Best action movie plot holes of all time

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Twister picture

Plot hole: Throughout the entire movie, barns, houses, cars, 18-wheelers, etc. are demolished and lifted into the air like they were made of paper. And yet Jo and Bill pass through one tornado after another with nothing more than their hair getting messed up a little. You'd think the debris alone flying into their faces at 100 miles an hour would be enough to give them a few injuries.

Krista

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Ready Player One picture

Plot hole: In all scenes where special or heavy items are used against the sixers, they are 'zeroed' in waves or circles. This can be seen by their stations turning red in clusters. This makes no sense as the stations have fixed positions, meaning that the sixers would have identical positions in the Oasis and have no freedom or own will to move relative to each other.

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Suggested correction: From a military point of view it makes perfect sense. AOE weapons would be most likely to hit members of the same squads, companies or battalions. It would make sense for squad mates in the oasis to stick together in stations as well. I just watched that scene. As long as the Sixers are trained soldiers or players it makes perfect sense.

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Robocop 3 picture

Plot hole: The opaque red lined map that Otomo retrieves from his first fight is ridiculous. Why would people who know where the hidden base is be carrying around a map on them (which shows a route so basic that they'd have to be brain-dead not to be able to remember it anyway) just so that conveniently one of their enemies can get it?

GalahadFairlight

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Money Train picture

Plot hole: When Charlie sets out to hijack the money train, he jumps off the platform onto the tracks as it arrives, in plain sight of the driver and other passengers at the station, and only puts his mask on once he's in position on the tracks. The train conveniently stops right over top of Charlie, allowing him to enter through the conveniently-placed grate on the train's floor. (01:17:15)

Jay Runkle

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Escape from the Planet of the Apes picture

Plot hole: While it is essential to the story, there is a problem with apes in the space ship. While it is the one that took Taylor to the future, there is no way the chimps could have salvaged the ship from the water (plus there wasn't enough time for such a salvage operation. Kira and Cornelius were living in the ape city we see in "Beneath the Planet of the Apes" never mentioning to Brent that they found a spaceship he could travel back with). They didn't have the technology for such an operation, no diving suits, and chimps are scared of water. Also, the water would have destroyed the power systems of the ship when it sank. (00:00:25)

Movie Nut

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Wonder Woman 1984 picture

Plot hole: Diana never formally expresses her wish to the stone (as opposed to the coffee guy), but for the rest of the movie it is stated that wishes have to be spelled out explicitly, even if just in agreement with a very leading question. (00:24:00)

Sammo

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles picture

Plot hole: When April O'Neil calls Vernon Fenwick (drives the channel 6 van), he answers his phone and immediately says "O'Neil". When the scene cuts back to O'Neil, we see she called from a payphone. Fenwick would have no way to know it was her calling.

ScRiZ

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Suggested correction: That isn't a plot hole. Vernon assumed April was the person calling him and was correct. People do this all the time in real life.

BaconIsMyBFF

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The Lost World: Jurassic Park picture

Plot hole: How did the men on the ship get killed? The bridge was intact and the T-Rex was still inside the cargo hold. [A raptor was meant to escape from the boat when it pulled in to the harbour, but they cut the scene from the film and now that bit doesn't appear to make any sense.] (01:40:55)

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Suggested correction: The idea of raptors being on the boat is a myth (likely spawned from a similar thing happening in the first book's ending). Though it's very poorly communicated and leaves many unanswered questions (the captain's hand the least of which), the dead hand holding the cargo hold controls implies that the T-Rex somehow got free, killed the crew, then was either lured or willingly returned to the hold where a dying worker closed the doors again.

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The Game picture

Plot hole: When Nick confronts the P.I. and yells "Why are you following me?", he looks inside the car and see the file with his picture on the front seat. The P.I. notices this and turns the file over. After Nick grabs his gun, the P.I. jumps out on the other side, raises his hands in the air and tells him someone hired him and runs off. As the P.I. runs off, Nick yells "Who hired you?" as he stands alone next to the car. He then waits a minute and walks off. If he really wanted to know more information, he could have taken the file that was right in front of him on the carseat. It makes no sense that he is desperate for information about the strange events that are going on, sees this file on him, and yet doesn't even pick it up or look at it. (00:59:55)

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Free Guy picture

Plot hole: When Guy kisses her, she questions how he did it - stating no "kiss" function existed in the game. However, later on after the reboot she proceeds to kiss him (rather than him kiss her).

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Suggested correction: As one of the principal developers of the simulation engine, Millie recognizes that Guy is a non-player character (NPC) who merely obeys a loop of coded actions, and he's supposedly incapable of acting outside of his code. So, she means that NPCs can't just arbitrarily kiss players. Players can do whatever they want, but NPCs are mindless robots. At that point, however, she doesn't realise that Guy's Artificial Intelligence has evolved to independent self-awareness, allowing him to act outside of his code.

Charles Austin Miller

Key's actually says "There isn't a button for that" when Millie brings it up. There would be no way for her to initiate, as her in game actions would be limited to the controls offered.

By the time Millie kisses Guy, we know that the Free City simulation engine was already undergoing Artificial Intelligence evolution, essentially rewriting its own code, allowing Guy (and other NPCs) to achieve independent self-awareness. It follows that Free City was probably rewriting its player code, as well, making all sorts of new and startling functions possible for players and NPCs alike.

