# Biggest Plotholes in Blockbuster Movies (spoilers) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 4, 2004, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-plotholes-in-blockbuster-movies-spoilers/227449 "2004-02-04T06:20:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2004, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-plotholes-in-blockbuster-movies-spoilers/227449/121 "2004-02-08T00:01:09Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > After studying humans and the Earth for years and getting everything in place, they forget a critical thing…to them, water is deadly on contact (its like acid to them, though god knows why). Also, we don’t know that they’ve been studying us “for years.” The movie explicitly states that the crop circles that have shown up in the past are not the same as the ones that show up right before the alien invasion. All the previous ones, like crop circles in the real world, had been shown to be hoaxes. The new ones couldn’t be explained through any of the known crop circle hoaxing methods. And, as **emrkp** pointed out, we don’t know why they made the crop circles. You can make all sorts of guesses, but it’s worth pointing out that one of the explanations believers have put forth for “real” crop circles is that they’re the impressions made by the alien spaceship’s landing gear. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Man\_With\_The\_Golden\_Gun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dc4da7/32.png) [@The\_Man\_With\_The\_Golden\_Gun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Man_With_The_Golden_Gun)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2004, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-plotholes-in-blockbuster-movies-spoilers/227449/122 "2004-02-08T00:07:31Z")
The main thing I wondered about Signs was, if water kills the aliens, what did they do when they invaded a part of the world where it was raining? ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2004, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-plotholes-in-blockbuster-movies-spoilers/227449/123 "2004-02-08T00:16:47Z")
> [@The Man With The Golden Gun](#): > > The main thing I wondered about Signs was, if water kills the aliens, what did they do when they invaded a part of the world where it was raining? Stayed in their ships, I assume. Or flew off somewhere sunnier. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2004, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-plotholes-in-blockbuster-movies-spoilers/227449/124 "2004-02-08T00:18:49Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > We can know these things by extrapolating from current technology. Yeah, but isn’t “extrapolating from current technology” the main reason why we have these collections of dumb predictions from the past, like quotes from respected scientists why human flight was, and would always be, absolutely impossible? ---
**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2004, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-plotholes-in-blockbuster-movies-spoilers/227449/125 "2004-02-08T00:22:37Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Besides, Shyamalan created such a creepy and effective mood that I don’t really care what the story was about. The movie is so fantastic on a technical level that I don’t mind bending over backwards to patch the plot. Viz: > > My take on the movie was that the aliens that we actually see are not the aliens who built the spaceships, made the crop circles, or decided to invade Earth in the first place. The aliens we see are a slave race to some other species that stay on the ship. The slave aliens don’t have any laser guns or death rays or anything because their masters don’t want to give their slaves powerful weapons they could turn on their masters. Plus, humans could capture the weapons from fallen aliens and perhaps learn new technological breakthroughs that could make us dangerous to the slave masters somewhere down the road. As slaves, the aliens we see in the movie would be kept generally ignorant and uneducated, and they may not even be fully sentient as a species, hence the ease in which they are tricked or imprisoned. Their suseptibility to water is precisely why they’re valuable for this sort of mission: given the choice between returning to their masters or staying on a world that’s two-thirds covered in a deadly acid, they’re likely to return to the ships. And since they’re slaves, it doesn’t matter that humans are eventually going to figure out their weakness and kill a bunch of them, because by that point, the slave masters have what they came for: thousands of captured humans that can serve as breeding stock for a new slave race. Okay, I can buy the slave theory. In fact, that’s the only theory that makes the entire thing make sense. I was annoyed by the plotholes in this movie too, though, and while I would have been able to ignore them if the movie was scary, I didn’t think it was. When they showed the “Frightening” scene of the alien in that 3rd world country, which seemed to freak out the characters onscreen, all I could say is “That’s it? A grey naked guy?” I was dissapointed, to say the least. It should have been scary, but for some reason, it felt more stupid then scary. ---
**Author:** ![Silvio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cdc98d/32.png) [@Silvio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silvio)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2004, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-plotholes-in-blockbuster-movies-spoilers/227449/126 "2004-02-08T00:36:55Z")
How about GHOST SHIP, which takes place in the Bering Sea. The characters are frequently shown swimming in the ocean without thermal wetsuits. At the end, the heroine just floats away in the sea until she is rescued. HELLO? ARTIC OCEAN? FRIGID WATER? HYPOTHERMIA? Didn’t any ot these people see TITANIC? On a far better note within the horror genre movies, it seems like there is a plot hole in the Night of the Living Dead movies. The zombies are supposed to eat humans for food…however, we see legions of zombies that are at the most missing a bite or two. Doesn’t it seem like zombie victims would be totally devoured by the endless armies of flesh eating ghouls, and that there would be nothing left to reanimate. Then again, maybe the zombies stop feeding as soon the victim dies… ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2004, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-plotholes-in-blockbuster-movies-spoilers/227449/127 "2004-02-08T00:44:32Z")
Well, I have to admit I wasn’t too frightened either. Could have been that I was too busy laughing, of course. I suppose the series of speculations put together by Miller put together COULD be plausable. I’ll buy the ‘slave’ possibility, though why you would bother with all the bullshit of setting up a coordinated operation to simply snatch some people, when they could simply have snatched them unawares is beyond me. I’ll buy the mystery of the crop circles too. Maybe they WEREN’T communications or signal devices but strange totems to their pagan gods. 😃 Sorry though, not buying the door thing. That door was hardly ‘baracaded’, it was merely locked with a few boxes piled in front, if I remember correctly…and it was just a wooden door. As to the aliens just ‘playing’ with the humans…thats really out there. After all, the whole purpose of this thing was the attack (to snatch humans or whatever), and here was a nice group right there where one of their crop circle things was at. They KNEW they were there, they TRIED to get at them…but they were foiled by a wooden door. I’m not buying sending even ‘slaves’ down into what is obviously a hostile environment for them though without protection and at least SOME weapons or support. What would be the point? We’re not even talking about humane reasons (or the alien equivelant) either…but simply practicallity. How were the aliens going to capture ANY humans? How could they grab them or hold them…they sweat for gods sake. 🙂 Humans, by their very need of water, are surrounded by the stuff. Its all about us, and we have to live right next to it. Even if they chose a more logical place to attack us (like, say North Africa), anywhere there are humans there is water…lots of the stuff. In addition, if they had THAT much trouble with an isolated farm house snatching unarmed humans (well, I guess they DID have a baseball bat and a few glasses of water), how could they hope to have a chance of snatching more heavily armed humans, like firemen equiped with hoses, or gardeners? 😃 The radio thing though. Its amazing that advanced aliens (assuming the slave MASTERS were of course) would use 2.4ghz for their transmissions (remember, it could only be picked up by the broken baby monitor, but it could be picked up all over the farm and in town so it was pretty wide spread). I’m surprised that garage doors and WiFi units around the world weren’t going haywire, clueing in the humans that something was up. 🙂 Really I’m just giving you a hard time Miller…I’m having too much fun with this. Its almost like getting to pick appart the movie a SECOND TIME!! Woot! 🙂 -XT ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2004, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-plotholes-in-blockbuster-movies-spoilers/227449/128 "2004-02-08T01:12:12Z")
> [@HPL](#): > > Okay, I can buy the slave theory. In fact, that’s the only theory that makes the entire thing make sense. > > I was annoyed by the plotholes in this movie too, though, and while I would have been able to ignore them if the movie was scary, I didn’t think it was. > > When they showed the “Frightening” scene of the alien in that 3rd world country, which seemed to freak out the characters onscreen, all I could say is “That’s it? A grey naked guy?” > > I was dissapointed, to say the least. It should have been scary, but for some reason, it felt more stupid then scary. Guess it’s all relative. I found the scene with the video very chilling, because I was sold on the reality of the characters and the world they inhabit. It was scary because I was judging it not as a movie-goer, but as a character in the movie’s reality. It didn’t really matter what the alien looked like, because what made it scary was that in a world that was identical to ours, all of a sudden there are aliens walking around in secret, spying on us. Sure, I’d seen scarier aliens in other movies, and I assume all the characters in the movie had, too. But to the characters in _Signs_, _this_ alien was real, and that video was proof of it, and that’s what made it scary to them. And I found the characters intresting and realistic enough that whatever made them scared made _me_ scared. I think, in general, for a movie to really be scary, it has to sell you, not on the danger represented by its particular