Big-budget action movies and television shows are fun for the most part. But a lot of the most action-packed and awe-inspiring moments just don’t make sense. Entire plots could have been resolved with simple solutions that would have saved everyone a lot of time. But those solutions are often ignored for plot convenience. Here are 10 such films and television shows with glaring issues in their big scenes.
Featured image credit: Warner Brothers via YouTube
10The Hunger Games
Really Caking On The Makeup
In the first Hunger Games film, we’re introduced to Katniss Everdeen, an archer who is destined to achieve great things, and Peeta Mellark, a cake baker who is just along for the ride. The two residents are forced to compete in the Hunger Games, a yearly trial that pits different towns’ tributes against each other in a battle to the death like Battle Royale.
In the middle of the games, Peeta gets grievously injured and may die from blood poisoning. Unable to move, Peeta uses mud and moss from his environment to try to blend into his surroundings.
And he comes up with what’s shown in the video above. Seriously.
He isn’t blending into his surroundings; he’s literally a part of them. Somehow, he’s molded himself into the rock face without even a mirror to see what he’s doing. This completely ignores the fact that he was near death and couldn’t move on his own. How exactly did decorating cakes in a society where people are routinely starving to death translate into Peeta being able to melt into the scenery when he’s no more than an hour from death?
9Spider-Man 3
Why Didn’t Harry’s Butler Deus Ex Machina Him Earlier?
Spider-Man 3‘s hilarious list of problems includes out-of-place dancing scenes, emo Peter Parker (aka “Spider-Man”), a Sandman plotline that goes nowhere in favor of a shoehorned Venom arc that director Sam Raimi didn’t want in the movie, and dialogue that doesn’t match the tone of the film.
Harry Osborn—an amnesiac who forgot that he wanted to get revenge for his father’s death by killing his best friend, Peter Parker—gets his memory back. Then Harry spends the majority of the film trying to ruin Peter’s life until Peter, under the influence of an evil symbiote, almost kills Harry (as shown in the video above).
Afterward, Harry mopes around his house, thinking about what to do next. Peter returns to apologize for the actions he took while in an altered state and to ask Harry for help in saving the woman they both love, Mary Jane Watson. But Harry refuses to listen because he certainly can’t understand what it’s like to be driven insane by an outside source. Dejected, Peter leaves as Harry sits in the dark.
This is when Harry’s butler enters the room and reveals a life-changing secret: The night that Harry’s father, Norman Osborn (aka the “Green Goblin”), died, the butler cleaned his wounds and saw that Norman had killed himself with his own glider. Supposedly, this was obvious by the shape of the stab wounds on Norman’s body. How the butler could be so sure without intricate knowledge of the Goblin’s glider is beyond us, but apparently, this butler’s pep talk is enough to convince the insane, disfigured Harry to help Peter save Mary Jane.
The question is, why didn’t the butler tell Harry how his father died right after it happened? Why did the butler do nothing as Harry spiraled down into madness and injected himself with the same dangerous chemicals that ultimately killed his father? The butler didn’t have the slightest concern until it became convenient for the plot. Almost every bad thing that happened to everyone in the movie could have been avoided if the butler had told Harry the truth at the start.
8Pearl Harbor
The Gritty And Hyper-Realistic War Drama Makes A Mistake
Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor has long been lauded as the best war movie ever put in theaters, with a nearly perfect score of 25 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Unusually reserved in his directorial duties, Michael Bay sprinkled in just enough action to placate the critics while keeping his love-triangle plotline front and center for the audience.
Yeah, sure, there were a few grouches who made unkind remarks: “They spent 150 million on this thing,” complained Harry Gailey, author of the acclaimed War in the Pacific: From Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay. “They should have been able to afford two or three dollars for a historian.”
There’s just no pleasing some people. The film was truly a spectacle that accurately portrayed everything about World War II. Almost. There may be one little thing they screwed up in the film.
In the video above, Japan has launched its attack on American ships in Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor. During the confusion, Josh Hartnett’s character announces to an officer over the phone, “I think World War II just started!”
The attack on Pearl Harbor occurred in December 1941. The phrase, “World War II,” was used to describe the war as early as 1939. However, Josh Hartnett’s character may have made that teeny mistake because he likely assumed the United States was the world.
7Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade
Nobody Should Find The Holy Grail
In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones goes on a quest to find the Holy Grail, a magical cup that’s said to grant its user eternal life (as shown in the video above). Indy’s journey eventually leads him to an oil-filled catacomb that holds the only clue as to where the Holy Grail may be hidden. After finding the clue, Indy makes his escape just as a cult sworn to protect the location of the Holy Grail sets the oil-filled catacomb ablaze. But wait, how did Indiana see in those dark catacombs to begin with?