Charles Austin Miller

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Night at the Museum picture

Plot hole: Christopher Columbus speaks Italian while the Huns supposedly speak their native language. Shouldn't Octavius and his Romans speak Latin? (00:34:50)

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London Has Fallen picture

Plot hole: After an assault on the scale that's been witnessed, covering a wide area of London by extremely well prepared attackers, there's no way Marine 1 would fly to the airport at low altitude within easy range of missiles, and then when attacked, double back over the areas that have already been attacked where hostiles would still be present. (00:35:00)

Jon Sandys

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Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves picture

Plot hole: The Bishop in the film is performing the duties you would expect of someone in his position (giving mass, hearing confessions, performing weddings etc.) He has his own private chambers in the cathedral, refers to Robin as 'the boy I knew' and talks about hearing his Father's confession four months earlier; so he's been around for a while. The problem is the credits refer to him as the 'Bishop of Hereford'. No explanation is ever given for why the Bishop of a city 100 miles away is living and working in Nottingham rather than looking after his own diocese; or why the Bishop of Nottingham isn't around to look after his. (The Bishop of Hereford was an enemy of Robin Hood in the original ballads, and it's likely the filmmakers just gave that name to the Bishop in the film due to its familiarity, without thinking about the plot hole this creates).

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Flight of Fury picture

Plot hole: The admiral receives the news of the stolen aircraft from the general over an open radio, with umpteen enlisted personnel within earshot. However, when the air group commander asks what the OP is about, the admiral tells him that it is on a need-to-know basis.

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3,000 Miles to Graceland picture

Plot hole: How could the police miss finding Cybil in the trunk of Michael Zane's car when it was in an impound lot? They would have definitely searched the car if he was found in violation of a federal offence (for carrying the weapons). Even if they didn't do a search, they would certainly have heard the sounds that Cybil would have made from being locked in the trunk.

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Fast & Furious 8 picture

Plot hole: The nuclear codes are stolen and the Russian guy holding them was let go by Dom. He would contact his government to let them know and the codes changed. Cypher would also know this so her plan is flawed.

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Venom: Let There Be Carnage picture

Plot hole: A core plot point (lifted by the comics) is that Venom needs phenethylamine, and the only way to get it is from brains and from chocolate. Let's just go with it and forget the fact that phenethylamine can be legally purchased as dietary supplement, which would solve every problem. So, Venom gets incredibly angry because Mrs. Chen's shop ran out of chocolates, and *therefore* they need to go raid a chicken plant to eat some chicken brain. Uh, Venom lives in San Francisco. Chocolate is sold everywhere. If Mrs. Chen ran out of it, there are hundreds of stores and vending machines that have it in abundance. The escalation does not make sense.

Sammo

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Suggested correction: The point is he needs to steal it. At Mrs. Chen's shop he gets it for free because he protects her from robbers. Eddie doesn't have the money to buy all the chocolate Venom needs all the time. Stealing some chickens as an alternative is better than trying to shoplift at a different store.

lionhead

In the rest of the movie Eddie lives in his old apartment constantly in need of repairs, but shows zero serious money problems. He has lavish breakfasts, and he replaces the $2,000 TV the same day. Raiding the chicken place appears riskier than slipping his symbiote in a vending machine or shoplift, especially if it's just temporary - again assuming he's so poor that he literally has no money to eat, which is something the movie should have let us know, instead of pointing to the contrary and making him talk angrily about the need for them to not draw attention.

Sammo

Not only are the original mistake and Sammo 100% correct, but chocolate isn't exactly expensive. You can get 5 pound bulk orders of melting chocolate on Amazon for like... $25. And that's just a quick 2-second Amazon search. You could probably get it even cheaper elsewhere online. Even if Eddie hypothetically has little money (which doesn't seem to be the case - he has a nicely sized apartment in a major city, new TV, etc.), it's still ridiculous that he couldn't get his hands on chocolate. This is definitely a case of the movie ignoring practicality and reason to manufacture a funny situation.

TedStixon

I agree. There are many other stores that sell candy so all Eddie had to do was to go to one of those instead. Plus, at the end of the first movie, Eddie told Ann that he was going to become an investigative journalist, so he has a new job.

Suggested correction: Which would you rather have phenethylamine, chicken, or chocolate for dinner? That's like saying just because we need food to survive...we should just eat anything or buy our base vitamins and minerals over the counter and from the store.

DetectiveGadget85

Sure. How does that have anything to do with the entry? Venom wanted chocolate for dinner and not chicken, supplements to a diet don't mean that you can't eat actual food and the main point was and is that if a store in a metropolis is sold out of chocolate of any kind, there are a dozen other stores in a few blocks' radius who sell it without you having to resort to crime to eat it.

Sammo

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Under Siege picture

Plot hole: An American battleship with an active supply of nuclear warheads on its missiles would in no way allow a helicopter full of strangers to land and deploy without those men being screened for any weapons by the security guards on the ship (even if Krill already knows).

jbrbbt

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Cliffhanger picture

Plot hole: This happens after Gabe has killed the guy in the cavern and is reaching for the radio. We hear Frank trying to reach them, so they must be on the same frequency. Then, Hal finds out that a bomb has been planted, grabs a radio from the bad guys and starts yelling for Gabe to get out of the cavern because of the bomb. Why didn't Frank hear any of this on his headset?

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Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen picture

Plot hole: Simmons stands outside the 'The Monastery' at Petra (not to be confused with 'The Al Kazneh' at Petra where Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was filmed) and looks at the horizon, and he is able to see the Air Force landing with Optimus by the pyramids. It then appears to take them mere minutes to drive over there. This is outright laughable, even accepting that they make the trip in an alien robot car. Petra and Cairo are separated by hundreds of miles of desert, not to mention Israel being between Egypt and Jordan.

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