7 WORST Types of Plot Holes (Writing Advice)
Learn to avoid the worst types of plot holes in storytelling. Examples from Game of Thrones, Batman Begins, Rocky IV, and more!
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"Somehow, Palpatine returned." This isn't just a plot hole, it's a plot crater 😂
or an inside joke turned into bs, the exőanded universe had multiple palpatine comes back stories, most of them was bad, to the point that was nearly an in universe joke too. and than they went to this route, since obviously it was never before done and so great idea...
awesome profile pic... Sabin's my favorite character in video game history... his bro is all right as well!
The entire new trilogy is a plot hole factory. It managed to create plot holes in the previous trilogies... that's inconsistency to the next level 😂 😂😂
I am honestly speechless. They wasted hundreds of millions and couldn't even make sure that the 3 movies had some sort of cohesive plot before filming... Hell, by Star Wars standards, TLJ was a failure. Yes, it made a billion, but the Force Awakens made 2. It's as if Avengers Endgame made only half of what Infinity War made.
It truly makes Ryan Goerge's pitch meeting sketches look like documentaries...
Plot holes exist so that Pitch Meeting has material.
‘Whoops’ ‘Whoopsie’
This is the only comment, everyone else can go home, thank you for participating.
TRUE!!!!!!!
They make his job super easy, barely an inconvenience!
That’s tight
To me the one in Ant Man always annoyed me. The movies spends a lot of time making it clear that when scott shrinks down he still has the same mass and strength and that's why he has to learn how not hit people to hard when he's small. They also show him jumping off counters when he's small and be breaks the tiles on the ground because he still weighs the same. But then he's shown climbing up people's clothes and standing on their outstretched arm without them noticing that a tiny person with the weight of an adult man is on them. They also show him shrinking down cars and buildings that he carries around which should also still weigh the same amount and should be to heavy to carry.
Yes, that mass issue just drives me insane! They specifically explain to us that objects made small via the Ant-Man technology retain their mass - and then Michael Douglas carries around a whole building like an airport suitcase - AND - he's got a TANK on his keychain (which would serve as a deus ex machina later as well). And to look at the opposite end of the spectrum - if he retained his same mass, then when he becomes Giant Man, how is he suddenly superpowered and super heavy? Able to ride a truck like a skateboard and hold a ferry back? How does a 180-pound man do that?
Scott’s shrinking powers work by folding space between the atoms of his body and moving them closer together, while suppressing the force of gravity on the sub-atomic particles. This means his mass stays the same, while his weight decreases in proportion to his size.
@@AceCorona -- That whole heap o' shit you just said there? Uh, nah.
Given the implications that Pym discovered them and doesn’t actually know much about the Quantum Realm, only how to generate the particles: I think it’s safe to assume the stated rules are just what he thinks are correct, but he actually has no idea.
I have chosen to absolutely turn off my brain while watching Ant-Man's movies because of this 😂
One trick I used to avoid plot holes was this: when my characters got into a bind I'd actually have them discuss all the obvious solutions and how they wouldn't work until they were forced to deal with the problem in the desired way. Sometimes I didn't know the solution myself and used their dialogue to discover the it.
wow, this is one of those "hidden in plain sight" tricks - thanks for pointing this out! a real gem!
That's a really good idea! You wouldn't even necessarily need to include the discussion in the final story, of it didn't work for pacing or audience suspense reasons. It would still be an excellent tool for brainstorming.
@@Verity58 btw, if you want a great example of this in action, check out the Expeditionary Force series (space opera), there there is always an "unwinnable/impossible" scenario and the characters discuss various plans and how impossible it all is until a lightbulb moment occurs and it all works out somehow at the last minute
Yeah this is a great technique because it makes the story a character-driven storyline instead of a plot-driven storyline. The characters have agency and they're not just railroaded into the plot.
Thanks for this!!
Personally the most egregious plot hole has to be " Daenerys kind of forgot about the Iron Fleet..."
Every intelligent character suffered a noticeable stupidity boost as soon as they ran out of books.
You could have had Game of Thrones for every single example. oof.
Game of Thrones seasons 5-8 are littered with plot holes and characters acting out of character for the sake of the plot. They have an example that fit every section of this video.
Or Daenerys suddenly become a mass killer fully acting out of character without any concrete justification while at other times is could have make sense (typically when crossing the Iron red fleet - by the way how do you hide a fleet from dragons in the air and reconnaissance boats at sea ? -)
im not really sure if that is exactly a plot hole, though i could understand someone who argues that it is. It's more so a plot device, and a really awful and lazy one
Fun fact: Ben Affleck actually addressed this plot hole in Armageddon, to which Michael Bay said to shut the f*ck up
Yep, Ben Affleck's legendary DVD commentary on it is hilarious
Reminds me of the South Park episode where they really skewered Michael Bay. He deserved it. He thinks special effects cover up any plot holes.
@@eatmorenachos "Reminds me of the South Park episode where they really skewered Michael Bay. He deserved it. He thinks special effects cover up any plot holes." His financial planner and his bank agree with him. I wish I could be wrong like that.
Same with Tolkiens reaction on the idea with the eagles flying the ring to mount Doom: “Same thing i say to everybody else, shut up!”
I like to say that Sauron's eye is a powerful anti-aircraft weapon, just a little ahead of its time.
I have to admit, you're really making me want to write a game and call it Plot Hole where completely improbable things happen to propel the story along like some kind of an action movie.
You may consider taking inspiration from the latest disney star wars movies.
@@antipoti That would be funny if I just ripped off their material and they saw it and said "that's shit, who would write such drivel and think it's good" with no realization that they already had.
wow, so your writing a hollywood script. Interesting.
@@ericjohnson7234 No. I was considering making a game based on this idea, but I have no artistic skills. Maybe I should write it anyway and use place holder graphics until I could find an artist, but it would be a really niche joke.
That's kinda like Dirk Gently Holistic Detective. His whole shtick is that he does stuff which ends up somehow solving his cases
I think the bigger issue with the tech in "Batman Begins" is that: if the microwave emitter is strong enough to instantly vaporize water in a metal pipe however many feet beneath a concrete street from a train that's moving however fast and however many feet above said street...wouldn't all the water/blood/meat of the humans just burst and vaporize?
You but me to posting this. I asked my dad, an engineer about this, and yes, anybody in close proximity would explode from their body's water vaporizing. The device would have to be dropped in like a bomb, not stand next to it
And there was a simple way to circumvent this plot hole: just don't have the villains activate the device until the train was on the move and everyone had cleared the car it was in. Maybe they could have implemented the device in the main villain's death, have him get too close to it and die
Not to mention how the human body is over 60% water to begin with. Being that close to something that instantly vaporizes water would cause severe burns to any humans standing close by to the exploding pipes.
Mircowave emitters are usually directional, but anyone in the beam's path should be nuked
All super hero movies have plotholes. like when Superman with all his superior strength doesn´t use it to bring down the villain
My wife is always commenting that if people would just talk to one another, most conflicts (as plot devices) would go away. Instead, everyone says they didn't tell their wife/partner/buddy "in order to protect them."
Yes but unfortunately that's realistic human behavior. How many people do you know in real life, that would be able to easily solve their interpersonal conflicts, if they just calmly talked to each other? I happen to know a lot of people that I had to tell "just talk to this person"
YES!!! This one drives me absolutely insane!
@@SimCatsie Except too often that doesn't work even when tried because one or the other, or both, don't seem to actually listen to what the other person is saying, or trying to say. They just seem to keep hearing what they imagined the other person was doing/saying, or why they were doing/saying it, or something similar. Like when somebody thinks they were insulted, the other person didn't mean anything like that but thought they were saying something quite innocent, but the person who imagined the insult keeps insisting that the other person definitely did insult them, and maybe also keeps insisting that the insult was done on purpose, and gets angry when they are kept being told that they are mistaken.
This makes me think of the old clitche of people overhearing only a part of conversation and taking it out of context - then reacting in a strong way to it. Maybe just talk to the person about what was said? Or stay for an extra 2 minutes and hear the rest of the conversation?
This applies to almost all drama in superhero fiction. It makes it all feel so forced and fake.
I hate when conflicts can be resolved with a simple conversation that never occurs, which you always see in mistaken identity stories.
Wait! Let me explain! It would take a single sentence but I will instead waste this conversation begging you to allow me to say it! Noooooo let me explaaaaaain!!!! Oh well, I guess I will just wait for you to eventually realize the miscommunication on your own.
Usually due to them playing the pronoun game.
My girlfriend is Brazilian and she hates the pronoun game because she can tell in the Portuguese subtitles that they’re struggling really hard to obscure the gender.
LOST was terrible with this. "I'm angry for some reason, so I'm not going to tell you the new thing I learned."
Every romantic chick flick ever!
To me, the worst and most obvious plot holes are those extremely stupid choices the characters make, which are so common, they become clichés and are repeated in almost every movie. Example: In horror movies, a character is often chased down the road by the bad guy. And they just try to outrun the car, or whatever is chasing and gaining on them. Almost never the victim tries to get off the road and run into the woods, etc. Nope, they just keep running down the road until they're inevitably murdered.
Why do people in movies act like they've never seen a movie??!!?
Or in action movies where the villain and hero are holding guns in each other's face then both leave instead of just pulling the trigger.
Similarly no matter what the hero is driving the villain can catch up, like a Semi-truck catching a motor bike.
Or a villain staggering in pursuit, yet somehow staying on the heels of the sprinting victim.
More realistic than you think. Unless you have the presence of mind to dodge it, you'll flee in a straight line because predators can turn as quick as you can.
In 'Inside Out', Joy and Sadness have to get the core memories back to headquarters. On the way, Joy witnesses a certain memory sent by some random workers to headquarters and doesn't think to send the core memories back in this fashion.
The frustrating bit is that the scene was basically just used for a joke. It could have easily been fixed by either not including the scene or explaining why Joy may not have trusted the others with them
I think the reasoning is that she's a control freak. She didn't just want the core memories to return, SHE wanted to return them herself.
@@jasonclough9380 In what way is that not Joy returning them herself? Her action of putting the core memories through the tube directly leads to the core memories being back in headquarters.
@reubenmanzo2054 because using the tube is the random guys idea to transport memories. Not her idea. Therefore, she can't use it.
@@LyrasStitchery Just because it's someone else's idea doesn't mean you can't use it.
When you mentioned Batman's microwave emitter, I thought the plot hole is that it would have killed everybody by vaporizing the water in their bodies.
There's a disturbing mental image.
There's a lot of things wrong with that whole scenario. Definitely one of those times where I go "O.K. this is completely unrealistic/impossible and kind of stupid, but let's see where it goes."
I see what you mean, but the idea was for the people to go mad and destroy the city with riots and such. Of course, they could've shown the emitter vaporizing people's water as it travelled along the tracks to the city center, but that would've been horrific.
It would have been a much shorter movie if Ra's al Ghul and his henchmen had all exploded when they turned on the emitter.
@@613harbinger316 Isn't this the point of a Horror film?
One plot hole that always bugs me is when the heroes are trying to disarm a bomb that consists of a block of C4 with blasting caps pushed into it, connected to a complex electronic timer. The heroes waste time trying to figure out which wire to cut, etc when all they need to do is pull the blasting caps out of the explosives.
Exactly, that's one which always gets me.
I have once seen in a tv show somone disarming a bomb exactly that way - pulling out the cap and pointing it away before it ignites. Afterward saying: "I learned that on the last workshop". (It was a local production, so probably not many have seen it outside my country.)
whtat if they dont know that detail?
@@Cau_No inspector Rex?
@@johnprice4405 That would be "Kommissar Rex" - could be that was the show.
Some years back I was writing an action-horror story. A friend in Wales read it, and asked me 3 questions. One I ignored simply because it involved a commmon type of story trope. Another was easily fixed with some dialogue. The third... wound up seriously improving the story! The story took place during a very specific period in recent history. I thought a natural disaster of some type might explain the plot hole, and on doing research, discovered the biggest earthquake in California in generations happened exactly when the story was taking place. It was TOO GOOD not to use! One of those "meant to be" moments.