bogeyman, but on the fear of the human characters struggling against the bogeyman. If the characters aren’t interesting or believable, then they’re merely props to be abused by the monster, and the monster itself becomes the star of the movie, instead of the motivation for the action. Such movies can be fun (_Freddy v. Jason_, anyone?), but they’re not particularly frightening. > [@xtisme](#): > > Well, I have to admit I wasn’t too frightened either. Could have been that I was too busy laughing, of course. I suppose the series of speculations put together by Miller put together COULD be plausable. I’ll buy the ‘slave’ possibility, though why you would bother with all the bullshit of setting up a coordinated operation to simply snatch some people, when they could simply have snatched them unawares is beyond me. I think they were grabbing people up by the thousands, maybe tens of thousands. Which would be hard, maybe impossible, to do in secret. They also might have been working against some sort of time table we don’t know about. Maybe they had to clear out before the Space Cops showed up and pinched them for interstellar kidnapping, or biped slavery, or cruelty to animals, or whatever. > [@](#): > > I’ll buy the mystery of the crop circles too. Maybe they WEREN’T communications or signal devices but strange totems to their pagan gods. Sorry though, not buying the door thing. That door was hardly ‘baracaded’, it was merely locked with a few boxes piled in front, if I remember correctly…and it was just a wooden door. As to the aliens just ‘playing’ with the humans…thats really out there. After all, the whole purpose of this thing was the attack (to snatch humans or whatever), and here was a nice group right there where one of their crop circle things was at. They KNEW they were there, they TRIED to get at them…but they were foiled by a wooden door. We don’t _know_ what the purpose of the attack was. Could’ve been anything. Maybe the aliens are psychics who feed on fear, and having a bunch of terrified humans locked in the basement was like a buffet to them. They also don’t appear to be particularly strong aliens. Maybe they come from a low-grav planet originally, and a locked wooden door is a serious impediment to them, especially when they weigh 30% more than they’re used to. The ignorance of the characters (and, by extension, the audience) to the motivations of the aliens is the entire point of the movie. > [@](#): > > I’m not buying sending even ‘slaves’ down into what is obviously a hostile environment for them though without protection and at least SOME weapons or support. What would be the point? We’re not even talking about humane reasons (or the alien equivelant) either…but simply practicallity. How were the aliens going to capture ANY humans? How could they grab them or hold them…they sweat for gods sake. Humans, by their very need of water, are surrounded by the stuff. Its all about us, and we have to live right next to it. Even if they chose a more logical place to attack us (like, say North Africa), anywhere there are humans there is water…lots of the stuff. The attack was apparently global: they did attack us in North Africa, and every where else, and places with little rain would have been hit harder than places that tend to be moister. And they did have weapons: the poison gas they could exude, which may not have been a part of their normal physiology. Good point about the sweat. Maybe it’s only fresh water they have an aversion to, or maybe that little amount of water merely stings badly, whereas a full glass burns. I’m sure they were expecting humans to figure out how to fight back, the trick was just to see how much they could get away with before any effective resistance could be organized, at which point they’d pull out, and any aliens who got left behind… well, that’s just too damn bad. > [@](#): > > In addition, if they had THAT much trouble with an isolated farm house snatching unarmed humans (well, I guess they DID have a baseball bat and a few glasses of water), how could they hope to have a chance of snatching more heavily armed humans, like firemen equiped with hoses, or gardeners? Sure, once they figured out what sort of effect water had on them. Besides, apparently they used that gas on a larger scale elsewhere in the world. I seem to recall there were radio reports about clouds of the stuff sweeping through cities. If they can project the gas further than the range of a garden house, then they win. > [@](#): > > The radio thing though. Its amazing that advanced aliens (assuming the slave MASTERS were of course) would use 2.4ghz for their transmissions (remember, it could only be picked up by the broken baby monitor, but it could be picked up all over the farm and in town so it was pretty wide spread). I’m surprised that garage doors and WiFi units around the world weren’t going haywire, clueing in the humans that something was up. I don’t know a lot about radio, so this is all going to be sketchy, but I assume it was blind chance that the baby monitor happened to be set to the same frequency as the alien communications. And most other people probably assumed they were picking up someone’s cell phone, or a radio station out of Canada, or something. The kid in the movie was, for some reason, pre-disposed to think it was aliens, and went to some lengths to improve reception to prove he was right. Most other people would have just grumbled about how they don’t make things like they used to and turned their radio or whatever off. I have no doubt whatsoever that the government knew about it, but what were they going to do? "My fellow Americans, this is your president speaking. Today, NASA received radio messages from outer space. We don’t know who sent them, or why, or what they’re saying. We just though you’d all like to know. Try not to panic and run riot in the streets, okay? > [@](#): > > Really I’m just giving you a hard time Miller…I’m having too much fun with this. Its almost like getting to pick appart the movie a SECOND TIME!! Woot! No worries. It’s just a movie. I don’t expect anyone to agree with my opinions. That’s why they’re opinions, and not facts. ---
