Plot Gone Rogue: 35+ Glaring Inconsistencies In Action Movies That Left Us Scratching Our Heads

If you are a fan of watching classic action movies, you know there’s no better way to relax on the weekend than that. And as an action movie buff, you might also have the tendency to pay a lot of attention to detail, just like we do.

So, if you’ve watched some of these thrilling films and noticed the minute things, you must have seen many plot holes, errors, and other unexplainable things. Today, we have compiled a list of such mistakes and tried our best to examine the situations.

It’s not like these minor errors get in the way of how incredible a particular movie is, but they make you laugh when you encounter them. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at some of the biggest mistakes and plot holes observed by action movie fans.

The Terminator

“I’ll be back” is one of the most famous lines in this movie and also probably Arnold Schwarzenegger’s most famous line ever. As most people know, the film is centered around a cyborg sent by an AI company to kill a woman whose unborn son is set to destroy them in the future.

There is the obvious time travel problem, but let’s not get into that. Why would you only send one Terminator for such a critical mission? Why not send the entire army? Do the machines just trust that one cyborg to take care of the task? Why is there no backup?

Planet of the Apes

The original movie is undoubtedly a cult classic, but the 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes did have something special about it. We just have one very simple question – where did the horses come from in this movie?

The protagonist comes across a crashed spaceship carrying humans and apes. He also finds out that the planet was uninhabited before the crash landing. But if that was the case, how did these four-legged majestic beasts find themselves here? Curious.

Kill Bill: Vol. 1

Quentin Tarantino is an incredible director, but he’s not a guy who makes the most realistic movies. Kill Bill: Vol. 1 is a fantastic revenge flick with weird and gory scenes. Although it’s split into two parts, there is something strange about the first part.

So, let’s address the elephant in the room: How could the bride do any of all that? She spent years in a coma, and her leg muscles had atrophied. The movie has a satisfactory ending, but it never answers how her arms were strong enough to kill people and drag herself around.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

If you saw this film, you must remember when Jones had to spell the word ‘Jehovah’ in Latin to reach the Holy Grail. He almost steps on the wrong letter for a brief moment which would have resulted in a big fall.

Anyways, he saves himself by grabbing onto some other letters, and eventually pulls himself up. But, according to many viewers, because he held onto L and Y, they should have also crumbled, and he should have fallen as a result.

Independence day

In the movie Independence Day, we see aliens invading Earth, and they start by destroying famous landmarks instead of destroying our human race. When they begin the destruction, many people are killed because of the huge fireballs being launched everywhere. 

Their approach is a little weird when you give it some thought, but there is more. There’s one furry exception who manages to outrun the fireballs that were blazing at him at the speed of hundreds of miles in an hour. 

Ocean’s 11

Daniel Ocean performs the ultimate heist in this movie when he and his crew trick a wealthy casino owner and take his money. They tell him how the safe is rigged and how it won’t blow up when they get away with half of the money.

Later, it is discovered that his money had been taken and sneaked out by the guys in S.W.A.T uniforms. That’s all alright, but when did they replace the real money with the counterfeits? There’s no answer to this question, as said by Soderbergh himself.

The Mummy (1999)

We won’t argue with the premise of this movie, which is an ancient mummy returning to life in Egypt. But they did get something historically or geographically wrong in the film. We’re talking about the exact location of the Pyramids.

At the start of the movie, we see the Pharaoh in Thebes. You can also see the Pyramids and the Sphinx somewhere close by. In reality, Thebes is present-day Luxor, which, wait for it, is almost 500 kilometers from the Pyramids!

G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra

The plot of the movie G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra has a lot of problems, and it has bugged many of its viewers, especially those who have watched the first part of the movie. There’s nothing egregiously wrong about the film, but just this one plot hole.

Destro’s underwater Arctic base is buried in the movie, and it gets destroyed due to an ice cascade when an ice shelf above it blows up. That’s legit, but in this case, ice would float. It wouldn’t bolt down like it did.

Die Hard

Die Hard is a fantastic movie overall and is considered among the best action flicks of its time. But even with that level of greatness, there are some mistakes in it. For example, Hans Gruber, the villain, holds people hostage to steal bearer bonds.

In reality, that would’ve been highly inefficient because they were made legally obsolete around five years before the movie took place! So, it might’ve almost been impossible to use them for business transactions. You’d also have to be physically present at the bank to cash them, ruining the plot.

