Stupidity: After Julie tells Louis that Peyton is still alive, she notices the Bellisarius memorandum on his desk and realises he was involved with the destruction of the lab. If Louis had kept the memorandum in his desk instead of in plain sight, he would never have been found out.
Stupidity: McCord gives Lincoln and Jordan a credit card and tells them that he will have to report it missing within twenty four hours, and he warns them that they can be traced by using it. He then gives them a huge wedge of cash. Since we have a society that still uses cash, and he has acknowledged how dangerous the use of a "stolen" credit card is - he even tells them how using it will lead the authorities straight to them - why not just tell them to use the cash? (If there wasn't enough, they get a cash advance on the credit card up to its limit - easy). He repeatedly acknowledges the risks of using the card, and it is absurd to speculate that he didn't have time to find and use an ATM to max out the card. He doesn't have to find an ATM - Lincoln and Jordan do, and as he acknowledges they have twenty four hours to do so. Once the cash is withdrawn, the card is thrown away, and nobody is at risk.
Stupidity: When Flint Marko is escaping from the police, he climbs a chain link fence into a test facility. Besides having a chain link fence, there should have also been security cameras around the area as well as guards to prevent anyone from trying to get in. Plus, when the scientist notice on their computers that there's an increase in mass, one of them simply assumes it's a bird and then they continue their experiment. Instead of making assumptions, they should have halted their experiment and have someone take a look to see what caused the increase of mass.
Stupidity: The humans return to Pandora knowing how things went last time...and still haven't improved the cockpit glass to be able to resist a bow and arrow?
Stupidity: The Death Star comes equipped with a powerful tractor beam capable of capturing a ship the size and agility of the Millennium Falcon. Why don't they use it against the rebel fighters attacking them at the end of the film? Okay, Obi-Wan Kenobi turned it off earlier but I find it hard to believe that someone who has never before visited the largest, most complex space station in the Universe and who was previously unaware of its very existence can disable a fundamental security system but the people who designed, built and run the whole thing can't work out how to switch it back on. They should have no problems with this, considering the fact that Obi-Wan didn't damage it.
Suggested correction: Obi Wan disrupted the battle at a critical time causing much confusion. We could chalk this oversight up to "Fog of War" - that in the heat of battle it's normal for commanders to overlook obvious things and seem to act stupidly. It would also be reasonable to assume that the fighters were too close for the tractor beam emitter to target them.
This scenario would require every single person on the Death Star who was involved in the maintenance of vital defence systems not noticing that one of them had been switched off! Not ONE person noticed? Obi Wan did not disable the tractor beam during "the heat of battle." There was a considerable time lapse between his switching off the tractor beam and the climactic final battle, during which time it would have been switched back on. When the Millenium Falcon leavs the Death Star Han Solo remarks that he hopes that "old man" succeeded in disabling the tractor beam, implying that those on the Death Star would be trying to use it. Even then, they didn't notice it had been switched off? Not sabotaged, not disabled, switched off.
Good point. This was definitely stupidity on the part of the Death Star crew, but not stupid as a plot point. It does happen in combat regularly. In 1987 the USS Stark was hit by 2 Iraqi Exocet missiles after challenging a single fighter. The ships' Close-in Weapons System should have easily shot the missiles down, but the investigation showed that no-one had noticed that the system had not been turned on.
They didn't use the tractor beam when the gang was escaping in the Falcon because they WANTED them to get away. The Empire placed a tracking beacon onboard so as to be able to find the hidden Rebel Base. As to how the Falcon was snagged originally: yes, they had just exited hyperspace, but they were not relatively fast; they were preoccupied with the TIE fighter (incapable of light speed) and the small moon right up to the point they were trapped in the tractor beam (and realizing "that's no moon!"
Suggested correction: The Falcon was travelling towards the Death Star when it was caught in the tractor beam. The tractor beam was properly turned back on by the time it travelled to Yavin. The rebel fighters are too small and quick to be held in a tractor beam and there are so many of them so it would be near impossible to trap enough to make a difference.
As I have already pointed out, assigning technical limitations to a wholly fictional piece of technology is absurd. As to "flying towards the Death Star" - the X and Y wing fighters are shown doing just that. As for being too quick, the Millenium Falcon is decelerating from superluminal speeds when it is captured in the tractor beam. That's pretty bloody fast in anyone's books.
It's flat out stated by General Dodonna in the battle briefing that the Death Star's defenses are based around repelling attacks by capital ships, not fighters. The targeting may not be exact enough.
Actually, claiming a fictional piece of equipment can't behave the way you think it should is somewhat silly. The previous explanation that the tractor beam's limitations were the reason for not using it during the battle makes perfect sense.
Stupidity: If the song "Beyond the Sea" can be continuously broadcast on the radio station as a "cryptic clue" that there are survivors living on the island and the aliens are unable to swim, then someone could verbally announce that information over the radio and otherwise communicate with other humans. The same thing about how Regan's hearing aid incapacitates the creatures. Rather than explaining how to weaponized the high-frequency sound, only the hearing aid's noise is broadcast and anyone hearing it has to figure it out.
Stupidity: The entire plot hinges on a military facility that knows it's housing what's essentially a sentient world-ending disease, and that has the foresight and resources to build a containment room with a cyanide failsafe, having nothing else to stop said virus from breaking out beside the glass her room is mostly composed of. Once she's out of that room, she just has to run through an unlocked, labeled exit door and hop a fence. Where are the emergency bulkheads? Where are the armed guards watching the hallways? Why isn't that fence electrified? Why isn't she wearing a metal shock-collar at all times? Even if that glass was bulletproof and/or they seriously underestimated her strength, they'd still have to open the door to her room at various times to give and take her food, books, laundry and waste.