Is that the '89 earthquake? Cause that's also the catalyst of a horror story I've been working on.
did you write the next Resident Evil
MatPat: the Earthquake of 89.....@@garretthenderson5738
#6 Abandoned sub-plots. The television series Lost threw away so many sub-plots it became clear the writers had no idea where they were going and were just making it up as they went and I ended up really resenting them for that. The promise of the show was that if you stuck with it, all the mysteries would be revealed, but in the end all we got was a contrived ending that never explained anything. They hooked viewers with a lot of cool mysteries, but didn't know themselves what the answers were, and that was a crime.
Amen.
JJ Abrams in a nutshell
The truth is they literally did make it up as they went along. They literally didnt know what was going to be in the hatch when they wrote about the characters finding the hatch. It was just "what if they found a mysterious hatch?" then figured out where it was actually going later.
The bottom line is that nobody should ever hire JJ Abrams to write a script
"Somehow, Palpatine survived." Worst plot hole ever, or worst plot hole POSSIBLE? To just...hand-wave the biggest plot point in your entire trilogy of billion-dollar-franchise movies is unforgivable. I don't care if there's an explanation in a tie-in book or whatever, if you can't put the plot of your movie IN YOUR MOVIE you're a terrible writer. RoS was such a flaming turd for a laundry list of reasons but that one is the one that still burns me.
Don't forget about in The Last Jedi when Luke told Rey he came to the planet to die. THEN, WHY THE HECK DID YOU SEND R2D2 THE LAST COORDINATES TO YOUR LOCATION? PEOPLE HAVE DIED BECAUSE OF THAT MAP. What was Ryan Johnson thinking cutting that part out? It's not like showing a character that had barely to no screen time in one installment, and they have one race, but then they get a race change when they have more of a part in the story. It works, but not freaking important plot points. Btw, I thought their attempt at cloning was on Luke from TLJ because that was NOT him on thay movie.
> I don't care if there's an explanation in a tie-in book or whatever, It's worse. It was announced in Fortnight. Not even a Star Wars game tie in.
@@jacevicki wait, they explained "how Palpatine returned"?
@@jacindaellison3363they didn't much like explain it rather than announced it , on fucking Fortnite, I don't remember if a year or so or the same year the movie came out.
@@seragx99 Dang. Lazy and dumb.
Two I can personally never get over: - jurassic park: after establishing in a cult scene that the T-Rex makes the ground shake when moving with massive tremors, he becomes a silent ninja in the final scene to rescue the heroes - independence day: Jeff Goldblum's computer can plug in and upload stuff to an alien computer he's never even seen, no problem
The Independence Day one is kind of addressed on a cut scene as well: Supposedly, modern computers are product of the alien technology found on the crashed spaceship they were hiding in Area-51. Still, I want to think aliens use UNIX or something, because it makes me think of an alien IT department.
the ID4 one is well think in 1's and 0's. You can throw a wrench into a computer's program easier then you can repair said program. He could have written a simple program, from the part of the program he already found and understood from them using it on our sats, and made it turn every 10th or 11th 0 in to a 1. That would so mess up any program that it is funny.
In my headcanon the guys in area 51 werent complete fools like they are portrayed in the movie, and actually used the 50 years they were in possession of the alien technology to figure out their computer language and then gave jeff goldblum's character a simple plugin or update to his computerso he was able to communicate with the alien technology
The Jurassic Park one is indeed ridiculous. Probably even worse in The Lost World where again the t-rex comes out of nowhere, silently. For Independence Day, I don't think it's that weird. For all we know, Goldblum spent time analysing how the aliens communicate and how their computer/spaceship/software works. All kinds of computer systems can communicate with each-other, you just need to know the protocols. Considering he had access to one of their alien ships, it's not that unbelievable that he could try to "interface" with them in some way and insert a virus where they didn't expect it. It could have been fleshed out more, but it's not really a plot hole, IMO.
@@DonVigaDeFierroThe moron who cut that scene ought to be shot
I have had to revise my view on large scale stupidity as a plot hole over the last 8 years.
Yeah I know. The left are the poster child for stupid. Trying to win a land war against Russia? Good luck Napoleon and Hitler!
sigh.... you're... you're not wrong. i just wish you were.
The biggest plot hole for me was in 28 weeks later: when there is an outbreak of a very rapidly contagious zombie virus, instead of telling everyone to stay inside and lock their doors, the authorities herd everyone into 1 giant train station so that they can all be infected at once
When they could have had the exact same result by having the authorities telling people to lock down, and being ignored by idiots who think that the virus is a hoax/no big deal/doesn't apply to them, personally/an infringement on their civil liberties.
@Seal0626 That would make no sense whatsoever. The civil liberties people, once they see the LITERAL ZOMBIES, would start shooting people for not quarantining. Maybe if you slipped the zombie plague into the vaccine supply instead...
I would also have accepted that they left the ONE living person in the world, who they suspect is infected, alone in a room where the janitor could just waltz in. (I'm aware he makes the point that he has keys to the whole place but not a single guard?)
Considering how badly the real-world authorities responded to the COVID virus I actually find this quite realistic.
@@lesrankins5025 Well to be fair COVID patients weren't running down the street in broad daylight biting people.
The biggest plot hole ever is bringing back a character who died and just have some other character say “somehow Palpatine has returned”
Poe Dameron: "Somehow, Palpatine returned." Us: "Hey, didn't Poe die in the TIE fighter crash? How did you survive again?" JJ Abrams: "Somehow, Poe Dameron survived."
One of the biggest problems with overlooking an easy solution is when the writer wants the hero to save the day all by himself, and so leaves out everyone else who could have helped him.
The Winter Soldier is a great movie but i believe people criticize it for that kind of plot hole. was there ever an explanation why they didn't ask for other Avengers' help to defeat Hydra?
Avatar 2 vibes intensify
@joshuacrisanto7419 cause HYDRA could've had other double agents in the Avengers, they infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D (which we now know half of the agency had Skrulls)
@joshuacrisanto7419 so Cap didn't trust anyone but Fury and Widow to help with the Winter Soldier. Also, Tony's past conflicted a lot of things in that movie.
The forgotten characters who can help is one of the most common plot holes.
I just remembered in one of the Harry Potter books/movies, Hermoine has a device that let's her go back in time and it only gets used in that one volume. I don't remember them mentioning any restictions on how often it can be used, so they could have saved so many lives.
In the books, all the time turners were destroyed in the fight at the ministry at the end of Order of the Phoenix.
@@daniellebrossoie8215 Still kinda plot-holey. Order of the Phoenix happens nearly a year after Voldie's return. Even before he returned they still could have prevented a whole lot of crap from happening if they had had the foresight to use them as soon as they knew how. Assuming they only learned to use them in Prisoner of Azkaban, they already knew at that point that Voldemort was still alive. The easiest and safest way to stop him would have been to use those time turners, provided their power would allow them to do so, but neither Rowling nor the filmmakers ever establish their limits.
@@reefrunnerart I think it was confiscated by the MoM after the end of that school year, and enemies in the MoM kept them from getting ahold of it afterwards. The consequences for it was that you couldn't go back too far in time (maybe 24 hours? don't quote me on that) and you had to live all that time within the day. So a 24 hour day could become a 48 hour day. Definitely plot-hole magnets though. Anything like that can be used in too many ways to account for.
I love HP but god forbid anyone goes back to abort Voldy! Nope. Gotta save a hippogriff 😑 How it Should’ve Ended nailed it 😂
Well they were very regulated magical items, and you could thus assume they had limits on them. She needed to do 1 twist per hour.... how many twist for a year? that makes it unusable for any long term time warp. also she has to return it at the end of the year, she only got it with multiple assurances she would ONLY use it for school stuff... and the hippogriff saving was just not mentioned to anyone ;)
Biggest plot hole in gaming: Why didn’t Cloud just use a Phoenix Down on Aerith?
In every Christmas movie, where Santa is proved to exist... if he was delivering presents on Christmas Day, that the family knows they didn't buy... why didn't people believe in him?
When I was a little kid I tried to figure this out; both in the movies and real life since I thought I was getting presents from Santa while also knowing that the adults didn't believe in him. My conclusion was that most presents were from the parents while one or two were from Santa, and that when the parents saw the gifts from Santa they each assumed that the other parent had bought it.
Hey, my kid gets his presents from Santa. Because Santa exists. Why do the parents in films don't believe in him I have no idea.
Perhaps Santa wants to remain secret, so he changed adults' memories to make them think they bought the presents.
Maybe the husband thinks the wife bought it, or vice versa, or maybe that the grandparents bought it?
@@violenceteacher6669 This happened in every house throughout the world? Look at the movie "Elf", where Santa's sleigh can't fly because **nobody** believes in him
To be fair, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand seems like a massive plot hole of unlikeliest contrivance and stupidity. Leading to total war? Good luck with that storyline!
Read my forthcoming book "The Power of Alliances" - which I just started writing.
All the events leading up to the final successful assasination attempt about reads like time travelers are stopping and then helping the attempts.
Honestly, it’s just lazy writing. Let’s just hope the sequel is written better.
@@anonymoose6703 Sorry to disappoint, but (spoiler alert) The Treaty of Versailles is such an obvious and stupid set-up for the sequel that the whole story takes a hit. Plus, the twist in the middle where the bad guys suddenly attack Russia just makes the main villain look stupid.
Oh look, his carriage just happens to stop right in front of the spot where the would-be assassin is sitting after just giving up…
The Sopranos had a bunch of abandoned sub plots, but they ended up making the show feel more "real." Things would pop-up, but then just kinda disappear into the background, get resolved off screen, or just be left as a mystery. I honestly loved that they didn't finish out every single storyline
The inciting incident for Spider-Man No Way Home is a series of giant plot holes. Peter, after experiencing multiple world-ending events, decided that going to MIT is the most important thing in the world (!), and asked to Dr. Strange to help undo his international infamy. Strange, who is supposedly very careful with his magic, is surprisingly okay with memory altering on a large scale. He starts with something like a "rune of forgetting" and customizes it (who should forget what, etc). Because they didn't write down exactly what Peter wanted (which is another plot hole, why can't they sit down for 5 minutes and lock down the exact requirements for the spell?), Peter kept distracting him. Eventually, that spell exploded and became a dimensional-linking spell. What? It would be more believable if he accidentally wiped the memory of everyone on Earth. But the movie has to jump through hoops to give us 3 Spider-Men so...
It seems that everyone forgets Peter and everything he has ever done. I wonder what would have happened if Strange made everyone forget Mysterio and everything HE had ever done. It certainly would have been a short movie.
Your idea would make a boring story
Yeah, all that but...the three Spider-Men were pretty cool 😄
Peter's a teenager, it's understandable he would crave normalcy after all the nonsense he's been through. It was also previously established that fame makes him uncomfortable and he didn't want it in the first place. He also has a love for technology and idolises Tony Stark, so MIT would absolutely be an interest for him. Strange has always been shown to be not particularly careful of his magic, and less respectful of the art overall than his peers. He's also quite cocky, and probably didn't expect Peter's (in-character) inability to make up his mind or stay quiet for 2 minutes. I disagree that this was a plot hole.
yeah, and it felt very out of character for strange to just start the spell without asking for those specifics. Good movie, but that part always bothered me, and it's hard to look past. ALSO, he is (or at least was, can't remember if he got the title back) literally the sorcerer supreme! No way he should lose control of a spell like that. But even if I can believe that the spell took that much concentration and power, that just makes it weirder that strange was so willing to do it, and that he didn't ask for specifics!!
- Detective visiting murderer every day for interviews, having no idea who he is - Murderer cooperates because he knows they can't reveal his identity. - Then one random day detective finds a random clue on the other side of the town - Murderer suddenly disappears as if he knew that the detective found something on him.
Don't forget about the murderer having no problem axxing off nobody characters but once s/he has a chance to kill the protagonist doesn't.
What story are you talking about there? It sounds a little bit like The Usual Suspects but also not really.
@@needycatproductions6830 Are you talking to me or the other person?
Flip side of this is the frustration I feel when characters don’t make decisions I would make based on my omniscient narrator perspective.
