I was watching Some Like it Hot on TMC tonight and there is a scene that has always bugged me because it makes no sense. It happens right after Jack Lemmon (as Daphne) and Marilyn Monroe (as Sugar) meet Tony Curtis pretending to be the heir to Shell Oil on the beach. Of course, Sugar falls for Tony, which makes Jack Lemmon very jealous. Sugar mentions that she wants to get back to the hotel and tell Geraldine (Tony Curtis in drag) all about her new guy. Jack Lemmon, wanting to mess up Tony’s thing with Sugar, encourages her to quickly run back to the room. When they arrive, Tony Curtis, wearing his Geraldine wig, is soaking in a full bubble bath. The punchline of course, is that after Sugar leaves, Tony gets out of the bubble bath still fully dressed in his Shell Oil outfit. So how did Tony have enough time to draw a full bubble bath, but not enough time to take his clothes off?
On Mission to Mars I’ve always wondered this (maybe someone that knows more about space/gravity can answer) The problem was that they were falling toward the planet and his wife didn’t have enough fuel to make it to him and back before gravity pulled them both back…so what? His wife goes out gets him say 50% back the next person goes out grabes his wife and him and gets him say 80% back. The last guy goes and gets them all back. Where’s the problem? Is there something wrong with this way of doing it?
In Casablanca, there is no color! Everything is in shades of grey! And yet, none of the characters seem to think this major differentiation from the real word is remarkable, or even seem to notice it! That major, major, really obvious plothole completely prevented me from enjoying the movie.
Actually, the plan I’d personally prefer would still just be to put a few dozen tons of dynamite under the fish—maybe with a few huge steel girders for shrapnel—and send the Big G straight to Hell as soon as he sniffs at it. After all, the simpler the plan, the less can go wrong with it.
Or, since they obviously have no qualms about using nukes…why not just slag the entire planet from orbit? You could use nukes, or just divert a few dozen asteroids into Klendathu’s surface.
Of course, there’s my private theory that in the movie (not the book) universe of Starship Troopers, the government actually relied on a prolonged war, to keep their society going. Like in 1984, except with a generally decent standard of living. (Except for the occasional massive civilian massacre by the bugs)
Someone actually went and crunched the numbers and said that yep, the bus could jump that gap and have room to spare.
The book says (and the movie actually does imply) that the bugs were irritated by humans encroaching on their homes. In the book the bugs are technologicallly skileld like us. God knows how they managed it in the movie.
Speaking of bugs. At the end of the movie the big bad bug was trying to escape Earth before some other aliens blew it up. Will Smith starts to step on a bunch of roaches to anger the big bad bug into abandoning his escape to stop Will from hurting his bug pals. It makes no sense. Just a minute ago the big bad bug was more then willing to escape earth and leave all the bugs on the planet to die. Why would he come back over a few squashed roaches?
I’d say a lot of these posts are more nitpicks then plot holes. A nitpick is when you see something in a movie that just doesn’t technically make sense. Like turning off a computer without saving first. A plot hole is a mistake that renders the rest of the movie pointless.
Marc
I hate to ask, but is there a cite for that? I agree it would be possible if the missing bit was a hump, but to me it looked a fairly constant incline, in which case it’d surely be impossible?
I always wondered about the Aliens:
-How these things grew from something the size of a rat, to twice the size of a man (in 2-3 hours)?
-these things have “molecular acid” in their veins…which eats steel! Why do they eat humans?
-why is Sigourney Weaver ALWAYS stripping down to her underwear (when confronting these mosters)?
-why are the scientists dead set on importing these aliens to earth, considering how much mayhem they cause?
Several major plotholes from the original Planet of the Apes series always bugged me.
Planet of the Apes- in one of the most famous and campy endings in cinematic history Taylor learns that he’s been on Earth the entire time.
Mmmm… Taylor- wasn’t it sort of a tip-off that the apes spoke, read and wrote in 20th century English? Or that they rode horses, owned dogs and all the flora and fauna of the planet were the same? And the ruins of the apartment showed that the man wore spectacles and had a hearing aid exactly like the ones on 20th century Earth? And also, exactly what purpose was served in human evolution (pardon me: I’m in Georgia so that should read “in human periods of biological change over time”) by losing the ability to speak?
I’ve never been able to watch Beneath the Planet of the Apes long enough to make observations, but either it ends or Escape from the Planet of the Apes begins with Zira, Cornelius, and their dear colleague who was never mentioned before now Dr. Milo (Sal Mineo in reduced circumstances and a monkey suit) hijacking Taylor’s ship, which just coincidentally has started working again and even more coincidentally sends them back to 20th century Earth (ala It’s About Time after the mid-season revamp), where luckily they can speak the same language. After becoming pop-stars they’re reviled when it’s learned that they’re from a place where humans are subjugated by apes.
