5 Gaping Plot Holes Hollywood Knows You Won't Notice
#2.
Hey, Just The ___ I Was Looking For!
Hoosiers wouldn't have been as good if Gene Hackman had, say, simply overheard the opposing coaches game plan before every game. But Hollywood repeatedly gambles enormous blockbuster budgets that we'll want to watch someone trip dick first into the exact thing they were looking for.
Notable Offenders
Harry Potter is supposed to be some sort of predestined messiah wizard, but his greatest survival skill is bumbling around in the dark and accidentally overhearing information that will come in handy later on. And if he and his friends are attacked by a monster, you can be sure they learned its weaknesses in class last week.
"Check it out guys, more apparently useless trivia we should memorize."
Probably the best example comes in Goblet of Fire, when Harry Slumdog Millionaire's his way through a challenge that's billed as the ultimate test of his wizardry skills. Yet, every challenge he faces is based on something he or some other character learned at some point in the film. While this isn't exactly a logical flaw, it's certainly a trick. They tell you you're going to see a movie about the best wizard ever, when in actuality you're going to see some kid remember shit that was conveniently explained to him last week.
The hugely successful Bond reboot Casino Royale was guilty of the same lottery switcheroo. James Bond has to bankrupt a villain by beating him in a game of Texas Hold 'Em (apparently the game of choice for sophisticated British gentlemen.) In the final showdown, the two superfluous characters have a flush and a full house, the bad guy has a better full house and looks confident in his win. But then Bond is dealt a straight flush, the absolute perfect hand at that moment.
For those not familiar with poker, the odds of all that happening in one hand are pretty damn low, one in 158,551,976 to be precise. It's supposed to show us what a suave badass we're dealing with, but if the film had a stray bolt of lightning come through the casino walls and strike the villain dead, it would have been just as unlikely, and required as much secret agent-ing as Bond's once in a lifetime hand. Why not have him gamble on a terrible hand and still pull out the win? Better yet, have him lose the last hand but then shoot the bad guy in the face before uttering some sort of gambling related quip.
"I see your pair and raise you... three bullets in your face."
Star Wars: Attack of the Clones is another film that equates spying with Brad Pitt-winning-the-lottery good luck. Obi-Wan is crawling around through some caverns, and overhears a couple of the villains talking about exactly what he needed to find out. While it's true that Obi-Wan is actively trying to get info instead of wandering around (like some sort of a wizard) the bad guys are telling each other things they should logically already know. Actually, that brings us to ...
#1.
Peekaboo Logic 2: Make Everyone Retarded/Insane/Plot Forwarding Robots Boogaloo
Attentive readers will notice a subtler form of the peekaboo logic at work in the Obi-Wan example. There's no logical chain of events that could possibly have lead to the behavior exhibited by the men who give Obi-Wan the information he's after. This is probably the logical blind spot that Hollywood is best at exploiting, and it's not just armed guards having convenient conversations while our hero eavesdrops. The plot forwarding robots are sometimes the greatest characters in some of the most successful movies ever made, and sometimes it's, well, everyone in the movie ...
Notable Offenders
Entering Ghostbusters II, the last time we saw the only people to have ever battled the paranormal in the history of the world, they had just saved Manhattan from a giant cartoon made out of marshmallow. They did this, it should be noted, in the middle of Manhattan. It must have been a giant media spectacle, with all four of the Busters being hailed as heroes.
Yet, at the beginning of the sequel, we find Dan Akroyd and Ernie Hudson working as birthday clowns to make ends meet. That's quite a fall for the only people to have ever saved the world from the undead forces of darkness. The only explanation we get are random accusations that they staged the crisis they saved New York from. The one with a giant man made out of marshmallow walking down the street in front of TV cameras and millions of stunned eye-witnesses. But because their fall from grace happens off-screen, it doesn't have to make sense.
Some off-screen moments aren't worth exploring.
