The worst movie plot holes of 2018

Enjoyed the biggest movies of the year? You were probably so busy having fun you didn’t notice the horrendous great plot holes they were riddled with.

Read at your peril, for spoilers await, and once you know about these plot holes, you can’t unknow them…

Venom – Running Riot

Venom director admits plot hole

Sometimes plot holes are so vast and obvious that some brave soul brings it up with the film’s director, at which point they’re usually dismissed or ignored.

Venom director Ruben Fleischer, however, was caught bang to rights when confronted with his own plot hole: how is it that the alien symbiote Riot, who must move regularly from host to host to survive, is content staying in the body of an old woman in Malaysia for six months while the film’s story continues elsewhere?

“That’s one of our logic bumps,” said Fleischer. “We had to have a passage of time in order to show Eddie’s downfall, and that was the one thing that doesn’t entirely track.” He’s admitting a flaw in his superhero movie – BURN HIM!

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom – Indoraptor inconsistency

Let’s not get bogged down in the minutiae of movies about genetic cloning and dino DNA, because any plot inconsistencies can be explained away by the scientific equivalent of ‘a wizard did it’. Better to focus on flaws in the movie’s screenplay, which posits genetic abomination the Indoraptor as the ultimate killing machine, capable of following human orders and hunting prey without mercy.

In reality, however, the Indoraptor is a terrible hunter – for example, it’s utterly incapable of locating even a single human being in an empty room if they’re hiding behind something, as per the movie’s museum showdown. Even with this movie’s laughably low dinosaur prices, if you’d forked out top dollar for one of these dino duffers, you’d ask for your money back.

Avengers: Infinity War – Give Thanos a hand

Not to sound like a backseat Avenger, but we thought of a way Earth’s Mightiest Heroes could have definitely defeated Thanos without breaking a sweat.

The opening of the movie illustrates a power that we know Doctor Strange has – he can create portals to other parts of the universe, and if those portals happen to close around a body part, as with Cull Obsidian’s arm, then the owner of said body part can kiss it goodbye. Why, then, does Doctor Strange not try and close a portal around Thanos’s gauntleted hand, saving about an hour of drama and a few billion lives in the process?

Even if one of the Mad Titan’s crazy magic gemstones could have countered it, it’d still be worth a try, no? It’s odd that the movie itself establishes that possibility in Act 1 and never follows up on it in Act 3.

Halloween – Sequelitis

Here’s an interesting by-product of the 2018 Halloween reboot completely ditching all of the subsequent sequels and remakes: if the outlandish events that followed the original movie never happened, then why is Michael Myers considered to be such a legendary and feared killer?

Going on the events of the 1978 movie only, Myers killed four people, then spent 40 years brooding in jail, where he never said a word. That’s relatively tame in serial killer terms, even for a small town like Haddonfield. The character of Laurie Strode also bears the psychological scars of a lifetime of torment at the hands of Michael, but in actual fact – without wanting to downplay her PTSD – she was attacked four decades ago and there was never a hint that Myers would ever get free.

The reboot gets to coast off the legacy of the Halloween sequels without being bound to any of the stories. If that’s a bit vague for you, then chew on this: how does Michael Myers know how to drive a car?

Ant-Man and the Wasp – Giant-Man gets away with it

No reasonable explanation is given for this shocking last act plot hole, which is odd considering how water-tight the Marvel Cinematic Universe usually is. In trying to retrieve Hank Pym’s miniaturised lab, Scott Lang very publicly morphs into Giant-Man at the San Francisco Bay – we’re shown crowds of people filming it on their phones.

Lang, of course, is under house arrest, yet the agent tasked with making sure he stays at home never questions the fact that Scott was clearly responsible. Although he eventually arrives at Lang’s home to find him there, it should have been obvious that Scott fobbed him off with the time-wasting distraction of the inflatable suit. It was clearly Lang at the bay – he was talking and everything!

Pacific Rim: Uprising – Smashed it

You will find no joy in nit-picking a movie about giant robots fighting large monsters – it’s almost like they made the whole thing up! – but the sequel to Guillermo del Toro’s kaiju-slaying masterpiece is so much more sloppy than the original.

Never mind that a 300ft Jaeger manages to hide in 50ft of water in Sydney Harbour. Never mind that the Precursor’s plan to only attack cities on the way to Mount Fuji makes zero sense, because the geography doesn’t scan at all.

How about the very simple plot hole whereby Gypsy Avenger’s visage is shattered and broken open, but the pilots inside aren’t affected in the slightest when the Jaeger burns up on re-entry? It’s all total nonsense! Harumph!

Ralph Breaks the Internet – Glitches in Ralph’s memory

Ralph doesn’t know how long he’s known Vanellope

The most annoying plot holes and goofs are the avoidable ones – where a quick skim of the script could easily pick up an unnecessary error. For example, Disney sequel Ralph Breaks the Internet manages to break the Wreck-It Ralph timeline despite the franchise only containing two movies.

In the internet-based sequel, Ralph tells Vanellope he met her after 27 years of being a villain in his own game; however, in the first movie, the Fix-It Felix game is celebrating its 30th anniversary – that’s actually the event that kickstarts the entire plot.

Sorry, screenwriters, you can’t do what Twitter celebs do every time they say something dumb and claim you’ve been hacked. That’s not how the internet works.

Incredibles 2 – Jack-Jack’s lack of powers

Here’s a plot hole that’s left open in the space between the original movie and its sequel. In the first movie, the audience knows that baby Jack-Jack has a wide array of superpowers, but that point is hidden from the rest of the family, and Incredibles 2 starts with them still in the dark as to Jack-Jack’s abilities.

However, Special Agent Rick Dicker – who is shown to be a close friend of the Parr family – does know about Jack-Jack’s powers, because he mind-wipes the poor frazzled babysitter who looked after him. Why, then, does Dicker not think to tell Jack-Jack’s parents that their baby boy is capable of phasing through dimensions, spontaneously combusting or morphing into a demon? Did he just forget?

Skyscraper – Between The Rock and a hard face

Sometimes it’s hard figuring out what is a plot hole and what is just a tremendously bad piece of writing – Dwayne’s Johnson’s disaster movie Skyscraper is riddled with both.

Behold, the world’s most secure and technologically advanced building, which for some reason has all its security panels located on the building’s exterior! Behold, the key to cracking the tower’s code, locked in an ordinary combination safe!

Even down on terra firma, the movie has plot holes galore – like how the criminals steal Johnson’s security tablet from his bag, even though they already know they also need his face to unlock it. So what was even the point of stealing it in the first place? Great plan, idiots.

The Meg – Jason’s seen-‘im

During the movie’s prologue, Jason Staham’s character Jonas – which, the sharp-eyed among you may notice is an anagram of ‘Jason’ – claims to have already seen ‘the Meg’ before, which is how he’s able to immediately identify the giant Megalodon shark that terrorises the movie.

However, according to the movie’s own timeline, this would not have been possible because the Meg was only released sometime later when the crew of the Mana One break the gas seal confining the giant shark.

This is a classic case of Adaptation Explanation Extrication (thank you, TV Tropes), because in the novel on which The Meg was based, Jonas does indeed see the shark several years before it turns up to start chomping on swimmers. Who knew this thing was based on a book, am I right?

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