8 Classic Movies That Got Away With Gaping Plot Holes
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People hate plot holes in movies. At least, that's what they'll tell you. But sometimes, if a movie is awesome enough, people will overlook even the most retarded gaps in reason and logic. At least, until some asshole on the Internet points them out and makes a big list of them. Enjoy: #8.
Back to the Future
The Plot: Marty McFly goes back in time, helps his parents get together, invents rock and roll... The Hole: ...and everyone promptly forgets he was ever there the minute he leaves. Nobody notices that a famous clothing brand is later named after him, nobody notices that Chuck Berry releases a song that sounds pretty similar to the one he played at the big dance, and most importantly, nobody bats an eyelid when his Mom has a kid who looks exactly like him.
Now we don't claim to know exactly what first enters the mind of a married man when his wife births a child who looks identical to their old high school boyfriend, but we're guessing it's not "time travel conspiracy." Old George was either the most oblivious, forgiving man on earth, or there were some secret resentment beatings in the McFly household.
Even more disturbing, what must his Mom have thought? The only explanation we can see making sense from her point of view is that Marty was Satan (he did invent rock and roll after all) and the whole thing's some kind of demon spawn Rosemary's Baby type deal. And no one should ever be in a position where the most plausible explanation for their situation implies that they fucked Satan.
Plus, think how chilling Marty's final remark on stage becomes given this context: "I guess you're not ready for that yet... but your kids are gonna love it." #7.
Minority Report
The Plot: Tom Cruise is convicted of a murder he hasn't committed yet, by a team of psychics called "precogs." The Hole: The precogs? They don't work. At all. We're told they predict the future but nothing they predict ever happens. If they actually predicted the future properly, they'd predict the people getting arrested, not committing murders. In the entire movie, the only precog prediction that actually comes true exactly as they said involves a kid losing a balloon. Chinese fortune cookies have a higher success rate than these guys.
But maybe they're really more telepathic than precognitive, able to see what people's intentions are. Except they can't do that, either. The movie is set in motion by the premeditated murder ball coming out with Tom Cruise's character's name on it. But he hadn't planned the murder at all. The whole point of the movie is that he had no idea who he was going to kill. The one time they do predict a murder that actually happens, they still manage to fuck it up. The loophole the movie's villain exploits is that if you commit a murder that looks identical to a previous murder, when the precogs' vision comes up they'll just think it was an echo and delete it. But that would only get rid of the image, there'd still be a new ball naming you as the murderer, which would be hard to explain. Seems like a flawed plan right? Well, it would be in any other movie.
Add that to the fact that Tom Cruise was able to continually get past the retina scanners at police headquarters by using the eyes he had when he first became a fugitive (they don't revoke your access when you get accused of murder? What, do they operate on the retina honor system?) and you have to wonder if they weren't just making shit up as they went along. #6.
The Sixth Sense
The Plot: Spoiler alert: Bruce Willis is dead. The whole time. We totally didn't see it coming and apparently neither did he. He's only able to figure out he's a ghost when he sees his wife drop his wedding ring. The Hole: But shouldn't he have figured it out before that? All the other ghosts in the film seemed to be wandering the earth, mindlessly reliving their deaths, with little awareness of the outside world at all. But ol' Bruce was just carrying on as normal, working and going about his day-to-day routine, completely unfazed by the fact no one but a small child had spoken to him in several months.
What kind of lifestyle was he living before his death that would make him fail to notice that no one could see or hear him? He assumes his wife isn't speaking to him because he's "neglecting their marriage." In the days right after he died, did he think she was mad at him for getting shot in the stomach? And what about everyone else? Does he also assume all waiters are suddenly assholes? That the girl at the supermarket check out finds him too hideous to make eye contact with? That taxis won't stop for him because he's balding? And how does he get the assignment to treat the kid anyway? Nobody hired him, being a ghost and all. Does he just approach random children in churches and start giving them free psychiatric advice? That's no way to run a business, ghost or not, and we're pretty sure it will get you thrown in jail.
#5.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
The Plot: At the end of another wondrous wizarding adventure, Harry uses a magical time-travel necklace to go back and save himself and his godfather from the evil dementors. The Hole: This is actually a problem in most movies that contain time machines. The movie treats time travel like this urgent thing: "We've made it to the past! Now we've only got a few minutes to go back and stop the dementors!" No you don't, you have as much time as you need. It's fucking time travel. If you mess up, just go back and try again.
They also seem to feel that they have to do it immediately, that there's no time to wait. Of course there's time to wait, you've got a goddamn time machine. Do it tomorrow, do it in ten years. You already know you've succeeded, you were there when it happened. It's actually the only situation you could be in where failure is impossible. It's the least suspenseful thing imaginable, yet they treat it as the nail-biting climax of the movie.