Con Air

In the 1997 action classic Con Air, some criminals decide to hijack a plane. They do that by removing the radar transponder from the plane and placing it aboard the tour plane to confuse the people who are behind them.

In reality, that can’t be done because these kinds of air crafts have their own transponders. Therefore, if you place another one on board, they’d show up in proximity, alerting the emergency services, which would make them think that the two planes have crashed but are still in the air.

Olympus Has Fallen 

It is a well-known fact that the Gerard Butler-starred Olympus Has Fallen was a box office success, but there were a few plot points that were senseless when you think about it. For instance, remember the scene where the codes are entered?

After that, a sequence is started in five minutes to bomb nuclear warheads. However, the program’s whole point is to destroy warheads in the event of a misfire. In that case, why does it take all that time to blow? Shouldn’t The President decide when to blow it up?

The Matrix

Without a shadow of a doubt, The Matrix is one of the best sci-fi movies of our time. Its plot explains how people have blocked the sun to prevent machines from accessing any form of energy. That sounds smart until you start rethinking it.

Without the sun, we would perish so fast. Also, in the movie, it is possible that all knowledge of the solar system could come from the Matrix. Therefore, they would have simply made us believe they need the sun. What a complicated situation!

Spider-Man: Homecoming

Don’t get us wrong, because we are also huge fans of Marvel movies. But, Spider-Man: Homecoming has a problem with its timeline and also with its relation to other MCU movies. For instance, we skipped eight years forward after meeting Adrian Toomes.

The Battle of New York should be after The Avengers took place. And if that’s true, this movie should take place in 2020. But Kevin Feige himself said that Infinity War took place in 2018. So, how could Homecoming exist in 2020?

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider 

The entire plot of this film revolves around Lara trying to locate and ruin the triangle before the Illuminati. When she finds and retrieves the first half, she continues looking for the other in the hopes of destroying both of them.

But, it is also known that the second half of the triangle will not work without the first half, which questions the basis of the entire story. If that was the case, why wasn’t destroying one half enough? Wouldn’t that render the second half powerless?

Face/Off 

We fully agree that Face/Off is not a biologically accurate film, and instead of micro-analyzing, we should enjoy it for what it is. But we also agree that the face swap scene was slightly out of the way. They changed everything from their faces to hairlines and voices.

That’s all fine, but what did they do about the teeth? Both actors have different teeth, different bodies, and they also weigh differently. The same goes for their eye color, and we know John Travolta’s character couldn’t even wear contacts in prison. How does it all make sense?

Limitless

Well, the movie Limitless has quite an interesting premise. We see the star of the film take a pill that lets him access his brain’s full power, making him supremely efficient. He also turns a few thousand dollars into millions of dollars in just two days.

Honestly, the world would be a very different place if this was possible in reality. Anyways, if that’s the case, why did he take an $800 loan from the loan shark who tried to kill him later in the movie? And why didn’t he pay him back if he had all that cash?

Kong: Skull Island

There is something that doesn’t make any sense about this popular sci-fi movie. If you don’t know what it is, it’s the fact that Marlow simply takes a cab to his wife’s house. Come on! The guy had disappeared for about thirty years!

Wouldn’t somebody have reported that he wasn’t really dead? And after he got back on the ship, wouldn’t his family have been informed and been there on the docks to greet him? And how did he even know that his wife was still living there after all those years? So many questions.

Star Wars

We don’t need to point out that the Star Wars trilogy is a masterpiece of its time, but that doesn’t stop us from pointing out that there are certain flaws in the plot of this great trilogy. It’s more of a stupid move than a plot hole.

We’re referring to the part where the Jedi decides that the Skywalkers need to be hidden on different planets. The funny thing is they decided to place Luke on Vader’s home planet and didn’t even change his last name. That was definitely the worst hiding place for him.

Ant-Man

Ant-Man is a part of the MCU and also one of the most entertaining movies from the bunch, with the incredible Paul Rudd as the titular character. His mass is not supposed to change when he grows or shrinks, which brings a lot of questions.

How can ants support his weight, and how can they fly him around in the first place? Apart from that, even the tank and other cars that shrunk would’ve been very heavy to lift, but that’s not what we saw. How did all that make sense?

The Maze Runner

To be frank, The Maze Runner is another young adult book that has been made into a very successful movie. As the name subtly suggests, the film is about a couple of people who get trapped in a giant maze.

