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Plot Holes, Movie Mistakes and TV Inconsistencies—they’re among the biggest headaches for movie and TV audiences. They can undermine our favorite stories and shatter our suspension of disbelief...
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00:00Plot holes are one of movie and TV audiences' least favorite things.
00:03They can cause problems in otherwise great stories,
00:06and even totally ruin our suspension of disbelief.
00:08But, as much as viewers might like to rag on them,
00:11they aren't always as big of a deal as we might imagine.
00:15Sometimes we don't even realize they were there until way after the fact.
00:18And a lot of things that have been called plot holes aren't actually at all.
00:23So let's take a look at why plot holes happen in media,
00:26some of the biggest ones ever put to screen,
00:28and if they really even matter at all.
00:32We'll be touching on some key points from these films and shows,
00:34so just a heads up about possible spoilers.
00:37In conversations about movies and TV shows,
00:39the pendulum has swung from viewers actively seeking out plot holes,
00:43and often claiming just about everything is one,
00:45to the exact opposite,
00:47where no one seems to agree if anything is actually a plot hole.
00:51So first, let's quickly break down what a plot hole really is.
00:54Plot holes are issues that create inconsistencies within stories
00:57that break the internal logic of the film or show.
01:00They're not just small accidental flubs or continuity errors
01:03that might be noticeable but don't actually affect anything.
01:06Characters just making a bad choice or doing something
01:08that doesn't really make sense isn't automatically a plot hole either.
01:12People do and say silly or ridiculous things all of the time.
01:16And just because a character does so on screen
01:18doesn't mean there's a failure in the plot.
01:20Just the opposite, in fact.
01:21It's often a deliberate part of the character's personality
01:24or their growth journey.
01:25I went back to season one of Fringe to check for plot holes.
01:29As I suspected, airtight.
01:31Plot holes are an issue because, like the name suggests,
01:34they mess with the plot itself.
01:36They go against the logic of the world as it's existed up until that point
01:40in a way that can cause the entire story to begin to fall apart.
01:43And as a result, can also break our immersion.
01:46Plot holes can come in many shapes and sizes.
01:48But the ones we see most often on screen tend to fall into a few main categories.
01:53Character not having knowledge or an ability
01:55that they definitely should just to further the story.
01:58This isn't always a plot hole.
02:00As we'll unpack in a moment, sometimes this is a deliberately used story device.
02:04But when it doesn't seem to be purposefully planned,
02:07things can start to feel a little weird.
02:09Take Gravity, where during a pivotal moment,
02:11veteran astronaut Matt and mission specialist Ryan
02:14both forget basic physics.
02:16They're tethered together and Matt tells Ryan that she needs to cut him loose
02:20so that they're not both pulled out into the abyss.
02:22But that's not how space works.
02:24She could have easily pulled him towards her and they could have both been fine.
02:29But he needed to die for the story.
02:31And so she cut him free and some mysterious force pulled him out into the beyond.
02:35Gossip Girl ended up retroactively creating this plot hole for itself when,
02:39in the final episode,
02:40it's revealed that lonely boy Dan Humphrey was Gossip Girl all along.
02:44So all of those times where he was just shocked by a Gossip Girl blast while sitting all by himself
02:50make a lot less sense in hindsight.
02:52There's a recurring subtrope of this type that often happens on television,
02:56where two characters meet for the first time multiple times.
02:59Like Sam and Cat meeting during the iCarly and Victorious crossover episode,
03:03only to then seem to not know each other at all during the first episode of their spinoff show.
03:08Our friends Chandler and Rachel,
03:09who meet for the first time on three separate occasions.
03:12In the pilot, in the flashback when Rachel runs into Monica before her wedding,
03:16and when they met as teens.
03:18These kind of plot holes certainly aren't story-ruining,
03:20but they can make it difficult to really nail down character relationships and backstories.
03:24This can also happen in the other direction,
03:27where a character all of a sudden has knowledge or an ability
03:29that's directly contradictory to what we know about them.
03:32For example, in Twilight, it's made clear that Alice can't see the shapeshifters.
03:37But then, in Breaking Dawn,
03:39she is somehow able to see the wolves in a key premonition.
