Biggest Movie Plot Holes

Picture this: you’re watching a movie and you’re super invested. Then something happens that makes absolutely no sense! Is there anything worse than noticing a glaring plot hole in a movie you love? From characters appearing in 2 places at once to entire storylines that collapse under scrutiny, here are some of the biggest movie plot holes of all time!

Jurassic Park's Lost World: How The T-Rex Killed The Ship Crew

It’s no secret that the many sequels to 1993’s Jurassic Park are far less revered than the original. The first of these, 1997’s The Lost World, has a finale that doesn’t work at all. Essentially, the bad guys "dino-nap" a T-Rex and her baby and shove them on a boat. Then they transport the duo back to the mainland, intending to use them as star attractions in a brand-new park. But when the boat arrives, the entire crew have been taken out, allowing the T-Rex to escape for the bombastic climax.

So, the Rexes must’ve munched all the baddies during the trip, right? Well, no. They only escaped the ship’s hold when the boat hit land, and only the baby would’ve been small enough to fit through the vessel’s corridors anyway. It's worth noting that the vessel is filled with armed mercenaries! They could’ve easily taken care of a single infant. There’s absolutely no explanation as to how or why the crew popped their clogs, other than the simple fact the movie needed them out of the way.

Some fans theorize that an earlier draft of the script had a pack of velociraptors on board as well, which would explain the many casualties. But that’s purely speculation and it's not even in the movie! It wouldn’t be the last time the Jurassic saga would treat us like morons either. Enter 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which has a shocking ending that’s also totally dumb. With a toxic gas threatening the last caged dinosaurs, our heroes deactivate their locks, then make the tough choice to open the building and free them.

With that, dinosaurs live among us, causing all sorts of carnage. But what choice did they have? There was no other way to save them! Except, keeping the dinos safely caged and only opening the doors to the outside world, allowing the gas to disperse without the ensuing onslaught of prehistoric monsters. Would’ve saved a whole lot of trouble.

Toy Story: Buzz Lightyear Plot Hole

Anybody that dares criticize 1995’s smash hit Toy Story is in for some serious heat, right? Well, in my opinion, Buzz Lightyear makes zero sense. The main storyline involves Buzz believing adamantly that he’s not a toy at all, and instead a genuine space ranger on an alien world.

Only, in the world of Toy Story, the toys all immediately pretend to be lifeless when a human enters the room. So, why does Buzz go limp as well? He’d have absolutely no reason to if he really thought he was a human unless he was intentionally mimicking the toys as some kind of survival tactic. Even then, the movie establishes that a trained space ranger would be more likely to try and defend himself. Remember his laser? Why wouldn’t he just start blasting?

One theory is that toys are kind of programmed to behave in a certain way. They don’t choose to hide themselves; they just have to. If that was the case though, why wouldn’t Buzz question his body being hijacked without his permission multiple times? It’s not just internet losers like me that questioned this either, the movie’s own writers knew there was something wrong. According to them, they racked their brains to come up with some kind of answer, before deciding that ultimately nobody cared enough.

Gremlins: Feeding Mogwai After Midnight

The 1984 horror comedy Gremlins has become iconic for its titular monsters. Mogwai are cute and cuddly but can turn into the evil gremlins if some simple rules aren’t followed. At least, they’re supposed to be simple, they don’t actually make much sense! The most important is to never, ever feed them after midnight. That’ll transform them from precious pal to vile villain!

©CoolGiz via Fandom Wiki

But it makes you wonder, why is that? What is it about midnight that triggers the change? More pressingly, when can you start feeding them again? Dawn? Lunch time? No clue, we’re never told and none of the characters seem concerned about the answer. And what happens if it’s daylight savings time? Does the cutoff point change with the clock readouts? What if you're heading on a romantic getaway to Australia with Gizmo, will he have to give up his in-flight peanuts because of the time zone change?

With just the slightest of examinations, the movie somewhat falls apart, doesn’t it? The only thing we do know is that a scrapped Gremlins 3 script would have addressed the time zone issue. In it, a mogwai on a plane chows down after a time zone shift. With it then being after midnight, the change occurs.