@@jacindaellison3363 plot armor is the source of so many plot holes
"Abandoned Subplots" is the subtitle for the series Lost. The writers had no idea what they were doing. "We had a good explanation for that, but the character is dead, so moving on!"
@@erdelegy The X-Files prided itself on not having a "series bible" an it showed. Thus the messy alien conspiracy and messy resolution to Mulder's long lost sister. At some point, the show got high on its own farts.
Funny that the writer/creator of Lost is the same of Rise of Skywalker
Lost was an exercise in improvisation. After the end of S2, I could no longer suspend my disbelief.
@@GanjaLibre JJ Abrams cannot be bothered with continuity concerns.
@@GanjaLibre Mistakes have been made!
A plot hole that appears in many movies that always bugs me is when the original opponent or challenge starts out as impossibly hard, it defeats the hero or nearly defeats the hero, and then for sake of drama it gets much much worse, there are more monsters of the same type, or the villain has gained tremendous power and for some reason the protagonists are now able to defeat them. It's usually just effort or determination or something like that. You saw that a little bit with the Rocky movies, the first Hellboy movie had that problem though to their credit they at least wiped out the army of demon dogs eventually by different method, but Hellboy is still kind of holding his own against hundreds of them when one of them gave him a huge problem. You see this in a fair number of superhero movies.
Agreed. The villain gets MORE powerful by the final battle... but all the hero has to do is use HEART to win. GTF outahere!
Every marvel movie ever does this and I don't know if this includes the whole "Oh the villains been kicking the heros ass all movie but suddenly after one last ass beating in the final fight he gets the determination to defeat the villain and does" which that in and of itself is like a plot hole since you're told the villain is stronger but he gets defeated simply bc he's the bad guy of the story there's typically no reason as to why they couldn't have been defeated sooner and it really makes the movies insanely boring to watch since you know what's gonna happen Every. Single. Time.
Agreed. In the first Matrix, Morpheus could not fight even one agent. By the third, he could fight several.
When you apply RPG logic to things that aren't RPGs with no explanation:
I understand the appeal, but John Wick always bugged me in this regard. The man who killed two people in a bar with a pencil, the man you send to kill the boogie man, the man of singular focus and determination, gets his house broken into, beaten up, dog killed, and car stolen by three relatively no-name thugs. Then he straight up murders 20-30 trained, armed men who know he's coming to kill them. Then he nearly gets assassinated, again, in his sleep (by someone who later walks into a trap). Then he murders another dozen armed men, gets captured, gets saved, again. And then murders the final dozen or whatever men. Sisu was, IMO, much better in this regard.
The even bigger plot hole in Batman Begins is if they are going to vaporize an entire city of water, it would simply cook all the humans (who are mostly water) WAY before toxins even did anything.
Yep: You were not alone in thinking that.
Vapor can happen at much lower temperature than boiling, so its not a guarantee. If the vapor has to travel some distance and gets out in much colder air it could also lose some heat.
I thought the same thing, having seen this film over a dozen times and it is by far my favorite Batman film so maybe I'm biased. If you listen to the narration in the film, 1:08:10 “it uses focused microwaves…” Focused, which means it can be aimed with settings. Edit: That said, a lengthy bit of research gave me a few answers to this plot hole. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon In theory, a microwave emitter could be aimed directly for the pipes underground and set to vaporize specific targets. This would bypass humans and pipes on the surface level of the city. shrugs...
@@will_sketchyour initial reaction is correct. The movie shows people next to all the pipes, not getting vaporized. 2nd in a contained vessel water is not going to easily vaporize, the amount of energy required would be astronomical. It was a poorly thought out idea but I love that movie so I'm happy to switch my brain off for it.
I don't think they'd be cooked so much as exploded. Having all the water in one's body instantly vaporized would essentially turn one in to a meat bomb.
Frankly, my least favourite plot hole is the “derp moment”. This is where genius characters do stupid things that are just obviously traps. The best example is Q in Skyfall. While going through DiSilva’s computer, he finds an encrypted file, so he tries to open it, which leads to MI6 being shut down, and DiSilva escaping. Now, if Q had been thinking, he would have had the computer off grid so it couldn’t do anything, since it was known DiSilva had been hacking their system for ages. But no, keep it connected to the computers that runs the whole place, what could possibly go wrong?
This pissed me off so much in the movie. I used to work in a piss ant data recovery company, and we always operated using un-networked computers. Q should have known better.
Or Promeatheus where dumbass biology scientist decides to grab an alien lifeform displaying hostile behavior with his bare hand...
That's a mistake Desmond Llewellyn would've never made when he was Q
@@AndrewHalliwell It's these young wipper snappers who think they know it all, who screw it up for the rest of us. He should go back to Counter Espionage 101 and pass this time.
Great theme song though.
The most forgivable plotholes are simply storytelling conventions, especially in movies, for example always finding a parking spot right in front of the destination.
More of a contrivance or coincidence than a plot hole. But if everything in the plot is too convenient or the characters get lucky all the time, it’s bad.
Movie characters eat and drink all the time, but they never go to the bathroom. I for one want to see a scene where James Bond goes to do a number 2 and literally gets caught with his pants down.
This is something we need to suspend our disbelief about, as it's necessary to get rid of so called "shoe leather", the monotonous tasks like walking through parking lots/buildings, opening doors, taking your shoes or coat off, waiting for elevators (unless it's a backdrop for dialogue, or an awkward lack of dialogue).
@@RaoulGigondas In Goldeneye he catches a Russian soldier on the toilet.
@@RaoulGigondas Vincent Vega wishes he hadn't gone number two at Butch's apartment. Roger Murtaugh nearly died on the commode. Paul Finch's "cool dude" rep was blown after his legendary laxative event.
In the case of Armageddon, I can see a case for having 1-2 experienced drillers on the mission for those times when something is off that they would recognize while a trained but inexperienced man might not and sort out before it went catastrophically wrong, but yeah most of team should have been astronauts
the driller could've been back on earth ready to give advice as needed via radio.
Initially, NASA wanted the drillers to train astronauts to drill through rock. Bruce Willis' character knew that the skill was too specialized and too hard to teach to pilots and insisted his team go into space. NASA didn't really have a choice. They did send astronauts with the drillers to fly the ship. And they also had a plan B, which you know if you saw the film. The drillers didn't need to become astronauts. They didn't need to get degrees in physics, engineering, aeronautics, etc. They only needed to learn the basic skills to survive in space. People who are not fully trained astronauts did go to the International Space Station in real life. Of course, 17 days is still unrealistic, but it did give the film a sense of urgency.
@@askarsfan2011the solution is easy, sack willis and put a proper reasonable driller in his place.
@@Spartan0430 Except there's the matter of communication lag, communication interruption, relaying instructions, and a whole lot of situations where 1 second is too slow a response time. Potentially.
@@JuryRigged any such situation is far more likely to come up for the driller-turned-undertrained-astronaut than for the actual astronaut.
This was really interesting, thank-you. Another factor is editing choices. I’ve seen deleted scenes from movies that explained perplexing plot holes in the released version of a film
Or you have to read one or more books that expand the story of the movie.
Yes. Many plot holes are due to the editing process. The Directors Cut, therefore, can eliminate these plotholes.
@@garymathis1042, Not necessarily. They just like to add "great shots".
I remember watching Highlander II as a kid and it not making a lick of sense. Then I watched the Directors cut as a teenager and everything I was confused about was explained! It was still a shit movie, but marginally less shit I guess.....
The "Holdo Maneuver" in "The Last Jedi" - it retroactively turns the entire Star Wars franchise into one huge idiot plot, because every space battle, every attack on a space station (including the Death Star) etc. could just be won by a few ships with hyperdrives installed that are piloted by suicidal droids.
Also, that's not how hyperspace works; What the Holdo maneuver should do is just push the ship aside because you're not going faster, you're going the same speed in a shorter distance. The Holdo Maneuver would work in Spaceballs though; Going to Plaid would tear through anything.
They could have hand waved it away by saying that the hyperspace tracker thingy on Snoke's super-duper star destroyer functioned by existing in hyperspace and real space simultaneously and that it presented a window that a starship, with just the right coordinates and the right timing, could exploit by intersecting it at just the right moment of transition from real space to hyperspace. And maybe needing Threepio to stay behind to perform the calculations. And having Leia be the one to execute the maneuver instead of Holdo. And so on. Yeah, that movie was just lousy with terrible writing.
Also, why didn't the previous two rebel ships that were low on fuel do it? Smaller ships but if you hit the big Star Destroyer's bridge...does it matter? Never mind that the big rebel ship's escape pods have hyperdrives, too. Because Rose and Finn got to casino planet.
Because as the rebels were extremely limited with where and how they could ever get capital class cruisers, let alone any ship in general, throwing them away to damage or destroy a ship that can easily be replaced by the empire is stupid at best. If however, you have nowhere to go and you have only a small amount of people left to protect, suiciding your ship to try and save those people seems more logical. That's why you don't throw ships away. The death star would seem to be a bit more reasonable for that sacrifice. Maybe it had an interdictor? Any space station for that matter could.
Bruh they literally had 2 whole movies explaining how the Death Star was completely impenetrable and invincible outside of a tiny exhaust port... The Holdo Maneuver wouldn't do anything. Also, that only worked because the First Order's capital ship was locked on to them. When jumping into hyperspace, coordinates have to be set first, and then it takes 10-30 seconds to make the jump. It's not a practical maneuver because any other ship could easily move out of the way. It showed the First Order scrambling to disengage the tracking so that they could move freely, and they weren't able to in time.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The whole premise is to get Harry alone so he can touch the goblet which transports him to Voldemort. Yet there were plenty of opportunities to get Harry to touch something that could transport him.
Speaking of getting someone to touch something that'll lead to death. Disney's Sleeping Beauty is a weird one. The curse was VERY clear that she'll prick her finger on her 16th birthday. So maybe DON'T waste all the trauma putting her in a cottage in the woods and burning every spinning wheel (when you know Maleficent can spawn things out of nowhere) and instead just... ya know... TELL her that she needs to be under constant supervision for this one particular day due to a life-threatening curse.
@@myowncomputerstuff True. Though I do tend to give fairy tales a LOT of leeway relating to plot holes.
@@keithprice3369 Yeah but why do we do that? Fai tales are still written by people and even if they are for children, it still does not justify the plot holes. I started reading children's stories out of interest and I am shocked how stupid most of them are.
@@InsArtTure Yeah. Probably because most fairy tales were written hundreds of years ago. Simpler times.
@@myowncomputerstuffor in the little mermaid, why doesn't she just write who she is in the sand? "hey, I saved your life and I love you. I lost my voice but I'll get it back if you kiss me"
My favorite plot hole was in a comic book (Hey, comic book readers deserve good stories too!) It explained the origins of Nightcrawler. His dad, Azazel, is stuck in his dimension, and to be able leave, he hatches a plan to make children that have the power to teleport. How does he make those children? He leaves his dimension and impregnates women....
now, it s fixed, azazel is not his dad anymore ;)
In "Sandman" the closest sibling to the Dream is Death. While he's imprisoned his capturer dies in front of him. It is established Death is the only personification (doesn't use any kind of minions, no other rippers) to collect the souls. She would see her brother imprisoned and he would see her. And still he remains captured for many years to come. It's really jarring.
I think its part of the abandoned subplot category but i hate when the story does a bunch of setup/foreshadowing and then the payoff does not match the level of setting up, making the whole thing feel deflated. Almost like the writers were planning on abandoning the story element but were in too deep, but couldn't go back and cut the element in the first place
Yeah, those disappointing payoffs tend to crop up in long running TV shows
To be fair to TV shows, this happens usually when the writers make a story thinking it will be a X number of seasons till the end but then get so succesfull they are preassured to make a lot more then that, and suddenly your massive payoff planed for the series finalle in season 3 ends up becomi a iseless wimper in season 7... Never liked how tv studios do that. To me a tv show should be produced with a defined ending in mind without tacking new seasons, or cancelling them last minute without giving the writters prior notice. It just makes for bad shows.