03:42The most common plot holes are points when an event takes place
03:45that then upends the sense of the entire rest of the story,
03:49because it doesn't at all fit with the world as we've come to understand it.
03:52The butterfly effect is all about how even the smallest changes in the past
03:56can have major effects on the future.
03:58Except that one time Evan goes back in time to stab himself,
04:01just to prove a point,
04:02and nothing at all changes except the appearance of the scar.
04:06And there's also the issue of how this would even prove anything,
04:09because in this new reality, he would have always had the scar.
04:13Many fans have been bothered by the inconsistencies
04:15around how the shrinking of mass in Ant-Man breaks its own internal logic.
04:20He gets to keep his full mass and strength when shrunk down,
04:23but then other large things like buildings and tanks
04:25are made light enough to easily carry around when they are shrunk down.
04:28Sometimes something will be set up or revealed
04:30within a story that seems to totally change everything,
04:34but then is completely forgotten to a degree that feels totally illogical.
04:38There are a few occurrences of this in the A Quiet Place franchise.
04:41In the original, everyone questioned why,
04:43if they knew that the waterfall allowed them to safely talk freely,
04:47did they instead choose to live in the middle of an incredibly quiet farm?
04:51In the recent sequel, A Quiet Place Day 1,
04:53we're told explicitly that New York City is incredibly loud,
04:57much louder than a waterfall.
04:58And yet this doesn't seem to help mask any of the human noise.
05:01The Harry Potter films also encountered this issue
05:03with the introduction of the Time Turners,
05:05which don't create a plot hole in the film in which they appear,
05:08but instead create one for essentially the entire rest of the story,
05:12because so much could have been solved via their use.
05:15It's put forth that no one uses them because they're too dangerous,
05:17but then why would anyone ever give one to a third-year student?
05:21Plot holes seem like something that any writer would work hard to avoid,
05:24but they can actually happen for a number of different reasons.
05:27Sometimes the writers just don't really care about the why or the how
05:31and are instead just looking to get certain scenes or themes into their story no matter what,
05:35logical or not.
05:37The aliens from Sides, for example, are often brought up as a huge plot hole.
05:41Why would aliens who know they're deathly allergic to water
05:43invade a planet that is made up mostly of water?
05:46But it provides the humans a simple earthly way to overcome the aliens,
05:50using the thing that is the essence of our life to save ourselves.
05:54And M. Night Shyamalan is more interested in interesting metaphors than logical consistency.
05:59Plot holes are often just a result of issues slipping through the cracks.
06:03Movie scripts can go through dozens of rewrites before they make it to the screen.
06:06And sometimes something that made sense in Draft 2
06:09doesn't make sense at all by the final version
06:11because things that were directly related to it were removed or changed
06:15to the point that now the connection is gone.
06:18This can also happen in television.
06:20But there, they also have to deal with the fact that the story is being written
06:23over a very long period of time, often years.
06:26There are people whose job it is to try to keep up with all of the plot and continuity information.
06:30But they're also trying to do a hundred other things at once, too,
06:33and so sometimes things just slip through the cracks.
06:36Another plot hole.
06:38Well, yeah.
06:40I mean, you guys are aware.
06:41There's, like, so many plot holes.
06:43Other times, plot holes can arise as the result of deliberate changes,
06:47specifically meant to break the existing logic of a story
06:50to turn things in a different direction.
06:53In stories that are written by multiple people,
06:55say, TV shows,
06:56or movie series that have different writers for each installment,
06:59sometimes a writer will just decide that they no longer want to be bound by what came before
07:03and make some changes,
07:04even if that then leads to a plot hole.
07:06This coming from the guy who's had how many psychotic breaks on campus?
07:10Are we including the gas leak here?
07:11Take that Dana's Gossip Girl plot hole we mentioned earlier.
07:14That was actually a deliberate change on the part of the creative team.
07:17They were initially going to go with someone else.
07:19Many speculated that it would be Eric,
07:21who would have made a lot more sense,
07:22but were unhappy that people seemed to be figuring it out so early along in the show's run,
07:27and so eventually decided to just go in a totally different direction.
07:31Ridley Scott, who wrote and directed Alien,
07:33famously disliked the sequel Alien vs. Predator.
07:35So when he was back at the helm for Prometheus,
07:38he deliberately contradicted various plot lines in that story
07:41to essentially remove it from the Alien canon.
