Best action movie plot holes of 1987

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The Living Daylights picture

Plot hole: Necros had absolutely no way of knowing that Bond and Saunders had arranged to meet at the café when they did and wouldn't have had anywhere near enough time to track them down and set up his elaborate booby trap. Saunders only suggested the meeting place and time a few hours earlier, and it was kept strictly between him and Bond. The scene in Tangier, where Whittaker tells Necros to kill another British agent, takes place on the same day Bond arrived in Vienna; meaning that Necros got from Tangier to Vienna (a 5-hour plus flight), tracked down Saunders, acquired the materials to booby trap the café doors (or had planned this ahead of time - unlikely), and set the trap up well in advance of him and Bond getting to the fairground. There was nowhere near enough time for all of that to happen without Necros having psychic knowledge of Saunders' movements.

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The Running Man picture

Plot hole: In the unedited video footage of the helicopter incident shown to the crowd, the last shot of Arnie getting knocked out is seen from his perspective and as such could never have been filmed by any camera.

Gavin Jackson

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Beverly Hills Cop II picture

Plot hole: Cain's hitman asks for a match to lit his cigar. Cain gives him the matchbook. When Axel later tests the matchbook for fingerprints, there is only one on it - Cain's. The hitman's fingerprint ought to be on it too.

Jacob La Cour

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Superman IV: The Quest for Peace picture

Plot hole: Superman traps the supervillain (whose power depends on sunlight) inside of an elevator to incapacitate him. Superman then ripped the elevator out of the building. He then plants it on the far side of the moon. Later on, sunlight starts to shine into the elevator through a slit at where the doors meet. The villain of course recharges and comes after Superman again. Now, if light could get through that crack there, then why couldn't it get through when the elevator was ripped out of the building in BROAD DAYLIGHT?

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Masters of the Universe picture

Plot hole: When Gwildor tells Julie and Kevin that he can use the Cosmic Key to take them to any point in time they wish, Kevin asks just for them to go straight home. As Kevin and Julie go through the portal, Julie turns around and shouts to Gwildor to send them back before being dragged through the portal completely. When Julie wakes up in bed, she discovers that Gwildor has sent her back to the day her parents were killed. Julie never said where in time she wanted to go, so there's no way Gwildor could know to send her back to the day her parents died.

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Lethal Weapon picture

Plot hole: One of the children is a witness that saw the man that planted the bomb in Dixie's house. He is said by a policeman to have been playing 'under the porch' and was close enough to make-out the Special Forces tatoo on the bomber's arm. Problem is, Dixie's house had no porch of any kind, and any other home's porch would've placed him too far to see such a small tatoo so confidently. (00:57:40)

johnrosa

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Suggested correction: The rear of Dixie's house is never shown. The house could conceivably have a back porch the kid could have been playing under and the killer could have used the back door.

BaconIsMyBFF

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The Hidden picture

Plot hole: When Gallagher is trying to kill the senator at the end, he is fired on by his bodyguards. Yet when they finally catch up with him, they're quite content to stand back and watch him torch the senator. One of them even lowers his gun. They couldn't have known Gallagher and the senator were aliens. (01:27:20)

Daz

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The Monster Squad picture

Plot hole: The army showing up at the end of the movie is wrong on numerous levels. 1) Eugene wrote and sent out the letter that day. I find it hard to believe the mailed letter got to the army in just a few hours time. 2) How did the army know to show up at time square? When Eugene wrote the letter, nowhere did it say where to meet. Plus the boys didn't decide to go to time square until the last minute. 3) since when is the army deployed to battle monsters based on a letter that was written by a child?

SAZOO1975

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Suggested correction: The army's arrival being unrealistic is a very deliberate joke, like the armadillo-rats from earlier in the movie.

I submitted a category change to "Factual Error" to help cover this. It is indeed too deliberate to be a true plothole, but it is nonetheless amusing to point out all the ridiculous ways this humorous scene defies believability.

TonyPH

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G.I. Joe: The Movie picture

Plot hole: After being hit with the spores, Cobra Commander cannot walk or even move very well with any speed at all. The Cobra minions have to drag him to their prison with the Joes and just leave him there on the ground after the Joes make a break for it. The Joes go quite a distance to engage Cobra. Road Block is delayed only a couple seconds behind the other Joes when he is grabbed, but knocks out the minion who grabbed him. Suddenly, Cobra Commander is at his feet telling him to wait because it's a trap. Later, Road Block has to carry Cobra Commander because he still can't move much. There's no way Cobra Commander could have caught up with Road Block to warn him of the trap. (00:52:50)

Quantom X

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Robocop picture

Plot hole: When Murphy is in the changeroom at the station, he learns that an officer has just died and that his funeral (according to the captain) would be the next day. There's simply no way a funeral can take place one day after someone's death. All the planning, prep work and getting the body released to the funeral home would take about a week...plus many other things. Simply cannot be done.

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Predator picture

Plot hole: After Blaine gets killed and the group hose down the forest, Poncho goes and checks for the enemy. He comes back and says he didn't find tracks or blood "We hit NOTHINGGG." Now, while he would be looking for red blood, he certainly should have noticed at least the glowing Predator blood (made from glow stick fluid - widely used by the military and public alike at the time) easily visible on the large leaf, and deduced that came from something - perhaps the enemy soldier had a glow stick.

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Suggested correction: This isn't a plot hole. The plot of the movie isn't broken because of this. It's an assumption that he "should have noticed" the predator blood but he might not have. And if he had, and had discounted it, it would only be a character error not to have mentioned it.

A plot hole doesn't strictly need to "break" the plot to count as a plot hole. The term most often refers to instances when a film contradicts its own sense of internal logic. For example, something happening that contradicts something else that was already established, vital information being left out, or a character acting way out of character for the benefit of the plot. In this case, this absolutely could count as a plot hole.

TedStixon

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Assassination picture

Plot hole: Senator Bunsen is introduced in the film as the President's Chief of Staff. As such, he would no longer be a sitting senator, and although he might be addressed as such, the newspaper lamenting his death would display his current title, not "Senator".

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R.O.T.O.R. picture

Plot hole: Considering everything seen in the film is supposed to be told as a flashback through the narration of the Coldyron it's never explained how the conversation between the couple could even be in the film, since Coldyron wasn't a witness to it.

jbrbbt

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