One Piece be like:
kind of like how we discovered the reason nick fury lost his eye, it wasn't from a very emotionally driven and heart breaking betrayal scene, it was because a fucking cat he liked scratched his eye out and was just played fr laughs. we waited years to discover the incredibly interesting origin of him losing his eye and it turned out to have been a stupid comedy moment, one of the other reasons why people hated the captain marvel movie.
Also known as “Lost” syndrome
To me the worst plot holes are the ones that COULD be explained very quickly by a character, but (probably) because the writer doesn't recognize that it's a plot hole, it goes unaddressed. For instance, in the Rocky IV one, man imagine if someone in Rocky's corner around round 4 was like - "Rock! You can't take that punishment, you gotta get outta the way" and he goes like "I'm stronger than him!" Then him trying to absorb the blows is like a pride thing. And then for the round 15 turn around someone in his corner could challenge his pride as not actually helping the memory of Creed, and suddenly you turn what was otherwise a plot hole into a character building moment. The entire movie is the same, you've added like, what, 15 seconds of dialog? Filmento commented on this one time like, man c'mon on guys - for movies the writing is the EASY part to fix. The worst plot hole I've ever seen was Star Wars - Rise of Skywalker. That was a 2 hour and 22 minute plot hole.
Exactly....also, just to add a little more realism to your easy explanation that could have been implemented in the movie, i know that writers don't usually watch fights, but i have seen countless times fighters in the ring, just fighting differently than they usually do, just to prove a point (usually only the very best ones do that...because they are the only people that are confident enought to even thinking of doing it in the first place). For example, in the UFC, Anderson SIlva (multiple times UFC WC) was one of the best fighter when it comes to evading punches......but sometimes, when one punch of the opponent would land, he would just stand still, lower his hands and let himself get hit multiple times, just to show to the other fighter that even if he was getting hit, he was never going to get hurt by those punches, and it did work, because the other fighters were always stunned by him acting that way (even though, eventually, that lead to his first major title defeat).
What the hell is Rise of Skywalker???? There are only 3 Star Wars movies and they came out in the 70s and 80s. There certainly aren't any prequel or sequel trilogies filled with unnecessary politics. That would be silly.
wow that would have been a great character arc for him
The thing you said for roky i think happened on 3 when apollo asks rocky what he is doing while fighting clubber lang. I really cant tell what exactly is different in the fight on the new cut but it does get most tense.
That's called hanging a lantern on it.
One of the worse plot holes I've noticed was Looper. The entire movie is based around sending people back in time, because it's impossible to get away with murder in the future. But the main plot starts when the bad guys bring lethal weapons to Willis' house and murder his wife without a second thought.
Time Travel movies are the Swiss cheese of plot holes.
Worst for me is the movie _Signs._ Aliens come to Earth but can easily die by coming into contact with water. Two-thirds of the Earth is covered in water, it rains, there are rivers, underground aquifers, there's water vapor in the air, and there's condensation. If an alien species is intelligent enough to build a craft capable of travelling through deep space, slide through parallel universes, and avoid death on the journey, you'd think they'd be smart enough to know the chemical compound of the Earth, seas, and atmosphere before even thinking of making a visit.
@@EinzigsteEinzelganger That was what confused me about Endgame since I thought time travel creates new continuities or some such, so I wasn't sure whether Steve wound up with "his" Peggy or if he just created more time branches.
Looper was the worst. It had almost all the holes mixed up.
Yeah, there's countless plotholes with the time travel, but the entire point of inventing time travel went out the window when they tried to capture people using guns with live ammunition! They broke their own rule right at the start.
I don't think it's the worst but it always bothered me that Silva in Skyfall developed this ridiculously complicated plan to get revenge on M when he could have clearly just walked into her unsecure flat and put a bullet in her head. It was the foundation of the entire plot.
I think I can answer this! I think he wanted her to know how right he was and make her FEEL the guilt of her actions. So the whole movie he toys with her and hurts her and hurts Bond, just to rub it in her face before he gets his big intimate moment. His fatal flaw, however, is that his ego is so big, he doesn't believe Bond can defeat him. Then again, he tried to whack her in the court hearing thing, right? Maybe we can call that a passionate abduction attempt. 🤷🏻
The most famous plothole in recent times that made the whole cinema theater laugh out loud was in Pacific Rim (2013) where there was a long fist fight, and when the hero faced immintent death he pulled out a giant sword he had the whole time.
The aliens had environmentally hazardous blue blood, it's very messy in the water. It's their excuse but a poor one.
There was an explanation for this in the movie, but it was a single line of dialog buried in a big exposition dump and easily forgotten. They do say early on how each successive Kaiju is larger and stronger, and specifically adapted to resist whatever killed the last one. The idea being that you don't want to go all out and kick a Kaiju's ass with everything you've got, because you'll just make the next one even worse. They didn't pull the sword out because, "whoopsie! Forgot we had that!" They pulled the sword out because, "crap. . . This one is tough enough that we finally have to break out the next tier of weaponry." They definitely should have reinforced the idea a few times throughout the movie to help that scene make sense.
@@caclarkjr14 Thanks bro. I will sleep better at night now. I actually thought Pacific Rim was quite entertaining.
@@andreasboe4509 Apart from the terrible wooden acting by Hunnam and Elba.
I thought it was that they didn't want to spray acidic Kaiju blood all over the city.
Another problem with plot holes is when the reader or viewer doesn't know whether or not it's a plot hole until the end. For example with Melissandre's missing necklace, the audience doesn't know if it's an error or if there is some plot explanation for why she didn't need it before. You really do not want your audience investing energy in trying to figure something out only to later realise you were just wasting their time with lazy, sloppy writing. This is especially true if your writing otherwise DOES encourage the reader to notice minor details and come up with fan theories. Although of course even without the plot hole, Melissandre's necklace turned out to be absolutely nothing, with no explanation or relevance to the plot, as I recall. Another pat on the back for D&D. This whole series could just be about them.
And George RR Martin on the other hand is extremely careful about these things. In the books (as well as the earlier seasons), even seemingly trivial things might actually serve as foreshadowing, or some sort of Chekhov's Gun for a future event.
10 bucks says they literally just wanted an excuse to add an old-ass wrinkly naked lady.
That seems more like a wardrobe error in Season 4, than a writing error. She should've been wearing it, and one can easily pretend she was with no difference to the story. Not that anyone wants to pretend something they're watching is different... :/
Even if your writing leaves absolutely no room nor need for fan theories, you know there's gonna be a million goddamn Fandom articles about "Thirty things you DEFINITELY missed but NEED to know about Recently Released Thing!" ...Constantly popping up along the sides of your Elden Ring wiki or whatever you're browsing at the moment.
@@sibylsaint _> seems more like a wardrobe error in Season 4, than a writing error._ Or viewer interpretation error. The assumptions are: 1) Melisandre is old; 2) the necklace is necessary to keep the illusion. Alternative explanations could be: 1) Melisandre was not old in earlier seasons - her end state is *rapid aging,* like dark magic side effect. 2) The necklace is not or was not necessary - e.g. Melisandre had enough power without it (before), or dropping the illusion was a voluntary act that just coincided with necklace removal. Either case, this is the least problematic type of plot hole: "consistent and easily explainable, but verbose explanation was not provided".
Idk about the Armageddon one. They even explain it in the movie that it's easier to teach a driller to be an astronaut than vice versa. I can see myself in an astronaut's shoes and I think I'd do pretty well. As long as they had a couple critical players like the pilot (which they had). But if you said you're gonna have to drill a few miles into the core? No chance.
One plot holes subversion that I actually really liked was from the 4th season of The Good Place when Janet started acting really out of character. Being subtly more mean, messing up basic functions when she's supposed to be top of the line, etc. it turns out Janet had been replaced by an evil doppelganger and her out of character behavior was a plot point not just a way to create drama.
The best case of large scale stupidity that I can think of is the space chase in star wars episode 8. The chase itself is absurd but then all the characters can just leave the ship at will and travel to distant worlds for stupid meaningless side quests.
Yea, that side quest was a lot of fun but it was completely meaningless. Then again, it doesn't matter if you defeat the Evil Empire--it just reconstitutes itself in the next movie.
Yeah, to have the kind of train chase that they did, all of the spacecraft would have be accelerating at the same rate. We see this in that ships that run out of fuel drop behind the rest and into the range of the enemy’s guns. But just how fast are they going with all of the constant acceleration? By the time they get to that salt planet, they should be just whizzing by it. But that movie was full of stupid writing.
@@sanchellewellyn3478 Just like in a real world. Russian Empire -> Soviet Union -> Russian Empire; 2nd German Reich -> 3rd German Reich -> European Union.
This is one of the worst movies made ever, there is a German KZheadr which analyses everything about it and the director and its full of unprofessional crap. It's literally a giant plot hole and the only story is the little plate below it which mention it as a plot hole.
@@KenoshiAkai This isn't a Last Jedi plot hole. This is just how space travel has always worked in Star Wars. Star Wars ships have always maneuvered as if they're in an atmosphere even when they're in space. You never see ships coasting in free-fall trajectories, and only using their thrusters to change velocity, as you would in actual spacecraft. They always have their thrusters going full blast. I think Lucas may have even confirmed at one point that space in Star Wars is an "ether", not a vacuum. That said, the fact that characters were able to jump to and from the revel convoy during the long, drawn out chase was problematic, IMO. Could they not just have evacuated people piecemeal by packing into shuttles and doing a bunch of quick trips?
I feel like abandoned subplots are the biggest problem in this era. Too much of a push to just get content out, especially if it has a recognizable name, and not enough planning.
That's why I hate the writers of Lost and all other writers that use the "mystery box" bs. It's just lazy, make it up as you go along writing. I think the first TV show that I remember doing stuff like this was "Heroes" - the unrealistic dialogue always went something like this: "There's a secret to this." "What's the secret?" "A secret you won't understand." "OK." - And then never gets addressed.
@@chicofoxo I hate that (Lindelovian?) style of writing with a passion. Oh, a mistery! How mysterious! Are we going to do anything with it? No, look, a bigger, better mistery! Repeat ad nauseam.
@@juanausensi499 JJ Abrams is the originator.
The one thing I would add to this list is overpowered plot devices like mind reading, mind control, omnipotence, resurrection, time travel. They could solve everything and it opens you up to a lot of questions of "Why didn't you use this in Episode 12, 17, 21, and 24?". Then you have to make excuses on why you couldn't use them in those situations, or worse completely forget that you have those tools.
Really great video. I'm a strong believer in "not all plot holes are created equally" In that I think that character and thematic holes are much much worse than pragmatic ones. e.g. real life is full of examples of people making less than optimal choices and mistakes etc etc. but things like characters acting out of 'character' is almost a betrayal of a the whole point of a story! And ridiculous as it is I kinda don't mind stuff like Armageddon. The whole point of fiction to me is to create "fiction' the story of well trained astronauts having to learn drilling isn't as interesting as an implausible tale about a bunch of non-astronauts etc etc. To me the biggest plot whole of all is when the story doesn't actually show the theme it claims to or is kinda themeless. The first Suicide Squad movie springs to mind - like what is the movie trying to say, that bad-guys can be redeemed? That everyone's bad so do it with style??
Sometimes in a series plot holes are created retroactively, for instance, in the fifth episode of Star Trek a landing party is trapped on a planet with rapidly dropping temperatures but the transporter is malfunctioning and the race against time to make the transporter safe is integral to the plot, two episodes later its revealed that the Enterprise had shuttle craft
The Batman Begins microwave emitter would cook and probably kill every inhabitant of Gotham anyway but the worst part of that is the mains pressure water pipe with a steady trickle of water flowing through it 😂
Right? Humans are mostly water!
Yeah, Ras Al Ghul could have just built like 10 of them and probably depopulated Gotham in some "steam explosion" .
The hilarious part of this wonderful bulletpoint-type explanation video, is that one could easily use Season 8 of Game of Thrones as an example for ALL 7 explained plotholes. Every time Brandon explains the characteristics for a specific plothole - a scene, or multiple scenes, from GoT pops up in my head. I don't even have to try hard. It's simply just that horribly written! HAHA! A Masterpiece of bad writing :)
Lol exactly what I was thinking, GoT can be used as an example for all of these plot holes.