We're picking on Harry Potter especially for this because after they use the time machine that one time, that was it. For the rest of the saga, the entire wizarding world is under siege from a magical Hitler, and they never again find the time travel useful? Despite all the people who die in the Harry Potter series (and post Azkaban, they start killing them off like it's a Friday the 13th movie) he never goes back and saves any of them? Selfish prick. |
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It does always kind of bother me when they do the part mentioned in regards to Harry Potter. Not the time travel part, but the leaving something incredibly useful completely unused when there's no established reason why you couldn't. Another example is in season 2 of 24, with the software that they used to make the Cyprus recordings. CTU had their hands on software that could create, more or less on the fly, replications of other people's voices that were incredibly convincing. As in, convincing to the point where whichever government agencies analyzing it thought it was real. Why didn't we ever see them use that again? There were tons of occasions throughout the rest of the show where it would have come in handy.
I do understand that sort of thing from a dramatic standpoint. It would kind of take the excitement out if every time it was, "Oh my god, the terrorists are calling right now, but the only man they'll talk to just died! What in the hell do we d- oh, wait, we can just make his voice with our computers." That'd be lame. But at least have that Harry Potter medallion break, or the software get deleted or something.
Really?
Come on these are not huge plot holes. Do you wanna be spoonfed all your life? Do you really need everything explaned to you?
I mean in a stageplay there can be a guy and a box. And the audience will just imagine the rest. Cant you just imagine just a little bit with these movies. No one can be that perfect.
You can make up holes like this for every movie. This is just sad.
Enjoyed the article!
As for the little argument below about Empire, I always thought this, I don't care! It's a great movie, which is kinda the point of the article.
As for the comment about how luke got there quicker than the falcon, the Falcon's hyperdrive wasn't working, Luke's was.
Right! I'm off to don my yoda outfit for some crazy leia slave fun!
wow you guys are smart.
i watched the majority of these movies without seeing those huge plot holes...
great article!
And Cedric is not useful at all.
I'm sure this was mentioned in the 500-odd comments that were left, but there are a LOT of plot holes in the third HP movie. Not just things that were left out from the book, but there's the whole situation with the Marauder's Map. Lupin gets the map from Snape (who confiscated it from Harry), and knows how to use it. Doesn't explain anything about the history between Harry's parents, Pettigrew, Sirius and Lupin. It may have been left out to save time, or it could have been left out because Guillermo del Toro cares nothing for character development/emotional attachment.
tan_tayum, I see no reason to bring Cedric back. He wouldn't have been useful for anything.
And bringing back Lily and James would completely screw up fate. It had been prophicised, or how ever the hell you spell it. And he'd just try again if he failed.
@hjordis
well what about the 4th book - bring back cedric? why did they think to bring back lily and james while they're at it?
also, this couldve stopped voldemort from resurrecting too.
shadowzoid - Tolkien said something about the eagles being a "neutral" tribe that didn't want to interfere with the affairs of man, so that's why they couldn't drop the ring in the volcano...bunch of dicks, really, if they knew countless innocent lives would have been lost if Sauron got what he wanted. Being a bystander during a catastrophe =/= neutral in my book, it = jackass.
Actually, it said in the 6th book when they were talking to Hagrid about taking his class that they couldn't apply for a time turner as they smashed them all the previous year, thus implying that they were the only ones in existence.
HEYbitch: Nowhere was said that those "time-traveler-thingies" located in the Ministry of Magic were all the ones in existence, or that they couldn't make more. Don't try to pass a made-up explanation as an explanation for such a big plothole.
the star wars geeks need to chill! As for the lion king thing, i always assumed it was sort of a mandate of heaven deal you know. Everything went to s**t not because scar was incompetent but because he wasn't the rightful king... and he was incompetent. When Simba became king the throne was returned to the rightful possessor and order was restored to the universe, so everything righted itself. Mandate of Heaven, that's my two cents.
I really have you say that you screwed up the Star Wars point entirely. You didn't mention the actual plot holes the movie has whatsoever, and what you did talk about was really just bullshit.
The fact that Luke wasn't on Degobah for very long is meaningless. It was never implied in Empire that his training was complete, that he was there "long enough", or anything close to it. His teacher, who was 1. Really f*****g old and experienced 2. Considered to be the most wise and powerful of his order, and 3. The greatest living Jedi at that point TOLD HIM HE WASN'T DONE BY A LONG SHOT, and proved it to him by MANIFESTING AN EVIL APPARITION OF LUKE'S FATHER FOR HIM TO DUEL WITH AND SHOW HIS b***h ASS THAT HE WOULD FAIL. Actually, A f*****g GHOST OF HIS MENTOR AND FATHER'S EX-BEST-FRIEND BEGGED HIM NOT TO LEAVE. Did you even watch this movie?
