Best thriller movie plot holes of 2004

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Flight of the Phoenix picture

Plot hole: This film is set in 2004. The thought that no search and rescue operations would be put in place after an aircraft disappeared from radar during a routine flight is absurd. The Chinese are paranoid about intrusion on their territory and the downed aircraft would have been located by a simple satellite search within hours of it crashing. Chinese military satellites crisscross the Gobi and they are equipped with optical cameras, microwave and infrared detectors and radar, so spotting a metal aircraft on the ground would be simple even if it was hundreds of kilometres off course. The crew would have been visited by Chinese military helicopters (and probably arrested!) as soon as the storm had died down.

PEDAUNT

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Suggested correction: The Chinese government, for whatever reason, may have denied there was any crash at all if it suited their purposes, and the oil company that owned the plane would have little recourse. The Chinese have done this before. For the purpose of the plot, the survivors decided that they had to save themselves rather than wait for rescue and that was completely plausible.

Suggested correction: It's now 2021, and we still can't find Malaysian Airlines MH370. So this suggestion of planes always being found is laughable.

stiiggy

MH370 crashed into the ocean, and in fact some wreckage has been found. The Chinese military does not have the south Indian Ocean under satellite surveillance 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, unlike the Gobi desert where a crashed plane would be spotted within hours of it going missing.

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Spider-Man 2 picture

Plot hole: Harry tells Doc Ock that in order to find Spider-Man he must find Peter first. Doc Ock finds Peter with Mary Jane in the cafe and throws a car through the window straight at them, then later throws Peter against a brick wall. Any normal person would've been killed instantly (or very badly injured), and Doc Ock doesn't yet know that Peter is Spider-Man. Given that Peter is his only lead on Spider-Man, it makes no sense that Doc Ock would try to kill him.

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Suggested correction: Doc Ock is being controlled by the arms. They aren't behaving rationally.

Creating a series of silly explanations for obvious plot holes never resolves them. These arms were not behaving irrationally. In many scenes they were shown to be very intelligent. A good example is the scene where they attack doctors who try to remove them from Doc Ock's body. Saying that they weren't behaving rationally is absurd.

He may not have been trying to kill Peter, he could've been trying to make more of a scene of his entry, so Peter would take him more seriously and tell him where Spider-Man was. He could've been thinking of it as a risk of killing Peter though, but his arms made him go crazy.

This is only a theory. Theories never resolve mistakes.

It's not a theory. When Otto is first giving his demonstration to everybody at his apartment, a woman asks if the advanced AI for the tentacles would make him susceptible to being controlled. Otto says that yes it would so he shows everybody the inhibitor chip that he designed so he would not fall under its control. After the inhibitor chip gets destroyed, it's seen that the tentacles have not only taken control of his mind by forcing him to commit crimes, but have slowly driven him insane.

This scene is much too confusing for many people. This entry is correct. This is a mistake.

If these tentacles wanted him to finish the experiment then they wouldn't make him kill the person who has valuable information for him.

The arms are influencing his thoughts but not controlling every part of him. Doc Ock still seems to have control when defending himself but they seem to work in tandem with Ock. The only time they work on their own is when he under anesthetic. As we don't see him before he throws the car, we can only speculate the arms were trying to hurt Peter by themselves.

Lummie

It's a cool scene regardless man.

Rob245

Killing Peter would probably send a message to Spider-Man as well, so Ock probably wasn't concerned about being gentle.

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Saw (2004)

Saw picture

Plot hole: Det. Kerry says at the scene of Paul's trap, "He had two hours." There is no way she could have known that. The clock simply said 3:00 and the tape specifically says "you have until 3 o'clock or this room will become your tomb". No way to know that's two hours after the fact. (00:17:30)

Ssiscool

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Suggested correction: In the flashback of the razor wire trap, it shows the clock as a few minutes past 1, so he did know he had 2 hours.

Paul knew he had 2 hours as like you said he could see a clock counting. But how did detective Kerry who made the remarks in the first place as listed in the mistake?