@@jooptablet1727 I think its good to expand out and show problems from various movies and TV shows. But at the same time season 1-4 of GoT were talked about as great TV show ever and then season 8 happens and everyone just didn't care anymore.
I'm glad I wasn't the only one thinking this. Every time they start on a point I was like "yeah just like GoT" and then they'd show some other example until they finally showed GoT
About Rocky, Stallone had mentioned that the motive behind the whole character is to be able to endure the "punches" that life throws at you, you could argue that the was so filled with rage that at some points during the fight he wanted to prove to Drago that he was able to withstand whatever Drago threw at him, that he wouldn't be killed by the strongest if his blows alone, that is supposed to be a statement to shake Drago's morale, but of course that is no strategy and that's why Rocky eventually reverts to proper dodging techniques
A plot hole I didn't see mentioned was what I call "The Rapture conflict" plot hole. This is when the protagonist is running from someone or some kind of struggle breaks out in a very populated set, like a busy mall. Then suddenly when the women is being chased or the action begins, she turns down a corridor and suddenly, NO ONE ELSE is around. All the people are suddenly GONE, Like everyone in the world just disappeared.
A great line about fixing plot holes is in the black comedy “Thank You for Smoking.” The Hollywood agent played by Rob Lowe suggests inserting a scene in a space movie in which the stars smoke cigarettes. When it is pointed out that smoking in an oxygen-free environment might cause an explosion, he responds: “But it's an easy fix. One line of dialogue. 'Thank God we invented the... you know, whatever device.'”
"smoking in an oxygen-free environment might cause an explosion" Even if it is the most funny joke in the whole movie - gonna watch it. PS yes, I know what a thermite is, and still would like to see someone smoking it.
Eh... how does one smoke a cigarette in an environment that is oxygen-FREE???
You must mean "oxygen rich".
I watched this movie, it was great but I don't remember that scene. But how do you make fire without oxygen anyway ?
To all: you *can* fire a cigarette in oxygen-free environment, if the cigarette has a source of oxygen in it. But the first chemical resolution for the problem that came to my mind was thermite 😈, so it may be a perfect illustration to 'smoke kills'.
Worst plot hole for me is not because it's huge and annoying, but because I love the movie, but once I realized I couldn't not see it anymore. In The Butterfly Effect, they spend the whole movie showing to you that whenever he makes a change in the past, the present is basically rewritten, and the only one who perceives changes and remember what used to be is the main character. However when he's in prison, he goes back to the past to impale his hands so he can have scars that resemble stigmatas in the present, so his very religious cellmate helps him escape. Not only the fact that a 12 year old kid impaling his hands would dramatically change everthing afterwards (the movie is callled The Butterfly Effect after all) but even then, the cellmate sees the scars appear righ then, which makes him believe it's a miracle. The stigmatas would already be there since nothing he does changes the present at the moment he comes back, but otherwise changes the past creating a new present from scratch. It always bothered me because I felt it was a mistake with the core concept of the movie.
Wouldn't that only mean that his cellmate has the same ability unknowingly?
@@joseeduvigisdiaz2759 yeah sure...
Yes. But it's the plot hole with pretty much any time travel story where it's possible to change something in the past. (Which is why I believe that, if time travel WERE possible, it would not be possible to change the past. [Or the future.])
I agree, and it’s like the one time that it’s only used to directly affect things in the protagonist’s immediate present. Honestly, they could’ve done away with that scene, and had him reacquire his diary another way, and nothing would be lost.
The whole movie was a plot hole
Every video of your is so teaching and practical. I learn so much, thank you! Can you do a video on how to fast-forward through technical details (zoom out), vs. how to delve into a scene and expand on something you want to put a spotlight on (zoom in)?
As much as I adore the TV series Bluey, it's also become a pet peeve of mine because it's provided the quote so many lazy writers use to dismiss their own lazy writing: "It's just monkeys singing songs, don't think too hard about it." To which I like to point out that the exact same series features two VERY inquisitive children who ask a LOT of tough questions. The worst example of a stupidity subplot, IMO, is the act 3 misunderstanding, ESPECIALLY ones involving dialogue that is obviously written to to cause such a misunderstanding to a tortuous degree. The most blatant example occurs in the first Shrek movie when Fiona is talking about her expectation that Shrek could never love her once he sees her ogre form, but she goes out of her way to not mention him OR herself, constantly speaking in the third person. Then when Shrek returns the next morning, he does the exact same thing, letting her know that he heard what she said about HIM but once again never mentioning him or her, leaving her to think that he's confirming he could never love a monster like Fiona. It's especially painful because there was room ON BOTH SIDES for the plot to advance as intended without this misunderstanding. If Shrek had heard that Fiona say SHE was the monster and needed to marry Farquaad to undo the curse, he could have left, possibly thinking that it must be really bad if she doesn't even want him to see it and that it'd be better for her to get her happily ever after than to possibly be miserable with him. Likewise, if he had chosen his words -- maybe said something like "I've been called worse" to indicate that he thought she was talking about him -- that would have opened it up for Fiona to possibly decide it might be less painful for him to think she's just a shallow bitch rather than to correct him. But instead, they both walk away hating each other. And all because they both chose their words very carefully.
I love the plot hole in the Citizen Kane movie where he said "Rosebud" before he died and everybody tries to solve the mystery of what rosebud is supposed to mean, but like... He was alone when he died. How tf did anybody know what his last word was? 😂
His butler says he was in the room.
@@Lammy4ever7 As movie butlers usually are. Just ask Alfred.
@@davidanderson_surrey_bc “Went back to theory seldom used today: Butler did it.” - Inspector Sidney Wang, SFPD
@@Lammy4ever7sometimes its not plothole, but lack of concentration from wiewers...
Nobody knows but the audience... I think
Also, if you guys want to create a story full of plotholes, don't forget to include time-travel.
No; those are paradoxes, not plot holes.
@@davidhoward4715although slightly different, it's still on the subject of inconsistencies, so I see no reason to nitpick
Time travel stories need time travel at the core of the story to work. Take Harry Potter 3 Azkaban as a good and bad example. Its one of the best books but simultaneously the concept breaks the consistancy of the entire franchise to the extent JK later conveniently made sure they were all destroyed 2 books later.
Time travel scenarios do not inherently result in plot holes, but they can make stories more complicated to keep track of, resulting in issues with the time travel scenario or rules. Case in point: Wonder Woman 1984: once they lost track of continuity, the whole plot broke down and the climax became nonsense. Fannish criticisms about her flying or costumes or cgi are easily dismissed as aesthetics, but the breakdown of the time travel rules and continuity is fundamental.
@@randyroo2 That was my best example as well. Suddenly we have a device that allows you to go back in time. And they give it to a girl who uses it to attend more classes.
When the capitol ship carried out a hyperspace suicide attack in The Last Jedi, it was very cinematic and awesome and all that… but like why would no one in the thousands of years prior ever try to do that? It seemed like it opened a lot of questions about the possibilities of that mechanic being used in Star Wars warfare that previously had not been explored.
The anathema trilogy screwed up a lot with hyperspace. Seriously. In New Hope, Han tells Luke that hyperspace isn't fun and games, and that coordinates and routes are essential. Then, in Farce Awakens, the same Han jumps out of hyperspace in a planet's orbit, totally surprising the bad guys...when Darth Vader already established that coming out of orbit too lose alerts the enemy. Terrible writing
Yeah, totally brainless plot. How is it a problem with the Empire building all these death stars and Star destroyers, when you can just press auto-hyperspace and boom, problem solved.
Highlander II: The Quickening. This is a #7. The entire premise of the movie is that the Immortals were all aliens from the planet Zeist, and that once Connor finished off the Kurgen, he got the Prize, and could choose either a mortal life on Earth, or an immortal life on Zeist, which was apparently a punishment for trying to overthrow Katana. So obviously, Connor has chosen to stay on Earth, and is an old man. Katana decides he needs to go prevent Connor from returning, and tells his two lieutenants to go kill him. One of the lieutenants actually questions why, since Connor is about at the point of just dying from old age, and Katana hits him for suggesting it. This would almost be fine, EXCEPT, later on, when Katana and Connor first face off, Katana is shocked when Connor points out that Katana had already gotten his victory, and that returning only made Connor immortal again. Like, DUDE, your right hand guy pointed this shit out to you earlier, and you backhanded him!
I refuse to acknowledge the existence of this movie. There can only be one.
In horror movies, the characters are obligated to do the dumbest things possible. Geico made a whole commercial about that. 🤣
To quote Scream "The girl is always running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door"
Except for the The Thing. The did everything logically based on what they knew and had but it was not enough
"Dany kinda forgot about the Iron Fleet" must be up there. It could be that she was given false information about its whereabouts, or thought they were no match for the dragons as she wasn't aware of the ballistae, both ideas of which would have fit the theme of Game of Thrones and been much better than "she kinda forgot" about one of their enemies greatest assets.
Yes, the whole "we know there are bad guys out there but we won't use our truth serum on everyone to find them" particularly grates. And it's not as if the wizarding community is otherwise ethical and doesn't do this on moral grounds - sending innocent (or indeed guilty) people to Azkaban is practially the definition of a cruel and unusual punishment!
I think you may have replied to the wrong person buddy, but I agree. Although using Harry Potter as a source of plot holes almost counts as cheating!
Dany did know her enemies had ballistae, since one was used by Bron to injure Drogon during the battle where Dany's army waylaid the Lannister army after the sacking of Highgarden. She might have not though they would be mounted on ships, but the one she saw earlier was mounted on a wagon and was a manouvreable piece. Another thing writers keeps ignoring is just how much skill that were needed both to construct and operate such machines.
Ah yes, good memory! I suspect I deleted the details for most of that series from my mind...
@@lyooyiylklykyokyklky Oops, meant to reply to something further down! HP is one giant plot hole really - though to be fair, it's a book for kids so it could be argued that it's less important so long as the story is gripping.
Great information and video! I also love Rocky IV, particularly that it has, not one, not two, but three montages in a 90min runtime. Amazing 😂
There are so many cases of #7 that I can't recall them all... it's too painful... and it's not just GoT....😂 I do notice that they tend to occur more often when the writer as a favorite character who's supposed to be super intelligent, but as no character can be smarter than the writer, what ends up happening is every other character suddenly becoming stupid, even the ones who were supposed to be clever. If the writer's favorite is also a fan favorite, most fans won't mind until it's too late... Of course like any other plot holes, # 7 also occurs often when the writer is in a hurry to get to a more spectacle-based scene (especially relevant in video games).
There's a terrible plot hole in Star Trek Generations, where Picard has enlisted the help of Kirk to help him stop Malcolm Macdowell's evil scientist character. Picard meets Kirk in the Nexus where they can literally defy time and go back or forward to any point in time, and Picard who is a genius strategist and tactician decides to return to where he and Kirk have almost zero time to stop the villain.
Ha! I just mentioned the same thing. I'm especially bugged by the fact that his recently-deceased nephew shows up in his Christmas dinner Nexus dream, but Picard doesn't think, "Perhaps I should go back a day and warn Robert that their house is about to burn down."
No error, cause the storm has to be close enough to the planet, else they would jump out of the cloud in the midst of the vacuum.
@@TheKamiran85 Oh, if only the movie allowed for that loophole... Guinan: Well, as I said, time has no meaning here. So if you leave, you can go anywhere, any time.
@@MAMoreno maybe you can go to any time, but I doubt you can go anywhere. It was necessary to change the path of the Nexus, coming close enough to the planet to enter the Nexus. Leaving the Nexus will very likely have also a very limited range of exit options.
@@TheKamiran85 That would make echo Guinan an unreliable exposition device and that's also BAD WRITING. If you could only exit where the Nexus has been, then they would arrive in time for the planet to blow up, because the destruction of the star is what causes the Nexus to get that close to the planet. Prevent the star's destruction and you cannot exit on the planet at all. Exiting on the planet is a no win scenario. And there'd be no other option unless they had space suits and existed in the vacuum of space. And even if the had then, then what? Contact the Enterprise? "We are floating in space!" "Who is we? Captain, I thought you beamed down to the planet." "Just blow up the Klingons and kill Soran, dammit!"
