Updated May 27, 2021 4.8k votes 931 voters 55.5k views
Voting Rules
Upvote the most glaring plot holes in action movies - the ones that are hardest to ignore.
Everyone knows that, generally speaking, action movies are not to be taken seriously. When you go to the movie theater to check out a film about an alien invasion or people fighting off killer robots, you're probably there to get pumped and feel the thrill of carnage and destruction, not to dissect and scrutinize the film’s idiosyncrasies and errors… but that doesn’t mean that action movies are free of plot holes - some even feature the worst plot holes in any film of any genre.
Over the years, you’ve probably noticed some rather puzzling unanswered questions in some of your own favorite flicks, likely finding the biggest plot holes in action movies (if you can’t plug yourself into the Matrix, then how did Cypher sneak in to make a shady deal with Agent Smith?) As this list proves, there just might be more plot holes in action movies than any other kind of film out there.
So which of these action movie plot holes do you find the most offensive and which ones can you forgive? Vote up the ones you can stand and vote down those you can look past.
At the final tournament in The Karate Kid, one of the match rules stipulated kicking your opponent in the face will result in disqualification. How then is Daniel allowed to win the final bout by crane kicking Billy Zabka’s bad guy in the jaw?
Actors: Ralph Macchio, Pat Morita, Elisabeth Shue, Randee Heller, Martin Kove
The spinosaurus in Jurassic Park III shows an incredible amount of strength when it breaks through a massive wall with reinforced metal bars. So how is it that later on, it's unable to break through a wooden gate with regular old metal bars?
Actors: Sam Neill, William H. Macy, Téa Leoni, Alessandro Nivola, Trevor Morgan
When Starla begins to get suspicious of her husband's activities in Slither, she decides to bust the lock off the basement and have a look at what he's hiding - she discovers a room full of rotting meat and dead animal carcasses, reeling from the stench. But no matter how thick those basement walls were, the smell of that much carnage would have permeated the entire house.
Actors: Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, Michael Rooker, Gregg Henry, Tania Saulnier
In the beginning of the franchise sequel Star Trek Into Darkness, Spock gets in a tizzy over Kirk’s willingness to flout the Prime Directive by letting a primitive civilization witness their technological clout. But if anyone was actually worried about remaining undetected by these people, then why make a trip all the way to the planet's surface and hide under the ocean? Couldn’t they just have stayed in orbit, out of sight, and beamed their crew on and off the rock?
Actors: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Anton Yelchin
A well-explained part of the time-travel mythology in the James Cameron franchise is that only organic material or something surrounded by organic material can time travel, which is why people arrive at their temporal destinations naked. But if the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day is made of liquid metal, how did he make the trip back in time?
Actors: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick, Earl Boen
In exchange for the precious metal that Doc Octopus wants, Harry Osbourne demands that Spider-Man be brought to him; Harry tells Doc that to find Spider-Man he has to find Peter Parker. When Doc does find Peter, he hurls a car at him while sitting in a café with Mary Jane. Sure he dodged it - he’s Spider-Man… but how could Doc have known that?
Actors: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Alfred Molina, Rosemary Harris
