Stupidity: Beck wants to kill Peter's friends because they know his secret. Instead of using Edith to attack them directly with a drone strike, or using his illusion technology to lead them into the path of a train like he did with Spider-Man, he instead has a henchman drive them onto a bridge and leave them in the path of his next Elemental attack. Because absolutely nothing is forcing them to stay on the bridge, they all casually walk off the bus and out of immediate danger. It is unfathomable that a man as intelligent and resourceful as Beck would take such an idiotic approach, especially considering all he had at his disposal and how desperate he was.
Suggested correction: He wanted it to seem like they were killed in the Elemental attack because it was cleaner. If they were killed by a drone it would be much more suspicious than being killed in the disaster. Once the plan goes wrong, he does simply send an Edith drone after them. If it wasn't for Spider-Man's timing, he would have been successful as well.
But that is the major problem, and why I think it was an egregious mistake in the movie. The plan "goes wrong" because it was idiotic. So idiotic that it is unrealistic that Beck, a highly intelligent person, would have made such a glaring oversight. Leaving the kids on the bridge but not trapping them at all allowed them to make an easy escape.
I think the point is that Beck thinks he is the smartest person in the room and that this plan is going to work. Should he take into account MJ and co's free will, yes, but he is so maniacal (and not thinking rationally) that it does not cross his mind. This is proven by the fact that as his plan is failing around him that he still wants his suit pressed and ready to meet the Queen because it will work out in the end in his mind. Also, to your point, having them walk in front of a train or walk off the bridge, would not make him a hero. He needed real casualties and Peter's friends were the place to start. Finally, in the sequence showing Beck and his team preparing for the attack, he was focused on the theatrics of the attack and, again, thought the size of it alone would work (he wanted it bigger, scarier, more forceful).
Suggested correction: Fury is well aware of the drone system (he berates Peter for misusing it earlier). If Beck simply utilised EDITH to kill the students, it would give away that Beck was using the drones for his own gain. Once Fury was dead, he could have used EDITH had the original plan failed, but he certainly couldn't do it until after Fury (and potentially other SHIELD agents) had been taken out. He was going to attack London no matter what, so he took the opportunity to take out Ned, MJ and Betty at the same time.
This doesn't stop him from using a targeted drone strike to kill the kids, he was planning on using it to kill Fury anyway. The fact that he fails in his strike against Fury is irrelevant to the fact that he needed those kids dead and decided to take a round-about way of accomplishing this goal. Again, he doesn't have to use a drone strike, he is perfectly capable of using the illusion technology to force the bus off a cliff or into some other immediate danger. Having a henchman drive the bus to a bridge and hope the kids are dumb enough not to escape danger when literally nothing is forcing them to just stand there and be killed is ridiculously idiotic.
Suggested correction: Characters, even intelligent ones, are allowed to make bad tactical decisions. Real-life history is replete with examples. Just because it seems unlikely doesn't make it a plot hole.
True - this was originally submitted as "stupidity", which is slightly different, but this seemed like such a massive oversight that it qualified as a plot hole.
Suggested correction: Beck's intentions were to make it look like the kids were killed in the attack by the monster. Had he just killed them with a drone out right, it would have obviously looked like murder and foul play bringing in more investigations and potential problems for him.
But again, he doesn't need to use a drone strike he can use the illusion technology to trick them into an accident. Even what he chooses to do (just leaving them on the bridge) would have also been fine had he trapped them there at all. Just leaving them there without trapping them is so stupid it is unbelievable. It's like leaving someone on train tracks but not tying them up.
Suggested correction: He was an insane person and wasn't thinking fully rationally.
Stupidity: Spoiler. The protagonist is a trained and competent nurse, paired with one of the greatest murder mystery writers. Neither finds strange in the slightest that after jabbing his vein with a dose of drugs 30 times the norm he is absolutely fine, not just conscious but even able to concoct on the spot a convoluted plot, speaking normally and quite at length, no trouble at all. He should be dead "in 10 minutes" sure, but it's not a time bomb. You'd think one would not be so blasé about slitting their own throat and the other would have to notice how amazingly unaffected and lucid the other appears to be minutes later. Not to mention that his plan would have never worked with the toxicology report, which should be routine in a suicide case also to assess the mental state of the person who left no note or anything behind.
Suggested correction: It is explained that the drug overdose will kill Harlan in 10 minutes based on the dosage. The implication is that Harlan's heart will stop, not that he will become gradually and obviously sick over those 10 minutes. Regardless, based on what they believe will happen, even if they did notice that Harlan wasn't getting sick they wouldn't have the time to test that theory. The fact that neither Marta nor Harlan thought about a potential toxicology report is a pretty major part of the plot, and it is perfectly reasonable given the circumstances. The plot was hatched on the spot within a few minutes and there are several holes in the plan that drive the story throughout the film. Although a brilliant man and a great writer, Harlan simply didn't think of everything.
She explicitly says "You'll feel symptoms in 5" and when he shuts her up putting a hand on her mouth she says "We have 6 minutes."Then his daughter interrupts them and more time is wasted. By the time when he begins his convoluted explanation of the big plan he should have already been disoriented, sweaty and the whole gamut leading to his respiratory failure. And he goes on for minutes after that. It's very true, it moves the plot along, but by what they say themselves (which is from I understand not medically accurate and contradicted also by what happens later in the movie with the second death) they should have realised that time has passed with nothing happening. You could even say it's Rian Johnson's intentional deconstruction of the artificial nature of the whoddunit contrivances! But also, just saying, one of those "Stupid actions and decisions people take in movies, which no-one would ever do in real life."