The Rocky thing bothered me because that was multiple plot holes. Drago's hits were already established as lethal for repeatedly reinforcing the punching power and showing Apollo die after just a few. Yet when Drago fights Rocky, he just outlasting him. Despite Rocky being tough, he's not a superhuman and this just feels like a plot armor, especially since the guy is clearly stronger than Mr. T's character who knocked Rocky down in the previous movie.
Yep, and this is the main criticism of every Rocky movie post Rocky II was that it became a cartoon and not even a tad realistic. Now, it might be corny and entertaining (and Rocky IV WAS entertaining) but it was completely a shut your brain off and enjoy movie because no sane people box like that and Rocky would have been dead in real life fighting like that. He had superhero level resilience because Merica! Rules! and the blue collar guy beats steroid man! You just have to go with it.
I actually had much bigger issues with Rocky 3 than I did with 4. How did he gain like 25 IQ points between 2 and 3? He could hardly read in Rocky 2, and then suddenly he’s doing commercials and making speeches and stuff.
I didn’t have a problem with the way he fought Drago compared to the way he fought Clubber. Clubber was a much shorter fighter. Rocky’s speed could not overcome Drago’s reach. Nor could Rocky even hit Drago very easily.
Because there's no easy way out. There's no shortcut home.
@@loganmatthews3672 Rocky could read. He read that book though it wasn't great it was still quite understandable. His problem seems to be that he suffered some kind of dyslexia. He was also very self conscious which may have hurt his performance. And once Rocky became champion the people he worked with wold be much better to work for and would have used his strengths. Remember that the whole commercial thing in part 2 was making fun of his intelligence. So of course he wasn't comfortable.
Great writing advice. And bonus I get to hear about movies I never saw and wouldn't watch but I get to learn about them with quick insights. 🤩
I like watching your videos since i found you yesterday because i really like writing storys weird acting horror stuff so i see these videos as a kind of critique of what i should try to leave out
Awesome, glad to hear the channel is helping!
Hey Brandon, Can you do a video on how to take inspiration from a story without copying/plagiarising? Btw, nice video as always
Thanks for the idea! I'll add it to my list
Homage vs Rip-off is a tricky area. Definitely would make a good topic.
I need a video on this badly lol
Adventures in Babysitting. It came out a yr after Feris Buelers Day Off. There's 6 points of similarity. Both R set in Chicago.Both R picarist or episodistic if you prefer. A car features prominently in both. It's surprise number 1 which starts act two in both.Theres a subplot in both which involves the antagonist trying to bust their respective butts.Theres even a fancy restaurant . Robert Ebert, also from Chicago, called Adventures, Feris Buelers Sisters day off. Why it's not a rip off is that first, the Central idea, common to both,the linch pin, is reversed. Adventures is Fun Scary.There reacting to things.Their literally running for their lives from half way into act 2. They need to accomplish two external goals. Feris day off, by contrast, is Scary Fun. Feris is proactive.For most of act one hes setting things up.The stakes, external,are less dire but still significant. Another important difference is character arc. In Adventures,for the most part, even the protagonist has a basically flat character arc. She does get what she wants, true love. The only thing she needs is to pick better boyfriends. Mission accomplished in the pay off when they get bk safe and sound, including the car.Home free. Feris has to make sure the Ferrari is safe and sound in Cameron's garage.Goal number 1, external. They could have cracked open the spedomiter and rolled bk the mileage by hand, no one the wiser, but Cameron has his coming of age moment and in an act of anger starts to vandalise the car. He can't hide that. He, like in Adventures, says it was the best day of his life. Now on to external number two.Theres some nice subtlety here. Sure ,if his parents discover he was skipping, he could be grounded.And he's not getting that car his mom was planning on buying him. However, he has a special relationship of sorts with them.Internal.He tells em in the opening scene their both very special people. The best line in the film. Theyd be very disappointed to say the least.He not only has to beat them home, he also has to be bk in bed before his sister can expose him. Feris is also dealing with the other adversary, the antagonist.Major surprise number 2.It appears that defeat has been prised from the jaws of victory. Looks like he'll be spending another yr under the watchful eye of principal Rooney. To the rescue, the payoff, his sister. If your wondering how that works, so am I.There was some plot holes I felt in the film.Of a secondary nature, that distinguish Feris from Adventures, is subplot which I'll flesh out a little fuller. We had the two antagonists here. We have a subplot involving the two parking garage attendants who take the Ferrari for a joy ride, surprise number one. We also have a third subplot involving the escalating seriousness as to what's wrong with Feris.This is referenced 5 times I believe.Theres even, I'm calling it a mini subplot, one that involves his parents. Reactive.
@pequodrequiem681 I think time is a factor too. I once thought I had an original story but it was actually and old film. I probably came across it somewhere and it sat in my subconscious. I only found out after seeing a simpsons Halloween episode.
Does the "Holdo Maneuver" in The Last Jedi count? Instead of building a giant Death Star, all the Empire had to do was light speed ram a ship into a planet to destroy it or at least kill all life on it. Even a grain of sand would do. There is a video of what a grain of sand at 99.99999% the speed of light would do if it hit Earth. If you keep adding more 9s after the decimal point, the worse it gets. In the movies they can travel beyond light speed. Infinite mass. This kind of breaks the Star Wars universe.
Yes that was absolutely bad. But that whole movie is a complete joke.
That manoeuvre renders all of Star Wars a massive plot hole. Got a Death Star to destroy? Send an unmanned ship at it at light speed. Speaking of unmanned, when they did it in Last Jedi, why did anybody have to be on board?
@@jeremypnet It seems in Star Wars any given ship over certain size needs a pilot for some reason. Even in Revenge of the Sith the Separatist capital ships still have living breathing pilots running them. The author-side reason is that Lucas wanted to evoke classic films like Dambusters with Star Wars, so he wrote a universe with piloted starfighters that act like Spitfires and Lancaster bombers. (And the trench run in A New Hope is heavily inspired by the climax of Dambusters, fwiw.) I don't know of an in-Universe reason. Maybe after the clone-piloted ships in The Clone Wars using droids / automated ships was outlawed or considered too immoral even for the Empire to try? (You can probably think of a better idea.)
@SRMoore1178 That breaks just about EVERY sci-fi with FTL travel and any sort of combat. The genre doesn't work if your militaries start using that tactic, so you kind of have to pretend it isn't done or else abandon the genre.
@@arkadyeAnd that’s the point. Never weaponize FTL travel because that _will_ break everything. If necessary, it can be explained away with gibberish, “The Johnson-Vlermlokin Synthesis Effect prohibits this.” No need to explain further.
I feel like there is a minor quibble with number six. Sometimes there are plots that were never meant to go anywhere, they were always background elements meant to be left ambiguous... But the audience, for whatever reason, latched on to them and wanted more.
I think what McNulty is getting at in that regard is subplots where the authors are deliberately hinting at something bigger in the future versus say a romance subplot that was really never meant to go anywhere. An example of the former that immediately jumps to my mind is the dark energy subplot from Mass Effect 2: the writers are obviously setting it up to play a major (or at least bigger) role in Mass Effect 3…only for it to be not brought up once in Mass Effect 3.
If that's the case then writers need to be very careful not to build up the subplot past a certain tipping point where audiences will naturally expect more.
Great tips!! Thank you very much! Success!
Not sure if this is a plot hole, but I think it is in the Wreck it Ralph series. The first movie was about how abandoning your game and going turbo was a bad thing when Ralph wanted to do it, but in the second movie, when Vanellope wants to abandon her game, it suddenly is all fine and Ralph is the bad guy for not supporting Vanellope going turbo...because, I dunno, gurl powah?
I believe it is. It was established that "going Turbo=no, no." But, the sequel tried to make it sound like "Oh, Vanellope is one of hundred racers in Sugar Rush, no one's going to miss her," which is another plot hole because it is established in the I.I that she is a beloved character. SHE'S IN THE TOP NINE CHOICES TO PICK FOR THE RACING FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. The first movie confirms that she's a popular character. Also, they established don't go against the game's program, but Ralph decides to throw that, put the window, and build a new road so Vanellope can experience something new, regardless if that would interfere with the player! And it did, but Vanellope fought back, and that's what wrecked the game. Ralph barely, if ever, acknowledges the fact it was his fault, but Vanellope doesn't take equal responsibility because she was just as wrong. Plus... she's the ruler of Sugar Rush. She wasn't just abandoning her game but her people to rule. She left them leaderless!
you can argue that 'going turbo' is more about game stealing then game hoping sense that was what turbo was doing. in the first movie turbo jumped games to be the star, causing the first one to glitch out and then later possibility many games later he took over and rewritten sugar rush so he could be king candy/the star of the game. later Ralph and the goodlandias opened up their game to other gameless characters allowing them to have a game to be played and live in. meaning they game jumped without going turbo
personally I like both movies the first one is the best hands down and the second one is...ok. I like it, its better then a lot of Disney sequels I seen. but they should of cooked it longer, like have more of the characters in the first movie involved. like when they were off collecting game items to sell they should of done a montage of the various side characters going off exploring the games and getting the items having funny moments. instead of just the main two doing one game, failing and moving on to notyoutube. later they can have scenes at the arcade were the various game characters are rushing off the internet and back to their games before the arcade opens or the characters are subbing in for other games because those missing characters are needed for internet jobs, ect. it would of reminded us that the clock is ticking, keeping the pressure on but also shows that the arcade is a close knit community that has each others backs. ehh its still a okay movie its just very obvious it could of been a lot better.
There's another plot hole in the first one : at the end of the movie Ralph says that he likes the moment the NPCs lift him up on top of the roof because it gives him a clear view or Sugar Rush (implying that's the only way he can clearly see it). However, long before that, when he stands on the penthouse balcony after throwing away his medal (so well under the roof), he notices Vanelope is drawn on Sugar Rush's console, which means he can already see it perfectly.
the whole girl power thing in the second movie made me cringe so much. to this day i just cannot watch that movie without cringing almost as much as i did while watching the emoji movie
I tend to be fairly forgiving of #3 when it's a minor omission in a long series of books or tv shows. It's very, very hard to keep a story world internally consistent over a huge number of books/episodes. With #2, it's not just annoying to see an obvious solution ignored, but it's also a missed opportunity. Showing the obvious solution being attempted and not working is a chance to increase the stakes and tension!
#3 can also be used to great effect. Eg, even the writer admits that the opening of the Martian isn't realistic. There isn't enough atmosphere to tilt the ship, or blow someone away. He needed an excuse to set up the rest of the book though.
#2 could be used too as somewhat a funny gag of one of the characters involved latter realising they could have done that instead, and all the characters involved feeling dumb for it Or use that realization to add to a character who is already feeling worthless, or remorseful
Doctor Who has had a lot of these in recent years. Everything from "We're going to let the giant spiders starve to death because it's more humane than shooting them" to "Graham has cancer so we're going to react really awkwardly and then never bring it up again. And now he's in a volcano."
The first 1993 Jurassic Park movie had a ton of plot holes. The movie itself was based on the illogical concept of cloning dinosaurs using blood sucked by mosquitos. Moreover the mosquito shown was an Elephant mosquito which does not suck blood. Other than that there are several continuity errors and technical glitches surrounding the movie. However, the movie was a huge critical and commercial success and is still widely praised.
Dont forget the Stealth T-Rex too.
Well it was not that impractical. In the scene where Rexy killed the gallmius she approached with ninja like stealthiness.
A couple of the biggest plot holes was in the latest Doctor Strange movie. Wanda could've found a universe where that universe's Wanda was dead, & she could've seen if that would've worked. Also, in the movie, she didn't mention her brother & her lover. I know she loved her children, but she made up her children in WandaVision. They weren't real. However, her brother & her lover were real, & they died. Shouldn't that make her sad as well?
If you're not aware, the writers hadn't even seen Wandavision when they were doing MoM because it hadn't released yet, which is why she acts so weird, which is insane
@@IAmABoss2 How had they NOT SEEN WANDAVISION? What kind of nonsense was Feige up to there? I saw the movie before I watched the series, and the two do mesh together reasonably well (she has two sons in both).
