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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possible future - ok, but what about name? the murderer was named - so they would know the second time its ANOTHER NAME!=echo?
Hermione returned her Time Turner to the ministry at the end of the school year. While it wasn't shown in the movie version, all of the Time Turners were destroyed during the fight between The Order and the Death Eaters at the ministry the night Sirius died. Just saying.
Here's my review: Some of them don't follow the premise of the article (first paragraph)for example Lion King is not supposed to be "awesome", it's a disney movie made for kids it's obvious it has a simple and dumb plot with shallow and retarded explanations there's no point in being a b***h because it's not realistic. The same goes for harry potter, it's a childish corky story about teenage wizards a woman came up with to make his son go to sleep, I think it's kinda lame to have to recur to those kinda movies in order to make a plot hole observation.
About the first part on Minority report, I don't think you really got the movie: They couldn't see the certain future, they just saw an hypothetic future and then altered it by warning the police. The whole point of the movie is the moment when, as a result of predicting the consequences of the prediction itself, you start causing alternative (and often negative)random timelines.
All the other plot holes about minority report and the one about time in star wars are well explained, though they are not very import.
I didn't pay attention when I watched the movie so I'm just going to complain about the second part.
Wouldn't going back in time to alter something that directly affects you, you wouldn't be able to change it? So they can't technically kill Voldy.
(e.g. You go back in time to kill yourself, therefore, you don't grow up and you won't go back in time to kill yourself.)
For the Star Wars one, the training was actually somewhere between a couple weeks to a month or so, if I'm not mistaken. George Lucas just fails as a director and can't show the passing of time. I swear, he made one of the greatest series ever, but he fucks up more as time goes along (see the prequel trilogy). Still not exactly long for training, but Luke had been studying basic training stuff that Obi-wan had left to him. Thus his actually having some force powers before Dagobah.
As for the second part, it's just like GlassMoon said. There's a year long time-skip between Empire strikes back and Jedi. Luke actually did go back to yoda for some serious training, and he trained on his own and built his own lightsaber. Once again, Lucas just fails at showing the passage of time...
For the sixth sense the book explains why all the happens. He passes out. A lot. As for the little kid thing it explains it as the ghosts are naturally drawn to him and they don't know why. Other then the fact hes the only one who makes eye contact. If he starts to figure out that hes dead on his own he passes out. (Which might as well be a plot hole, why can't he reach rapture alone without some stupid kid?)
The reason why he goes on life like is normal is because the way he died. He was shot by someone who he failed to help. His regret is that he didn't help him. So he is living his unlife trying to make up for that. By helping the little kid. Whom is supposed to be his next case. The woman who committed suicide regrets killing herself. It explains she just wanted attention. Screaming at the little kid is her way of getting attention (roll with me) the little boy who blew his brains out wants Cole to stop him. So on and so on.
The movie has a number of flaws they tried to patch with the book(which i read first being to poor to rent the bloody film) sooo yeah....
All right, the Star Wars one I can't explain the first part, being trained in a couple days, but I CAN explain the second part. There's a book (Shadows of the Empire) in between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. About a year happens in between Luke losing his hand and the gang rescuing Han, in which they pretty much break up a huge underworld organization, Black Sun. During that time, Luke had the time to go back to Dagobah and train for awhile. And no, he didn't ask Yoda if Vader was his father, because, let's face it, he was afraid of the answer. Once he realized Yoda was dying--in Return of the Jedi--and this was his last chance to learn the truth, he asked because he had to know. There, I fixed a hole.
I'm a Star Wars fan but star wars fans complaining about this really need to STFU. no one cares about your pissed off opinion of this article and you're just making yourselves look like a bunch of idiot fanboys.
no offence but with the minority report a lot of the "plot holes" arn't there. firstly you have the wrong definition of precognition, normally id say that a mistake anyone could make, but they explain it in the movie . Tom Cruise rolls a murder ball across a table towards the government guy, he catches it as it goes off the edge and Tom Cruise asks "why did you catch that" government guy says "because it was going to fall" then Tom Cruise says "but it didnt fall you caught it" thats precognition. secondly the murderballs are made after the vision is marked as a echo or not. and thirdly it was less than a few hours after he was labeled a murderer and they had no reason to belive he would walk into the police headquarters once they thought he was a murderer so they probably wernt that worried about deleting him from the scanners
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.
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.
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Problem with the Harry Potter one. Every you go back in time, all the other you's that went back in time before are now running around, so you would have to go more and more Metal Gear Solid every time you went back in time...duh!