Best sci-fi movie plot holes of all time

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Journey 2: The Mysterious Island picture

Plot hole: As the island is sinking you can see parts break off, like the island is falling apart, but if it does this every 70 years then there wouldn't be an island. It should have completely fallen apart hundreds of years ago.

brianjr0412

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Men in Black: International picture

Plot hole: Spoiler. Agent M points out as highly suspicious that the twin assassins knew the location of Vungus, and High T backs her up on this, saying that only a handful of MIB officers could have leaked that information. High T also established that those aliens were part of the Hive collective. It turned out that they were not part of the Hive, and the Hive connection was made-up entirely by the villain himself...which is the Hive! What he did was absurdly counterproductive to his cause: nothing except the report he himself made up connected the Hive at all with the case.

Sammo

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Suggested correction: Maybe a wrong move by High T but more like a character mistake rather than a movie mistake. High T was trying to scare the agents into overreacting to what was perceived as a high risk threat. Then it backfired on him but definitively non a plot hole.

mauslyon

I don't mind the proposed changes of category, or even a 'demotion' to Stupidity. But I say it's more of a Plot Hole by the definition used in the website; " Events or character decisions which only exist to benefit the plot, rather than making sense." The whole plot moves along thanks to a deliberate decision by the villain who literally fabricates evidence to implicate himself.

Sammo

Sorry but it COULD make sense. We have 2 aliens from planet X (which is presumed to be a "hive" territory) that - at that point in the movie - are perceived as killers. It makes a lot of sense for HighT to reinforce in Agent H and Agent M the fear of an incoming invasion by waving the Hive scare flag in front of them. HighT could not have predicted at that point in time that the twins would say "we need that weapon for the hive" before being obliterated, Thus starting a doubt in H and M.

mauslyon

I fail to see why it makes sense for him to tip them off about the much larger intergalactic invasion when he just needs to send them on a wild goose chase to buy himself time for the last part of the plan. He amply demonstrates that he can fake anything about their background. Or simply not fake anything at all;they have no Hive contamination, and so they are just refugees from a dead planet. Instead, he fakes evidence that implicates his faction and is caught hiding that forgery.

Sammo

Maybe Stupidity is more appropriate.

mauslyon

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Deep Impact picture

Plot hole: The government would have no chance of hiding the existence of the comet for a year. Most comets are discovered when they are very faint, literally thousands of times fainter than Wolf-Beiderman when Leo found it. Long before the events in the film take place, probably even before the government itself would be notified, the comet would have been discovered, an orbit calculated, and people panicked. The whole premise of the first half of the movie is thus based on flawed logic.

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Suggested correction: Only 3-4% of the visible universe has been discovered. Meaning this comet could have been discovered much later.

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Jason X picture

Plot hole: When the Grundel explodes near the end, Rowan looks out the window to see Uber Jason floating towards the rescue shuttle, only to be grabbed by Brodski who happens to fly sideways at a high rate of speed. Now provided it's feasible that Uber Jason can survive an immense explosion, how Brodski not only survived the explosion but managed to wind up away from the spaceship and far enough off to the right so as to catch Jason in mid-space is beyond me. (01:22:15)

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X-Men 3 picture

Plot hole: When Magneto lands the bridge between San Francisco and Alcatraz, only the ends of the bridge are on land, with the rest still suspended in the air despite having nothing to keep it there. Magneto could arguably be using his powers to keep it supported, but at the moment he loses his powers it still does not collapse at the center.

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Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker picture

Plot hole: While the pair are duelling on Kajimi, Kylo Ren only realises Rey is onboard his ship when the mask of Darth Vader is force-teleported between them. However in this same fight Rey is wielding the dagger, which Kylo must have known was also inside Ren's chambers before the fight. So he should've been able to determine Rey's location earlier.

Jack Tobe

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Suggested correction: While he should have had some idea, it doesn't prove she is in his quarters, only that she has been there. It's also a small item that he may not have noticed in her hand, focusing more on her lightsaber.

Hogwash. He could have easily noticed it, even if he was focused on her lightsaber. Maybe it is small but rather easily noticeable.

I think the biggest point is the mask proves her location whilst the dagger in her hand doesn't.

lionhead

It's also a weapon. In a combat situation a trained fighter like Kylo would have checked her other hand for a weapon as it is a common tactic to check a swipe with the main blade and stab with an off hand short weapon.

