If you've ever finished a book or a movie with the phrase, "Hey! Wait a minute!" the Plot Hole Zone is for you! The P.H.Z. is a growing collection of those leaps in story logic created by writer error or laziness, submitted by observant viewers and readers like you. If you have any famous film, TV, or book Plot Hole you'd like to submit, just mail me (dano@cybercomm.net) with the title and the details, and we'll be sure to post it ASAP. The Color of Night Action-"Suspense" Film Description: Bruce Willis slums it as a group psychologist whose members are being tricked by a mysterious murderer. The plot "twists" in the movie are contrived and utter nonsense, so the only redeeming factor of this movie is to watch Jane March get naked. (Okay, redeeming for half the movie-going public anyway.) Dan O'Leary (dano@cybercomm.net) Okay, this laughably bad flick's got more holes than a hunk of Swiss cheese that someone used for target practice with his machine gun, but this one just defies all laws of physics. Bruce Willis is on the ground in front of a four-story parking garage. His mysterious would-be assassin is on the ROOF of the parking garage in his car, following "behind" him, but four stories above. At the moment Willis stops walking, the car gets into position, loudly revs its engine, and launches off the roof as a sort of Chevrolet-made missile. There's NO way that anyone driving on the roof could possibly see the ground, much less anything on it. Not to mention that if you're attempting to kill someone, it's probably best not to gun the engine and warn your victim with lots of big crashing noises. Don't Say a Word Action-suspense Film Description: A psychiatrist tries to rescue his daughter by getting her kidnappers a 6 digit number known by one of his patients, which will help them retrieve a diamond stolen from them by the patient's father 10 years ago. A. Petty (a.petty2@verizon.net) There are many plot holes in this movie. It's a shame, the movie could have been quite good. How do the kidnappers know the girl has hidden the diamond? How does the girl know what the kidnappers want (hence the famous line, "I'll never tell" and "You want what they want")? This number is a distant memory in the mind of a mentally ill girl, and there is no reason for her to associate this number with a hidden diamond she shouldn't even know exists. How is Dr. Conrad able to completely diagnose her in about 30 minutes when 20 other psychiatrists never even came close? Why do the kidnappers give Dr. Conrad only until 5pm to pry the information out of this girl when she hasn't opened up to anyone, ever? They've waited ten years, why not just give him more time? Oh yeah, because they're just EVIL and dumb. It's probably the same reason why they took their masks off during a bank robbery and never put them back on so everyone could see them. The timeline is really messed up. Dr. Sachs was already put in the same situation as Dr. Conrad and he was unable to deliver the goods, so they kill his girlfriend Sara. Sara was killed before Dr. Sachs got a chance to even work with the girl. That makes no sense of course. Well this absurdity makes it even more absurd that the criminals would hatch a new plot to do the same thing with Dr. Conrad, especially when it had failed with Dr. Sachs. But they do. The original plan to get the number somehow involved an orderly who the girl had cut up. I assume (the movie doesn't really tell us) that this orderly was sent to kidnap the girl so the bad guys could torture the number out of her. Well this failed because the girl beat up the orderly, at which time she is promptly transferred to a new hospital under Dr. Sachs' care. How could they have come up with their new plot (to use Dr. Sachs to get the info from the girl) so quickly after their first plan with the orderly failed? It's impossible! How in the world were they able to plant all of that surveillance in Dr. Conrad's apartment when he and his wife were there? And then why did these idiots choose to keep the kidnapped little girl in an apartment adjacent to her own, where her mother could easily hear her? How did they plant surveillance in the mental patient's room in a heavily secured psychiatric ward? And if they could get in, why didn't they just kidnap her right then and there and torture her to get the number? Another plot hole is the identity of the girl's father. He is murdered on a subway and according to the newspaper headlines is a John Doe. How and why did this man erase all records of his identity and that of his then-eight year old daughter's, he's just a bank robber for goodness sakes! And he's not the only one, apparently the lead villain Patrick is a "ghost" as well. The homicide detectives say they know nothing about this guy prior to his armed robbery conviction. So that's two people who have chosen to erase their history, but why? There is no reason that is ever given for this. We never find out who these guys are. These men were