Even taking that into account, what you are saying is Harlan should have said "Hmm, a few minutes have passed and I haven't felt any symptoms, so I'm not actually poisoned. Carry on then, false alarm." It moves the plot along because Harlan isn't willing to risk Marta getting in trouble for poisoning him and they have less than 10 minutes to act. This would count as a stupidity entry if Harlan didn't care about who took the blame for killing him, but obviously he does. Remember, stupidity entries are not for poor decisions by characters, they are for minor plot holes. This being "an act no-one would ever do in real life" is kind of the entire point of the movie. Nobody believes Harlan would do this because, well nobody cares about their nurse that much. But he does.
The part I was quoting is the description of the category in the metadata on google, or if you prefer the hover text description just above this very page go by "Something just plain stupid. Not as deal-breaking as a plot hole, but something daft, like running upstairs with a killer behind them, instead of out of the front door." I call "slitting your own throat feeling totally fine after you yourself have been calling the minutes with precision earlier", pretty silly, to say the least. Again, this is all stuff the script itself unnecessarily calls attention on. If he didn't mention twice the time before, if she hadn't said that the symptoms happen after 5 but just "your heart is gonna exploded at the 10 minute mark", then, maybe, I would have simply reported the factual error that this is not how it works. It's the script itself that points out (Harlan himself says it twice) the exact minutes, and the symptoms and how they are gradual.
This still ignores the fact that they don't have time to test the theory. They would have to notice the lack of symptoms, and assume somehow that the lack of symptoms after 5 minutes must mean that Harlan isn't actually poisoned, and stop their plan right then and there. The audience knows that Harlan isn't really poisoned, but we don't find that out until later. I doubt very seriously that anyone watching this film for the first time believed, as you suggest, that Harlan obviously wasn't poisoned because he didn't show any symptoms and it was therefore stupid for him to kill himself. It seems to you to be stupid in hindsight, but I honestly don't believe, based on what the characters knew, that Harlan's action was so egregious that it constitutes a mistake in the script.
We definitely had a very different impression watching it the first time. The thought that this old man could be shot a big dose of morphine in vein and calmly think of perfect murder plans for the next minutes was 200% absurd on first view here. I could say that others thought the same but it's just anecdotical and I respect you having a different take. For the rest, it's again just the script itself drawing attention to it. From the mouth of the same character who nonchalantly slits his own throat feeling still fine. It seems egregiously stupid and contradictory.
But he wasn't shot a big dose of morphine. He got his normal meds, they only think he overdosed.
We don't know that yet. We know that, in their words, he was shot 100 mg instead of 3 (does not matter if true or not, we are fed this information and the characters believe it). Again, the whole scene would have worked if they didn't, themselves, add details. Makes the overdose sound huge, and inserting the 6 minutes mark (which means, barely 1 min till the symptoms show up) before the daughter arrives when more than half of the scene has still to be played, weakens it terribly. Some things are maybe just stupid in hindsight, like the fact that all he needed to do was to write in his own penmanship a suicide note saying he killed himself with an injection once Marta left, but the overdose bit felt absurd on first viewing.
Stupidity: The train which takes M from New York to London arrives looking like an old tube train, then when she's on board converts into a high-tech train, to her amazement, and whisks her across the Atlantic. Except...why did it ever look like a regular train? She's in a MIB station, it's only used by agents and aliens, it goes to another MIB station, and when it arrives and people get off / on before it continues its journey, it stays in its high-tech form anyway.
Stupidity: The bad guy who spies on Bosley is visible from the very beginning of the scene, when Elena is not even inside the cafe yet. The cafe does not have many customers and the bad guy is using a loud vintage typewriter with a big mirror mounted on top (!). The Angels are portrayed as being super smart and their setup is so careful, but somehow they managed to miss something amazingly obvious. Conversely, nobody would have ever paid attention to a laptop or any silent, modern-age device perhaps with a camera or something similar, so the bad guy chose the most blatantly conspicuous accoutrement for his spying job. Try showing up to a cafe punching the keys of a big clunky typewriter and literally everyone will be looking at you. (00:18:25)
Stupidity: Denny removed a tray of chicken/capons from the oven, set it on the counter, cut off a piece from one chicken and threw it to Enzo (who caught it in his mouth). If the meat had just been removed from the oven, it would have been too hot to give to a dog and Enzo could have burned his mouth/tongue. (00:51:25)
Stupidity: The movie takes creative liberties with the real story; it's understandable, for instance, that it would show Paige being directly on NXT rather than part of the Florida Championship Wrestling promotion first, and that she is the only real character from NXT depicted in the movie. However, the movie chooses also to omit the fact that Paige was NXT Champion when she faced AJ Lee. Not just that, but it alters entirely the dynamic of the actual match; she does not manage to utter a single word because of stage fright, something that movie-wise she seems to have never managed to overcome. Given the changes, the movie asks us to believe that WWE would make a champion out of a complete rookie who is a deer in the headlights in front of a crowd that ignores her and hasn't found her personality yet - she does so only after she wins. That doesn't make a lot of sense even by the movie's own logic.