prize. Pazuzu is happy to stay in him, tormenting him. Carras tried to commit suicide. He failed.

Also, it's not a disease. It's not communicable like that.

Of course he dies. Why doesn't he die?

You see his hand moving at the end. he's not dead. I always read it as a very Catholic, unending-torment, sort of ending.

Plus he's in Exorcist 3.

I haven't seen EXORCIST III, so I call bullshit on the sequel, but that brings up an interesting question:

Does sequel continuity really count where sequels (NOT part of trilogies) are made? For instance, the way HALLOWEEN II made Laurie Michael's sister, and then Part VI made him part of some druid cult. The same way JAWS, THE REVENGE unceremoniously killed off Chief Brody. Etc, etc.

At least Exorcist 3 was made by Blatty. Is he dead yet? Can someone ask him if he meant it all along or just did it for the money. While you're at it, ask Harris about Hannibal.

Speaking of Halloween... plothole in HALLOWEEN : H20 :

Jamie Lee Curtis' character is seen driving a truck, when she is CLEARLY a woman. WTF?!

That nearly made me do a spit-take with my coffee... good stuff.

Blatty is still breathing. Exorcist 3 was originally based on his novel Legion which really had nothing to do with "The Exorcist." It was a separate event that dealt with the Biblical evil known as, well, Legion. He approached the studio to get it made and they basically forced him insert the Father Karras character into it and rename it Exorcist 3.

Harris has gone on record often stating that he doesn't care for any of the movie adaptions of his novels. That still does not excuse him for the bloated, overly verbose crap that "Hannibal."

I have to second the Empire mention. That's one thing that's always bothered me - how long of a time period is covered in this movie? It's possible it may have been a few weeks considering that the Falcon's hyperdrive was off, so that would have given Luke weeks to learn how to be a Jedi.

But in the movie, it looks like a couple of days at most. And if that's so, how was he able to hold his own against Vader? Either Vader was told to go easy on him, or he decided to go easy on him himself. He should have been able to slaughter him without too much of a hassle.

It's a month or two at least.