The same can be said for the behavior exhibited by some of the most iconic characters of all time. At the end of Halloween, we never stop to wonder why Michael Myers took the time to carefully spring load every closet in the house like a corpse-filled can of snakes. At the end of Usual Suspects, we never stop to wonder why the most powerful criminal in the world--a man who people are willing to pay millions of dollars to have described to them--drops dozens of potentially incriminating clues while waiting to post bail on a relatively minor weapons charge.
And not to pick on the Die Hard terrorists, but their Plan A is "bust into a company's holiday party, ask for the boss to identify himself (since you haven't bothered to research what he looks like), threaten him into giving you the code and shoot him if he doesn't comply." When that plan somehow goes awry, they're forced to go to Plan B, "Buy our computer guy enough time to hack into the vault." It's worth pointing out that they'd have all the time in the world if they hadn't just pretended to stage a terror attack on an office Christmas Party.
But rather than formulate a set of circumstances that would logically require the crew of indiscriminately accented Europeans to take over a Christmas party, the writers said fuck it, nobody's gonna notice. And the reason we keep bringing up Die Hard is, they were right. We've watched that movie hundreds of times, and never realized how baffling the terror plot was because they never showed them hatching the plot. When we first saw Usual Suspects, we had to pick our jaw up off the floor, and use it to scoop our brains back into our heads. And it's not just us. The members of the Academy watch movies for a living, and they gave The Usual Suspects the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
So apparently, the quality of a movie has nothing to do with how smart it is. The only thing that really matters is whether it's the right kind of stupid.
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For more plot devices Hollywood loves to use, check out 6 Baffling Mistakes Every Movie Criminal Makes6 Baffling Mistakes Every Movie Criminal Makes. Or check out Hollywood insanity as it looks in real life, in 5 Real Bank Heists Ripped Right Out of the Movies.
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Regarding #5, I just assumed that the protagonists were too preoccupied to notice the pitter-patter of approaching T-Rex feet.
ReplyAs for #2, I've always been irritated by the notion that a good poker player is good because he gets good hands. If one player gets four of a kind, the better player will have a straight flush. It's just poor writing in my opinion.
and Scotty also happened to be stationed on not-Hoth
ReplyUsual Suspects- criminals were paying all that money for more than just his description. The snitch was a guy who had intimate knowledge of all of Soze's business affairs. He was Soze's Tom Hagen. Once that guy's dead, it doesn't matter who knows what Soze might look like, because they can barely prove that Soze even exists.
ReplyOkay, Attack of the Clones has issues (primarily concerning why the Jedi weren't overly suspicious of an army cloned from the guy who seems to be the personal body guard of the Sepratist leader), but that wasn't one of them. They were discussing the merits of what they already knew; negotiating and renegotiating a topic they had been discussing for probably years. Remember that everyone at that table was either a politician or a businessman. (I think Nute Gunray was both.) Re-establishing deals is what people like that do all day.
ReplyTo be fair to Die Hard, they did explain the whole terrorist thing pretty well in at least the first 3 movies. In order to get through the last lock, they needed the power to be shut down to the entire building in order for it to disengage, they needed the cops to do that...it was part of their plan. They probably could have found a way to shut it down themselves, but that would have also been act of terrorism. But the plan was to also make it look like botched terrorist attack where they think the terrorists blew themselves. I'm sure I'm paraphrasing when, but Hans says something to the extent of "when steal a million dollars, you can disappear...but when you steal a billion dollars, they WILL find you, unless they think you're dead." So the terrorism was to cover their robbery AND to fake their own deaths.
ReplyIt was also a convenient cover in With a Vengeance. McClane didn't just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was a part of the entire plan, it was made to look like the whole thing was to make his life a living hell. But like in the first movie, the terrorist plot was made to cover up a robbery and was completely necessary to get people away from the true crime scene. What better way to do that than to make the cops think you're gonna blow up 2000 kids? And in the process shut down the communications of the police department (granted, making a bomb that responds to police frequencies is unrealistic, but what isn't unrealistic is that terrorist could just be listening in on police frequencies at that he'd blow the bomb if you use them.)
