Stupidity: Ultimately, it did wind up working. However when they shoved the antidote vial into Claire's purse and got George's attention so he would eat her, this was an insanely stupid move. 1. They had no way of knowing if he would actually choose to eat her if he even grabbed her in the first place. Before then he'd been crushing people and even threw the helicopter pilot miles off the building while they watched that happen. 2. The antidote was in a plastic polymer like tube designed to hold the substance inside it while submerged in liquid nitrogen containment. Even if the gorilla's stomach acid could eat through the vial to get to the antidote, it would take hours for it to get through a material like that. 3. Gorillas are herbivores, so it wouldn't have tried to eat a person in the first place. (01:17:55)
Stupidity: When they first arrive on Planet Zero, Victor runs his hand through the mysterious green liquid on the planet surface. No scientist in their right mind would ever willingly attempt to touch a body part to an unknown substance. He had no way of knowing if the substance was toxic, corrosive, incendiary, hypothermic, etc. Moreover, none of his companions try to warn him against doing so.
Stupidity: At the end of the film, the Rehabs recruit gang members and give them all kinds of guns from shotguns, handguns, and automatic weapons. The cops and deputized citizens have similar weapons. But for all the shooting, not one gang member is hit and only one citizen appears to be shot (aside from the three blown off the building roof by the Rehab tank.) I don't think anyone has any bullets.
Stupidity: At the prison yard, when Weiss overhears that the sonic deadline was being deactivated to let new prisoners in, he manages to look at the deactivation code. The guard sees Weiss looking at the code and switches the computer off. If he had changed the code and informed another guard, none of the prisoners would have escaped.
Suggested correction: The prison riot happens mere minutes after this. We don't know what it takes to actually change the password and whether or not the guards have the authority to do so. The real stupidity is why the guards would be using portable computers in full view of the inmates when they could easily walk on the other side of the deadline to do so.
Stupidity: Nobody in their right minds would take a nine-year-old child on a dangerous mission to locate and destroy a marauding, giant shark, a project that has already cost a number of lives.
Stupidity: In the scene where Lewis and Clark nearly hit the Event Horizon, One of the crew is calling out the closing distance and another confirms this information. Regardless of clouds obscuring their view they were aware of their proximity and the fact that they were speeding towards it and forced to attempt an abrupt stop makes no sense.
Stupidity: When Angela goes back to her house and finds that it's being sold, why are the cops letting her busybody neighbor hang around, ask her questions, and give opinions about her answers? If this were to happen for real, I think they'd ask the neighbor if she could identify her and then send her home.
Stupidity: The Engineer and Fireman of the Polar Express train crew should have known better than to not bend back the the metallic prongs of the cotter pin, which would have prevented the cotter pin from coming loose and causing all those problems in the driving of the train.
Suggested correction: As you yourself stated, the whole thing is likely a dream, where "normal" reality doesn't apply. In the "real world", the train would never be able to do any of the things that it does in the film.
Dream or not, it is still a stupidity of the train crew to not secure a pin that could work itself free of the controls of the locomotive.
Dreams are often unrealistic. There is no mistake.
The entry doesn't say anything about the entire trip to the North Pole being a dream.
Stupidity: Major Franklin is struggling up the side of the cliff while the rest of the group are on top of the cliff checking their equipment, then he slips and slides down the cliff side, breaking his leg. After seeing this, the group members reach for a long length of rope that was used to bring up the other members and the supplies. The commandos could have used the rope to help Major Franklin climb up and prevent him from falling and injuring himself.
Stupidity: When the trolls are trapped in Chef's cage, Smidge is small enough to slip through the bars and could've easily escaped.
Stupidity: Lao Che's intention was to kill Indy. He had no intention of giving him the antidote. So then why would he bring a real antidote? Why not just fill it with something else instead? From his perspective, bringing a real antidote was a waste of time, and also very stupid in case Indy managed to get it, which he did. In fact, Lao Che could've brought a fake antidote and given it to Indy. He probably wouldn't have noticed the difference, and then there wouldn't have been a fight in which one of his men was killed.
Suggested correction: If you're using a poison it is always worth having an antidote nearby just in case something goes wrong.
Lao Che could still have the real antidote in his pocket and give a vial a fake antidote to Indy. Plus, if you're implying Lao Che would need the antidote should he accidentally be poisoned, it would also be a stupidity for him to give the antidote to Indy.
