6 Movie Plot Holes You Never Noticed Thanks to Editing
#3. Magneto Is a Free Man (For No Good Reason)
The first thing you need to know about the X-Men supervillain Magneto is that he's an elderly Holocaust survivor who can control metal (just accept this). The second thing you need to know is that he spent three films trying to kill the universe, only to be thwarted by the X-Men every time. At one point he is successfully imprisoned, but murders his way out using the powers of evil and metal manipulation so he can continue to wreak havoc.
And these weren't just rinky dinky Lex Luthor amateur show schemes, either. By the third movie, the guy is engineering a mutant terrorist army and tearing up the Golden Gate Bridge, because lord knows mutants are anything but subtle.
You could have just mutated yourself a boat, jackoff.
Once again, Magneto and the X-Men go to battle. And during the battle, Mag gets a taste of his own medicine, literally, because he gets injected with some mutant cure, which leaves him powerless. He escapes, the X-Men win, everybody's happy. We even see the Golden Gate Bridge, back to its original spot and being repaired as Angel, a winged mutant, flies above the San Francisco skyline ...
Probably should have just repaired it with concrete and plastic. Just to be safe.
Cut To:
A sullen-looking Magneto sits at a chessboard in the park with a case of the grumps.
Awwww ... he needs a hug. A justice hug.
So, the guy who tried to kill EVERY HUMAN IN THE WORLD is now free to wear a newsy cap and play strategy games in public spaces. Either this is a universe where the scales of justice don't even bother with the unmutated (in which case, hey Hitler, you could have saved that bullet!) or the greatest crimes against humanity are punished with unmitigated freedom and leisurely afternoons in the park.
Then there's the possibility that Magneto just didn't get caught -- that he didn't go through a court system at all, which is even worse. Look at him -- not only is he not disguised, he's IN THE SAME FUCKING CITY THAT HE JUST ATTACKED. Earlier we compared a scene to bin Laden walking into the CIA building, but this is actually worse -- this is bin Laden sitting in the middle of Central Park three months after 9/11, completely undisguised. Either because the authorities are that incompetent, or because he got crippled somehow and society said, "Eh, he can't do terrorism any more. Just let him be."
Never Forget ... Or Forget ... Whatever ...
#2. Indy = Aquaman?
Even with all the supernatural stuff we've come to expect from the Indiana Jones series, from the holy ark to magical stones to aliens, Indy himself is not supernatural. He's just a regular guy who's good with a whip and bad with snakes. Yet, in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jones demonstrates that either he's got the blood of Poseidon running through his veins or he's actually a fish in human form. Don't know what we're talking about? We'll refresh your memory.
Indy and Marion have rescued the Ark of the Covenant, and they're just about to sail it to England on a steamer, when who should show up but the Nazis, as usual. The Nazis steal the ark, kidnap Marion and take off on their U-boat. Not one to take stealing-the-Holy-of-Holies-or-his-ex-girlfriend lightly, Jones stows away on the sub. And we mean "on" the sub, not "in" the sub -- he's riding on top of it.
Doing fucking pull-ups.
Cut To:
We are treated to a Nazi U-boat diving montage superimposed with the iconic Indiana Jones-style red line map animation showing the path of the U-boat as it travels from the middle of the Mediterranean and onto an island in the Aegean Sea. The sub is then seen docking on said island, and as the Nazis debark, we finally see our hero once more, soaking wet from the ride over but still as spry and macho as ever -- he even takes out two Nazis right off the bat. Way to go, Jones!
"Surveillance report: clear. Sneak mode: activated."
This is all especially impressive considering that right at that very moment our lively hero hasn't eaten, drank or breathed air in more than two goddamn days. Thanks to its signature map shot, this film just gave us a really clear idea as to what kind of trip this U-boat just took.
The red is the trail of blood Indy is leaving behind as kelp and fish cut into his skin.
See that? Right between Crete, Greece and its mainland. That map is so accurate that you can put it right up against Google Maps:
Bam! See that little legend in the bottom? You can see for yourself that the U-boat traveled roughly 500 miles to get where it was going. Also through the magic of modern technology we can tell you that a German U-boat such as the one in the film goes about 7.5 knots, which for you non-mariners out there is about 10 mph. That's a 50-hour ride, spent on top of the sub. So how did he do it?
The first thought would be that perhaps he somehow entered through a hatch and stowed away -- but considering that we last see him standing right on top of the bridge of the U-boat, any hatch would surely lead him to a room full of angry Germans. Also, good luck prying open a sealed hatch and not getting noticed. We're assuming those things lock pretty tight, you know, as not to let the ocean in.
Via Wikimedia Commons
It's the reason people are able to return home after riding in one.