Ant-Man: Pym Particle Paradox

The first Ant-Man movie from 2015 establishes that he can shrink down to the size of an ant using the mysterious “Pym particles.” When he does, he’s still able to wail on his foes with regular human strength. This means that objects shrunk down have to maintain their mass and/or density, or else he’d be unable to hurt anyone. It's possible to get behind that explanation.

What you can’t get behind is that in the sequel, 2018’s Ant-Man and the Wasp, Hank Pym, the creator of the shrinking tech, reveals that the miniature tank on his keychain is actually a real one, shrunk down. It means this old dude was carrying an actual tank around in his pocket.

If shrunken objects maintain their mass, how in the ever-loving heck was he able to lift the thing? There’s just no way! It seems the only explanation is that Pym particles are magic and do whatever the screen writers want them to.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

The Last Jedi was a poorly written mess that fundamentally misunderstands what makes Star Wars so iconic. It also misunderstands the art of writing a script that makes sense! The central plot of the 2017 movie involves the world’s slowest chase sequence. The Resistance are being pursued by the evil First Order. The heroes are out of range of the baddies, and going at the same speed, but they can’t zoom to light speed as they’ll be followed and are low on fuel.

The Resistance being pursued by the evil First Order

For the majority of the story, the two sides move slowly through space while people bicker on board the ships. But while slowly scooting along, a couple of heroes leave their capital ship in an escape pod, have an entire side adventure, then return to infiltrate a pursuing enemy flagship. In that case, why don’t the First Order capital ships just send some fighters ahead? They clearly have the means.

There's a theory that they run the risk of the Resistance ship destroying their fighters! Sure, but they’re in a war, and all the top enemy generals are right in front of them, it’d be stupid not to capitalize. And that’s not all. There’s one other thing the First Order could do, just call for backup. We’re told repeatedly that they’re essentially a rip off Galactic Empire, ruling across the entire galaxy.

And they don’t have any other capital ships they can call up on the space phone? We know they have communication capabilities on board, the movie used it for a cringey “your momma” joke right at the start. But no, they just decide to give it a few days for them to run out of fuel. And we’re gifted with the worst Star Wars movie ever.

Avengers: Thanos Couldn't Have Snapped His Fingers With A Glove

It’s been ages since we first saw 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War, and we still can’t believe that Thanos won. Not because it was shocking to see our heroes fail and turn to dust, but because it’s literally impossible for Thanos to snap his fingers.

Let me explain. We snap our fingers through skin-to-skin friction, the sound originates from our middle finger sliding down and smacking into our palm, and the innate compressibility of our fingers is key to the motion needed. When snapping your fingers, your middle finger moves about 20 times faster than the blink of an eye.

Thanos needs the infinity gauntlet, a big old metal glove, to use the power of the infinity stones. But big old metal gloves don’t have anywhere near the friction of our skin. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology put the theory to the test, attempting snaps with gloves and metal thimbles on. They concluded that the sound is so reliant on the friction between our fingers that it would indeed be impossible while wearing the infinity gauntlet. Thanos would just have to use a different gesture.

Transformers: Why The Decepticons Didn't Just Buy Sam's Glasses

Michael Bay’s Transformers movies are majorly stupid, but the 2007 original is actually pretty good! That is, aside from one massive issue. The evil Decepticons are trying to locate a MacGuffin known as the All Spark. To find it, they need to follow directions which are burned onto a pair of glasses, only, they don’t have the glasses.

So, they hack into a military network onboard Air Force One and find out they’re owned by series protagonist Sam Witwicky, who has them listed on eBay. They then attack Sam, demand the glasses, and wind up in a battle with the Autobots that lasts the entire movie. Here’s the thing though, why didn’t they just bid on the glasses and acquire them without drawing attention to themselves?

They would’ve taken the Autobots totally unawares! Does that mean that the Decepticons are smart enough to hack the US military in seconds, but can’t figure out how to place a bid on eBay? Sam didn’t want the glasses! And it’s not like the Decepticons even needed money, surely, they could hack PayPal as well? Maybe they were foiled by the “I’m not a robot” tick box.

Robots tricked by i'm not a robot captcha

Spider-Man's No Way Home: Electro Plot Hole

2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home is a crowd-pleasing blockbuster that brings together iconic characters from across the Spidey movies. Even if one of them is a massive oversight! In the movie, Peter Parker attempts a spell to make the world forget his secret identity, but it goes horribly wrong. Instead, it brings a bunch of villains from the other movies who know his identity into his dimension. But one of these villains is not like the others: Electro.