Lao Che's goal is not to kill Indy, it is to get the emperor's remains without having to give up the diamond. He even tries paying for the emperor outright with valuable coins. He brings the antidote in case he loses track of the poisoned glass and the wrong person is poisoned. He never intends to actually give the antidote to Indy, he's only using it as leverage so Indy will hand over the diamond without making a scene. Indy only gets the antidote after he kills Lao's henchman and the antidote is knocked off the table.
Stupidity: After the team break Solomon Lane out of custody, they drive around Paris with him in the front seat of their car. Lane is still wearing a straightjacket, bound in chains and has a black bag over his head. The IMF team drive him through crowded streets, past multiple police cars in full view of everyone just minutes after an armoured convoy transporting a dangerous prisoner (who everyone is now looking for) has been attacked. None of the Parisian police seem to notice this and none of the IMF team questions the tactical soundness of this approach.
Suggested correction: What's stupid about this approach? The IMF team is trusting that with their skills and experience they can easily evade any police that spot them. Which of course they do. Placing Lane in the trunk would have kept him out of sight but that doesn't really matter because they weren't planning on sneaking him out, they were planning on a quick escape.
Stupidity: It's stated that Imhotep will fear cats until he has fully regenerated and two different scenes show him fleeing in terror at the sight of a cat. Despite this, none of the characters that Imhotep is trying to kill that are fully aware of his weakness even think to have a cat with them at all times.
Stupidity: Beck wants to kill Peter's friends because they know his secret. Instead of using Edith to attack them directly with a drone strike, or using his illusion technology to lead them into the path of a train like he did with Spider-Man, he instead has a henchman drive them onto a bridge and leave them in the path of his next Elemental attack. Because absolutely nothing is forcing them to stay on the bridge, they all casually walk off the bus and out of immediate danger. It is unfathomable that a man as intelligent and resourceful as Beck would take such an idiotic approach, especially considering all he had at his disposal and how desperate he was.
Suggested correction: He wanted it to seem like they were killed in the Elemental attack because it was cleaner. If they were killed by a drone it would be much more suspicious than being killed in the disaster. Once the plan goes wrong, he does simply send an Edith drone after them. If it wasn't for Spider-Man's timing, he would have been successful as well.
But that is the major problem, and why I think it was an egregious mistake in the movie. The plan "goes wrong" because it was idiotic. So idiotic that it is unrealistic that Beck, a highly intelligent person, would have made such a glaring oversight. Leaving the kids on the bridge but not trapping them at all allowed them to make an easy escape.
I think the point is that Beck thinks he is the smartest person in the room and that this plan is going to work. Should he take into account MJ and co's free will, yes, but he is so maniacal (and not thinking rationally) that it does not cross his mind. This is proven by the fact that as his plan is failing around him that he still wants his suit pressed and ready to meet the Queen because it will work out in the end in his mind. Also, to your point, having them walk in front of a train or walk off the bridge, would not make him a hero. He needed real casualties and Peter's friends were the place to start. Finally, in the sequence showing Beck and his team preparing for the attack, he was focused on the theatrics of the attack and, again, thought the size of it alone would work (he wanted it bigger, scarier, more forceful).
Suggested correction: Fury is well aware of the drone system (he berates Peter for misusing it earlier). If Beck simply utilised EDITH to kill the students, it would give away that Beck was using the drones for his own gain. Once Fury was dead, he could have used EDITH had the original plan failed, but he certainly couldn't do it until after Fury (and potentially other SHIELD agents) had been taken out. He was going to attack London no matter what, so he took the opportunity to take out Ned, MJ and Betty at the same time.
This doesn't stop him from using a targeted drone strike to kill the kids, he was planning on using it to kill Fury anyway. The fact that he fails in his strike against Fury is irrelevant to the fact that he needed those kids dead and decided to take a round-about way of accomplishing this goal. Again, he doesn't have to use a drone strike, he is perfectly capable of using the illusion technology to force the bus off a cliff or into some other immediate danger. Having a henchman drive the bus to a bridge and hope the kids are dumb enough not to escape danger when literally nothing is forcing them to just stand there and be killed is ridiculously idiotic.
