You guys are ignoring the biggest plot hole in Die Hard 2: the fact that the Army only sent one 10-man team, commanded by a major, to deal with a terrorist situation in the nation’s capital (the film even had the audacity to mention this, and then ignore it!).
In the real world, they would have had a Marine brigade airlifted within an hour, forming a paremeter around the airport. Every single member of the Washington PD they could organize would be on the scene, in full riot gear, and both the Virginia and Maryland National Guard would each send an armored division as soon as they could get them organized. Whatever Carrier Group happened to be at Norfolk would launch its entire air wing to circle the area. The FBI would send any available agents, including all the trainies at Quantico, for added security. SEALs, Green Berets, Rangers, Delta Force - anyone within a 3-hour flight radius would be there. And commanding the whole thing from the control tower would be the Joint Chief of Staff, helped by the National Security Advisor.
Sleepless in seattle- The plot a girl hears a widower talking on the radio and falls in love with him. She writes him a letter and they end up falling in love and want to meet. The problem is that she is engaged. Her fiance is a nice guy who has alot of allergies. They have been dating for years, she just got a ring, they are planning the wedding, the whole nine yards. However as they have a romantic dinner on Valentine’s day she announces I am leaving you for someone I’ve never even met. His reaction was a very mild disappointment. Not anger that she has been writing a man behind his back while pretending to be in love with him. Not sadness that the love of his life just gave him the kiss off on Valentine’s day. He acts like the waiter just told him they were out of ranch dressing.
I liked the movie other than that but it just bothers me every time I see it.
There is a slightly similar scene in You’ve got Mail, also with Meg Ryan and written by Nora Ephron but that scene is almost plausible, becaue the boyfriend in that movie has a crush on someone else.
I just have to say some of these “plotholes” mentioned are too nit-picky. Can anyone say “suspension of disbelief”. I’m not saying I disagree with all of them, but in movies like The Truman Show, we are given ample opportunity from the promos on to realize that this could never happen and that it’s just a movie. To nitpick a point that “the constitution wouldn’t allow this to happen” is tantamount to saying, “as if apes could ever evolve to rule the planet holding human’s as slaves.”
Some holes mentioned do irk me, like the magically appearing bullets in I Know What You Did … and the Double Jeopordy professor misinterpreting the law, but in movies like The Matrix or Jurassic Park they could use fairy dust and leperchauns to explain plot difficiencies and I’d buy it because the plot is fantastical from the get-go.
I just had to get that off my chest. After all I have been accused of liking far too many movies and not hating enough (that’s why Hollywood really needs me as a critic - the industry would boom), but don’t let me spoil the fun.
It’s been a long time since I saw the movie “Copycat” with Sigourney Weaver. It was a good flick, but one thing struck me as a big plot hole. It may have been explained – I don’t remember.
(Spoilers follow.)
The serial killer is copycatting the techniques of other serial killers. When he kills a woman à la the Hillside Stranglers, the police identify the semen of two different men in the body of the victim. The killer was able to obtain these two different samples because he works at a sperm bank.
What a huge clue! As I recall, the detectives never stop to wonder about how the killer managed to obtain the semen of two men other than himself. I don’t remember that the detectives ever followed up on it at all. Of course, the movie would have been a lot shorter if they had …
I know pointing out scientific inconsistencies in the Star Wars movies is like kickboxing with a first-grader, but bear with me.
At the end of the first movie, the Death Star sets out for Yavin to destroy the rebel base. They’re following the tracker they put on the Millennium Falcon. The movie has already made it clear that in order to get from star system to star system, ships must enter lightspeed. (A small concession to reality.) So, by extension, the Death Star must be able to jump to lightspeed.
They get to Yavin. They’re on the wrong side of the planet from the moon the rebels are using for their base. It’ll take half an hour to orbit Yavin so they have a clear shot at the moon.
Seems to me they have two other options:
Jump to lightspeed for a moment and move to the opposite side of the planet.
Blow up Yavin. Or just shoot through it; it’s a gas giant.
I know, I know, Star Wars is space opera, not science fiction. But still…
I have one that I’m not sure qualifies as a plot hole or more of a “Oh, come on! That’s utter BS!” In Mission Impossible 2, towards the end of the movie the chief henchman of the bad guy is duking it out with Tom Cruise. We don’t get to see who won the fight, but moments later the henchman walks into the bad guy’s room dragging Tom Cruise’s semi-conscious body. The bad guy empties his gun into Cruise and chortles evilly. But wait, what’s this? Something looks wrong with Crusie’s finger. Why, it has the same wound that the henchman had. Gasp! The bad guy pulls the Tom Cruise face off the body he just shot full of holes and realizes it is really the henchman under one of those gee-whiz Mission Impossible masks.
