Being a big fan of Empire magazine, I recently came across this little competition in their latest magazine which seemed like quite fun to do and I thought would be fun for us. Basically, it’s about all the plot holes in this summers major movies. You’re meant to answer questions about the plot holes in the most humorous/clever/original way possible.
So here we go.
Warning, major movie spoilers ahead.
The Matrix Reloaded
1. If the architect is so damn clever and The Matrix is so damn difficult to control, why haven’t the machines investigated alternative power sources?
2. If Neo is actually the sixth person to be The One, shouldn’t we start calling him ‘The Sixth’
3. If Neo and trinity are all weak and plug-ridden in the real world, but sexy and super-powered in the better and life Matrix, why on earth do they wait to get to Zion for a shag?
4. If neo can fly, why does he fight 100 Agent Smiths instead of just buggering off upwards?
5. And aren’t the Twins just the ghostly reincarnation of Milli Vanilli?
Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle
6. Just what did Ashton Kutcher say to Bruce Willis at the LA premier of Charlie’s angels: Full Throttle?
The Hulk
7. When he’s a baby and gets the arse, Bruce Banner goes a ‘bit green’. Was this verdant vision a one off? Did no one notice the odd green phase, or was he just extremely calm for the next 200-odd years?
8. We all know that nobody likes him when he’s angry, so why did the army stick Banner in an enclosed space (now featuring dangerous electric cable!) with the psychotic father who killed his mother?
9.If the army has no qualms about killing the Hulk when he is invulnerable, why doesn’t General Ross just have Bruce Banner summarily executed in his vulnerable form?
10. Once much loved and tipped for the top, now they seem to have disappeared. What happened to Jennifer Connelly’s knockers?
11. Oh, and one last thing, why didn’t anything happen in the first 45 minutes?
Pirates of the Caribbean
12. The pirates aboard the Black Pearl say they drowned Bootstrap Bill, but they are able to walk underwater without and problems – so how did Bootstrap Bill manage to drown?
13. And wouldn’t Will’s dad come back to life at the bottom of the ocean at the end of the film, only to drown immediately
14. If by stealing one of those golden coins, you’re damned into being undead, shouldn’t Elizabeth Swann be a zombie, thanks to her theft of the coin necklace from Will Turner at the start of the movie?
15. After the success of Pirates, how will Disney ever be able to condense such a rich story and character elements into an 11-minute theme park ride?
16. If Jack sparrow is based on Keith Richards, just how long have the Rolling Stones been going?
2 Fast 2 Furious
17. Are they going to call the third movie 2 Fast 2 Furious 2?
Terminator 3
18. In the Terminator Movies, why doesn’t Skynet just send back an army of bad Terminator?
19. Or, if it’s all about time travel, why didn’t Skynet just send the T-X back first?
20. Forget the morphing powers of the Terminatrix-how the hell did those meddling kids walk right into a secret military complex?
21. If Skynet is roundly defeated in the future, how can it build better Terminators?
22. just what were the women in the strip bar staring at in Arnie’s Crotch area – are these robots anatomically perfect?
Lara Croft: the Cradle of Life.
23. Why, when visiting a maximum security prison, does Lara sport a fur coat that has just come off the Paris catwalk?
24. If the orb/map thingie leads to the ultimate biological terror, why doesn’t Lara just smash it with a hammer?
25. And why, when the map finally gives up its secrets, does it look like and African Wildlife special? Couldn’t Lara have just watch the Discover Channel?
26. If Pandora’s Box has been floating on the oil for aeons, how come it sinks like a stone at the end of the movie?
27. Who the hell told Lara to ditch the shorts?
Hollywood Homicide
28. Detective Joe gavilan sells real estate ‘on the side’ in a market that’s growing at 20 percent every year-so why the hell is he still a cop?
X-2
29. If the X-men had moved to the other side of the dam during the climactic escape, wouldn’t the threat of drowning have disappeared?
30. Did James Marsden piss off Director Bryan Singer, or is Cyclops just useless?
31. If Wolverine had walked so far to find his birth-lab at Alkai lake, why not check downstairs before heading home?
32. Why didn’t Iceman not even try to freeze the water that ‘drowns’ Jean Grey?
33. And just where was Jean Grey when the cool names were being handed out?
Remember, even if you can think of the right answer, we want the most humerous here. Just to make it fun. Go!
Lol! Great post! I have one to add though:
Terminator 3:
Wouldn't Arnie's powercell exploding underneath the blast door have damaged it? And if so what's going to protect John Connor from the radiation? Hmmmm?