He used a torch. And we don’t mean a flashlight, either.
Indy was lugging around a big ball of fire while hip deep in a soup of instant death, with fire as the only missing ingredient. As he walks around, we can clearly see bits of fire falling off his torch and into the oil, yet it doesn’t kill everyone instantly.
We could argue that the flames from his torch weren’t hot enough to ignite the oil, but he clearly uses the oil to fuel his torch before lighting it. The movie should have ended there, without anyone finding the Holy Grail because they all died and the only clue was reduced to ash.
6X-Men: The Last Stand
Why Did The Juggernaut Chase Kitty?
In X-Men: The Last Stand (aka X-Men 3), the government has found a way to nullify the powers of mutants by extracting serum from a mutant named Leech, who can neutralize other mutants’ abilities. This creates an all-out war, with different groups trying to get Leech for their own purposes.
In her search for Leech, Kitty Pryde encounters the Juggernaut, an unstoppable wall of mutant muscle who has been tasked with killing Leech. Kitty uses her ability to phase through objects to escape from the Juggernaut, who smashes everything in his path as he chases her. As shown in the video above, the chase ends when the Juggernaut rams headfirst into a wall. His powers are nullified by Leech, who is clearly standing in the room with them.
Although the Juggernaut wasn’t a mutant in the comics and thus couldn’t be affected by Leech, we’ll ignore that because the Juggernaut was considered a mutant in the movie universe. Even so, why did he chase Kitty? He was looking for Leech. If Kitty got to Leech first, so what? Leech’s power would have nullified her ability to phase through walls and made her a sitting duck for the Juggernaut to attack whenever he pleased.
And when he finally got Kitty and Leech in a room where they were completely defenseless, the Juggernaut ran headfirst into a wall instead of punching them or attacking them in another way. Was that his plan from the beginning? What if Kitty hadn’t been there? Was he just going to run headfirst at Leech either way, even though he knew his power wouldn’t work?
5The Walking Dead
Why Are People Still Being Killed By Zombies?
In every zombie movie and television show, the world is shown as completely unable to cope with the lumbering corpses of the people who’ve died, with society breaking down almost immediately. In some cases, such as Fear the Walking Dead, society literally falls apart in a single day. But if you run the numbers—and if you’re like most people, you do—large portions of the world should be A-OK.
In America, the average town has a population of around 20,000 people. Things can obviously be a lot worse in densely populated cities, but they’re not the norm for the vast majority of the country. Assuming an absolutely absurd 90 percent infection rate (absurd because the Spanish flu only infected 40 percent of the world’s population at its worst), that leaves 2,000 people to fend off the dead in every town.
Let’s assume that only 100 of those 2,000 people are capable of fighting the slow-moving and easy-to-kill undead. If each person averaged 10 zombie kills a day, they would have the town zombie free in about three weeks. The food on store shelves wouldn’t even have a chance to spoil before the problem was solved. The only problem would be finding the zombies that are hiding.
And speaking of hidden zombies, for creatures that are attracted to noise and movement, the walkers in The Walking Dead are surprisingly stealthy, opting to lie in wait and jump out at people as they pass by. Like they just teleported into the scene, zombies routinely disembowel people or bite unsuspecting victims. That’s why Daryl engages in a mercy killing of the disemboweled Dale in the video above.
Seriously, how do zombies keep sneaking up on people in that show? Their whole modus operandi is the fact that they’re noisy and obvious.
4Aladdin
Jafar Shouldn’t Have Been Trapped By Anything
In Aladdin, a lovable street urchin by the same name earns the love of Jasmine, a princess who just happens to be looking for a suitable suitor. Unfortunately for Aladdin, Jasmine cannot marry someone who is not of royal blood. Aladdin needs to be a prince.
With the help of his nearly omnipotent genie, Aladdin uses one of his three wishes to become a full-fledged prince. A couple of musical numbers later, Aladdin is practically part of the royal family and in line to marry the princess. Everything is coming up Aladdin until the evil Jafar, adviser to the sultan, gets his hands on the genie.
Using his first wishes, Jafar commands that the genie make him the greatest sorcerer in the world. As shown in the video above, once he becomes a true sorcerer, Jafar immediately uses his new power to completely cancel out the genie’s own magic and make Aladdin a pauper again. It wasn’t like Jafar just morphed Aladdin into someone who looked like a homeless scamp; the genie outright mentions that Aladdin’s wish has been completely negated. Aladdin would need to wish again that he was a prince to regain whatever he lost from Jafar’s magic.
But Aladdin, knowing that genies aren’t free beings, tricks Jafar into thinking that he needs to become a genie to be the most powerful sorcerer on Earth. However, Jafar was already at least the genie’s equal. This makes Jafar’s wish to become as strong as the genie by becoming a genie himself completely unnecessary.