Ssiscool

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The Butterfly Effect picture

Plot hole: When Evan is in jail with the religious prisoner trying to get him to help him get his journals back he goes to the scene where he is drawing that homicidal picture in kindergarten, but he gets up and puts the spikes that holds documents through his hands, creating a stigmata-style scar. The religious guy in the cell with him is so amazed because of this he thinks Evan is a prophet and he decides to help him. If Evan had gone back in time and got those scars on his hands, he would have changed the original timeline and would have arrived in jail with those scars the whole time. Some people try to correct this using the "If I can create scars, then can I fix them?" statement Evan made to defend the mistake and suggest he can create instant scars but he was using the word "scars" to refer to the negative events; not literal scars on his body. The scar he got when he burned himself in the past didn’t magically appear on him the moment he returned from the past; it became part of a new, slightly altered timeline (just like the scars on his hands should have been) and it let him know he can change history.

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Suggested correction: This isn't necessarily a correction so much as a possible explanation. It's possible that the religious inmate (I think his name was Carlos) just simply didn't see the scars on Evan's hands when he first came to the prison in the timeline where he got the scars or Evan knew to hide them in the scar timeline (due to the fact that it was the sole purpose of him going back) and due to his fanaticism he didn't question him a second time.

Nope, after jamming those things in his hands Evan simply came into the prison with the scars already on his hands and would have never thought of showing the religious guy his powers using that particular moment in the past to convince him, or doing what he did a second time as he already had done it. It doesn't matter if the religious guy didn't see them before, they won't be the object of Evan convincing him. He would have had to try it some other way, each and ever time. That how this time travel works and its definitely a plot hole that it worked as it did, whilst it shouldn't have. Of course, it's a time travel movie and they never make sense.

lionhead

Additionally, the inmate was looking at Evan's palms when Evan traveled back, and when he returned to the present, the inmate remarked that the stigmata marks came out of nowhere.

Phaneron

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The Day After Tomorrow picture

Plot hole: When you see the shot of New York, just before the scene where the apartment lights go out, there are no lights on in the buildings, or car lights in the street, although it is dark. The lights should still be on as there has not been a power outage. (01:28:00)

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Ocean's Twelve picture

Plot hole: How does Agent Lahiri know that you needed to raise the pylons before it was possible to make the cross bow shot the boys needed to unlock the house in Amsterdam? Additionally, those pylons would not be accessible through water as they are planted in mud under the foundation of the building, not water.

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The Ladykillers picture

Plot hole: When Gawain is repairing the hole in the vault wall, a security camera is visible in the top corner in the room.

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Blade: Trinity picture

Plot hole: It is said that Drake has been sleeping for 4,000 years. But Drake specifically mentions that he witnessed Christ being crucified, which happened around 2,000 years ago. This harkens back to a plot line where Drake had only been sleeping since the turn of the century, abandoned in favor of the one shown in the movie.

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Criminal picture

Plot hole: In the scene where Michael Shannon attempts to rob John C. Reilly and Diego Luna, he takes the briefcase, looking for the check, but it is empty. Diego Luna then reveals he has the check in his pocket. In none of the previous scenes does Diego Luna have a chance to take possession of this check. The check remains in the briefcase, and the briefcase is always in John C. Reilly's possession.

Rochelle McCarty

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Alien Vs. Predator picture

Plot hole: A big deal is made about the pyramid reconfiguring every ten minutes, which the archaeologist surmises because the calendar is metric (powers of ten). Why then would it be in minutes, rather than a truly metric time measurement (eg a 100th of a day)?.

Talon

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I, Robot picture

Plot hole: Sonny hides among the 1000 robots in the big store room. They are all placed in very straight rows. Sonny would not be able to take over another robot's place in the grid (when he starts running we see a large robot-sized gap) without getting another robot to move. And while Will Smith is running around the rows, he would have noticed if the others moved to make room.

Jacob La Cour

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Suggested correction: Sonny was already at the factory before Spooner and Calvin showed up. It's possible he moved in a robot's space, and either the robots to his sides or the ones behind him moved back a space (we never see the rows in their entirety), hence no need for any of them to move while Spooner and Calvin are in the storage room.