My only problem with the whole blowing up the gold was that it's ridiculous to think that would really do anything constructive. Goldfinger had a similar plot...setting of a nuclear bomb at Fort Knox. The theory being that it will make the rest of the gold in the world more valuable. The difference is that the gold in Fort Knox was gonna irradiated and therefor unusable. The gold at the bottom of Long Island Sound would still be usable, pretty expensive and a pain in the ass to retrieve, but ti wouldn't lose it's value. Which makes it all the more easy to figure out that it's just a ruse. So, the "I know the man, I know the family" excuse isn't as bad when you translate to say that this guy isn't that stupid. It's so much that the behavior is hereditary, it's that it's a smart plan that, as was Hans' but John has seen a ruse like that before so you can sniff it out.
alternate title: "5 Things That You Can Point Out That Will Suck the Fun Out of Every Movie"
Reply"In fact, by the fourth film, when a shark eats Sean Brody in Amity Harbor and then follows Sheriff Brody's wife to the Bahamas" - Actually.. if you watch the movie, the shark gets there before her, its swimming in the water when her plane lands. How the f**k does it know where shes going??
ReplyIn other news, in the original Scooby-doo series, the culprit was always the first person they met.
ReplyBut noone's gonna read that comment in April 2012. My secret is safe.
Sorry, im a darn kid. You wont get away with it.
"And if he and his friends are attacked by a monster, you can be sure they learned its weaknesses in class last week."
ReplyI don't know how many times I learned about something just to be faced with a situation that required that knowledge shortly thereafter.
Wait a minute... I'm in a f*****g movie! It's the only logical explanation!
The book Casino Royale makes more sense, as they're playing Baccarat, rather than Texas Hold 'Em, because...well...they're not in Texas, and the book was released the same year Texas Hold 'Em was introduced to Las Vegas, where Bond also wasn't. I guess they changed the game for the movie because many people would be sitting there scratching their heads saying "what's this Baccarat stuff?"
ReplyOf course, the movie takes place in a time where you can watch people from many different countries playing Texas Hold 'Em on several (US) national cable channels so maybe it's not so far-fetched that there would be a villain who is skilled at the game and a good variety of operatives with a fair amount of skill as well.
I'm sure nobody cares but Jason can be seen running in Friday the 13th parts 2-4.
ReplyI was mildly interested ;)
If you enjoy these articles, try tvtropes.org... I have opened a record of 30 tabs at once. It's a very good site that explains all the various shortcuts and story-telling techniques writers use, the good and bad.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesWell, the users of the site explain it, or try to anyway. Though, for a wiki, it has some of its worst edit wars, but not as many I would imagine.
As soon as I read "If you enjoy" my brain creates a sentence that structures itself something like "then go 2 bestwive DOT com 4 da best wive".
Sorry for the harsh judgement, you came on strong.
Oh man...TV Tropes...don't go there if you aren't prepared to lose several days to that site, haha. Love it, but damn. I always end up with so many tabs open when I go there too, almost as bad as Cracked!
Good article, but I don't know why audiences are so obsessed with "plot". It's just how characters move from A to B. My 11th grade English teacher taught us that "A novice reader cares about plot; a sophisticated reader cares about character development" and i think that is true.
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesNo, a sophisticated reader cares about multiple sides and elements of the story, and doesn't use nice characters to justify a s****y plot, or a good plot to justify flat characters.
And may I just say, you 11th grade English teacher sounds like one condescending ass.
A sophisticated reader enjoys the book for what good ideas it has to offer (moral/theme), appreciates (or hates) the author's attempt at story-telling (plot), and lives the story for the sake of the experience (characters).
A sophisticated reader is someone who pays attention to all the parts of a story, plot, character development, cliches, setting, idea, theme, foreshadowing. Basically, everything about the story.