Yeah, okay, but the whole idea was to answer them in humerous ways. I'll start to get the ball moving.
1. They like repetition.
2. That or Ted, I always liked Ted (or was he Bill?)
3. Trinity didn't trust Neo in the Matrix, who knows what he could do and how fast he could do it.
4. Because that's just boring! Get witht the program.
5. No, they're just useless albinos.
6. You had this, but not at my age you didn't. BURN!
7. Actually, at the beginnig, he was just being sick, babies do that you know.
8. For the insurance money.
9. That's no fun now is it?
10. Gamma radiation.
11. You arrived at the cinema 15 minutes early.
12. He didn't, he just didn't have the time to walk al the way to shore, so he stayed underwater and made friends with a flounder fish and a crab.
13. No, that's too frightning for children, this is Disney by the way.
14. Yes, but no one notices, she's already so skinny.
15. By making the queue legnth at least four times as long as the ride of not more.
16. As long as the elvis, which is actually longer than one would think.
17. No, 2 Fast 2 Furious, but we stay off our phone whilst on the wheel.
18. They might get it wrong and destroy skynet, or even worse, their favorite robot strip joint.
19. They didn't know Arnie could be outwitted by a waitress.
20. With teh help of their dog sco-, oh wait, never mind.
21. By finding sites on the internet created by six year olds with degree in advanced physics and thermopd dynamics.
22. No, he keeps chocolate bars in there and they'd just come from a weight watchers meeting.
23. The first thing she could find that wouldn't show off her breasts in a maximum security prison.
24. It would have just ended the film to quickly.
25. She'd missed that episode, this was a recording.
26. It sudeenly found that nobody wanted it and died.
27. Billy Bob thornton, don't think he has no control over her anymore.
28. To find houses people were killed in and sell them off.
29. yeah, but then we would have never gotten rid of jean grey.
30. Nope, useless, he has to wear those stupid glasses and everything.
31. he's been afraid of basements ever since his childhood when he went down to his basement to find his mother... shacked up with his father.
32. The SFX budget wouldn't streatch that far.
33. The lavvy, well what did you espect?
You don't know the difference between Ted Theodore Logan and Bill S. Preston esquire??? For shame. Keanu was Ted. And you should know that.
Hey, gimme a break, I don't work in a cineplex or anything. Plus i haven't seen the movies in a while, but I was pretty sure he was Ted. Meh.
Crappy plot holes. All of the ones for the Matrix and Terminator 3 can be explained logically, but I can't be bothered to. and some are just silly and don't deserve a response, and so it could all be a joke and I don't want to make myself look all silly taking it all seriously and stuff.
...
Shut up.
Mort: I'd like you to explain my Terminator 3 plot-hole as it bugs me like crazy!
Originally posted by Mort-Hog
Crappy plot holes. All of the ones for the Matrix and Terminator 3 can be explained logically, but I can't be bothered to. and some are just silly and don't deserve a response, and so it could all be a joke and I don't want to make myself look all silly taking it all seriously and stuff.
...
Shut up.
Mort, this whole thing is meant to be a joke, just a little fun. A lot of these I can explain logically, but that's not the point, the point is to come up with humerous answers to these questions.
With the Terminator series, there are two key plot 'holes' (they're not exactly plot holes, but just concepts that don't fully make sense), but they are pretty general things and in no way unique to just the Terminator films.
First, however, I'll explain the proposed plot holes.
18. In the Terminator Movies, why doesn’t Skynet just send back an army of bad Terminator?
In the first film, an assassination machine was sent back to kill John Conner's mother before she gave birth to John Conner. We're not told how the time travel actually works, other than how they cannot take any items with them when they travel, so perhaps the machine takes a long time to 'recharge' and can only transport one person at a time? Either way, the Terminator is built for assassination, not warfare.
19. Or, if it’s all about time travel, why didn’t Skynet just send the T-X back first?
Because time would continue both in the present AND in the future, and so Skynet would not have had the technology at the time they sent back the T1 to develop the TX. Although the 'present' time between each film only spans several years, the 'future' time could very well span decades or centuries. Skynet could have sent the T2 or the TX back to the same time as the T1, so it would appear that they had been sent back at the same time, but they could have been sent back hundreds of years afterwards. But as the T1 failed, the machines probably realised that it would make more sense to try and assassinate John Conner at some other period in the past.