So what? Did he just hang on? Actually, yes. As a deleted scene explains, Indy fucking latches himself onto the periscope via whip and then just kind of ... enjoys a 50-hour ride that may or may not involve drowning, dehydration or just dying from exposure and exhaustion. And when it's all over there he is, still standing, and ready to fight Nazis with his bare hands.
Via Theraider.net
Here's them filming part of that scene while masking fits of muffled laughter.
Speaking of superheroes ...
#1. The Man Of Steel KILLS AN ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOOD
Superman fans all remember those awful moments when Superman turned evil in Superman III. And if you don't, you're lucky. They were horrifying.
Two hours of him grabbing your sister's boobs and giving you wedgies is just too much.
But for most of Superman's existence, he's goodness personified ... or is he?
Case in point: the earthquake in the first Superman movie. Lex Luthor launches a missile that triggers an earthquake on the West Coast. So naturally, Superman races the fault line, attempting to save as many lives as he can. The first thing he does is save a school bus from nose-diving off of the Golden Gate Bridge. After that, he prevents a train from derailing by literally standing in for the train track.
The people who make his hair gel should design body armor.
After that, Superman takes the time to jet over to the Hoover Dam, which is near collapse. After saving some workers in the dam, Superman's next move is to rescue the increasingly annoying Jimmy Olsen from falling to his death. As he flies Jimmy to safety, the dam finally ruptures, spilling out an ocean of water heading straight for a neighborhood not too far away.
These future corpses.
Meanwhile, intrepid reporter/Superman boner-causer Lois Lane has run out of gas in the middle of the fault line. Hilarity ensues as Lois's car gets sucked into the ground and engulfed by dirt, burying her alive as she dies gasping for air.
It gets funnier every time we see it.
Unfortunately, at the exact same moment, Superman is busy with the dam disaster -- he's creating a giant rock dam to stop the wall of water that is rushing toward the panicked town below. After exerting all of his strength, he finally creates the barrier needed to save the countless lives.
Only after the town is saved does Superman finally fly to Lois's rescue, only to find out that he is too late. In a fit of rage, Superman flies up into the upper atmosphere.
In a bizarre attempt to fistfight God.
It's now that Superman gets an idea -- fuck time. In what is one of his most iconic moves, the Last Son of Krypton shoots as fast as he can around the planet Earth, somehow reversing the events that have just transpired. The wall of water flows backward into a repairing Hoover Dam, the earthquake destroys in reverse and Lois's car unburies itself in the ground.
Otherwise known as Xenos ex Machina.
Cut to:
Lois Lane sits in her recently broken-down car. Before she can be sucked into the ground, however, this time Superman is right there to help. He coolly flies in, helps her out of the car and engages in a cute conversation while simultaneously eye-fucking the shit out of her.
"Wait, why do you look four minutes older than you should?"
Just before he can make his move, in comes Jimmy Olsen, who thanks Superman for saving him from falling to his death. All is right again, and Superman flies off to go catch Lex Luthor and throw him in jail. YAY! Everyone lived! And by everyone we mean everyone who didn't live in that town that Superman just opted to drown.
It was, after all, the whole freaking point of why Superman couldn't save Lois; he had to choose the greater good over what was going on in his tights. So when Superman goes back in time to try it all again, he shows up right as Lois runs out of gas -- a sequence we previously saw happen just as a giant flood of water is rushing toward the town. It can only be logical that he is choosing to not save the town this time around. After all, he then spends the next few minutes where he is supposed to be straining to contain the flood with rocks chatting it up with Lois instead.
"By the way, there's one hell of a story just over those hills."
For more baffling plot points, check out 6 Plot Threads Famous Movies Forgot to Resolve and 8 Classic Movies That Got Away With Gaping Plot Holes.
And stop by LinkSTORM to see how many towns David Wong has destroyed.
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Sometimes I hear oranges.
ReplyI don't think it mattered what the freakin article was about after I read that >.
If anybody wants to see the photo i was talking about:
Reply-Go to IMFDB . Org and search District 9
-Go to the District 9 Discussion Section
-Scroll down the page until you get to 13.7 "still unnamed alien firemars"
Again, hope that helps. I added this separately to the post below as I don't want it to get deleted for advertising another site. I assure you that the Internet Movie Firearms Data Base does not offer dating services for tall people.
Regarding District 9
ReplyIn the early scenes when they are interviewing random people about their thoughts on the prawns, we are shown a woman who says that the prawns are known to steal shoes and phones, and perhaps the hyperbolic statement that they kill you afterwards. Her dialogue demonstrates that the people of J'Burg are interacting with the prawns in day-to-day life and are considered a nuisance to a normal person than a serious threat.