At one point in this movie, they also talk about how they have tried almost everything to escape and how it’s not possible to just climb up because the ivy doesn’t grow all along. But, from the aerial shots, it’s pretty clear that the ivy does indeed reach the top.

The Day After Tomorrow

The Day After Tomorrow is actually a wonderful movie that depicts a dystopian time, not so far into the future, where the environmental implications of the thoughtless actions of human beings have caused natural disasters on a very large scale.

At the end of the movie, we see helicopters circling around to rescue the people who have survived in New York. Therefore, people gather on the roofs of the skyscrapers. However, fans keep wondering how these survivors got to the top from the inside since the buildings were covered in snow.

Now You See Me

Now You See Me is a movie about a group of magicians who attempt to perform a heist with magic. They plan to give that money away to the people, and it’s all a part of their leader’s plan. The leader is mysterious and communicates only through cards.

All the magicians receive messages in the form of cards with times and addresses on them. When they arrive at the place, it’s obvious that they’ve all never been there. Yet, they somehow know exactly the apartment they need to go to. How, though? 

Minority Report

The movie Minority Report had an extremely intriguing premise, where we see the Police Department of Washington DC, using three psychic individuals to prevent future crimes before they occur. Based on that alone, it raises a lot of moral issues.

Arresting someone before they have done something wrong sounds a little unorthodox. Tom Cruise’s character is framed for planning to murder someone. Later we see that it’s all a setup, and we don’t even get to know who actually murdered the victim.

Avatar

With this film, the director wanted to showcase the importance of human lives over industrialization. However, and this is so sad, we humans aren’t truly like that. After losing in Pandora, it’s a little strange that humans decided to stop and reconsider their actions.

Instead of that, it would’ve made much more sense if they went back and nuked the planet. Anyways, that’s just an opinion because regardless of the holes in the plot, the movie was incredibly successful, largely appreciated, and a huge box office hit.

Skyfall

Skyfall is a wonderful Bond film. The villain’s name is Silva, and he plans to bring down Agent M. In the end, we realize that the failed attack on the agent was part of a plan to get her to face a court hearing about some leaked info.

His intention was to get caught by Bond, find M in court, and finish her off there. But if you think about it, he couldn’t know if and when Bond would come. Q would’ve missed the hearing if it took long to decipher the code. It’s all a big stretch.

Air Force One

Air Force One is an amazing action film and truly a classic. While that’s true, there was also one huge problem with one of its scenes in the beginning. We see the presidential airplane being hijacked by a bunch of Kazaki militants.

We see this scene after the American special forces parachuted and kidnapped the Kazakh president as he was responsible for the terror attacks against the USA. When they dived in, they were dressed in black but had white parachutes. This means they would’ve been spotted miles away.

Armageddon

When we talk about the most discussed plot holes in movie history, the plot hole of this movie is often remembered. In this disaster film, NASA gives some miners astronaut training so that they can drill into a meteorite blazing to Earth.

This begs the question – why didn’t they just train the astronauts to drill instead of going the other way around? Wouldn’t that have been much easier? Many fans are not convinced about this particular approach in the movie, including one of the film’s stars, Ben Affleck.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

We all know that there is a scene in The Terminator where the cyborg shows up naked. According to Kyle Reese, a fictional character from the franchise, machines had to be covered in living tissue so they could travel through the time machine.

However, the T-100, which is completely made out of liquid metal, manages to come through it all even when he has no living tissue at all. Even if they got that fixed in the next movie, why did he arrive naked when he could have worn clothes?

Transformers (2007)

If you remember Transformers from 2007, you’ll also remember the plot hole in this movie because there have been a lot of complaints about it. The lead character posts a pair of antique glasses on eBay. These are the same glasses that the Decepticons are searching for.

Well, if the Decepticons can hack a military network with an impressive level of ease, how difficult would it be to bid on a pair of glasses on eBay? Sam was so close to selling it to them before realizing how dangerous the glasses were.

The Dark Knight Rises

Probably one of the best superhero movies of our time, The Dark Knight Rises has a very intimidating villain, Bane. If you’ve seen it, you’ll remember that this guy literally trapped the entire police force of the biggest city in the States in a bunker.

Now, there are a couple of questions. Firstly, why would Commissioner Gordon send everybody underground and risk so many lives? Next, when Batman comes to their rescue, how are they all alive and presumably healthy after several months? Did time stop?