I don't know how you get "condescending ass" from throwaway advice just about decent HS English teacher tells his/her students, but the OP has a point nonetheless.
I think that particular 11th grade English teacher may have been an idiot. Try college.
a*****e teachers like that are why we're becoming an illiterate society. If you can derive enjoyment out of reading something, then f**k the rest.
Haha peekaboo ending made me laugh like a retard
ReplyYeah, I totally lost it at the picture of the clown for some reason. Couldn't stop laughing.
I don't think the author knows what a plot hole is. This article is about plot devices. There is a huge difference.
ReplyThey're highly implausible devices, that are really just not-quite-holes placed there solely for the advancement of the plot.
Nah, they're still plotholes. One leads right into the other.
The objective in Die Hard was to get the FBI to turn off the power grid, so the locks on the vault would open. Knowing that in a terror attack the FBI would go by the book, they were able to tailor their escape perfectly. They never got to the escape part.
ReplyThe appeal to probability is extremely powerful. After all, it's the same reason incredibly intelligent people believe that all life on the planet comes from a proto-proto bacteria.
ReplyThis statement is more offensive than when Ron Burgandy swore on national television.
Please never breed. You should be ashamed of this comment, joejmz.
Let's not forget, in "Star Trek", future!Spock knew his past self gets into a fight with Kirk, thus abandoning him on the frozen planet. Regardless of what his future self does in any dimension, he KNOWS what his past self does, because um.. hello? He already did it. So he went back to that precise location knowing that's where Kirk was. It's not a coincidence, it's called: prior knowledge. He changed the outcome of his past self's abandonment of Kirk.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesNo he didn't. In Future Spocks timeline, George Kirk wasn't killed by Nero and therefore James Kirk was never abandoned on Delta Vega by Present Spock.
That's why people are always calling it a plot hole, because it's a HUUUGE coincidence that they met.
Actually...Nero wanted to give Awesome Spock a good view of his planets destruction. It was only luck that Okay Spock chose to kick Kirk off the ship rather then throw him in the brig. Plot hole? I think not
yeah seriously the ice planet was right next door to Vulcan. Nero put old Spock there so he'd have an up close view of Vulcan being destroyed, and young Spock threw Kirk there because the Enterprise was leaving destroyed Vulcan and probably passing right by the ice planet. It's not a plot hole, they were both put there because of it's proximity to Vulcan.
The problem is still that Kirk landed close enough on the planet to Spock that he found him so quickly. Do you know how big a planet is? It's still a plot hole. Of course, this isn't even bothering with the fact that there's no way this planet could be as close as it is to Vulcan without the two of them either crashing into each other or destroying each other with tidal forces.
The "Goblet of Fire" example doesn't really work, as it's explained at the end of the movie that Barty Crouch Jr. was deliberately feeding him information relevant to the tasks at hand throughout the movie/book as part of Voldemort's plan to meet him in the graveyard at the end.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesOf course, this only serves to illustrate the larger problem of why Voldemort himself would bother to hatch such a needlessly complex plot when all he wanted to do was kill Harry.
I don't know if my reply went through, so I apologize if double-posted:
It's further explained in the book. Before Voldemort killed Harry, he needed Harry's blood as part of the resurrection ritual. My understanding was that any enemy's blood would suffice, but, because Harry's touch was lethal to Voldemort's body, he used the blood to defeat that vulnerability. Even after going through that, Voldemort couldn't even use his own wand!
Of course, this only serves to illustrate that the article was right and should have use the Harry Potter series as a whole :/
The Goblet of Fire doesn't work because the entire Harry Potter series is GAY.
I'm not sure a series of books necessarily has a sexual preference
sweet book on book lovin
I've thought about #3 in about every movie I've seen. I don't like the way even the small actors have so little abitlities its like they don't really exist. When those crappy films try to make it look like they've enslaved an entire society by the means of some high-tech security guards, I go flipping insane.
Reply