He spends the entirety of his original appearance in 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 blissfully unaware that Peter is Spidey. In fact, he only learns who he is during No Way Home when Andrew Garfield’s web head unmasks himself. Which begs the question, how did he end up here? The spell only draws in people who know the wall crawler’s secret identity.

The obvious answer is that the studio simply wanted Jamie Foxx to reprise his role and didn’t really care how he did it. Are we supposed to just assume he learnt this incredibly important fact off screen between movies somehow? Maybe, but that wouldn’t work either cause Electro goes boom at the end of his first movie!

The Shawshank Redemption: Poster Mystery

1994’s The Shawshank Redemption is widely regarded as one of the greatest movies of all time. Surely nobody would dare spoil its legacy by pointing out a huge blunder, right? So, the movie follows prisoner Andy Dufresne, and ends with him escaping to freedom through a hole he dug in his cell wall. After crawling inside, Andy covers the tunnel by attaching a poster to the wall, something the warden only discovers when he angrily chucks a rock at it.

The plot hole is simple, how did Andy manage to re-affix the poster to the wall while inside the tunnel? It’d be totally impossible right? What if Andy had only stuck the top of the poster to the wall and left the bottom corners to hang? That way, he could simply let it hang back down after crawling to safety.

Although when the warden makes a hole through the poster, it’s clearly taut, which means it’d have to be attached at the bottom too. Unless Andy only attached one bottom corner? That way he could lift up the other and clamber in! Well, even then, that’s an awfully small gap for a grown man to fit into without damaging the poster!

Signs: Water Plot Hole

Famed director M. Night Shyamalan has a spotty filmography, to say the least. Enter 2002’s Signs, an alien invasion movie that has some cool moments, but it also has a mind bogglingly stupid finale. So, by the end the aliens have all but abandoned invading Earth. However, one has broken into our heroes’ home. In the middle of the ensuing scuffle, they realize that the insidious extraterrestrials have one major weakness: water. Essentially, H2O acts like acid to them, and is even able to finish off the final alien.

So, with that said, what possibly possessed them to try to invade a planet that’s over 70% water? It's like humans attempting to find a new planet to colonize and deciding on one that’s 70% Hydrofluoric acid. Not just that, but one where all the creatures are mostly acid, drink and excrete acid, and it regularly rains acid. And the aliens don’t even wear clothes to protect themselves! A hyper intelligent alien race capable of interstellar travel thought this was a great idea?

Some fans have theorized that the aliens were actually just a small recon party looking to see if they should invade. They had no idea water was dangerous to them and left as soon as they realized it was. You can see the logic here, but I think it’s far more likely this was just a silly idea that somehow survived countless script editors.

Little Mermaid: Communication Problem

The original Little Mermaid is credited with starting Disney’s renaissance era, where animated movies were propelled back into the limelight. The 1989 classic still mostly holds up today, but one plot point has bugged us since its release.

The main conflict in the movie comes from Ariel signing a contract with the villainous Ursula. It dictates that she has to kiss Prince Eric before 3 days pass, or she’ll belong to Ursula. Problem is, she has her voice taken away to stop her communicating with the guy!

But she signed the contract in the first place, right? So, Ariel can write, in perfect cursive too! In that case, why not just write the prince a note explaining the situation? Walk around with a pad and pen. This’d be the first thing anyone would consider!

Some people have argued that Ariel actually spoke in mermaid and the contract being in English was just artistic license for the benefit of us, the audience. That way, she’d have no way of writing to the prince after all. But later in the movie, Ariel, Ursula, and the prince do chat with no language barrier.

Harry Potter: Why Harry Didn't See Thestrals Earlier

In the 5th movie, 2007’s Order of the Phoenix, Harry discovers the truth behind the seemingly self-driving school carriages. It’s not an enchantment, but strange creatures known as Thestrals that are responsible. The spooky horse-like beasts are totally invisible to anybody that has never seen death. But because Harry witnessed the tragic passing of Cedric at the end of the previous movie, he can now see them clearly.