originally arrested immediately after throwing the girl's father onto the subway tracks in full view of everyone. So why were they only charged with the armed robbery they had committed earlier? Why only ten years in prison? Why wasn't murder on the rap sheets the detectives were reading? HELLO, they were arrested for killing someone, but never charged??? Armaggedon Science Fiction Film Description: Action-adventure that pauses only to focus on Liv Tyler's pouty lips, in the hopes your IQ won't catch up. Bruce Willis leads a team of oil-drillers crash-coursed in space flight to stop a giant rogue asteroid from smacking into Earth. Graham Brown (gtcbrown@yahoo.com) 1) Opening scene of the film, in space. Some astronaut is doing a spacewalk around a satellite. In the background, we see the space shuttle, with the bay doors CLOSED!!!!!! WTF?!?!? Impossible. Having the doors open is CRITICAL to the orbiter's fuel cell operation. If the doors cannot be opened with 6 hours of achieving orbit, the mission must be scrubbed and the shuttle must make and emergency landing. Not to mention, how did the astronaut doing the spacewalk get out of the shuttle? The side door, without an airlock? Yeah, that'd be healthy for everyone inside. I saw all that in the theatre and got disgusted. 2a) Umm... the 'asteroid' itself. Large chunk of rock and ice... exposed to solar wind... why didn't it have a large, bright tail of debris like every other fast-moving object to come into the inner solar system? Like comets? 2b) Failing that, and the 'asteroid' was 100% rock and stone, the comet that struck it must have been HUGE! At least as big as the object itself, probably bigger though. Why didn't the comet get spotted, 'cause it had to be one of the biggest every seen to knock the 'asteroid' into the inner system like that. 3a) Gravity on the space station. The station's rotation & acceleration would generate a gravity-like force, which would be perpendicular to the axis of rotation. I'm not going to even go into the geometry problems with this one, but just check it out for yourself and try and work it out in your own mind. 3b) Gravity on the asteroid? Granted, it's the size of Texas. Who gives a rat's ass. Gravity is one of the weakest forces in the universe. That asteroid shouldn't have had any gravitational force to speak of, yet all our heroes walk around and drill and generally act as though they're in a strong gravitational field... say the kind you'd find on a Hollywood sound stage. 4) Hey, American Flags inside a Russian space station? Now I know that I'm hallucinating! 5) Lastly, I was a victim on the marketing. I expected an action/adventure film for my movie-going dollar. Instead, I got a chick flick, which is what Armaggeddon was in the end. I was suckered again, recently, when I went to see Pearl Harbour. Which is another chick flick in disguise! Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace Science Fiction Film Description: The most anticipated, over-hyped SF film in the history of cinema. Director George Lucas spent years planning his prequel to satisfy SW's rabid fans, and came up with ... Jar Jar Binks. Dan O'Leary (dano@cybercomm.net) George should recheck the first half hour of his first Star Wars movie: how can the two 'droids spend most of this flick on Tatooine and not recognize the place in Episode IV? Dan O'Leary (dano@cybercomm.net) OK, so The Force is a measureable, organic substance (midi-chlorians, or whatever). So how do the spirit of Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Anakin live on after their deaths in Episode IV, V, and VI? Meg - A novel of deep terror. Science Fiction Novel Description: Jurassic Shark - Prehistoric 60-foot long ancestors of the great white shark, long thought to be extinct, have survived miles below the surface on the ocean floor in the volcanic waters of the Mariannas Trench. An accident during a human exploration lets a female surface, and the feeding begins. Our hero must conquer his fears from his last meg encounter to stop it. Dan O'Leary (dano@cybercomm.net) The first antagonist, Maggie, who is sick of hubby's meg obsession, dies in the first half of the book. Her lover, Bud, takes up the antagonist role but eventually shoots himself for no reason. In the Trench, the male meg gets caught in a tow line and dies as the small sub is hauled to the surface, but the live female survives miles of icy water by gorging herself on her mate's entrails and riding the trail of warm blood. (uh-huh) The meg ignores the huge dinner menu of whales and dolphins, prefering to attack and destroy several fishing boats, a helicopter 50' above the water, a nuclear sub, Maggie's shark cage, and several bad guys picked off from the deck of a ship. The shark is finally killed 600' below the surface by a swallowed Jonah, er, Jonas, who carves open its stomach and heart with his lucky fossilized meg tooth. The heroes and the Cousteau Society try to save the giant shark, but kill it anyway. This "heavilly researched" book includes decomissioned nuclear subs battle-ready in days to chase sharks, and the misspelling of the location where the action takes place, which has NO volcanic activity. Maybe when Disney releases the film next summer after a severe rewrite it'll be "That Darn Shark" or "Air Meg." Jurassic Park Science Fiction Film Description: A thinly-veiled morality tale of man's interfering with nature, when a theme park of cloned dinosaurs runs amok. Dan O'Leary (dano@cybercomm.net)(suggested by David Anderson) After two scenes establishing the T-Rex as a huge, thunderous predator (the famous "water glass" and "puddle" scenes, where the stomping dino creates water ripples hundreds of feet away), we have the final battle in the main hall. Two raptors are about to make entrees out of our hero and the kids, when the three-story Rex saves the day by snacking on the smaller reptiles. Where was the 30-foot door? And since it was a surprise attack, did the Rex creep up on the humans and a pair of the worlds deadliest reptilian predators? Must've been wearing those Patrick Ewing-sized Nikes. Jim and Kathie Fielding (fieldings@seaside.net) Dr. Wu says that the dinosaurs are female because they 'denied' and extra chromosome. How in the *heck* did they do that? This movie was created *long* before the Human Genome Project completed their 'rough draft'. Torrain (torrain@sympatico.ca) -- Response to previous post --- Actually, Dr. Wu says that they control the chromosomes by denying the embryos the extra *hormone* which they would need to become male. This not only isn't a plot hole, it's fairly basic science; a high-school biology teacher could confirm for you that all embryos start out female and only become male when a particular hormone is introduced. And since the scientists in Jurassic Park are controlling the entire gestation of the embryo, it's reasonable to belive that they can pick and choose which hormones to expose the embryos to. Jurassic Park II - The Lost World Science Fiction Film Description: A wholehearted attempt by Steven Speilberg and (yuck) Michael Crichton to fill their pockets with even more money than they made from the first movie. David Anderson, Jr. (oommp@webspan.net) Like shooting fish in a barrel. First of all, Ian Macolm is discredited because he went public with the first Jurrasic Park and no one believed him. I guess the thousands of people who were working there got amnesia and all of the bodies of the dead dinosaurs disintegrated. Then a major corporation moved a huge amount of a munitions quietly without any government hassles or interventions. (Perhaps the corporation's head was a White House Aid who gave... forgive me.) Then, at the end, the crew of the ship was killed while in the steel bridge with doors much too small to allow access by the 30 foot T-Rex who was still in the hold. I guess Speilberg and Crichton never really worry about doors. Dan O'Leary (dano@cybercomm.net) Even for an action movie, this flick has way too many gaps to overlook without it being an insult to my intelligence. Why, for example, would a team of animal experts willingly take a baby from its nest? Also, how did a T-rex survive in a non-tropical environment? The idea with the park being close to the equator was for the warmth (which also defeats the idea of a supposed abandoned Jurassic arena that just happened to be sitting in the middle of San Francisco, which defeats the idea that the whole project was a secret in the first place, which...never mind, I could be here all day.) The A-Team Television Drama? Description: A group of former Vietnam Vets on the run from the government help people in need as mercenaries for hire. David Anderson, Jr. (oommp@webspan.net) During the course of the (?) number of seasons the show ran, easily a million shots were fired form the chromed up M-14's the team carried, and yet, no one was ever hit. Independence Day Science Fiction Film Description: Huge alien spaceships attack Earth, but are thwarted by lucky humans using a crashed ship from Area 51. Dan O'Leary (dano@cybercomm.net) There are millions of holes in this flick, but the most annoying & obvious one (to me) is Will Smith's character explaining he could pilot the alien craft: "I've seen their maneuvering capabilities, sir." Using this logic, I should be able to place in NASCAR if I watch enough ESPN, or fly a harrier jet by watching "True Lies." Andy Horan (soulless@cybercomm.net) I would say the biggest plot hole in this movie is the computer virus that gets introduced into the alien's system. First of all, it was written on an Apple Macintosh Powerbook. Now, since not all of the Macintosh line is compatible with each other, how could it possibly be compatible with a COMPLETELY ALIEN SYSTEM?!? Andy Horan (soulless@cybercomm.net) How did the stripper, her son, and the dog survive the intense heat when the door the ducked into in the tunnel was open? The mother ship was destroyed when Will Smith was