Furthermore, during that interview a prawn is in the background rummaging through a dumpster, and the woman HAS HER BACK TO IT. She had no concerns about the prawn being not 3 metres away from her, which suggests that the people are worried about the 1.8 million prawns as a collective rather than an individual.
Concerning Wikus, it is shown that at one point he was across the street from his house which was crawling with MNU agents, despite being “the most valuable business artefact on Earth”. This means that either Wikus is good at hiding or MNU have a glaring lack of resources to find him. Furthermore, in one promo/deleted scene photo I found, Wikus is seen holding a RPG-like weapon to attack the MNU HQ and is getting out of an MNU personnel carrier, explaining how they got so close to the MNU HQ in the first place, as it has blocked windows
Hope that helps
magneto = ron paul
ReplyI don't think numbers 4, 5, and 6 are actually plot holes for reasons others have already expressed. I don't think it's necessary to explain every little detail about how things happen in order for them to make sense. We know that in District 9 the security is beyond lax, that the machines can kick log someone out in The Matrix, and that the Joker didn't find who he was looking for at the party. The entire third X-Men movie is a disaster so it's kind of pointless to pick out one plot hole even if it is accurate.
ReplyI'll have to agree with the rebuttals for The Matrix (logged out by machines), Batman (Joker leaves 'cause of the cops) and District 9 (it's not like they walked the whole way and went sight-seeing) being plausible. The "spirit" of the article is the point here though. Hollywood movies are made by retards for retards. Yes, I enjoy them sometimes but the whole "I'd rather not know what 'chicken' nuggets are made of so I can enjoy them" attitude is for losers.
ReplyI think they got into the building in District 9 with the fake noses, glasses, and mustaches as you illustrated.
ReplyX-Men The Last Stand is now non-canon, thanks to First Class. So that's one less plot-hole filled movie.
ReplyI am surprised when people bring up the refrigerator scene in Indy 4 as being stupid, but they always look surprised and confused when I mention the sub scene in Raiders. Since I was a kid I've asked people about that and people just never noticed. Love Indy movies, though. District 9 was a terrible movie with many many glaring laws.
ReplyFlaws, even. The edit function won't work.
Is the superman one really a plot hole, I mean I haven't seen the film but im assuming he goes faster than the speed of light to travel back in time rather than reverse it as you claim, this means there are two of him at the time the damn collapses, the one that was there already and the one that just went back in time, allowing him to both save the village and the girl.... that's the impression I got anyway?
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesBut then, where's the second Superman who does not know he Lois Lane is already safe?
The second superman is the one who saves Lois Lane. The first superman stops the flood, travels back in time (becoming the second superman), and saves Lois. It's all one timeline for him, but he exists in multiple places simultaneously to an outside observer.
But the first superman only goes back in time because he found the dead Lois. Had the other superman saved her, the first superman wouldn't go back in time, negating the second superman
Looks like they used the Crisis of Infinite Earth idea. Lol!
Or maybe using his super hearing he realized that a version of him came back to save her so he would have to do it too in order to hold up space time.
If he was going to bother with that nasty "time travel" business anyway, why not go stop the launch of the missile and save everything, then, I don't know, maybe grab a sandwich with the rest of his now-free time?
They missed the big one in Inception. I would have loved to see that one.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesNamely, once they finish their mission, how did they get out of the dream? Fisher's subconscious was still trying to kill them, and they were still under the sedative and thus still stuck there for a week.
That's not a plot hole. The three "kicks" (van hitting the water, elevator hitting the bottom of the shaft, secret base/hospital exploding) instantly pull them out of the dream state, as established in the FIRST SCENE.
My problem is how Leo and Ken's characters got out of limbo, because I do believe they established that you can't skip a kick. Meaning that when old Saito picked up that gun to off himself and old Leo, they had to ride the kicks back into consciousness. But by that point, the hospital was blown up and their bodies with it, the elevator was blown up and their bodies with it, and the van was... underwater. And their seatbelts were on, plus their bodies had been underwater for quite some time by that point. On top of that, the film doesn't state how long it is from the other characters' riding their kicks to when the sedative wears off and they all wake up.
This deus ex machine is even more frustrating with the final shot basically saying they might not have gotten out and that to wring your hands over how they got out is futile. Errgh!
so aren't they dead on every level of the dream, thus kicking them up? that's what i thought it was
There are two ways to exit the dream state: a kick or "dying" within the dream, which wakes the dreamer up.
The kicks, which occur simultaneously at all three dream levels, pull everyone still alive out.