But the plot hole emerges when you realize that an integral part of Harry’s back story is that he witnessed his mother’s demise when he was a baby! In that case, surely he’d have been able to see the Thestrals from day 1? And even if we do accept he needed to watch Cedric die, shouldn’t he have seen them at the end of the previous movie? Fans have been debating the issue since the movie first released, but the plot hole was actually already explained!

In 2004, shortly after the release of the book, author J.K. Rowling answered this very question. She claimed that it’s not enough to witness death, one needs to comprehend it. Harry was only a baby when his mother died, so there’s no way he could’ve understood the loss at that age. And although Cedric passed at the end of the last movie, Harry still needed time to come to terms with it. That’s why the Thestrals only show up in movie 5.

But hold up, didn’t Harry watch Professor Quirrell literally crumble to dust at the end of the first movie?! Although it happened only in the movie. In the novel, he passes out before Quirrell passes on, which protects the books from criticism, but certainly not the screen adaptation. So, looks like there is a plot hole after all.

The Karate Kid: Illegal Kick

No list of glaring movie plot holes would be complete without a discussion of the 1984 classic, The Karate Kid. In it, plucky underdog Daniel LaRusso learns karate to win a championship series and show some bullies what for. In the final round, he defeats his rival, Johnny Lawrence with a dramatic crane kick to the shnoz.

But there’s a problem, kicks to the face were declared illegal! Daniel cheated, and yet not only does he still win, he’s treated like a hero! Or so people claim. If you’re a fan of the movie, rejoice! Despite popular opinion, nowhere is it actually stated that kicks to the face were against the rules. In fact, Daniel’s girlfriend, Ali, tells him explicitly that anything above the waist is a point, including the head!

Throughout the tournament we even see multiple hits to faces with no consequence at all. So, why has this become such an enduring myth? It’s hard to say. In the third movie, released in 1989, contact to the face was deemed illegal, so it’s possible fans are just misremembering which movies featured which scenes.

The recent sequel TV series, Cobra Kai, didn’t help the matter. In the show, Johnny Lawrence laments that he lost that original fight due to an “illegal move”. He’s just making excuses for his loss, but surely some viewers saw it as further proof of the original movie’s mistake. Regardless, Daniel definitely won fair and square!

Avengers' Endgame: Pym Particle Duplication

So, if you remember, we covered earlier how Infinity War’s climactic snap is totally impossible with that hefty gauntlet! But the follow up, 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, has an even more egregious plot hole that you’ll never be able to unsee!

During the final showdown between our heroes and Thanos’ evil army, Ant-Man and the Wasp rush to his van in an effort to hot wire it. Literally moments later, we cut back to the battle to see Giant-Man fighting through a swath of baddies. The thing is, Giant-Man is Ant-Man, he’s just using the Pym Particles to grow rather than shrink. That’s right, somehow, there are 2 different Ant-Men running around at once! Unless he suddenly gained another superpower to duplicate himself without us noticing, this is an astronomical goof.

The actor, Paul Rudd, even spoke about it publicly. He joked that it probably had something to do with parallel universes before wondering how the editors could’ve missed the mistake, which is a good point. However, this is probably more of a crazy editing mistake than a plot hole. Or maybe it’s both? It's likely that Marvel will release a terrible Disney + series to try and justify it: Into the Ant Verse, or something equally as stupid.

Saw: Chainsaw & Phone

The 2004 horror classic Saw centers on the duo of Doctor Gordon and Adam, who wake up trapped in a decidedly nasty bathroom. They’re both in chains, with a pair of saws nearby. Late in the story, Doctor Gordon receives a call from his wife, who’s being held hostage alongside his daughter. But after hearing gunshots through the receiver he panics, drops the phone, and realizes he can’t reach it again.

Seeing no other choice, he grabs the saw, performs some elective surgery to free himself, and crawls away to find them. But many viewers have wondered why Gordon didn’t just use the saw to reach for the phone. It would’ve been totally possible, and a hell of a lot less painful!

Doctor Gordon could use the saw to get the phone

While it was definitely the best option, we can't consider this one a bona-fide plot hole. The man was terrified and under an extreme amount of stress. The belief he might’ve lost his family just pushed him over the edge. A character having a breakdown isn’t necessarily a mistake in a script!

I hope you were amazed at these biggest movie plot holes! Thanks for reading.