Ok…so Tom Cruise inflitrated the bad guy’s compound and just happened to bring a mask of the henchman and a mask of his own face? How did he know he would pull the ol’ switcheroo? Or did he have a couple dozen masks in that little backpack in case he needed to switch identities with one of the other 20 armed goons he faught with? That scene stretched my credibility to the breaking point.
The biggest plothole that has always bugged me was in “ET:the Extra-Terrestrial”;
The movie starts with the alien ship landing and ET and his fellow non-humans exploring. Of course, the faceless government agents nearly corner ET and prevent him from rejoining his buddies as the UFO he came in takes off…
Fast forward an hour into the movie, ET uses his awesome mind powers to make Elliot, Elliot’s bike, and ET himself fly over the hillside. Even later in the movie, ET levitates Elliot and a whole bunch of his friends towards the UFO which has returned to pick up ET.
WHY THE HELL DIDN’T ET JUST FLY BACK TO THE UFO IN THE BEGINNING OF THE MOVIE???
Even though the “Back to the Future” movies are amongst my favorites, the plot holes can be irritating.
Now, they did provide an explanation to the paradox you stated. Doc Brown said that there was a ripple effect, so that changes made by someone from the future wouldn’t directly affect him until a while later. That’s why Marty and his siblings disappeared one by one from his photo instead of instantaneously. (There wouldn’t’ve been much of a movie if Marty had disappeared as soon as he’d shoved George out of his grandfather’s car’s path.)
Unstated in this was that if the time traveller went back to the future right away, he’d push the ripple with him to the future, so that the future would be changed when he got back. This is how old Biff from 2015 changed teen Biff’s future (by giving him the almanac), didn’t disappear, but upon returning to 2015 immediately started feeling the pangs of being erased from time (when he staggered from the Delorean). His actual fading was filmed but edited out of the movie (for some reason).
So, OK, I bought the ripple theory as the plot device for these movies. But then, in BTTF3, the photo of Doc Brown’s tombstone (that was photographed in 1955) instantaneously changes from Doc’s, to empty, to Eastwood’s. It too should have only changed once the ripple effect from 1885 had reached 1955. This also goes for the 1985 newspapers that Doc and Marty had with them when they went to get the sports almanac from young Biff. Once Marty burned the almanac, the headlines changed instantly.
A better question, regarding that whole movie: The IMF didn’t want to move in on the bad guy because they didn’t know whether or not he had the virus, and they didn’t want to take the risk of contaminating themselves, spreading an outbreak, etc. But then they find out he doesn’t, in fact, have possession of the virus, and what’s more, they know pretty much where it is and how it’s being protected. Okay, so why don’t they just airlift a coupla platoons of Marines into the bad guy’s compound and shut down his whole operation right then and there?
So how come someone can live to be 40+ years old without ever realising he never gets sick, hurt or injured? Don’t you think he might have already become just a little curious about this, without the help of mad old Sam Jackson?
Along sort of the same line, when Tom Cruise is standing there watching the bad guy empty his gun into the mask-wearing henchman, why didn’t Tommy just blow away the bad guy right there and then? Instead, he steals the antidote and runs away. Of course, if he did do the smart thing (blow away the bad guy) there would be no gravity defying John Woo martial arts battle. But they also would have saved a couple of nice motorcycles.
The trial of the killing of the Archbishop of Chicago is sure to be the top story in the headlines. Norton’s face would’ve been plastered all over the television and in the newspaper. Somebody in this “tiny town” would’ve recognized him and come forth, if not for justice, then for publicity or money. Reporters would’ve been digging everywhere to break the story.
IRL, this would not have happened like this. Guaranteed.
In The River Wild, the whole premise is that the escaping bank robbers have no choice but to go through a dangerous area of rapids called the “Gauntlet”. They force Meryl Streep to guide them through it at the risk of all their lives. However, Meryl’s husband, who is portrayed as a geeky city boy, manages to escape and walk down the river, and he still arrives below the “Gauntlet” hours ahead of them.
I chalked up the Death Star’s ability to do hyperspace (but not as quickly as the M.F.) and its painfully slow move around Yavin this way:
An oil tanker can move at a decent clip in the open ocean, but takes a while to build up speed, and once in tight quarters it moves very cautiously like a pickup in low-gear. (Unless your Death Star is named “Exxon Valdez.”)
Have you ever seen the movie Frequency? The best about that movie was that the time traveling thing is never really explained. At least in other movies there’s some “magnetic wrinkle in the universe depending on an electrical storm in space” bullshit explanations, but not in Frequency. They were just, “Oh by the way, there’s come screwing around with time.” I thought it was hysterical.