Plot Holes

Scott Hardie | February 9, 2013
I wandered across Film Crit Hulk's defense of plot holes and it really got me thinking. (If you're not familiar: This is a film scholar who writes as the incredible Hulk for fun but has serious points to make. You get over the all-caps thing quickly.) Normally I agree with most things that "Hulk" says, like the dissection of Les Mis's cinematography that Erik shared in TMR recently. But on plot holes, I just can't accept Hulk's main argument that you shouldn't worry about plot holes (and more importantly, filmmakers shouldn't worry about plot holes) because worrying too much about logical errors in the plot detracts from the emotional resonance that is the most important thing about a movie.

I get what he says about Transformers and filmmakers who worry too much about organizing a structured universe for the movie to take place in, rather than making us care about the characters or drama. I get what he says about M. Night Shyamalan and filmmakers who enjoy tricking us with twists of logic to the detriment of characters and drama. (I would put some of Christopher Nolan's films in that category.) What really struck me about the piece was Hulk's argument that we don't care about plot holes when a movie is working: If I think about some of my favorite movies, which happen to be among my favorites because they make me feel strong emotions every time I watch them (Chinatown, Titanic, Wonder Boys, Do the Right Thing), I wouldn't mind in the least if I suddenly realized that "he wouldn't have done that because he didn't have access" or "she wouldn't have said that because she didn't know at the time" or some similar plot hole. Those movies would still make me feel something powerful just by remembering them, and for that feeling I would remain grateful, and I would chalk up the plot hole to a curiosity, a minor goof along the lines of a slight anachronism or a misplaced prop that changes angles between shots. In other words, who cares, right?

But all that said, I am frequently bothered when I am asked to care about characters who don't behave like reasonable people, who withhold a minor secret from their lover far too long simply because the movie needs them to have a fight later, or who go into the scary dark room simply because the movie needs the mad slasher to attack them, when I just can't believe that they would do such things. Maybe those are bad examples, but surely you've seen a movie where you just can't believe that someone would act a certain way. It breaks the spell of the movie, and worse, it makes the movie fail to resonate. We value drama and art because of what they teach us about the human experience, but how can a movie do that when its characters do not act like recognizeable human beings that we can relate to?

I just watched the flop Whiteout, which is about the least competent U.S. Marshal I can remember seeing in a movie. She misses obvious clues that other characters point out to her. She lets a killer out of her sight repeatedly and is surprised when he's gone. She does nothing to warn or protect civilians in imminent danger. This character's behavior is immensely frustrating, but maybe Hulk wouldn't call that this incompetence a plot hole. Maybe he would just call it bad writing or bad acting or bad directing, or a failure to create sufficiently captivating drama that manifested as severely implausibility that would be irrelevant in a better film. But the problem sure feels to me like a major cause of the film's badness, a reason why the drama failed to captivate me. I'm asked to care whether or not the marshal catches the killer, but she's so terrible at doing so that I feel jerked around by the movie. Hulk would say, "if she was good at her job, the movie would be over in 15 minutes, so that's not a problem, that's necessary for the movie's existence and you should just go with it." But I'm infinitely more drawn in by movies where the cop and the criminal are both competent: Heat, The Silence of the Lambs, The Dark Knight. If those movies can make their characters more or less believeable as human beings (which is especially hard in the case of Batman and the Joker), then why do turds like Whiteout deserve a free pass for failing to do this? Hulk might say it's because movie-making is extremely hard and you can't make every piece perfect and so it's better to focus on the right pieces, and I get that, but that doesn't mean I have to excuse it when some pieces go badly. And I don't accept that a movie's implausibility doesn't qualify as a serious problem, whether you call it a "plot hole" or not.

Are some movies so implausible that you can't enjoy them? Can you accept Hulk's argument that if a movie is a good enough work of drama that we cease to care about its plot not making complete sense?

Steve Dunn | February 10, 2013
It definitely ruins shows and movies for me when people do not respond realistically. Lost is a great example. There are so many...

Steve West | February 10, 2013
The Usual Suspects comes to mind. The whole plot centers around Keyser Soze wanting the death of this guy because he knows his identity. He forcibly recruits criminals to assassinate this individual and then kills all of them himself. Meanwhile he poses as another character who reveals himself to Chaz Palmentieri for the entire film yet he gets to live. Still loved the movie, though.