Suggested correction: Will Smith shot one of them, it's possible this hole in the front of the row caused that line of robots to move forward one spot, to complete the row again. As they did Sonny could have slipped in. When he spotted Sonny the first time Sonny was simply standing between 2, as Will Smith only saw them from the front at that point, when he started running it's impossible to notice a simple step forward of 1 row of robots and Sonny slipping in.

lionhead

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Suspect Zero picture

Plot hole: During the end of the film chase scene, Agent Mackelway calls Agent Kulok and gives her a vague location of where they are and asks for back up. Considering Mackelway had been kidnapped and driven out into the country, it should have taken Kulok much longer to arrive at the scene instead of the few minutes that are indicated.

Aaron Lassman

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Wicker Park picture

Plot hole: It's hard to believe that no one except Alex has a cell. These are fairly successful people, especially a traveling Matthew. No one having cell phones is highly unlikely.

RareJewel

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The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement picture

Plot hole: When Jo is getting to walk down the aisle with Queen Clarisse, he hands Shades his top hat and then pops his ear piece right off, in a split second, and puts it in the top hat. In the previous scenes, Princess Mia has Lionel's ear piece stretched from the back of his neck, across his jaw and around his chin and then stretched to her ear but it hasn't popped out, while Queen Clarisse jerks Charlotte with her when she goes to listen to Princess Mia.

Sheri Hartman

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The Village picture

Plot hole: After Noah stabs Lucius, Ivy is brought to see Noah who is locked up in the "quiet room". As they leave, the lock is being placed on the latch to lock Noah in, and soon after the door is rattling, presumably Noah in an attempt to open it. If you look closely, you can see that the rattling occurs because the door lock is locked and not because of the lock on the latch. Quite strange, as we clearly see the lock placed on the latch right after the door is closed. There could not possibly have been time for the door lock to be locked with a key.

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Taking Lives picture

Plot hole: Most of the story depends on Costa coming forward as a witness; however, he would have had no reason to do this. It would only make his goal of assuming others' identities more difficult.

throcko

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Suggested correction: Some serial killers try to involve themselves with the investigation, for instance famous serial killer Ed Kemper.

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Dawn of the Dead picture

Plot hole: When Ana is driving away from her home, she stops on the road and a guy opens her door, scaring her into turning her car toward the curb, plowing through a guardrail. She couldn't have picked up a lot of speed, and those guardrails are supposed to always be reinforced on highways/interstates. At that angle she would have had to knock out at least 4 reinforcing beams (they use 'I' beams to reinforce them, and are intended to stop vehicles from passing through them, or slow them down immensely).

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Fear of Clowns picture

Plot hole: After the police discover the plot to kill Lynn by her ex-husband, they never bother to visit his house to arrest him. If they did, they would have found him dead already and would have KNOWN that the killer was still at large.

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The Whole Ten Yards picture

Plot hole: Why do they need both halves of the torn dollar bill to access the bank account? All American bills have a copy of the serial number on each half, no matter which way you tear it, as long as it is in roughly equal parts (top and bottom or left and right).

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Collateral picture

Plot hole: Near the end Max calls Annie, using the number on the card she gave him, to warning her about Vincent's arrival. But why is there on the card the number of the law library on the 16th floor and not Annie's office number or her cell phone number?

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Suggested correction: The number on her business card is her office line. A lot of office phones are set up so they ring in multiple places throughout the office. A light will blink on the phone letting you know which line is ringing. The line is connected to her office phone, which we see Vincent looking at in her office when she was on the phone with Max, which then gives away her location. This is a very popular way of having phones set up in offices, as it eases communication between co-workers. If one of her co-workers wants to talk to her while she's in the library, they can simply dial her line instead of going up two floors. Furthermore, it is also possible that her cell phone number could be on the card. But Max tried the office number first. He would likely have tried the cell number next, had she not answered.

jshy7979

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