Jurassic Park

We’re sure that nobody has forgotten about the iconic T-Rex attack scene from the legendary movie Jurassic Park, although it has been three decades since people first saw that scene. The fences are not electrified, and the keeps are stranded.

Due to that, the hungry T-Rex starts attacking humans. The dinosaur easily skips over a gap near the fence that’s about 100 feet deep, but how does it not fall into it? In the book, it is said that it’s only a 30-ft moat, but that’s not the case in the movie.

Raiders of the Lost Ark

In this popular film, Jones and his partner Sallah have a very important mission. They have to ensure the Ark of the Covenant is safe from the Nazis. But when they get where the Ark is, they realize the bad guys aren’t anywhere close to finding it.

So, even if they did nothing and just went home, they would’ve still not found it. Instead, Indy digs it up and puts it in danger. Even without Jones, the ending would’ve been the same. This is even discussed in the famous sitcom The Big Bang Theory.

Harry Potter and Prisoner of Azkaban

In this movie, when Harry Potter gets the Marauder’s Map, he realizes that he could use that to reveal every single secret passageway in Hogwarts. Additionally, he can see everybody walking the hallways. So, you just can’t hide your identity here.

After Peter Pettigrew masquerades as Ron’s pet and hangs around with him, there is no way that somebody would not have noticed that. So, they should’ve also figured out that Scabbers the Rat was an animagus in reality much sooner than they actually did.

Batman & Robin

Don’t get us wrong on this one; Batman & Robin is a classic of its time and also a comedic masterpiece. But, there is one problem with this movie’s plot as well, and it’s about Mr. Freeze. He encounters an accident, after which he’s forced to always stay in sub-zero temperatures to survive.

Now, if him overheating himself is such a giant risk, why would he smoke a cigar? Is there a purpose behind it? It reminds us of Olaf singing about longing for summer in Frozen! We’ll forgive Olaf’s naivete with warm temperatures, but this one we just can’t overlook.

Inception

Honestly, Inception is a masterpiece, but it is still a complicated movie. Although we can’t surely say that we understood every single thing in the movie, there is one thing that, according to the fans, does not make any sense.

On the third level of the dream, Cobb tells the crew that they have an hour while Arthur only has three minutes left. After he misses the kick, he then says they all have twenty minutes. According to math, Arthur should only have a minute left! How’d he do all he did in sixty seconds?

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes

Honestly, there is not a lot that made a lot of sense about this beloved film. But, amongst all of that, here is the most questionable thing that a character did, or did not do, in the entirety of movie history.

For all the five years that they were together, Freida Pinto’s character never, even once, asks her boyfriend, played by James Franco, the reason behind him keeping a super-smart ape-child in his house. How is that a normal thing by any means?

Wonder Woman

In all honesty, the reboot of Wonder Woman was a splendid movie, and there couldn’t have been a better heroine than Gal Gadot. But, there’s one thing that’s very irrelevant. How does Diana not have the slightest idea of what a marriage is?

She’s somebody who’s so intelligent. She can recite Socrates and is very proficient in multiple languages and cultures. So, it’s odd that she doesn’t have a clue about a basic human tradition. Also, Socrates used to speak about marriage pretty often. So, make it make sense.

John Wick

If you have watched John Wick, you should know that you should never mess with him or his dog. However, the villains did not know that when they murdered his dog and stole his car. But how did they know where he lived after their initial encounter at the gas station?

We’re just wondering if they just asked around about a guy who speaks Russian. If they did, they should’ve understood not to mess with this person. And the most perplexing thing, why wouldn’t a retired assassin not have a functioning security system?

Superman

The original Superman movie is beloved by a lot of people and is considered a perfect depiction of Superman that very much abides by what’s written in the comics. However, we’d like to point out that the ending makes no sense.

How did he know that he could fly around our planet so fast that it’d spin backward and turn back time? He also uses an “amnesia kiss” to make Lois forget about his true self. If he arrived on Earth as an infant, how did he know about all these powers?

The Da Vinci Code

If you have seen The Da Vinci Code, you know about Robert Langdon, a symbologist who comes across an enigma protected by a secret society. In the movie, there’s a capsule that has to be unlocked by a combination that has to be figured out by Langdon.

However, the fact is that he doesn’t really need to figure all that out. Since vinegar could be frozen in a freezer, he could’ve simply popped the capsule in the freezer and later on smashed it open to reveal the message in it.