When a movie is really great, we don't always notice if a small part of the story doesn't
make much sense.
Sometimes, though, a few problematic details can dampen all that movie magic.
Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but huge, gaping plot holes?
These movies are something else entirely.
The flyers in the vault
Ocean's 11 has so much going for it.
A stellar cast, an action-packed story and a triumphant ending where the crew makes off
with $150 million dollars of casino money after pulling off an incredible switcheroo.
It all goes down when Danny Ocean and his crew tell casino boss Benedict they'll blow
up his vault of cash, unless he puts it in a waiting van.
“May I ask how you expect to leave?
You believe I'm going to allow you to carry bags of my money out of my casino doors?
No, you're gonna carry it out for us.”
Benedict does as he's told, but hedges his bets by calling in a SWAT team and having
his flunkies follow the money.
And when they finally intercept the vehicle?
The bags are full of x-rated flyers and the "SWAT team" back at the casino is revealed
to actually be Ocean and his team in disguise, making off with the real loot.
Great, right?
That is, until you stop to wonder how the fake "money" got in the vault in the first
place.
The only people who've been in there are Yen, who sneaks in via a tiny cart, and Ocean and
Caldwell, who rappel down an elevator shaft.
None of them have bags.
Even director Steven Soderbergh just kind of shrugs when asked about the plot hole in
the director's commentary.
The bottom line: No one knows, man.
Just enjoy the heist.
Illegal kicks
The closing scenes of The Karate Kid see Mr. Miyagi training Daniel to get him to the semi-finals
of a local tournament, where one of the villainous Cobra Kai competitors disables him with an
illegal kick to the knee.
Daniel powers through and goes on to meet his nemesis Johnny in the finals.
After Johnny does further damage to his injured leg, Daniel assumes a secret "crane" stance
and deals a whopping kick to Johnny's noggin, winning both the match and the love of Johnny’s
ex-girlfriend.
Except, of course, that the ref has repeatedly stated that blows to the head are illegal.
So who actually won that fight?
Probably just the audience.
Telling the story
The Social Network chronicles the birth of Facebook mostly in flashback, with Mark Zuckerberg
and Eduardo Saverin giving their depositions about the lying, cheating, and backstabbing
that happened along the way to creating the ubiquitous social networking platform.
This method of storytelling allows the movie to jump between the past and present, offers
conflicting sides of the story, and generally just keeps the action moving along.
“I was your only friend.”
But there's a sticking point: In one scene, Zuckerberg and Saverin are hooking up with
Facebook groupies in the bathroom of the club they're at together.
So many viewers have asked: who's giving the deposition now?
It's pretty likely that this is just Zuckerberg's memory instead of the deposition… so why
is he remembering the other guy's hookup?
Creep city.
No matter it's still entertaining.
Hence the four Golden Globes and three Academy Awards.
Missing
The Hangover is one of the funniest, raunchiest, wildest comedies ever.
The plot centers around Phil, Stu and Alan’s attempts to track down their missing friend
Doug after a night of debauchery in Vegas.
After two days, the guys finally find Doug.
It turns out that he’s actually on the roof of the Mirage Hotel in which they're all staying,
sunburnt but otherwise no worse for wear.
After the relief wears off, we're left to wonder: how did he go unnoticed for that long?
Don't casinos have crazy security and cameras everywhere including rooftops?
Besides, wouldn't Doug have tried to somehow get noticed during those long 48 hours?
Seems like he could've at least yelled or something.
Future tech
The main gist of Interstellar’s story is that the world is being plagued by a mysterious
blight that destroys crops and depletes oxygen levels.
The resulting food shortages and breathing problems mean all of humanity is on the brink
of extinction.
So NASA puts together a team to head off on an intergalactic journey to find new inhabitable
planets.
“We’re not meant to save the world.
We’re meant to leave it.”
Along the way, Coop, the pilot who accepts the assignment to lead the mission, gets hurled
around the galaxy, at one point ending up in a black hole where he can communicate with
his daughter Murph through a "tesseract" behind her bookcase and doesn't get back home until
she's an old woman.
Make sense?
Well, sort of.
Time and space do crazy things.
But you know what else is problematic?
The fact that even before Coop heads off to the Gargantua galaxy, it's revealed that the
technology to artificially grow crops on other planets already exists.
So why not just grow them on Earth?
It's such a big plot hole that the movie's novelization actually address it: the Blight
got into the bio-domes too.
Whoops.