**Author:** ![quasar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/48db29/32.png) [@quasar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/quasar)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2004, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-plotholes-in-blockbuster-movies-spoilers/227449/129 "2004-02-08T01:49:01Z")
> [@scr4](#): > > The [Mir-Shuttle Docking Module](http://www.astronautix.com/craft/mirodule.htm) was built and attached to Mir in 1995, and used several times. It’s perfectly plausible that the new shuttle has a docking system compatible with that of the current Shuttle. Interesting info. I was not aware of said improvement. Standardization reaches earth orbit. 🙂 I back away from my previous comment. 🙂 > [@](#): > > I don’t know how plausible it is, but it doesn’t violate any laws of physics. An airplane’s terminal velocity, even with the engine running, would be slower than that of a human body. Hmm. How do we know that the plane (and Bond) had already reached terminal velocity when 007 caught up with it? If they hadn’t, they should have been accelerating downwards at the same rate and, since Bond hit the cliff a few seconds after the plane, would rendezvous in the ground (not good in the middle of a Bond movie 🙂 ), rather than the air. Even assuming terminal velocity had been achieved, it seems (intuitively) unlikely that differences in terminal velocity would have been **significant** enough to bridge the time gap between the “departures” of plane and man. If so, this speed differential should have been responsible for knocking Bond dead unconscious upon reaching the plane. Further, the trajectory arc described by Bond’s fall meeting with that of the aircraft? Come on. Considering that neither man nor machine could steer to arrange their rendezvous, how did Bond manage to do exactly that? If not a rape of physics, surely one against probability. 😃 Cheers, quasar ---
**Author:** ![Kinthalis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kinthalis/32/16084_2.png) [@Kinthalis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kinthalis)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2004, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-plotholes-in-blockbuster-movies-spoilers/227449/130 "2004-02-08T01:50:41Z")
Hehehehe, man **Miller** this is your favorite movie in the world isn’t it? Common admit it! 😉 I liked the movie myself, I thought it WAS rather scary. I was even able to ignore all the religious propaganda crap I couldn’t relate to anyway, and enjoy the ride. I didn’t even start thinking critically about some of the ‘plot holes’ until well after the movie. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2004, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-plotholes-in-blockbuster-movies-spoilers/227449/131 "2004-02-08T02:05:05Z")
Heh. It’s not even my favorite M. Night Shyamalan movie, which is _Sixth Sense_, and _Sixth Sense_ doesn’t even crack my top ten. But I did like it an awful lot, and have spent a lot of time defending it from people who hated it, so I’ve got lots of counter-arguments ready. I haven’t yet found an error in it that I couldn’t explain away to my own satisfaction, if not to the satisfaction of anyone else. I keep lookin’, though. ---
**Author:** ![Made\_in\_Macau](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eada6e/32.png) [@Made\_in\_Macau](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Made_in_Macau)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2004, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-plotholes-in-blockbuster-movies-spoilers/227449/132 "2004-02-09T01:06:40Z")
I checked this thread out yesterday as I was about to watch Signs - nothing! TODAY? page after page. I thought 6th Sense was awful - but this was ok - it was about faith and you cant prove or disprove anything so the holes were ok with me. By no means was it a great movie however. This may not strictly be a PLOT hole; more a continuity error - but in Pulp Fiction they make repeated references to the fact that Marvin has had his head blown off and that there is a body without a head in the car and then… we see him with his head in place renderingmuch of the urgency unfounded. Maybe it’s just me. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2004, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-plotholes-in-blockbuster-movies-spoilers/227449/133 "2004-02-09T04:29:56Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > They didn’t use tanks (in the book) because each trooper in the MI was the equivalent of a tank division in their armor and weapons (it was all about the special armor MI troopers wore in the book…they even specifically mention tanks, and laugh at anyone stupid enough to attempt to put them up against the MI in the book). This of course does not make any sense. I never read the book but I assume an MI troopers armor is man sized and not giant Anime robot sized. That said, any weapons, armor, sensors, energy sources and propulsion equipment can be made bigger and more powerful when placed on an armored chassis. Maybe they are more powerful than an M1 tank, but I imagine that the tank in the future would have lasers, hover and/or be, in fact, a giant anime-style robot. MI would still be better off supported by mobile armor and vice versus. > [@Miller](#): > > Spaceships work in a gravity-less vaccuum. Weight is meaningless in that context, and we can see from the scenes that take place inside the ships that there’s plenty of room for tanks etc. “Weight” is meaningless but “mass” isn’t. It still takes more energy to push a spacecraft full of tanks and weapons than an empty one. Now in interest of this thread not turning into a dorkfest of “the Enterprise C class can only achieve warp factor 9.5 with it’s home theater system activated” on with the plot holes: Peal Harbor - The B-17s have been stripped of everything non-essential until they are forced to lauch several hundred miles ahead of schedule. All of a sudden, several hundred more pounds of crap can be found (including a phonograph) to jetison. Ocean’s 11 - Is there any doubt that these guys left enough evidence around the casino to tie them to the robbery? Least of all a SWAT team just packing up and leaving a crime scene. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2004, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-plotholes-in-blockbuster-movies-spoilers/227449/134 "2004-02-09T06:19:05Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > This of course does not make any sense. I never read the book but I assume an MI troopers armor is man sized and not giant Anime robot sized. That said, any weapons, armor, sensors, energy sources and propulsion equipment can be made bigger and more powerful when placed on an armored chassis. Maybe they are more powerful than an M1 tank, but I imagine that the tank in the future would have lasers, hover and/or be, in fact, a giant anime-style robot. MI would still be better off supported by mobile armor and vice versus. Well, you said it yourself…you didn’t read the book. 🙂 Basically, MI troopers had special powered armor, so they were like your anime robot in fact. Thats why they didn’t use tanks at all. The armor could run at incredible speeds, jump 100’s of meters in the air (fly really), was incredibly strong and tough, etc. The basic weapons were pulse rifles I think, with nuke rocket launchers and an assortment of granades…some of the troopers also had heavy weapons too. If you’ve ever read the John Ringo’s A Hymn Before Battle series, you have the idea of what MI was like. It was nothing like the movie at all (unfortunately). They didn’t use tanks at all, because they weren’t as efficient as MI, so the book was comparing them to tanks of the past (like your M1A1 example…and they could destroy them by the boat loads). Each MI trooper was LIKE a tank unto himself basically, and the ability to be inserted from orbit, coupled with its incredible mobility and firepower made it the ultimate infantry system (according to the book). -XT ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2004, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-plotholes-in-blockbuster-movies-spoilers/227449/135 "2004-02-09T07:43:57Z")
> [@smiling bandit](#): > > That itself is a plot hole to me. I have a real hard time imagining humans somehow losing speech, no mater what the circumstances. Its built into us biochemically on some level, and we naturally take the rest. > > But mostly, I don’t blieve that humans could have survived in appreciable numbers but somehow forget how to use tools and talk. We naturally take the rest from where? Human children must be exposed to speech in order to acquire speech. Since we don’t know the full details of the catastrophes suffered by the human race while Taylor was out in space, it’s not impossible (within the context of a science-fiction story, at least) that something might have happened to interfere with the ordinary process of speech acquisition. Say, air pollution rendered a couple of generations mute. Or the apes, during their rise to power, went around cutting vocal chords. Goodness knows. But if something horrible happened that prevented humans from being able to speak for a long enough period of time, their children would have no one to learn speech from. Still, in the number of generations that must have gone by you’d expect the human race to have come up with _something_. Children do pick up language easily and naturally, and if they’re exposed to even just a fragmented pidgin language they can turn it into a flourishing creole. Even with speech lost, they could have developed a form of sign language. But again, we don’t know what happened to the human race while Taylor was in space. The basic premise of the _Planet of the Apes_ film is that humans managed to completely destroy their own civilization and couldn’t recover, thus making room for the apes to rise to power. If you don’t find that premise plausible then that’s fine (although I’d recommend staying away from science-fiction films altogether, as most are even more far-fetched), but it’s not a plot hole. ---