still in space. You're gonna tell me he was able to crash land under no power? Not to mention, he was able to land that close to Area 51, when he'd never flown in space before? Also, with all their weaponry, the only thing to stop him from leaving the mothership was the weapons on the alien fighters? Will Smith was able to outmaneuver those fighter pilots in the trenches, even though these were beings trained to fly and maneuver on alien planets? Will Smith found Area 51 REALLY easily, when he had NO SECURITY clearance whatsoever? Will Smith was able to "cold-cock" and knock out the alien in one punch, even though we see later in the move that it was just an armor exoskeleton he punched, and the real alien was deep inside the "suit". Jon Liming (SkullNinja@aol.com) Okay, let's beat Independance Day a little more. You're going to tell me that the mothership is going to let a craft that has been missing for over four decades into the landing bay without nary a question? (TheJimmyO@aol.com) OK, so the United States Army, the most powerful in the world has a really hard time destroying the alien ship. They even use up all of their rockets or whatever. Then, the geniuses who created this movie jump to a bunch of shots around the world of people who had just destroyed the other ships. They even show some people waving spears over their heads. Spears! (TheJimmyO@aol.com) The alien ship is right above them when the United States shoots it down, but it crashes not on their heads as it should, but in an open field. Friday the XIII part 8: Jason Goes To Hell Horror Film Description: Jason Voorhees is back to slice-n-dice a fresh batch of horny teens. Expecting plot in these movies is like expecting drama in a "Baywatch" episode, but I digress. Andy Horan (soulless@cybercomm.net) Pardon me, but did anyone catch the previous to this, Jason Takes Manhattan? He was turned back into a little boy at the end. Spawn (Animated Series) Horror Cartoon Description: Comic-book antihero resurrected through a deal with the devil in order to see his wife and avenge his death. Andy Horan (soulless@cybercomm.net) In the last episode, the Evil Clown SHOOTS Billy the Child Killer when Spawn doesn't take him out. He's a DEMON for Hell's sake! What the heck was a demon doing with a gun anyway, and wouldn't a demon just rip him to pieces in anger? Day of the Dead Horror Film Description: The last of the "Night of the Living Dead" series, from the original black & white when the dead rise from their graves. Andy Horan (soulless@cybercomm.net) At the end, when they are escaping, you clearly see one of the guys get bitten by one of the dead (as we know from the first and second movie, this turns him into one of the zombies), yet the clearly show him having survived this at the end. Clash of the Titans Fantasy Film Description: Based on a number of the Greek myths. Lots of bad acting by a collection of past-prime '70s and '80s actors. Andy Horan (soulless@cybercomm.net) When "Perseus" uses the Medusa head against the Kraken, he never warns the princess or anyone else on shore about what he's doing, yet NONE of them get turned to stone, and I'm sure they were ALL watching intently what was happening! Nightmare on Elm St 6 : Freddy's Dead Horror Film Description: The supposed end of the wisecracking, teen-slashing Freddy Krueger character. Andy Horan (soulless@cybercomm.net) You're gonna tell me that all this time that Freddy Krueger had a daughter, and NO ONE knew about it? Star Wars Science Fiction Film Description: Classic Trilogy of films about Luke Skywalker and a band of rebels fighting against an evil galactic empire. James Sharkey, jr (James_Sharkey_jr@mercer.com) They've got lasers and stuff, but no e-mail. If they had e-mail, the whole story would never have happened, since R2-D2 wouldn't have had the only copy of the Death Star plans. Highlander III, the Final Dimension Science Fiction Film Description: Trilogy of films about immortals who battle each other for The Prize, given to the survivor. Andy Horan (soulless@cybercomm.net) This is supposed to be a sequel to the original. Now, in the original, it is quite obvious that McCleod gets the prize. Yet in this one, 3 other immortals are still alive (they were buried in a cave for centuries). So how did he get the prize in the original? The Abyss Science Fiction Film Description: A team of scientists discover a new benevolent, intelligent life form beneath the ocean. Daryl Healy () Why James Cameron, who most recently sunk the Titanic, would choose to sink this other movie in it's own abyss, by leaving the plot on the cutting room floor, is a mystery. Not to mention, it was billed as "E.T. underwater" . . . Did we see the aliens for more than twenty minutes, out of a two hour movie? Fortunately, this was also corrected in the director's edition. Cameron added another full fifteen minutes of alien activity. Not bad, for a now three hour movie.

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