OK, isn’t Taylor alive by this time? Wouldn’t it be just as simple to make sure he never pilots a spacecraft as to euthanize Zira & Cornelius? If they are really their own ancestors, wouldn’t Taylor have already known about their existence (talking apes arriving in spaceships tend to make news) before he ever embarked due to the temporal loop? If not, then doesn’t that mean that this is an alternate universe in which the ape conquest doesn’t have to happen? The mind boggles, but at least Ricardo Montalban got a job (“Dirty human bastard!”).
Next up: Conquest of the Planet of the Apes- set a generation after Escape From, a neo-fascist government has begun the massive importation of apes from Africa to be used as domestic help and for menial tasks. Now while it’s very conceivable that a yuppie couple would trust the care and feeding of their baby to a creature who lacks the ability to communicate or call paramedics and who is a wild animal in temperament and who has many times the strength of a human (after all, they can’t do much worse than some teenaged European au pairs who’ve made the news), it is odd that nobody seems to notice that apes have overnight evolv… um, biologically changed over time overnight- into beings with opposable thumbs. Luckily there’s Caesar to serve as their Charlie Manson and give them their new mission statement.
Then comes Battle for the Planet of the Apes in which in one generation’s time all apes have developed not only the power of fluent speech but are theorizing relativity and space-time. (Why they didn’t just use their new powers of reading comprehension to read Einstein et al isn’t explained.)
I understand that unlike today, when most sequels costs significantly more than their predecessor, each of the successive ape films cost significantly less than its predecessor. The original had a budget of some 9 million (which in 1960s would be more like $50-$80 million today, depending on how you figure it) while the last had a budget of just over $1 million and even used pull-on latex masks for the extras rather than the detailed make-up jobs of the original. Still, you’d think they’d make up for it by having plots that sorta kinda made sense.
“Highlander III: The Sorceror”. Okay, I know picking a Highlander movie is like shooting dead fish in a tiny barrel, but still:
Early in the movie, present-day scientists in Japan unseal a cave and release a trio of immortals who’ve been stuck in the cave for centuries. Immediately, the leader of the trio turns to one of the others and says “Find the Highlander”.
And he finds the Highlander. In New York City. In a mental hospital. In the laundry room. What…the…hell? This guy has never seen transportation more sophisticated than a horse, and yet he tracks down a single man in one of the largest cities in the world on the other side of the planet? Without being, oh, I don’t know, noticed? “Hm, you don’t speak English, you’re wearing animal hides, and you’re carrying a big-ass sword. Yeah, sure, come in and do your laundry.”
Sweet merciful Buddha, how did he even leave Japan?
Umm, in the book the bugs had ships and hand lasers and such. So the humans couldn’t just drive right up and start pushing rocks into the planet or dropping nukes. The movie’s changes make this point moot. WAG: Maybe there are not too many suitable planets for humans so they were a tad hestitant to nuke the crap out of one before they figured out the bugs were alot more dangerous then they thought (remember the bad intel on the glowing blue AA fire, ect. . .)?
In the movie, they went to Big K because of pure hubris- they thought they were going to easily kick some bug butt with their poorly suited weapons and tactics (remember the amped up rifle shown in the end commercial- now that’s a gun!).
I was also bummed about the lack of power suits. But for the most part the book and movie didn’t share too much- which made the movie a wiff confusing. Fortunately the movie had much better shower scenes! 
In regards to Speed
"The top of the bridge had a rather lengthy flat spot. In other words we were being asked to believe that a bus could fly straight across a fifty-foot gap.
When we watched the supposed jump in slow motion we compared the position of the bus to objects in its background. It appeared as though the back of the bus actually dipped significantly below the level of the take-off point as it traveled partway across the gap. This would have put it below the landing point at the other end of the gap and the bus’s undercarriage would have collided with the end of the unfinished bridge."
From:
INSULTINGLY STUPID MOVIE PHYSICS
http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/speed1.html
I’ve seen that movie twice, and I honestly don’t remember the Spinosaurus. I remember the little kid, the “bird cage”, the river scene. But no Spinosaurus.
I’m willing to give them a pass on this one. Films are always taking Geographic License, as directors scout for good-looking locations that don’t always make sense. In The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman takes a route from LA to Berkeley that wanders all over California and goes the wrong way on the Bay Bridge, but I try not to let it bother me.
Not that I really want to try to find logic in a movie based on a comic book, but maybe it’s trying to make the point that even though it’s a big, realitivly smart bug, it’s still a bug, and more ruled by emotion/instinct then logic.