We’ll ignore that fact because Jafar’s pride and greed lead him to fall for Aladdin’s trick. Jafar becomes a genie and immediately gets shackles thrown on him. But he’s still the world’s greatest sorcerer and has already shown that he can cancel out the genie’s magic. What stopped him from just canceling out this wish as well and continuing to wreak havoc on everyone?
3The Dark Knight Rises
Batman Nearly Kills Everyone To Make A Point
In The Dark Knight Rises, Batman returns to a broken Gotham that has been held prisoner by the madman Bane for three months. Knowing that Bane has a nuclear bomb set to go off when its timer reaches zero, Batman wastes no time putting together a plan to save the city.
But before he actually saves anyone, Batman scavenges an impossible amount of gas in a city that hasn’t been resupplied in over three months. He uses the gasoline to paint a giant bat symbol on the side of a building. As shown in the video above, Batman then saves Commissioner Gordon from certain death before lighting the bat symbol.
While Batman was setting up his symbolic masterpiece and a trail of gasoline, people were being killed just a few feet away. He obviously didn’t save any of them because the henchmen would have been on high alert if any of the bad guys had gone missing. Also, when Batman finally gets the bomb out of the city, he has only seconds to spare.
How many hours did he waste making that bat symbol? What if he had spent a minute too long making it? Would everyone have died just so he could make a cool bat symbol one final time? Where did he even get the gas to make it? Was he up there painting with gasoline for hours getting high off the fumes?
2The Flash And Arrow
Superheroes Who Need To Stop Keeping Secrets
The CW has a winning formula with television shows that are based on the properties of DC Comics. Shows like The Flash pull story arcs directly from the pages of decades of comic books. The CW also has their characters interact with comic book characters that originally appeared on different networks. All in all, there’s a lot of excitement for comic book fans.
But while the shows are mostly great, they all suffer from the same problem: The heroes keep secrets that just don’t make sense.
In The Flash, Barry Allen is forced to promise the father of his lifelong crush, Iris, that she will never know that Allen’s the Flash. Supposedly, it would put her in danger if she were ever involved in his heroics.
But almost every one of the Flash’s enemies knows that he’s Barry Allen. Every single villain knows who Iris is, yet she has no idea that she’s targeted. Many times in the first season, Iris was threatened by people who could kill her without her even seeing them, yet her father and Allen believed it would be more hazardous if she knew that she was in danger.
Arrow suffers from the same issue. Everyone whom Oliver Queen (aka “Green Arrow”) loves is either killed or turned against him because they don’t know what he does at night. Even more aggravating, it was revealed in a flashback that the one time that Oliver should have lied, he decided to tell the truth.
In that scene, a crazed man forced Oliver to choose who would die: his girlfriend or the lover of his friend Slade Wilson. After failing to convince the crazed man to kill him instead, Oliver chooses to save his girlfriend’s life. As shown in the video above, the crazed man reveals this to Slade, who asks Oliver if it’s true. After years of lies throughout the series, Oliver says yes, driving his former friend into a rage that boils over into years of horror for Oliver and his city. He could have just as easily said no and saved everyone.
1Jurassic Park
If Only Someone Could Reach The Gun
Jurassic Park is the classic retelling of a story as old as time itself. Boy meets dinosaur, dinosaur escapes its enclosure, hijinks ensue as the dinosaur kills everyone. The classic stuff.
In Jurassic Park, a young girl named Lex, a computer geek, is just one of the characters who’s been stranded on her grandfather’s island of murderous dinosaurs. Late into the movie, Lex is tasked with hacking into a computer system to get the security locks working on the doors. It’s imperative that she get these locks up and running because the adults with her are currently holding one of the doors closed while a group of raptors tries to force its way inside.
As shown in the video above, the scene of a child easily getting into the park’s main security system is silly enough. Even more foolish is what another character isn’t doing.
While the adults struggle to keep the door closed, they’re also desperately trying to grab their gun, which is just out of reach. You’ll notice that Lex’s young brother, Tim, is jumping up and down and telling his sister to hurry. He isn’t holding the door closed or hacking the computer, so why can’t he hand the gun to one of the adults or at least push it to them?
Sure, he’s scared, but everyone in the scene is scared. If his sister had failed to get the door closed, the adults would have needed that gun. Could Tim not spare five seconds of his jumping-around time to make himself even mildly less useless?
I’ve begun making cartoons and animations! You can check them out at my YouTube channel. As always, if you want to email me for any reason, you can reach me at wowanemail@yandex.com. Why would you need to email me? I don’t know, but go right ahead.
By: Ahmad Alomda
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