07:44Even the most carefully plotted story can be torn to pieces by a studio exec
07:48who is more interested in what they think will sell than anything else.
07:51Sometimes things have to be changed to fit what they think audiences will like more,
07:55even if it doesn't necessarily make sense.
07:58Some consider the machine's decision to use humans for battery power in the Matrix to be a plot hole,
08:02but they were actually initially meant to be used as processors.
08:06But the studio didn't think that the audiences would understand the brain-computer connection,
08:10and so forced the change.
08:12In the long-running discussions about plot holes,
08:14there are some things that have been named as such that aren't really at all.
08:18Many have called the fact that The Wizard of Oz's Dorothy
08:21technically could have clicked her heels and went home at any time a plot hole,
08:24but the entire point was that she had to go on the journey
08:27to learn how much she did care about her home,
08:29and that she should believe in herself.
08:31And it was only then that she was ready to return.
08:34I should have thought of it, boy.
08:36I should have felt it in my hand.
08:37No, she had to find it out for herself.
08:40Now those magic slippers will take you home in two seconds.
08:43While the Just Take the Eagles solution was a favorite of list makers for a long time,
08:47Lord of the Rings fans have debunked that alleged plot hole at length.
08:50Giant Eagles are not terribly sneaky modes of transportation.
08:53Landy's use of a poster to cover his escape route in The Shawshank Redemption
08:57was a sticking point for some viewers,
08:59because it seemed impossible that he could have gotten it up from inside the hole.
09:02But really, he could have just stuck it to the top,
09:04climbed in, put glue around the remaining edges,
09:07and released the poster down and let it stick itself to the wall.
09:10One alleged plot hole that it seems will never go away
09:13is the idea that both Jack and Rose could have fit on the door in Titanic.
09:17But it's not a plot hole at all.
09:19Instead, just a result of people not actually watching what's happening in the scene.
09:24He does go to get on the door,
09:25but realizes that his weight will pull it down considerably,
09:28meaning it won't keep Rose out of the water,
09:30or could even flip it entirely.
09:32And so he instead makes the decision to stay in the water.
09:35But for some people, because this was all relayed visually
09:38instead of having Jack narrate his decision-making process aloud,
09:41it's been stuck in plot hole canon ever since.
09:44Even though it is, again, very much not a plot hole.
09:47Since plot holes have become such a major point of contention,
09:50it can feel like they're incredibly important parts of storytelling
09:52that must be avoided at all costs.
09:54But that isn't really the case.
09:56Sure, particularly egregious ones can throw off a story
09:59or disrupt our suspension of disbelief, and that is a bummer.
10:02But other times, the storytelling is done so well
10:04that plot holes are able to sneak by
10:06without really disturbing any enjoyment of the media,
10:09even if they do make the story a little confusing
10:11when you sit down to think about it.
10:12Sometimes living with some plot holes
10:14can even be the better option creatively.
10:16Take Community.
10:17Creator Dan Harmon was axed by the studio for the fourth season.
10:21And over the course of that season,
10:22a lot of choices were made for the characters and plot
10:25that weren't ideal.
10:27He was brought back for the fifth season.
10:28And instead of getting stuck trying to move forward
10:31keeping all of the changes from season four
10:32and trying to get back to the show
10:34people actually enjoyed simultaneously,
10:36he came up with a funny way to essentially
10:37just hand-wave away that entire season.
10:39All of the odd behavior was able to be written off
10:41as just a result of a gas leak at the school.
10:44It became dubbed the Gas Leak Year,
10:46and the team was able to move forward
10:47without having to worry about creating
10:48any story-breaking plot holes.
10:50What happened to Annie, the unstoppable go-getter?
10:53Well, there was that gas leak last year.
10:55While they can definitely be fun to search for and point out,
10:58plot holes aren't always the show or movie ruiners
11:00that many have branded them.
11:01It's certainly best for writers to avoid them
11:03with a little creativity when possible,
11:05but they're not the end of the world.
11:07Don't miss our videos analyzing the best and worst
11:09plot twists and redemption arcs on screen.
11:12That's the take.
11:13Click here to watch the video we think you'll love,
11:15or here to check out a whole playlist of awesome content.
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