Great films have great plots. But sometimes even the tightest script can lead to big plot holes. We’re not saying these plot holes ruin the films they exist in; just that if you pay any attention to them they can undo the magic of cinema right before your eyes. These are just ten of the plot holes that make our heads hurt.

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Batman Begins (2005) – Fear Gas, what gas?

Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins is a cinematic marvel and brings Batman kicking and screaming into the 21st century with gritty realism and Christian Bale. The entire plot revolves around fear gas and the fact that it’s being dumped into the cities water supply – a fact that Inspector Gordon builds on when he tells Batman there’s been no reported incidents.

However we later find out that the chemicals take effect when turned into steam – which forms the entire crux of the films final act. So…. no one in Gotham City boiled water from the tap for weeks? Took a hot shower, ironed clothes or had a cup of coffee? Any of these would have triggered the chemicals and the viscous psychosis episode which followed. If citizens were falling like flies to an unknown chemical – we suspect the police would have taken a closer look at the water supply and possibly foiled Ra’s al Ghul and Scarecrows plan weeks earlier.

 

The Empire Strikes Back (1980) – What Time is it?

So at the start of the film, the whole gang is together on Hoth and by the end of the film they’re all together on Cloud City. But when you look at the parallel story running in the middle of the film – the time doesn’t add up. Luke meets Yoda and goes through a huge slice of his Jedi training; while Han and Leia are chased by the Empire (for pretty much the entire period Luke doesn’t see them). Unless we’re missing something – that wasn’t shown to be an exceptionally long period of time (Boba Fett even follows them to Cloud City – which they might have noticed over if they’d taken weeks to get there) – so what gives?

We’ve seen in other media (Namely the prequels and Rebels) that learning the ways of the Force isn’t a weekend task – so we know that it was likely weeks and not the days that the film implies. Either Yoda works exceptionally fast or we missed a huge slice of Han/Leia as they bummed it to Cloud City.

 

Star Trek (2009) – Seriously, what time is it?

During the opening scene – we see rogue Romulan Nero arrive 25 years too early – leading to him destroying the Kirk’s dads ship. He then proceeds to disappear for 25 years and sit idly on his thumbs until Spock’s ship returns from the future. Not one of his crew members (Of which there are many) took offence to being forced to sit in the shadows for a quarter of a century to see out the vendetta and the film never really feels the need to explain it.

It’s rumoured that in a deleted scene this gets explained away via the Klingon’s capturing the ship and crew – which in itself opens up even more holes (Like why didn’t he Klingon’s steal the technology from the ship and use it themselves to attack a vastly under prepared human race.)

 

Skyfall (2012) – Dropping In

This one’s not even subtle since most people pointed it out on first viewing. There’s a scene where Bond chases Silva through the London Underground – culminating in a scene where Silva detonates a wall and brings a Tube train down on Bond. Great, except how on earth did Silva know to plant explosives ahead of time in that exact spot? Did he know that Bond would be chasing him so closely? If he’d been 3 minutes later or earlier in arriving at M’s Parliament hearing he would have missed the chance to drop a train on Bond.

 

Home Alone (1990) – The Magic Telephone

At the start of the film we see a big storm take place the night before the McAllister’s leave for their vacation. We also see that this knocks out the telephone lines to the house. The guys fixing the power lines tell the family it’ll take a few days for them to fix it and when the family call later to check if Kevin’s home – they have to ring around other houses (and eventually the police) because of the phone lines being down. Yet Kevin orders himself a pizza using the phone from inside the house with relative ease. This raises several questions;

A. Why didn’t his parents keep ringing back everyday until they got him on the phone?

B. When did the phones get fixed?

 

Back To The Future 2 (1989)

So when old Biff jumps in the Deloreon and flies back to 1955 to give himself the sports almanac, he’s changing history. But we see elderly Biff return to his version of 2015 and leave the Deloreon quite fine. We then later see the same old Biff as he’s giving 1955-Biff the almanac – even though as Doc Brown explains earlier in the film – the timeline that old Biff arrived from has been erased and replaced with the alternative timeline we see in 1985. So by the films own logic, elderly Biff couldn’t have returned to give himself the almanac as he no longer existed; nor did the version of 2015 he returned too. If you’re confused, just refer back to Doc Browns chalkboard.

It’s never explained and remains arguably the trilogy’s biggest gaping plot hole as we see numerous times how changing time has an almost instantaneous effect on the consequences (See the grave in 1885, disappearing Marty in 1955).

 

Independence Day (1996) – That’s why you buy a Mac

At the conclusion of Roland Emmerich’s alien blockbuster – Jeff Goldblum’s solution to stopping the aliens is to create a computer virus tocinfiltrate the alien motherships hive computer. But how does he plan to get the virus on the computer? By plugging his Mac laptop into the alien ship and uploading the virus of course; which works an absolute treat.

Seriously think about the number of problems the film hand waves away to get this to work. Computer viruses have to be written in specific languages to be effective on specific OS’s, so unless the aliens were running Mac OS and Goldblum knew this (Which he didn’t) then there’s no way he could have know what language to write the virus in. Forgetting all this; how on earth do the aliens have Mac compatible connection ports lying around for Goldblum to use? You know what, it’s really not worth asking…

 

Face Off (1996) – The Old Switcheroo

So John Travolta is wearing Nicolas Cages’s face pretending to be a bad guy. But Cage wakes up, calls some of his gang over and steals Travolta’s face so he can do bad stuff disguised as a good guy. As the film goes on Travolta (With Cage’s face) escapes and visits Cage’s gang – (Confused yet?) but didn’t Cage call up his gang when he made the decision to steal Travolta’s face? Yes Cage killed the two members he took with him but you’re telling us that he didn’t tell anyone in his huge drug cartel about his plan just in case something went very wrong (as it eventually does).

Looking at how the end of the film turns out for the villain, if he’d told someone (ANYONE) his cover would never have been blown.

 

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) – Prison Break

So when the big tanker carrying the T-Rex crashes into the harbour – it’s revealed that everyone on board had been eaten. But the T-Rex was still in the cargo hold and only escaped when the ship crashed so that raises the question – what killed the crew?

A deleted scene points to a raptor that escaped while the ship was en route and massacred the crew en mass – though not quick enough for the ship to just sink in the ocean.

 

Karate Kid (1984) – Real Winners Don’t Cheat

The Karate Kid is a story of how Daniel LaRusso becomes friends with an elderly Japanese man and learns the way of karate. This allows Daniel to fight his bullies and eventually win the tournament with a kick into Johnny’s face. Great, except at the start of the tournament we are explicitly told that kicks to the head are illegal and wouldn’t be tolerated. So when Daniel wins with one, you have to wonder why the referee didn’t instantly disqualify