20. Forget the morphing powers of the Terminatrix-how the hell did those meddling kids walk right into a secret military complex?
Dude, meddling kids can get into ANYWHERE. Didn't you learn anything from Scooby Doo?
21. If Skynet is roundly defeated in the future, how can it build better Terminators?
You don't know that it is. All we know from the future is that John Conner leads an army against the machines, we're not told that he wins. The odds are greatly against him.
22. just what were the women in the strip bar staring at in Arnie’s Crotch area – are these robots anatomically perfect?
tee.
But anyway, for the two big illogicalities. The first regards really any movie regarding 'evil machines'. Machines can't be 'evil'. A machine is exactly that, a machine, with no 'wants' or 'desires'. Why would any machine 'want' to take over the world? What would a machine do then? A machine simply follows instructions to perform a function. Your toaster doesn't refuse to toast your bread because it doesn't 'want' to. It will keep toasting until you tell it to stop, or until it breaks. Lots of films focus on the 'evil of AI' without actually realising that AI is totally under the control and under the limits of a human. An AI will only kill someone if it is programmed to.
(The example that springs to mind is 'Dream House', a film about a house that's totally controlled by a computer with a complicated AI, which somehow suddenly goes evil and kills people for some reason, and everyone blames this evil house for 'having no soul' (at which point the house starts to play soul music, which I thought was sort of funny). only at the end of the film do we find out that the programmer actually programmed the house to kill people for some reason, yet no-one starts to blame him for it at all...)
If you want some great fiction regarding AI read I,Robot by Asimov, where all the stories revolve around the Three Laws of Robotics and the interpretations of them.
Of course, it could be argued that humans are also just machines, though the human brain is far more complicated than any computer.
But anyway, the second great illogicality is something that is touched upon in almost every film regarding time travel.
John Conner sends his father-to-be back in time to impregnate his mother-to-be. So, if John hadn't sent his father back, John would never even exist.
and also, if John didn't know about the future, would he still lead that rebellion?
Would the acts of the future still happen if the present wasn't affected by the future?
The whole 'affecting the future by travelling to the past' thing is a very complicated and very confusing area of philosophy, and something that the Terminator series ran right into.
Blah, this has pretty much turned into a huge rant. I hate reading huge rants, so I congratulate anyone that's bothered reading this. I'll do the Matrix when I can be bothered.
(oh, and for the thing about the powercell.. The cell is in his head, and I don't think his head was actually damaged by the door? I don't remember, but I do seem to remember the last scene being Arnie's head, and the red light slowly turning off, HAL-style)
Okay. Now maybe you could explain MY plot-hole to me now (clue: try reading it again).
1) The power-cell was in his chest (have you seen the movie?
2) Here: Wouldn't Arnie's powercell exploding underneath the blast door have damaged the blast door? And if so what's going to protect John Connor from the radiation? Hmmmm?
Thanks.
~ John
Oh, heh. well. perhaps it didn't damage it. the door could be made of titanium or something. again, we don't see that the door is damaged sufficiently, and we don't know enough about the powercell to speculate about whether it would.
He can't die, anyway. If he did die, he wouldn't be alive in the future to send his father-to-be back in time to protect his mother, and his mother would be killed by the T1 and he wouldn't be concieved in the first place.
but weren't there two doors, anyway?
Question.
When did this become serious?
The idea of making crappy explanations for silly plot-holes was just not that amusing (nice try though, Empire), so it's more interesting to actually talk about the loop-holes (because some of them were real).
~ John
It was meant to be sarcastic funny answers, but fine, make it serious. honestly, I guess you need the thrill of a competition to do this properly. Too bad I didn't send any answers in.
I know it was meant to be funny, but I didn't find it that amusing, and judging by the lack of other poeple joining in, no-one else did either. :(
Biggest plot hole EVER:
Okay, here we are: Jurassic Park. We can make DINOSAURS! We even have a half assed explanation as to how we do it. But why the hell are some of the plants supposed to be from the cretaceous period??? What kind of mosquito sucks blood out of plants???
To be fair, I can talk about Jurassic Park and plot holes for ever but you'd get bored.
Bigger plot hole: how would they get any DNA out out of the mosquito anyway? DNA is found in the nucleus of a cell, and red blood cells don't have nuclei. unless the mosquito was sucking off an ill dinosaur and drank up some white blood cells too?
Which is exactly why blood transfusions can be done perfectly (at least with the right boood type) as DNA has nothing to do with it.