In the show, I think Wanda wasn't creating new souls so much as pulling them from the multiverse. That's how she found a brother who looked like Evan Peters - the Quicksilver from the X-Men movies. Why is she so passionate about her sons, much more than about Vision or Quicksilver? That's a standard Hollywood trope. Motherhood is supposed to mean everything in Hollywood culture. I'd leave it to women to comment about the realism of this imposed value: I'm just noting it's very standard fare.
@@rickdesper Thank you. For me, I understand how a mother normally would love her children above all else, except to not mention Vision or her brother throughout the entire movie? Yes, she had her brother and Vision in WandaVision, but in the movie, I don't believe there was any mention of them.
Not sure that's a plot hole. If anything it's guilty of relying too much on the show, where we see that the book drove her insane, and she was able to generate her kids because of the book
Regarding Armageddon- NASA recruits mission specialists all the time. It's not outrageous for them to recruit the world's best drilling team for a direly important mission that involves drilling.
A couple plot holes from series I've seen that I can think of right off the bat: 1. Ash Ketchum meets a pokemon he's met before in previous seasons but has no idea what it is 2. Sheldon Cooper is known to be a germophobe, but in one episode of The Big Bang Theory, he hides in a ball pit (and those things are known for being nasty as heck) 3. and, of course, "Somehow, Palpatine returned" thanks for making this video, it'll be really helpful for the story I'm working on, as will your other videos :D
#4. Inconsistent magic. This is why I couldn't get into TENET and I thought it was absolutely absurd. I spent 80% of the movie trying to 'figure out' how a person moving backwards in one time line was consciously aware of another characters forward movement in another. It never explained how two different timelines; one forward moving, the other backwards; accounted for 'both' parties learning and being aware of actions and situations as they arose/arise. This could only happen if both parties mental states' were moving in the same direction. Otherwise, one party would always have an advantage over the other because of things seen and learned compared to the other timeline. The Nolan's never addressed this, and I only thought of this while explosions popped on screen. Big fail in my book.
That movie was SO confusing.
Actually, that was the point of the entire movie. Most action sequences in the movie were pincer attacks. The attackers attack from both sides of the time line and ant each end they tell each other what happened. The core goal of the good guys is to fool the bad guy into thinking he won, so he won't go back to fix his mistake. The reason why the movie is confusing is because the code concept is confusing. In normal stories information always moves in one direction, except for occasional "prophecy" that reveals future information. TENET goes balls deep on the time traveling. The timeline is a mess, information travels in both directions and creates a convoluted vortex of a plot. I'm not saying TENET is a good movie. But it's core problem is not inconsistency or plot holes. It's the absurd confusing premise that requires an infographic to make sense of what's happening, taken to an extreme.
@@KohuGalyWhile I won't claim to wrap my head around it completely, I did (ultimately) like Tenet for the concepts it introduces around time. It's not time travel, really, just.. moving in a different direction. To @MrPeffski's point, I think it's important to consider that any time two 'temporally opposed' events are happening, *both* sides are reacting, it''s just that one is moving backwards to what we normally perceive. Oddly (and a lack of understanding of a lot of the temporal concepts involved may play into this) the biggest issue I had was that they had to breathe reversed air. All things considered, the chemical processes in your body haven't changed, they're just following a different timeline. Right?
@@JuryRigged haven't seen the movie, but I have seen the clip of the bullet reverse falling from the table into someone's hand. I think the idea is that to someone in reverse time, normal oxygen will try to leave their body and normal CO2 will try to enter it, killing them. Reverse air when viewed in normal time would have oxygen that leaves your body, and CO2 which enters it. Thus someone travelling in reverse time with reverse air will have gases that behave normally to them. I hope that made sense but nothing does with that movie.
@@minerman60101That's the idea, yes, but in the grand scheme of things, a reverse-bullet in glass propagates backwards (which raises a whole slew of other questions), and when the reverse-bullet is un-shot, the glass is whole again. In the same way, a reversed person would inhale CO2 and exhale O2 (from a forward-temporal perspective), so the air cans containing CO2 *would* make sense (we exhale enough CO2 that we wouldn't be able to reverse-inhale normal air), but that's not the way it's explained. I do overthink things.
One of the worst plot holes I noticed, even as a kid, was in “Superman II.” He gives up his powers and is told he can never get them back. So then, he learns about General Zod (bad guy with his powers) and he (somehow) gets back to the Fortress of Solitude. He yells, “FATHER!!!” picks up one of the crystals and… that’s it. Next time we see him, he’s got his powers back and is ready to fight Zod.
That bugged me, too. In one version or deleted scene, that have Jor-El explain something like "I anticipated you would come back after this terrible mistake. I can use my remaining power (i.e., the green crystal) to undo it, but you'll never speak to me again." Not a great explanation, but better than just the crystal by itself, IMO.
The thing that bugged me most in that one (even though I overall still like the movie) was him throwing the nuke out into space and that *somehow* exploded near the three Kryptonians stuck in the Phantom Zone 2D thing and thus released them. Even as a kid, I was like, "Space is really, really big. Even if a big bomb could do that, what are the odds that they would be anywhere near each other?" Maybe Supes aimed towards Kypton for some reason? But it's galaxies away, so the chances just seem astronomical (pardon the pun).
Even worse, to me, in that movie was how the screenwriter expected us to believe that by reversing Earth's rotation (without somehow magically creating civilization-destroying hurricanes in the process), Superman could also reverse time. Eh... NOPE.
@@davidanderson_surrey_bc The earth isn't physically spinning backwards. As Superman flies faster and faster, he is going back in time, so as time goes backwards, the Earth goes backwards along with it.
@@youneedyourmedication yep. The earth spinning is the effect, not the cause. It was faster-than-light travel (per Einstein's Theory of Relativity) that reversed time for Superman, so what we're seeing is him traveling into the past.
The plot hole that always bugged me despite me loving the story was in The Wizard of Oz. This only applies to the movie since the plot thread didn’t exist in the book, but whatever happened to Miss Gulch? Did she come back to have Toto euthanized? Did she have (unlikely as it seems) a change of heart after hearing of Dorothy’s mishap in the tornado? Are we to assume she was killed in the tornado as the Witch’s death symbolized hers?
I'll go with your last assessment. Ding dong the bitch is dead?
Don't forget the magic shoes issue.
Not sure how that is a plot hole.
@@juanausensi499 The book at least explains they flew off somewhere in the impassable desert that surrounds Oz, never to be seen again.
@@gutenbird It's #6 - abandoned subplot.
Act 3 of Heat has a giant plot hole with the way Deniro’s character Neil snaps and does actions that aren’t supported by his earlier established traits. Steadiness is replaced with improvisational stupidity.
The explanation that if a story is so good or engaging that people will find ways to validate plot holes is so relatable. As a horror specialist, one of my all time favorite movies is Final Destination, and if we're getting into the specifics of the franchise, specifically Final Destination 2 as my favorite. I had noticed a somehow actually interesting plot hole about the character Brian Gibbons that yet nobody else had realized at all. I looked at it in an interesting light instead of a critical light and that is simply because if I recall correctly, I think I actually did have a pretty good explanation for this plot hole. When it comes to platforms I don't have but still come across posts like say Reddit for example, I always make up actual comments and responses in my head that would work well even if I don't get to share so this was my idea for a potential post
My big problem with the second installment of Final Destination series is that when the girl sees the accident on a highway, it happens like two minutes after they turn to it. When it happens in reality, it happens like a hundred yards away from them. And I know that time in movies goes at different speed, but the difference is just gigantic.
@@kanemighty Final Destination 2 is a masterpiece regardless tho tbh
To me, the "solution that's ignored" that frustrated me the most was in The Tale of Princess Kaguya. The entire problem could be fixed if the girl just was honest with her parents for 5 minutes. Not just 1 scene, but the entire time she can just talk with her parents and she never considers doing it.
That special kind of plot hole is more and more frustrating: Two people (who are on good terms with each other) NOT JUST SAYING WHAT THEY MEAN! I find it an additional kind of plot hole: CREATING (not only 'not solving') a conflict by stupidity. Even Shakespeare wrote 'Much ado about nothing' as an satire about this....
there is a german novel titled "Hummeldumm" (dumb as a bumblebee) which consists entirely of the main characters' inabilty to talk things out. or even mentioning them. he stands there doing, or saying, nothing. and the book is considered comedy. guess nobody ever read it.
That might be summed up with the cultural taboo. Perhaps "children should never speak against the wishes of the parents," or somesuch.
This particular plot hole is the main example of the #5 disclaimer - it works *if* there are good in-character reasons for characters to not talk to each other. Otherwise it feels really forced.
@@thatjeff7550 I'm sure the whole point of the story is just to drive it home the notion that parents SHOULD NOT assume they always know what is best for their kids, but listen to them. So, I don't really think of it as a plot hole.
The entirity of the final season of GoT contains by far the most plotholes of any TV show I've ever seen and they are all gigantic. The fact Dan and Dan still have jobs is beyond me. I hope they don't ruin Netflix's Three-Body Problem too.
((()))
Netflix's Three-Body problem... Netflix's. Three-body problem. That's... a combination of words that makes me uneasy...
Just be thankful D&D don't run a hospital. "We kind of forgot about that."
@@DonVigaDeFierro Yup, they are the writers behind it. Only positive is that the books are already completed so hopefully Dan and Dan wont mess it up. It's possible though and I don't like the odds.
YOU are the problem. Not Netflix and not D&D. Three-Body Problem has BOTH D&D AND RIANNE JOHNSON as producers. YOU OUGHT to automatically dismiss and ignore this project PERIOD on grounds of principle. But because you are voicing interest in the project, that clearly hasn't happened. YOU are to blame for BS storylines because you don't REFUSE to acknowledge projects that are run by people with dismal and destructive track records. So, rather than exercise your one power of not financially supporting the guilty parties, you "hope for the best" and give them your money. If a film has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 5% but makes a profit, it is considered a success and the people who made it are given more money to create new projects so they can destroy and demean more beloved franchises. Your complaints are hollow...you are the culprit. You are the bad guy. You are the reason Kathleen Kennedy, Rianne Johnson, Dumb & Dumber, and all of their cronies are destroying entertainment culture. Just the fact that you confine the errors of GoT to the final season demonstrates how disconnected from reality you are. The shitshow started back in season 5. When YOU are the problem, complaining about "the problem" just makes you a delusional hypocrite. At least you can take solace in the fact that there are millions of other hypocrites just like you.
One of the biggest plot holes is in the House of the Dragon series. The main reason for the conflict there is that Alicent and the Greens accuse Rhaenyra of being unfaithful to her husband and that her children are bastards, therefore they don't have a claim to the throne. But Rhaenyra is a legitimate heir, and her children are still HER children, no matter who is their father. This conflict would have made sense if Rhaenyra was a man and his wife had children with some other man, making him not their father and therefore interrupting his bloodline, in that case his children would be illegitimate heirs. But Rhaenyra's children are her blood and she passes her right to the throne to them legitimately
Not really. Clearly you're not familiar with royalty and how bloodlines work. For a child to be a Prince and a Heir he needs to be conceived within the wedlock. Bastards usually got titles like Counts or whatever gifted by the King, but they would never stand to inherit. Of course, there are many exceptions to that, some Kingdoms allowed for the King to legitimate his bastards as legit, other Kingdoms didn't but everyone ignored the rules in favour of a son who gathered the most influence among the nobles or the people, etc. House of the Dragon, has plot holes but that's not one. It's perfectly fine for the conflict to ignite due to the fact all Rhaenyra children are bastards and illegitimate. You can say there are ways to to make them legitimate and I can agree, but the whole point is politics and the Greens have tradition, laws and morals on their side.