The opening scene is Cobb beginning to explain to Saito, who has been trapped in limbo for many subjective years, that he's not in the real world. Once Saito realizes he's in limbo (Cobb already knows as a result of his previous experiences), they kill themselves, waking up to the baseline reality level where they all started. Which anyone who has ever seen a virtual reality premise movie knows may or may not be the top level or "real world" of the movie's reality. The point of the last scene cutting away before we see what happens to Cobb's totem is that it doesn't matter, at least to Cobb, whether he's in reality or not because he's in a world he wants to live in; in other words, he's escaped the trap Mal fell into under the same circumstances.
And, of course, part of the point of this or any other movie in which which parts are "real" and others aren't (see Total Recall, Existenz, The Matrix, the 13th Floor) is that they're all part of a dreamworld/fantasy/vr created by the filmmakers for the benefit of the audience. The characters, even at the "reality" level of the movie are still in a constructed dream shared by filmmaker and audience.
"Sometimes I hear oranges." Still giggling from that one.
ReplyCypher was probably using a simulacrum (like the MMO had), meaning that he never went into the Matrix. I mean, you're cutting a deal with Agent Smith. If you anger the guy, he'll just as soon shoot your kneecaps off and use you to lure Morpheus to him. This is also why Neo startled him. Had it been someone who could read the code, he'd be busted.
ReplyBest guess for District 9 is they hopped into a nearby cab and pointed a gun at the guy.
I COULD suggest that Superman's past self still existed to save the dam, making him so invincible even plot-mandated choices don't matter to him, but screw Superman. He's a dick and would totally kill an entire city to get laid.
I originally logged in to vote your analysis up, but then a thought came to me - If he's using a simulacrum, why do we see him orgasmically enjoying eating a steak? That level of sincerity from Cypher can only mean that he was jacked-in.
Still easy to solve the problem though, if you're Cypher. Being a hacker, he wrote a program that takes over when he inserts the jack and extracts him at a programmed spot a programmed while later while everyone sleeps.
who writes these things hahaha i laughed my ass off reading this maybe its just me
ReplyIs it just me or does that picture for Indy look like Nick Lachey?
Replyholy shit, it totally does.
well, you only failed on about half of these. pretty good I guess.
ReplyLet's see you top it.
That X-men one is even worse when the ending implies that Magneto is starting to get his powers back.
ReplyActually, Indy may have been able to ride the submaring all the way to Crete, or wherever. Submarines did not run continually underwater. Underwater they ran on batteries, and the batteries of the time ran out quickly. The only way to recharge them was to run on the surface. Plus, they got a lot more mileage out of their deisel engines than they did the batteries. A sub running underwater only had a few hours before it was toast.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesLeaving only exhaustion, dehydration, and exposure to kill him...or at the very least reduce his Nazi-fighting capabilities.
The problem with the non-submerged scenario is the fact that no one was on the conning tower. Whether or not it was a time of war there would have been several men on the tower to keep watch so Indy would have had no where to hide. The men not being there means the sub was preparing to dive so it would have been a submerged trip. But there's another issue with the submerged version besides the fact he would have been weak from exposure and that's the fact that being attached to the periscope wouldn't have worked either as the sub wouldn't have ran the whole way with the periscope up. Even my 11 year old self that saw that movie back in 1981 noticed this huge plot hole immediately and I have probably thought of it about 50 times in the 30 years since!
Have you ever tried to hold your breath for a few hours?
The plat hole about X Men 3 that always irritated me was when magneto and his army are walking across the bridge. One side, it's late afternoon, a few hundred metres later, it's pitch-black middle of the night.
ReplyUm...it's a very long bridge?
That's not a new thing, tho. I've noticed many many movies think that dusk (you know, the time between complete daylight and utter night) only lasts 15 to 30 seconds.
About the Matrix plot hole: it is possible that they went in for some reason or other (finding more redpills, maybe?) and Cypher took the chance and went to make the deal with Agent Smith.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesAbout the Indiana Jones plot hole: the German submarines at the time couldn't actually submerge too much, they had to use a snorkel to let air enter the U-boot and avoid their death through intoxication. I do find the whole thing about Indy not eating for two days plot-holish, but maybe he managed to take a couple of things out of the ship's kitchen before jumping into the sea.
About the Superman plot: maybe Superman approached his past self (the one that was saving the town) and told him what had happened and what he had to do?
If Superman went back in time thus creating two of him (Past and future) What happened to the other Superman? Did he just go into hiding? I'm lost. haha
But if that happened, then the past Superman wouldn't of had to go back in time, therefore not creating the future Superman to tell him everything's cool, but then he would go back in time... ARGH! DAMN TIME PARADOXES!
the second superman could have gone back in time and told the first superman to go back in time