Any mistakes, plot holes, dialog screwups or questionable decisions are fair game. Especially encouraged are things that probably looked good during filming, but really is stupid and illogical when the movie comes out.
As an example of my last one, I would like to nominate “Hollow Man” as having one of the most annoying mistakes that took me out of the movie that I can remember.
When Kevin Bacon is invisible, and they make the latex covering for his face, they cut out holes for his eyes and mouth. But not for his nostrils. are you kidding me? A form fitting latex mask is going to be a hot item to begin with, but to restrict his breathing should have been noticed and corrected withing the first minutes of him wearing it. I know it looked cool when he opened his mouth and scared the kids in the car, but no nostril holes was totally unrealistic and a stupid mistake for all the PhDs in that lab.
It amazes me that these little things find their way through the production of the movie… it also amazes me that something so small can annoy me so much.
Sure. Same movie. Same latex mask. What happens to Bacon’s hair?? His mop should have become an ungodly mix of hair and dried latex. Instead, his coated cranium is smooth, and the mask apparently slips on and off easily, as if Bacon is bald.
How does he see? If he’s transparent, and his eyeballs are transparent, then the lens of his eye can’t focus light that comes through it; light is streaming through his eye from every direction. His rods and cones are being bombarded with way too much signal. He should be blind.
On another thought while he is invisible, are his dead cells invisible? Then we should see his hair and the upper layer of his skin and nails.
Ok lets assume even his dead cells are invisible, how come we don’t see the food and liquid he consumes? We should see an outline of his digestive system and urinary tract and bladder.
Actually, the rods and cones are transparent, too, so light goes right through them, too. Blinder than a bat.
As an aside, this is why I’ve abandoned my experiments into a safe, marketable Invisibility Serum (well, that, and the fact that sneaking into the girls’ locker room has been fading as my primary goal in life since I started my lab work in 7th grade).
If I remember correctly, HG Wells had his original Invisible Man remain hidden for an hour or so after eating until the stomach contents were digested. I doubt it would be quite so simple as that, but at least he tried to address that particular detail.
As long as we’re nitpicking Hollow Man…
when they bring the gorilla back from invisibility, she gradually becomes visible from the inside out, as her heart pumps the elixer throughout her system. But later, when Mr. Bacon is rendered invisible as his heart circulates the potion, he gradually becomes invisible from the outside in.
The special effects are wonderful fun, but it really is a ridiculous movie, riddled with logical errors and plot holes.
Is this just about Hollow Man or any movie? If it’s the latter, I would like to submit The Core. All of it. Even the credits were of dubious believability.
I’ve noticed that many people resent me making this observation, but E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial is premised on one enormous plot hole.
In the first few minutes of the film, E.T. is one of many members of a landing party exploring Earth. Then the faceless government agents show up, corner E.T. and he is prevented from getting back to his ship in time. He gets back to the touch-down point a few minutes too late and must watch helplessly as the already departed ship ascends into the sky, about ten feet above him. A mother-like figure looks down on him forlornly, as if shrugging and saying “sorry, but…”
Fast forward about an hour or so, and Elliot is taking E.T. on a midnight outing on his bike. An impatient E.T. decides that the bike just isn’t fast enough, so he telekinetically lifts the bike, Elliot & himself off the ground and they fly through the air, silhouetted in a big full moon. Still later, E.T. telekinetically lifts Eliott, Eliott’s brother, and half a dozen neighborhood kids (and all their bikes) off the ground and they all majestically fly miles above the ground. They look down in wonder at their suburban California neighborhood (miles and miles of houses with swimming pools) into the nearby redwood forest to meet up with the UFO once again.
Soooooo, if E.T. is capable of making himself fly miles and miles above the ground - why the hell couldn’t he just fly up to the ship a mere ten feet above him in the first scene of the movie?
Actually, one of the bigger flaws with Hollow Man is why the government is funding the project at all - making soldiers invisible is of absolutely no tactical value unless you just want to send them in naked.
Though perhaps dropping a few hundred invisible and enraged gorillas on the enemy…
Well, duh. ET can’t lift himself, he can only lift bicycles. Now, why the alien exploratory party is not issued bicycles as standard equipment is a logical follow-up question, and a legitimate plot hole.
My favorite hole from the swiss cheese that was Indiana Jones And The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: The final room with all the skulls in it could only be opened by holding up the skull to a little spot in the door to unlock it. So how did the first person that stole that skull get in there the first time?
[fanwank]He didn’t have an energy source. When he lifted the various bicycles, all of the them were already moving, with the kids pushing the pedals. He converted the kinetic energy of that, along with their forward momentum, into the energy he used to fly them through the air. When the ship took off, it was just him, with no place to grab the kinetic energy he needed for conversion. Not to mention, the bloody door was closed. Grabbing the outside of a ship headed for space with no idea if anyone would notice you before vacuum did a number on you would probably not be the best idea. After all, they took off without noticing he wasn’t there.[/fanwank]
All movies. I didn’t realize Hollow Man would be as annoying to others as it is to me.
As for the eyelids being invisible, they do address that in that he always has to have his eyes covered because light will always be able to get in. Except in a completely dark room of course.
Thanks for all the other notes on Hollow Man. I especially like **TreacherousCretin **pointing out the hair issue on the latex mask.
As far as other movies, I’ll toss another one that annoys me to no end. Apollo 13. A great movie to see in the theaters once, but once you see it a million times on TV or video, you can see a few flaws that got by post production…
One part of Apollo 13 that they screwed up on was when they were talking about Lovell going into gimbel lock, he swears about pointing out the obvious while he’s on a hot mike. Bill Paxton reacts as if he already knows the mike is open when he says “Roger Houston”, but then he reacts like he doesn’t know when they tell him the mike is open and apologizes. I know it’s a small thing. but I hate Bill Paxton, and everything he does annoys me. So when he screws up, I probably notice it more than most people.
It also bugs me that the simulator that Gary Sinese is in for days is built so he is on his back the entire time. There is no reason for the simulator to be built like that. When the Apollo craft is in space, there won’t be any issue with the discomfort of laying on his back… and the movie shows they find him about an hour after the accident, so he’s basically laying on his back flipping switches for 2+ days. If that was how the sim was really set up, what a stupid design. I figure it was for movie drama to make the guy look as uncomfortable as possible.
Finally, when they get the re-entry procedures, the first thing they do (when power is such a critical thing), is flip the lights on in the CM. I don’t know if it was pitch black in there, since the movie implied there was enough light to see, but it sure seemed like a stupid thing to waste power on and put on first when they had to get the computer up and the parachutes heated, etc.
Ron Howard movies can never be watched more than a couple of times before they fail in many different ways for me.
It’s not a movie that falls apart entirely (the story in the past is a passable romance), but the contortions that The Notebook goes through to hide “the secret identity” of the present-day character get really annoying. The worst, for me is the ‘new doctor’ who examines Noah. Somehow he’s been around long enough to refer to Allie by her maiden name (and yes, she changed it, according to the credits) — but when talking directly and in private to her husband he keeps it up. I can’t see that, if it were to happen in real life, as anything other than incredibly rude (either he insults him to his face or he doesn’t bother to know his patients’ names).
My contention remains that given how much wasted effort went into ‘concealing’ his name from not just her but other characters, the movie is made immeasurably better if you simply change Garner’s role to the other guy. It would make sense if Noah had abandoned her years ago, and this poor soul was just happy to maintain her delusion that he is him.