**Author:** ![Darkhold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@Darkhold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darkhold)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2004, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-plotholes-in-blockbuster-movies-spoilers/227449/136 "2004-02-09T08:11:06Z")
Sheesh by now I was hoping someone would have commented on my **Mission to Mars** idea. Say I’m stupid b/c I didn’t consider factor X, Y, Z or say “hey that’s a good idea it would have worked” I guess I’ll have to remain in the dark about it. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Bakhesh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3da27b/32.png) [@Bakhesh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bakhesh)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2004, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-plotholes-in-blockbuster-movies-spoilers/227449/137 "2004-02-09T10:59:47Z")
In Batman: Forever (which is an enormous POS, but is Citizen Kane next to Batman and Robin), there is a car chase where batman is making his escape in the batmobile. In order to escape, he fires a grappling hook out of the Batmobile, to the top of a building. He then escapes by driving up the wall. The badguys can’t follow him so thats the end of the chase. Except, when he drives to the top of the wall, where does he go? Presumably, he’ll just be hanging at the top of the building. The badguys just have to wait at the bottom watching him dangling. Sooner or later, he is going to have to lower himself down again sheepishly. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2004, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-plotholes-in-blockbuster-movies-spoilers/227449/138 "2004-02-09T13:31:05Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > _Jurassic Park: The Lost World_ > > This one really annoys me. It’s not just implausible, it’s clear that no one was paying any attention to logic at all: > > The Tyrannosaurus apparently escapes from the hold on board ship, and kills everyone, including those in the pilot house, which is clearly too small for the T. rex to have entered. Despite this, the ship continues _exactly_ on its original course, smashing into the pier where it was supposed to have docked. Meanwhile, the T. rex _goes back into the hold and closes the door behind it,_ where it is found when others board the ship. > > Of course, what obviously must have happened instead was that there was also a pack of velociraptors on the ship, and they were the ones that escaped and killed everyone. They then left the ship without anyone seeing them, making their way to Hollywood and devouring the whoever was in charge of seeing that the script had the least vestige of logic or common sense. That, and the T-Rex runs from heavily crowded downtown into the 'burbs where _everyone_ is asleep and NOBODY bothers to follow him. > [@Art Vandelay](#): > > WHY THE HELL DIDN’T HE JUST FLY UP TO THE UFO IN THE BEGINNING OF THE MOVIE? Because the doors were closed? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2004, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-plotholes-in-blockbuster-movies-spoilers/227449/139 "2004-02-09T13:37:29Z")
> [@HPL](#): > > Okay, I can buy the slave theory. In fact, that’s the only theory that makes the entire thing make sense. > > I was annoyed by the plotholes in this movie too, though, and while I would have been able to ignore them if the movie was scary, I didn’t think it was. > > When they showed the “Frightening” scene of the alien in that 3rd world country, which seemed to freak out the characters onscreen, all I could say is “That’s it? A grey naked guy?” > > I was dissapointed, to say the least. It should have been scary, but for some reason, it felt more stupid then scary. Maddox did a good bit about [the many, many holes in Signs](http://maddox.xmission.com/signs.html) … ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2004, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-plotholes-in-blockbuster-movies-spoilers/227449/140 "2004-02-09T15:43:27Z")
> [@](#): > > 1. The nuclear plant will not use the near-absolute-value temperatures of outer space to dissipate excess heat. Instead, the plant will use expensive and inefficient media cooling systems to handle the heat. Actually, this is correct. Its very hard to dump heat into space, because it very inefficient. Assuming you could get by without breathing, you could hang out in orbit for a very long time unprotected - the total vaccuum essentially acts as a very good insulator. NASA did some experiments with this. Space may technically be “cold” but it doesn’t act that way on matter, really. > [@](#): > > If you don’t find that premise plausible then that’s fine (although I’d recommend staying away from science-fiction films altogether, as most are even more far-fetched), but it’s not a plot hole. I didn’t say it was a bad movie, I just said it was ludicrous. Without assuming a _lot_ of continuous circumstances to stop the propogation of language - and I cannnot see how any of those could exist, its quite silly. But I didn’t say I wouldn’t watch it or I am deeply offended at the the plot hole. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-plotholes-in-blockbuster-movies-spoilers/227449.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/biggest-plotholes-in-blockbuster-movies-spoilers/227449.md?page=8)