Please let this thread die.
Don’t we have an active one on this very same topic?
If “Joe Crackhead” robbed a store, then robbed the same store again, each instance would be a separate crime. Double jeopardy is a defense against attempting to try someone multiple times for the same crime. So if “Joe Crackhead” robbed a 7-11 on 5/5/2013 and was exonerated, prosecutors can’t try him again for that same crime - even if they have new evidence or a witness comes forward. But then if he robs that same 7-11 on 10-5-2013, that’s a new crime and he can be tried for that. If I murder my husband and am exonerated, or convicted, it’s over. There is no way to murder someone twice. So if I’m convicted with murdering someone and they aren’t really dead, and I murder them for real, double jeopardy would technically apply. In real life though, I’d imagine prosecutors would try to overturn the first conviction since the murder never actually happened. Then I could be tried for the murder because the original crime never took place. It would probably be more complicated had Ashley’s character been exonerated, because the court does allow convictions to be overturned but jeopardy does not allow, ever, for an exoneration to be overturned.
So you are correct in saying this is a plot hole - but not for the reason you stated. The plot would work better had she NOT been convicted of her husband’s murder.
If “Joe Crackhead” robbed a store, then robbed the same store again, each instance would be a separate crime. Double jeopardy is a defense against attempting to try someone multiple times for the same crime. So if “Joe Crackhead” robbed a 7-11 on 5/5/2013 and was exonerated, prosecutors can’t try him again for that same crime - even if they have new evidence or a witness comes forward. But then if he robs that same 7-11 on 10-5-2013, that’s a new crime and he can be tried for that. If I murder my husband and am exonerated, or convicted, it’s over. There is no way to murder someone twice. So if I’m convicted with murdering someone and they aren’t really dead, and I murder them for real, double jeopardy would technically apply. In real life though, I’d imagine prosecutors would try to overturn the first conviction since the murder never actually happened. Then I could be tried for the murder because the original crime never took place. It would probably be more complicated had Ashley’s character been exonerated, because the court does allow convictions to be overturned but jeopardy does not allow, ever, for an exoneration to be overturned.
So you are correct in saying this is a plot hole - but not for the reason you stated. The plot would work better had she NOT been convicted of her husband’s murder.
How is it pretty clear that everyone else thinks she’ll go to jail? I realize, (lol), that you posted this 10 years ago, but I’m curious.
Are you really laughing out loud at the realization that you are addressing a point made ten years ago? Would you say your laughter is like a hysterical howl, or more of maniacal cackle?
I saw it, and after I’d read the book btw. Norton’s character lived in a very very tiny town in KY before the big city, and even in the book, it took a lot of digging to get the truth about him. Gere knew he’d done the murder but felt he was insane (had two personalities and only one had done the killing). SPOILER ALERT>>…
(it wasn’t until the end that Gere realized he’d been played by a scoiopath of extroidinary skill)
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Hopefully, after 13+ years, you’re still on this post! lol!! I don’t get this “plot hole” you guys are talking about here. Who cares if no one looked into the kid’s past? I just watched this movie again and here’s what confuses me: During the trial the prosecutor’s witness talks about the numbers carved into the Bishop’s chest referencing Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter”. When the witness starts explaining the reference, the prosecutor produces the actual book with an underlined passage, and the defense is surprised, and of course not happy they didn’t figure this out, or find out about the secret book room the bishop had. Now wait just a minute here…one of the most elementary aspects of a criminal trial is disclosure. You don’t have to be an attorney to understand and know about that. The prosecution can not have any surprises with regard to their witness’ testimony! The information about the book and the underlined passage, and the secret book room, all should have been included in the discovery provided by prosecution. And it wasn’t a small part of the scene, either! Gere’s character reprimands his legal team and investigator after court because they didn’t find out about this first! That’s a HUGE plot hole, and a ridiculous one at that. It makes me want to read the book to see how it’s addressed there, or to see if I’m missing something, like why Gere didn’t at least object to this.
Return of the Zombie: I mean, really. The thing lies dormant for years on end, and people keep reviving it? They should just let it die!
My nomination for plotholes, assuming reality shows are eligible:
Zombie Threads at SDMB – The Reality Show
The premise may be good: Zombies keep waking up old threads, Dopers tell Zombie jokes hoping to be first to get a laugh. After ten years, no joke has gotten more than one chuckle but, though increasingly desperate, Dopers keep trying.
However I don’t think it’s realistic:
- Google Search, the Most Powerful Intelligence in the Solar System, would have to never learn to demote threads older than three years in its search rankings.
- SDMB, home to several expert programmers willing to work for free, would never install a simple patch allowing only Mods to post in zomby threads.
- Dopers, who hadn’t gotten a laugh in 100 tries, would have to be too obstinate to give up.
So … it’s just too unbelievable. I’d prefer Rick Blaine and the Letters of Transit any day.
In the remake of Rear Window, Chris Reeve’s character has an edectic, but doesn’t remember anything that happened a week before his accident, so he doesn’t know that the rear window sculptor’s piece has been chose by his company for the new building.