@@isaacfernandes560 First of all they were born within marriage - Laenor recognizes them as his own children. So they would't be bastards by law even if the fact of Rhaenyra's unfaithfulness was actually proven. They have dark hair? Well, they might be taking it after their great grandma of whoever. Basing an argument about their legitimasy on just the color of their hair is simple speculation and nothing more. They can have dragons - that means they're Targariens (same as John Snow). And Hightowers may have whatever traditions they like, they're not the royal family, Targariens are. Anyway, all these arguments don't really matter because all that matters is that they're Rhaenyra's children, and she's the heir, which means that Viserys' bloodline wasn't broken and they have all the righs to the throne.
Any time an unrestrained character is confronted by a "you're going to die now" moment and they just submit rather than taking an obvious last opportunity to try and escape by, for example, going batshit crazy. I know I would...
I recently watched the new Dungeons & Dragons movie, and it avoiding these plot holes was what impressed me most about it. The limitations of magic were clearly stated, it wasn't just arbitrarily whatever the plot needed, and these abilities were utilized as much as possible. And the characters - heroes and villains - always used the most logical and readily-available solution. When the plot required they couldn't, an explanation was given (and subsequently utilized by the characters in a different way, such as the anti-magic bracelet). I suspect this was due to the movie being based on table-top gameplay (I've never actually played D&D myself) where the rules for what the players can and can't solve with magic need to be very clear, and players will take the most reasonable or logical solution available. A good contrast that I've thought a lot about is Top Gun: Maverick. Anyone who knows anything about military operations and technologies would see so many obvious solutions (for either heroes or villains) that would have made everything easier. - A more significant strike team would have been used, not just four jets. At the very least, have had more jets to give more chances to hit the target so if anyone missed the mission wouldn't have failed. - The missiles that blew up the airfield could have also taken out the SAM sites, perhaps the target itself. - They would have used more advanced F-35s, not F-18s. I seem to recall that was addressed in some rather nonsensical way though. - When stealing the F-14, the likelihood that the F-14 would have been fueled, armed, and ready to fly at that moment without the help of any ground crew is slim, fighter jets are constantly requiring servicing. Especially ones that old for which parts are not available. - In the stolen F-14, they could have simply flown Mach 2 straight out of enemy territory back to the carrier, the enemy never having the opportunity to catch up to them and find out who they were. Given how short the distance between the coast and airfield was they could have been out of there before anyone knew what was even happening. Instead it seemed they loitered around and waited for a fight. - Modern missiles could have taken out the F-14 from dozens of miles away, a close-quarters dogfight would never have happened. - Of course the biggest one - how did this act of war not become a gigantic international situation? I have some ideas that might explain that, but still it feels like a weak story to not address that.
Afaik, they had to use F-18s because they were not allowed to film with F-35s (not to mention they would have had to take F-35-trained pilots' time for it). So they basically pretended that F-35s don't exist. They did use archival footage with F-35s in it which I thought was kind of stupid in that context. The idea was (not sure how believable that is) that nobody noticed them stealing the F-14 amidst all the chaos on the destroyed airfield so they didn't know why it appeared in the air. Apparently though, their intercept maneuvre was unrealistic and stupid (according to some former fighter pilot on youtube that analysed the scene, forgot his name). Nobody said that they didn't end up causing an international incident (although just ignoring that kind of still qualifies as a plot hole) and it wouldn't be the first time the US gets away with it, remember that drone strike on an Iranian general in 2020. I think the plot hole that far exceeds the other ones is that they didn't take out that target facility instead of the airfield. Deserves more than the half-sentence in your post (almost missed it and was going to point it out as an additional plot hole :D ).
@@Everest314 They don't pretend the F-35 doesn't exist, they just say it can't be used. There's a line that dresses it directly, it's s something like "Normally this would be a cake walk for the F-35 Stealth but GPS jamming prevents that." Whether or not GPS jamming would actually prevent the use of an F-35, I do not know.
@@Everest314 A lot of their decisions made sense from a cinematographic perspective, what was possible to film and what makes for good action. It's the extreme of a movie where the action justifies the plot, and the plot justifies all the questionable decisions and unrealism. Opposite extreme (and direction of thinking by the writers) from the D&D movie, where the characters' logical decisions drove the plot and action. But I must admit I enjoyed the movie in spite of that - it's a movie that asks for a lot of suspension of disbelief. As for them stealing the F-14, surely their takeoff was noticed but nobody knowing that it was Americans rather than unspecified enemy country Iranians (the enemy country being unspecified fits all this - all that matters is that they're enemies, who they are is irrelevant, though all details fit Iran). That bit feels somewhat plausible - more plausible than the jet being ready for takeoff and them being able to get it going without ground crew support (my understanding is real fighter jets require a lot of ground crew to get started). The big plot hole in my opinion is that they seemingly loitered around a while, or at least flew slowly, allowing enemy jets to come investigate. They surely could have made a mach-2 dash out to sea before anyone had a chance to figure it out, based on the apparent locations of the air base and coast this probably would have taken literally one minute. Thinking of using the missiles to take out the target directly, I recall some justification being given for this, which sort of made sense. The target required extreme precision, had to hit within a couple meters at most. I don't know if GPS-guided munitions would even be capable of that, but the enemy was also using GPS jamming that would have reduced said precision. The only way to take out the target was with super precise laser-guided munitions. The missiles that took out the air base probably used inertial navigation that doesn't require outside signals but isn't as precise. Putting some craters in the runway didn't require much precision at all. Though another issue when considering realism, what the US military would actually do in this situation, is that probably the real solution would involve highly classified technologies that the public isn't aware of and can't be shown (and would surely not make for as good action). So they stuck with old-school methods with both sides using effectively Vietnam War era tech, the F-18s and Su-57s being a bit more advanced but not in any way that changed the plot. Thinking of the international incident bit, I've had my own theory on that. This enemy country (again this thought 100% matches Iran) was not supposed to have nuclear weapons, the international community would make sanctions against them for doing so. They were developing them in secret in this mountain bunker, and the US somehow found out about it. Had they finished and had operational nukes, the international community would be at their mercy, they'd hold a lot more cards. So the US wanted to take this out before that, producing the tight deadline from the movie. Destroying the facility militarily would be the only option. But after such an operation both sides would want to maintain plausible deniability, would rather the international community not know that any of this happened. Iran not wanting anyone else to know that they'd been developing nukes, and the US not wanting anyone to know that they'd done this strike. So as long as they kept it on the down-low enough, neither side would want to call the other's foul, both would just say it never happened. This was why the strike team was so small, only four aircraft and a few Tomahawk missiles rather than a much larger strike force, as a larger strike force would be harder for either side to deny or cover up. Though regarding the above, even if all this could explain the whole situation (though still not filling a lot of plot holes), that shouldn't be the audience's job. If this is what was going on, the movie should have explained it. Why they had to do this, why they had to do it the way they did, and what the aftermath would be.
I admire your optimism, but to expect players at a D&D table (or any other RPG) to take the "most reasonable or logical" solution available is to create the most unreasonable expectations possible since someone told me that that Fast & Furious X would be a sombre reflection on the nature of family and consequences. Players will generally fly by their seat of their pants (in some cases, their characters pants, whether worn or not), forget about subplots mentioned more than one session ago (kinda understandable) and/or suddenly wake up from a nap only to attack the person in front of their character... whether or not that character happens to be the king in the audience hall, surrounded by guards, magic protections and the glare of a scowling DM. Happy to hear that you had a good time watching the movie, though!
To address your concerns about TG:M, I think you have to weigh the situation versus the tactical command. They only used four jets because that’s the minimum needed. Two with the payload and two with the targeting eyes. The SAM’s were located across the canyon and they lacked precise locations on them, as well as the ability to hit precision targets due to blanket static jamming which prevented satellite or radio assistance. The F-35’s were the original choice, but they can’t carry the precise targeting eye required (again, due to the static jamming), meaning they would either need F-35’s with the payload and F-18’s with the eyes (which would complicate the mission, the training, and the team’s available flight profile), or take four F-18’s and minimize mission logistics and chances of failure. They mention the ground crew are preparing all aircraft, the F-14 was simply left in favor of another craft which they were preparing as well while a secondary runway was established or cleared. The F-14 had to evade the vastly superior Next Gen Fighters, and attempted to act like they were part of the air group first instead of immediately being shot down from three clicks out when they bolted. Once the F-14 _was_ discovered: it intentionally dropped back down into both the Static Jamming zone and low to the ground to maximize difficulty in electronic lock-on. The last one is simplest. It’s a secret and illegal nuclear refinement site. Admitting that would get the enemy nation pounded by their patrons (Russia and/or China) to save face and avoid nuclear war. That’s why the mission also had to be precision strikes, only hitting the runway (not the accompanying base), the illegal site itself, and minimal casualties to minimize potential story-selling. But what do I know, I’m just a logistics
The bigger plot hole in Batman Begins, was the machine that vaporized water should have killed everyone in Gotham.
No, it would have killed Ra's al Ghul and his men first (they were standing right next to it when he switched it on) so, they couldn't have done anything after that. Absolutely the biggest plot hole in that movie!
Everyone on Gotham would have been dehydrated instantly and died.
@@MrShanePhoto their blood and organs would vaporize too
Apparently it was only meant to vaporize water and no other liquid.
@@leobuscaglia5576 luckily the city's water does not contain any impurities, probably because villains decided to first repair the water pipe
Silence of the Lamb: Hannibal Lecter is tranfered from Baltimore with an impressive security team only to be left alone with two guards on the verge of retirement on his floor.
I like how many authors have solved the vanishing subplots by simply adding a 10 line clean up after 4 books.... one that comes to mind is a sci-fi opera (where i forgot the name) where a guy sits in his cave and commands like the defenses of a planet. 2 books later it just appears "oh and that guy randomly died".
One big plot hole I've seen in a movie was in 2014s Ouija; throughout the movie, (spoilers) we're meant to believe that the mom ghost is the evil spirit tormenting and killing our main characters, and that they need to free this girl ghost so she can defeat her mother. Then halfway through it turns out that the mom ghost was the good one the whole time and that the girl ghost was the evil one. Plot hole, is, if the mom ghost was the good one the whole time, and the girl ghost was trapped and powerless, who was actually killing the main characters beforehand?
#6 Abandoned Subplots immediately makes me think of Walt in Lost. He was built up as this critical character of vast importance, then he's on the escape raft that seems to blow up, and... he makes it back home and the show kind of forgets about him. Forgive me if I'm leaving out pertinent details (it's been like ten years since I've watched it), but that's the gist.
Real life explanation was the reason. The kid that played him hit a HUGE growth spurt and they could not disguise it without a ton of camera tricks and work, so they just abandoned that story. They should have just recast the part, but for some reason Hollywood HATES recasting parts.
You’d think they would have considered the consequences of creating an important child character for a show whose entire in-universe course was only 3-6 months but whose story would be told to the audience over the course of _years._
@@rkwatchauralnautsjediparty7303 you would think, but TV was different back then. Lost, Sopranos Mad Men and the like created the "golden age" of prestige TV. They did not do it on purpose though. They were still kind of playing it with the old network playbook of just cast people and do not worry about latter seasons, because you never know if it would be cancelled. Because those shows became "prestige", future shows now all kind of think about the future. It was because of the mistakes like Walt that shows now do think about stuff like this.
Abandoned subplots sometimes reflect editing pressures. (Maybe the script and what was filmed gave the subplot its due, but when a movie's too long you have to cut it SOMEWHERE...)
Yeah, but that whole show was itself a red herring. It wasn’t about a magic island, it was about lost people.
Number 5 perfectly describes Joel from The Last of Us Part 2. Experience survivor that could predict all kinds of traps or potential danger, gets killed by getting traped in obvious ambush.
A good example of the plot hole (or a series of plot holes) is that GoT episode where they fight the army of undead near Winterfell. This is a perfect manual on how NOTt to depict battles because each and every strategic mistake was added to the story. We have the strongest cavalry in the world? Let's send it to the unknown darkness to be swept away idiotically instead of using it from the sides to cut the enemy forces (as it has always been done in the history). We have a huge field and we can use fire? Let's not turn the ground into the labyrinth of obstacles to reduce the advancing swarm, make them stop and eventually burn them without losing so many lives of the defenders. We have catapults? Why do we even build catapults (siege machines) if we're not sieging any settlement? And so on and so forth...