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Cube picture

Plot hole: Kazam is supposed to be a math genius, something that the plot hinges on, but he makes several mistakes when calculating the number of prime factors to find out whether a room is trapped or not. He says that 462 has three prime factors, when it has four, that 206 has four when it only has two and that 563 has two and 911 has three when both are actually prime numbers.

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Kate & Leopold picture

Plot hole: Stuart establishes that there is only one of you and that when you travel through time you can repeat things, but it will be you and not your double that does it. But, at the end, when the Duke is going up the stairs and the uncle says "Where have you been...", the Duke is wearing the same clothes as the first time. Yet we see that he goes directly from the time portal to his house in the ballroom raiment of the later scene. Where did the old clothes come from?

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The Day After Tomorrow picture

Plot hole: When you see the shot of New York, just before the scene where the apartment lights go out, there are no lights on in the buildings, or car lights in the street, although it is dark. The lights should still be on as there has not been a power outage. (01:28:00)

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Reign of Fire picture

Plot hole: The Americans allegedly landed at Manchester on their way to kill the male Dragon in London. London is due south of Manchester. Why then did they head in the complete opposite direction to Northumberland?

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Darkman picture

Plot hole: Peyton had his face burned in the explosion. In fact, he basically lost his lips, so he should not be able to talk very easily. While he could probably learn to speak normally again through other movements with his mouth and tongue, he does so too quickly to make logical sense. And his uncanny ability to almost perfectly mimic his enemies could probably be learned over time, but again is too quick to make sense.

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Evolution picture

Plot hole: On the doors inside the white dome, and on the elevator door, it is marked "Vapor Lock." This is impossible due to the mine shaft opening. It can't be vapor locked when there's an opening. (00:35:00)

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G.I. Joe: Retaliation picture

Plot hole: Even if someone would make all nuclear powers launch their nuclear missiles and then destroy them you still wouldn't have a nuclear weapons free world as most of those nations have plenty of nuclear weapons in reserve. A lot would be even be armed and ready to go for a possible second strike. (01:24:10)

lionhead

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The Krone Experiment picture

Plot hole: In the course of the story it's said that at the time the black hole went out of control, it had a mass of "half a mountaintop of granite." But in a flashback scene Dr. Krone is shown growing the mass of the hole by feeding it large numbers of lead bricks in the laboratory. It's a little hard to believe his lab could store, or even afford, enough lead bricks to equal that much mass.

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Forbidden Planet picture

Plot hole: Krell doorways and equipment suggest they are short, wide and 2-3 times larger than a human. Yet the shuttle pod the Commander, Doctor and Morbius ride in is designed for human size beings.

Grumpy Scot

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Back to the Future Part III picture

Plot hole: Although Marty rips the fuel line, not all the fuel would have drained out of the tank. Only the fuel that was already in the fuel line would have leaked out, meaning it could simply be patched, bled and the engine would run without a problem.

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Suggested correction: A cut fuel line could absolutely drain the tank. Even if not a direct route with respect to gravity, it could still create a siphon effect and drain the tank.

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The Day the Earth Stood Still picture

Plot hole: Klaatu is shot and his body is lying in a prison cell. Gort leaves the flying saucer and walks all the way to the heavily guarded police station in downtown Washington DC. Gort is 8 feet tall and is a robot plus he uses his noisy death ray to create a hole in the police station to retrieve Klaatu's body and nobody noticed him? On top of that, he walks all the way back to the saucer unseen with a dead body. (01:22:36)

Larry Koehn

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Tangents picture

Plot hole: The whole plot of this movie stems from a scientist selling his time machine to a corporation for further funding for development. He has a TIME MACHINE. Lotteries, stock market, 100 years of interest on a savings account. Why does he need more funding?

Grumpy Scot

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Philadelphia Experiment II picture

Plot hole: A nuclear armed stealth fighter is accidentally sent back in time to 1940's Nazi Germany. After the Nazis capture it, two days later they drop a nuclear bomb on the United States. There are several basic problems here. Firstly, if the Nazis captured advanced technology, wouldn't they spend more time taking the plane apart and interrogating the captured pilot? How on earth did they manage to train a pilot to fly the stealth in such a short length of time? And how did the stealth fighter manage to reach the U.S. from Germany when in-flight refuelling was unknown then?

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Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country picture Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country mistake picture

Plot hole: The assassin cuts a hole in the glass to kill the Federation president. But with the size of the hole and the placement of the scope on the phaser rifle, the assassin would not have been able to see out of the hole.

Grumpy Scot

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