Top 10 Massive Plot Holes in British Movies

Plot hole aside, this is a spectacularly underrated movie that everyone should really check out – with the plot focussed on Judge Dredd, played by Karl Urban, training rookie Anderson, played by Olivia Thirlby. Anderson is a psychic who doesn’t wear the trademark helmet because, she claims, it interferes with her abilities. Fair enough! However, later on, she reads the minds of other judges, who are very much wearing their helmets, without any difficulty. Does the helmet issue not work both ways? Might want to give that helmet another try, Anderson. Also, they sure worry a lot about ammo considering they’re in a building full of guns and ammunition!

One of the most famous sci-fi films ever made also gave birth to the granddaddy of sinister AIs, the HAL 9000… A creepy computer that we’re told is “fool proof and incapable of error” before it inevitably tries to kill the astronauts on board. Later, HAL interferes with life support, subsequently killing off several crewmen in suspended animation. A screen then lights up with the words “computer malfunction”. So, it was programmed to be capable of making errors? Or, it wasn’t?If HAL was incapable of error it wouldn’t need a “computer malfunction” screen, surely. Oh well, a masterpiece nonetheless.

Would it be a Bond film without convoluted master plans? Probably not, but this particular film pushes it to the limit. In “Skyfall”, Raoul Silva, played by Javier Bardem, plans to kill Judi Dench's M. Simple enough right? Nope, the plan’s too complicated to list all its faults, but it requires Bond, Daniel Craig, to do very specific things at specific times. If he failed at any point, the plan would have unravelled there and then. It also requires Silva to know very specific details, like what kind of cell would hold him, and that his laptop will be hooked up to the MI6 server to allow his escape. We love a good criminal mastermind, but this is just absurd.

Bane, played by Tom Hardy, takes over Gotham City and leaves Batman (Christian Bale) in an underground prison on the other side of the world with a broken back. Bane, then, lures the entire Gotham Police force into the sewers and traps them there. Months pass and Batman overcomes his broken back (as one does when one is Batman), and escapes. Okay, we’re with you. But then in the next scene he arrives in Gotham to save the trapped police officers who are all clean shaven and not at all starved to death. What?! Either Bane provided excellent hospitality or Batman is a time traveller.

Poor old, fanatically religious, Sergeant Howie - who, we might add, was played brilliantly by Edward Woodward. He was only trying to do his job. In the film, Howie goes to the Pagan Island of Summerisle to investigate the disappearance of a little girl. It’s a great set up for a chilling and unusual horror. But given the severity of the crime, wouldn’t you, oh, we don’t know… take back up? One policeman looking around an entire island? At the very least you’d phone for help once things started to get weird and dicey.

This entry sees George Lazenby taking over from Connery as 007 and journeying to the Alps to meet his arch-nemesis Blofeld, played by Telly Savalas. The two interact as if they have never met before. And yet, since “From Russia With Love” Blofeld has been aware of Bond’s appearance and the two had had one of film history’s most famous confrontations just two years earlier, in “You Only Live Twice”. Here’s the thing, in the novel chronology, the order of these two stories is reversed. Furthermore, Bond was allegedly originally supposed to have had plastic surgery, but the idea was dropped. Yeah, it would’ve been odd, but at least it would’ve made more sense.

This one’s simple. There’s a cross on Dracula’s coffin! Didn’t the designers know anything about vampires? In the film, Dracula ends up using a coffin in the undertaker’s cellar, only it’s adorned with a large cross. Given this decorative touch, he shouldn’t be able to get near the thing, let alone touch it, right? Now… some of you might be saying “what if it wasn’t blessed?” Well, by the end of the film Peter Cushing is using two candlesticks as a cross and getting the desired effect, so the rules seem pretty flexible, in general.

There’s no denying Christopher Nolan’s take on the Dark Knight was a runaway success and game changer for comic book movies and blockbusters in general. But, it’s not perfect. The antagonists use a military gadget called the microwave emitter, which vaporises water. The plan is to attach it to Gotham City’s Monorail, vaporising the city’s water supply, which will subsequently release a powerful toxic hallucinogen causing the people to lose their minds. Problem is, humans are roughly 70% water, so rather than go mad, shouldn’t they just die when the emitter works?

In this third instalment of the wizarding school saga, Emma Watson’s Hermione is given a magical device that enables her to time travel, so she can attend her classes and defy her conflicting time table. Pretty neat, huh. It’s later used to travel back and save a Hippogriff from execution and Gary Oldman’s Sirius Black from imprisonment. Problem is, no proper explanation (other than “when meddled with, it’s dangerous”) is given as to why they couldn’t use it to go back and save Harry’s parents or stop Voldemort entirely.

Yes, even this seminal masterpiece isn’t immune to making mistakes. In the film the crew of The Nostromo pick up a lifeform which promptly starts attacking people. Later the character Ash, played by Ian Holm, is revealed to be a robot who betrays everyone. If you have access to robots, however, why wouldn’t you use them for your entire crew? Surely it would make things go more smoothly? And eliminate many of the dangers? And if the secret objective was to pick up something so valuable but potentially volatile... why wouldn’t you send them heavily armed with appropriate equipment, rather than on a big expensive ship full of precious cargo?