Hell, you can see this all the time in movies, and even in examples of higher animals the bugs.
In movies, the Good guys are (almost) always willing to do exactly what the bad guy says if a love one has been taken hostage, despite the fact the bad guy never keeps his word and is planning to kill the loved one anyway.
Hell, I’ve seen my cat get scared, start running, come to a dead stop, lick himself, and then go back on running. If it was scary/startling enough to start running for, then why the hell did you stop?
-
In the first movie, she only does this at end, when she thinks the alien is dead and she’s preparing to go into cryosleep. It made sense for her to be in her underwear.
In Aliens, she strips down when preparing to go rescue next, probably because “it’s hot in here”(so says one of the marines on the intial foray). If I’m going into a hot enviroment, and I’m carrying some heavy weaponary, I’m probably going to take off all unessacry clothing as well if I don’t have any armor. -
That’s probably why they want them. In the first two movies(probably in the third as well), they mention something about the “bio-weapons division” of the company.
I’ve heard it suggested they could be dropped on an enemie planet, where they will then mutiply and kill on their own. All you’d have to do then is kill or capture anything leaving or going to the surface.
Most of the “holes” in the Matrix can be easily explained away with “neo is the one… duh!” thus allowing a willing suspension of disbelief to do the rest. I for one did this over 100 times (I really dug the first movie… pitty there was never a third, that explosion was a real tragedy.)
BUT one day a friend of mine asked me a question that ended my ability to not laugh at the whole thing. Curse him for, “Why not cows?”
After all, you’re the evil machines, you’ve taken over the planet, and are busy rounding up humans… but curses they’ve “Scorched the sky.” So we’ll need to combine something other than solar power with a form of fusion to keep ourselves in batteries… (mock machine dialogue follows)
Machine 1: “What about thermal energy?”
Machine 2: “Brilliant!”
Machine 3: “From the earths core?”
Machine 1: “No, to much drilling, why would we ever want to drill holes in the earth? We’ll use animals.”
Machine 2: “Brilliant!”
Machine 3: “Alright, I guess… if tidal or wind power is out… what kind of animals?”
Machine 1: “Humans of course… we’ll develop a hugely complex interactive program that allows us to exert control over them. Of course we’ll have to not wipe out some of them, but hey, them’s the breaks.”
Machine 2: “Brilliant!”
Machine 3: “Humans? But they’re so hard to control, and have reasoning skills, and such… why not just wipe them all out and use cows? Then we get the bioelectricity, the heat, AND methane!”
Machine 1: “Cows? That’s just silly. The massive program would only need to be about chewing ones cud… and we’d never have to fight an insurgency with the human rebels that will inevitably (according to dramatic convention) break free from our control. Humans it is.”
Machine 2: “Brilliant!”
Machine 3: "If you say so. :rolleyes: "
-C
Hardly “twice the size.” Maybe eight feet tall, tops. Also, it seems that aliens don’t have a whole lot of mass. The queen in the second one wasn’t even heavy enough to pull Ripley out of the airlock with her. I suspect that much of the alien’s body is actually hollow. They certainly seem to break apart like an acid-filled pinata when shot.
Er, why wouldn’t they eat humans? How does having acid blood make humans inedible? So far as I know, almost every species on Earth uses some sort of acid to digest their food. The aliens super-acidity would seem to indicate that it would be easier for them to eat a human, not harder.
All of which is moot, anyway, because aliens don’t eat humans. They use us as incubators for their young. We never do find out what the aliens use for food.
Because the aliens apparently thrive in hot, humid enviroments. You’re not complaining, are you?
Because they cause so much mayhem. They want to use them as biological weapons on a planetary scale. Having problems with the colonists of Beta Ceti? Drop a half dozen aliens on the planet and quarantine it until they’ve finished killing every higher life form on the planet’s surface. Sure, Beta Ceti’s pretty much ruined for ever and ever, but those bastards on Gamma Ceti will sure think twice about trying anything!
The theory that makes the most sense goes along the following lines: The machines, for whatever reason, beat humanity, but could not bring themselves to exterminate them. However, since humans still wanted to destory them, they had to keep them prisoner. Wether this was because of an ironic senitment on the part of the machines, or because they still wanted to give them a good world, or maybe they felt a certain attachment to their creators, even though the humans wanted to kill them off. The animatrix segments “The Second Reniassance” supports this theory, by showing the humans as the ones who are continually oppressing the machines and the machines wanting to live in peace(more or less).
It was mentioned twice in the movies that the first version of the matrix was a paradise…eden…whatever. Apparently the machines felt enough for humans to try to give them the perfect world to be caged in.