Stupidity: Ultimately, it did wind up working. However when they shoved the antidote vial into Claire's purse and got George's attention so he would eat her, this was an insanely stupid move. 1. They had no way of knowing if he would actually choose to eat her if he even grabbed her in the first place. Before then he'd been crushing people and even threw the helicopter pilot miles off the building while they watched that happen. 2. The antidote was in a plastic polymer like tube designed to hold the substance inside it while submerged in liquid nitrogen containment. Even if the gorilla's stomach acid could eat through the vial to get to the antidote, it would take hours for it to get through a material like that. 3. Gorillas are herbivores, so it wouldn't have tried to eat a person in the first place. (01:17:55)
Stupidity: When they first arrive on Planet Zero, Victor runs his hand through the mysterious green liquid on the planet surface. No scientist in their right mind would ever willingly attempt to touch a body part to an unknown substance. He had no way of knowing if the substance was toxic, corrosive, incendiary, hypothermic, etc. Moreover, none of his companions try to warn him against doing so.
Stupidity: At the end of the film, the Rehabs recruit gang members and give them all kinds of guns from shotguns, handguns, and automatic weapons. The cops and deputized citizens have similar weapons. But for all the shooting, not one gang member is hit and only one citizen appears to be shot (aside from the three blown off the building roof by the Rehab tank.) I don't think anyone has any bullets.
Stupidity: Nobody in their right minds would take a nine-year-old child on a dangerous mission to locate and destroy a marauding, giant shark, a project that has already cost a number of lives.
Stupidity: At the prison yard, when Weiss overhears that the sonic deadline was being deactivated to let new prisoners in, he manages to look at the deactivation code. The guard sees Weiss looking at the code and switches the computer off. If he had changed the code and informed another guard, none of the prisoners would have escaped.
Suggested correction: The prison riot happens mere minutes after this. We don't know what it takes to actually change the password and whether or not the guards have the authority to do so. The real stupidity is why the guards would be using portable computers in full view of the inmates when they could easily walk on the other side of the deadline to do so.
Stupidity: In the scene where Lewis and Clark nearly hit the Event Horizon, One of the crew is calling out the closing distance and another confirms this information. Regardless of clouds obscuring their view they were aware of their proximity and the fact that they were speeding towards it and forced to attempt an abrupt stop makes no sense.
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: The commando mission to save Chewbacca starts gunning down a few Stormtroopers in the hangar. The heroes then go on leaving the troopers lying down on the floor in front of the ship, in plain view. They don't hide them nor ask the droids (who have enough strength and tools to pull them in) to, in fact they tell them to stay put. No wonder they are found out later (after a ridiculously long amount of time).
Suggested correction: Hiding the bodies would have been a waste of time, anyone who came to the hangar would immediately notice that the guards stationed there were missing and there was now a strange ship parked there.
The droids have all the time in the world, and people just passing by are "more immediately" bound to notice corpses in the middle of a hangar rather than possibly maybe question the fact that you don't see guards in that part of the hangar or investigate the ship - which could approach without anyone taking exception by appearance alone. At least remove the bodies directly in front of the damn ship!
Why would they be more likely to notice dead guards than no guards?
Anyone passing by might well thing the patrols were just out of sync, or a shift change. Sure they might investigate further, but they might not bother. Whereas a couple of dead bodies? Immediate red alert. Worth taking 30 seconds to hide them, surely.
Perhaps, but then it's made irrelevant 1 minute later as Finn and Poe run down a hallway blasting about a dozen stormtroopers.
For that matter, 1 SECOND later they kill stormtroopers in the far part of the hangar. They are killing people all over the ship during their mission and it's not like they hide every single one of them, but they leave two bodies *exactly* in front of their ship (and telling the droids to stay put). You can even see later that there is a stormtrooper with his weapon pointed exactly where those two corpses are, with the 'smart' commanding officer asking "whose ship is this?" at the sight of that. Maybe I am spoiled by a trope here, but it's the first time that I see someone in an action movie leaving corpses right in front of their only escape route/vehicle, that's so counterintuitive. (Did they even have an escape plan, actually? I don't like hypotheticals, but gee, if only she did the Jedi mind trick thing to those 2 guards who came over to inspect the ship instead of doing it later. But I digress).
Stupidity: Shriek is being taken to a new facility for superbeings, after a medical exam established that her sonic powers that she has been using since she was a kid are too strong to keep her at the correction house. So "naturally" for this transport she is not gagged, sedated, not even bound, and there's just one guy with her, not even wearing earplugs. It couldn't possibly be any more comically unsafe.
Suggested correction: We don't know how much cash it was, could just have been many 1$ bills and a few tens. So they probably would have needed more money at the beginning, and as they had to hurry for the train it couldn't have been possible for McCord to go for an ATM machine. They can use the card without danger until he reports it stolen (nobody knows at that time that McCord is helping them, so they wouldn't track down his credit card, until he reports the theft) So it's not even a character mistake as he thinks they'd be safe to use it in the next 24 hours. His warnings are for after the 24 hours, when it is reported stolen. And anyway, they need the credit card so that Jordan can get back into the facility.
Ronnie Bischof