You got the order of events and implications all wrong. Han took the Falcon out of Hoth first before Luke left, but since his ride was falling to s**t, he couldn't outrun Vader, and had his ass chased around a f*****g asteroid belt until he decided to lay low inside a huge worm in an asteroid to fix his s**t. How long did they stay there? Who knows, but it's irrelevant, because even if they stayed in there the equivalent of a few Earth days or even an Earth week (remember, time is relative here) and then took off for Bespin and that took them another week it doesn't matter as far as what Luke accomplished on Degobah at all which leads me to my next point:
Luke never demonstrated any skills on Degobah that he didn't already have, he was just given instruction on sprituality in general. In case you didn't pay attention to the ENTIRE f*****g STORY OF STAR WARS, Yoda knew that training that f*****g Skywalker kid all those years ago was a bad idea. They did it, and guess what happened: he became an insane killing machine, slaughtered hundreds if not thousands of his wizard-like guardian-kind (along with the children) and brought an even more insane, tyrannical dictator into power, who in turn built a machine that can destroy f*****g planets - all in the name of some p***y that he killed in the end anyway. And they even destroyed one peaceful planet already. So he naturally wanted to learn from that mistake, and wanted to teach the kid TO THINK ABOUT s**t FOR A MINUTE, unlike his dumbass father. What does Luke do on Degobah? Well he stands on his hand and lift rocks with his mind... And a robot. And tries to lift a ship out of water too but fails because he's still a whiney p***y that doesn't get it. Oh, and he fights a ghost of his father, which turns out to be allegory for self-conflict, the importance of patience and non-aggression. All while he is really being taught to NOT BE AN a*****e. And you seem to have forgotten that Luke already proved he could grab a f*****g sword with his mind at the beginning of the movie, and bypass Facebook entirely by hooking up with someone through the ghost of a dead friend. Basically in this story he's the son of Jesus, the all-powerful dude who supposedly will fix everyone's s**t, and you think he's gonna be a chump-change off the bat?
Saying that Yoda pointed out in Return of the Jedi that Luke's training was one step away from being complete, which is an entirely different movie by the way so to my knowledge pretty much excludes it from being a plot hole in Empire, is also pointless in the context it was given. So you're saying that a dying old wizard who's like a thousand f*****g years old, telling this kid who literally has no one left to learn from because he knows he will die in a few minutes, that he's finished, meant it was a plothole as it contradicted what he said in another movie? Alright, let me break it down for you: Luke is the last of his kind. There's no one left to preserve their culture or their craft. Learning at this point from another living person is impossible, unless he talks to another one of those ghosts, and they seem to choose when to show themselves. The only hope at this point for everyone in that galaxy to get out of the f*****g hole they're in is this kid to either kill his father and the Emperor, or to convert them. So he should've told him, "Hey, you fucked up, pack up your s**t and go home?" How about this instead: maybe he figured since the kid faced the f*****g "chosen one" already and only had his hand cut off that he might be able to handle s**t on his own. Maybe he figured that the kid had already shown that he might have what it takes, but whether he does or not doesn't matter since it's too late now. What alternative did he have?
You want a real plothole? How about the fact that the Vader and the other Star Destroyers couldn't land on Hoth because the rebels had a shield generator, but they managed to stick a garrison of troops and walking tank behemoths on the planet to get the job done? How about the fact that Vader needed to have Han's crew hostage and torture them for no reasons so that Luke would telepathically cry about it and come there to save them, when taking down Vader was obviously Luke and the rebellion's goal anyway, so all he really needed to do was telepathically tell Luke "Yo, I'm over here"?
with the harry potter thing why didnt they just do what scottie said just go back when voldemort was sitting on the crapper and blast him
I got another one. Lord of the Rings (I love lotr btw). Why didnt gandalf just use the eagles to drop the ring into the volcano. woulda saved alot of lives
The Harry Potter thing can be explained. The reason they couldn't use the Time-Turner again because Hermioen returned hers and it was destroyed. She didn't think she'd need it anymore. She used it to take as many classes as she could, and since she stopped taking a ton of those classes she didn't need it. And like Tciddsisc said they couldn't use any others later bacause they were accidentally destoryed.
And as for the part where it says he has all of the tiem in the world, k**e it said they already did it, that means they can't change the time when they go back because that was most likely already predetermined. Plus he couldn't even wait two years or else Siruis wouldn't have died because his soul would have already been sucked out.
In Star Wars: Haven't you thought that they took some food on-board before they had to leave the planet? But there is another, implied, loophole: How the f**k does Luke get there so fast if it indeed the journey took months?
The Harry Potter loophole is explained in the books, just not the movies. (The "why don't they go back in time more" thing). In the books, the entire Ministry of Magic supply of Time Turners (they have ALL of them) is accidentally destroyed at the end of Order of the Phoenix during the battle. So that loophole is entirely the fault of whoever wrote the movie.
"... Yoda's insistence that Jedis start their ..."
Arghhhhhh!!!! Why not Jedii while you are at it?
Jedi!
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I don't care if your comment was positive or negative about Harry Potter, the mere fact that there are so many more comments about HP than Star Wars (which I also love, at least IV-VI) shows, regardless of any discrepancies, how influential and far reaching the stories have been.