Suggested correction: Characters, even intelligent ones, are allowed to make bad tactical decisions. Real-life history is replete with examples. Just because it seems unlikely doesn't make it a plot hole.
True - this was originally submitted as "stupidity", which is slightly different, but this seemed like such a massive oversight that it qualified as a plot hole.
Suggested correction: Beck's intentions were to make it look like the kids were killed in the attack by the monster. Had he just killed them with a drone out right, it would have obviously looked like murder and foul play bringing in more investigations and potential problems for him.
But again, he doesn't need to use a drone strike he can use the illusion technology to trick them into an accident. Even what he chooses to do (just leaving them on the bridge) would have also been fine had he trapped them there at all. Just leaving them there without trapping them is so stupid it is unbelievable. It's like leaving someone on train tracks but not tying them up.
Suggested correction: He was an insane person and wasn't thinking fully rationally.
Stupidity: The commando mission to save Chewbacca starts gunning down a few Stormtroopers in the hangar. The heroes then go on leaving the troopers lying down on the floor in front of the ship, in plain view. They don't hide them nor ask the droids (who have enough strength and tools to pull them in) to, in fact they tell them to stay put. No wonder they are found out later (after a ridiculously long amount of time).
Suggested correction: Hiding the bodies would have been a waste of time, anyone who came to the hangar would immediately notice that the guards stationed there were missing and there was now a strange ship parked there.
The droids have all the time in the world, and people just passing by are "more immediately" bound to notice corpses in the middle of a hangar rather than possibly maybe question the fact that you don't see guards in that part of the hangar or investigate the ship - which could approach without anyone taking exception by appearance alone. At least remove the bodies directly in front of the damn ship!
Why would they be more likely to notice dead guards than no guards?
Anyone passing by might well thing the patrols were just out of sync, or a shift change. Sure they might investigate further, but they might not bother. Whereas a couple of dead bodies? Immediate red alert. Worth taking 30 seconds to hide them, surely.
Perhaps, but then it's made irrelevant 1 minute later as Finn and Poe run down a hallway blasting about a dozen stormtroopers.
For that matter, 1 SECOND later they kill stormtroopers in the far part of the hangar. They are killing people all over the ship during their mission and it's not like they hide every single one of them, but they leave two bodies *exactly* in front of their ship (and telling the droids to stay put). You can even see later that there is a stormtrooper with his weapon pointed exactly where those two corpses are, with the 'smart' commanding officer asking "whose ship is this?" at the sight of that. Maybe I am spoiled by a trope here, but it's the first time that I see someone in an action movie leaving corpses right in front of their only escape route/vehicle, that's so counterintuitive. (Did they even have an escape plan, actually? I don't like hypotheticals, but gee, if only she did the Jedi mind trick thing to those 2 guards who came over to inspect the ship instead of doing it later. But I digress).
Stupidity: The bad guys should have just shot Paul and his backup during the standoff rather than risking another impediment.
Stupidity: When the crew of the German U-boat boards Katanga's ship, the submarine moves in a position perpendicular to the ship's bow as if to block its path. In reality, this would have been a pretty stupid move by the German captain, as Katanga could have rammed the submarine easily. Any kind of damage to the hull, especially ramming damage (even from small ships), would have been catastrophic to the submarine. It makes no sense to make a manoeuvre like this.
Stupidity: In the first action scene where James Franco's body becomes mortally engulfed in flames in his cryopod, when they are using the jaws-of-life-hatch-removing tool to manually free him, there are two very strong men struggling with all their might to pull down on the levers to pop the lid off. A) If you watch closely, one of the guys is only using one hand to pull down on the lever. Hardly a serious effort to crank the thing open. B) Meanwhile, there are three other men present who, rather than jumping in with the other two guys trying desperately to pull those levers down, are instead ridiculously engaged in holding Franco's hysterical girlfriend back from the now-flaming pod. (00:10:00)
Stupidity: After stealing the taxi, Cassandra removes the license plate, and yet the taxi's identification number is located in bold plain sight on the doors and roof light.
Stupidity: Shriek is being taken to a new facility for superbeings, after a medical exam established that her sonic powers that she has been using since she was a kid are too strong to keep her at the correction house. So "naturally" for this transport she is not gagged, sedated, not even bound, and there's just one guy with her, not even wearing earplugs. It couldn't possibly be any more comically unsafe.