Why didn’t he catch up on what was happening in his business while he was recovering from the accident?
A Mack truck could go through that plot hole.
Well, I never read this thread before. But regarding “Frequency”, I always thought that the time-effects were intended to be a variable phenomena due to the sunspot/Aurora Borealis thing behind them. One should not expect consistancy from such a thing and the fault lies with those who do.
My impression when I read the book was that they were there so that ALL of Flagg’s people were in one tight group to be better incinerated. Would the nuclear blast had gotten everyone if they were spread all over Vegas?
People acting stupidly in a movie is NOT a plot hole! My god people, you would think that you never read the threads in MPSIMS or have neighbors/relatives. We all share stories about the idiot things our co-workers, cousins, neighbors do. So “Betty Ann missed her court date for the traffic ticket. No one would ever do that.” is not a plot hole. In Iron Man when Pepper leaves the copy screen open it is stupid and probably lazy writing but it is not a plot hole as people do stupid things under stress.
It is also not about lack of knowledge. I bet you I can find someone (even an Illini) who believes the capital of Illinois is Chicago so a plot point made of a character having the wrong city as capital is not a plot hole. At best these are nitpicks. I would also have to say woo science and time travel in sci fi should be excluded as well unless it violates well-established science. So for example the gender-swapping of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park due to the ranadae DNA I’m willing to suspend disbelieve for but not the miniseries when people in Washington DC, Seattle, London, Berlin and Moscow all simultaneously witness the destruction of the Moon while looking at it. The big question is when did Tony Stark invent inertial dampeners in his suit?
A plot hole is one of two things. One, it is a violation of the internal logic of the film. I forget what the movie is but it seems to set the standard. A girl is tied up in the back of a truck while the villian drives it. We find out later the girl and the villian are the same (split personalities) so who was driving the truck? Or Silva’s entire plan in Skyfall is built on too many coincidences to be a master plan.
Another plot hole is when a character does not have knowledge that they should have. This could be iffy since ignorance is not usually a plot hole but in the Da Vinci Code when none of the experts equate “wisdom” with “Sophia” that is a plot hole (for me).
“High Tension” of which Ebert wrote: (at ‘High’ gets low marks for plausibility movie review (2005) | Roger Ebert)
“I am tempted at this point to issue a Spoiler Warning and engage in discussion of several crucial events in the movie that would seem to be physically, logically and dramatically impossible, but clever viewers will be able to see for themselves that the movie’s plot has a hole that is not only large enough to drive a truck through, but in fact does have a truck driven right through it.”
Funny thing about criminal law: every crime has “elements”, pieces of the puzzle each of which must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in order to secure a conviction. One of those elements is “on or about (date X)”. There is a wrinkle, which is that an exact date need not be proven; however, it is necessary that a prosecutor prove that the offense was committed prior to the return of the indictment.
So, let’s suppose you’re convicted of murdering Mr. Boddy. The offense is alleged to have been committed on 1/31/10, you are indicted on 3/31/10, and convicted on 5/31/10. You serve three years and get out on parole, at which time you discover Mr. Boddy is alive and well. So you kill him on June 15th, 2013. Double jeopardy? Nope. The new offense was committed after the return of the original indictment, so it’s a whole new episode of criminal conduct. Doesn’t matter that it’s the same guy. Having him walking around gives you damn good grounds for a reversal of your original conviction, but then you’ll just be convicted of the new crime anyway. There’s no “double jeopardy”.
Can’t believe I’m having to defend a more-than-a-decade-old post…
Yes and no. When main characters blatantly overlook facts that are obvious to the rest of us, then it begins to look like lazy writing. It’s like the old days of the Superman comic book, where Superman had to “forget” about one or another of his super powers, because if he remembered to use his X-Ray vision or Freezing Breath or whatever, the story would be over on page 2.
When the writer contrives a snowstorm so nobody’s cell phones work, and the characters aren’t able to call the police, that’s not a plot hole.
When the characters don’t think to call the police on their cell phones – but later call out for pizza – that is a plot hole.
That can be explained: they weren’t in love. She wasn’t in love with him and he probably wasn’t in love with her. They were getting married because they weren’t getting any younger and they were companionable together. He knew that she wasn’t in love with him; even if she never told him that, he could pick up on that. Therefore, Annie’s breaking up with him wasn’t the earth-shattering news she thought it would be.
I’d still like to know why Mary, in Dumb & Dumber, was so pleased to get her briefcase back. It was supposed to go to ransom her kidnapped husband.
Maybe they used an Italian base. Italy controlled some islands in the Aegean.
My nomination for movie that makes no sense at all is Basic, a 2003 film with John Travolta. It’s a military crime thriller with twists, double-twists and triple-twists.
I like that kind of movie even when I can’t figure out the twists – I appreciate good puzzles even when I can’t solve them. But the twists in Basic contradict each other. I won’t summarize the plot: I don’t want to “spoil” the movie and, anyway, it’s too confusing and nonsensical to summarize. But eventually we learn that two of the main characters were play-acting the whole time even though many of the scenes of their play-acting were two-person scenes with no witnesses. :smack: