“6 Movie Plot Holes You Never Noticed Thanks to Editing”
From Cracked:
The magic of movie-making is that directors have the luxury of leaving the boring shit out. One minute Kate Winslet is whistling her heart out in the middle of a corpse-filled ocean; the next, she’s a decade too old for a part on The Golden Girls. That’s what they call editing, kids!
The thing is, that casual jump from A to B is also used as a writer’s crutch to gloss over the stuff they didn’t have the time to think through — little things like “continuity,” “logic” and “whether or not our protagonist just did some accidental murder.”
Here is one example:
#6. Batman Leaves the Joker With a Room Full of Victims
At one point in The Dark Knight, the Joker decides to go after Harvey Dent at a fundraising party, where (unbeknownst to him) Bruce Wayne/Batman happens to also be in attendance. Bruce takes it upon himself to hide Mr. Dent, then slips out to put on his Batman guyliner and practice his scary voice.
“I eat three packs of cigarettes a day.”
So the Joker hops in and starts some shit with Gotham’s finest, as supervillains are apt to do. Before you know it, all hell breaks loose, and the Joker throws Batman’s girlfriend Maggie Gyllenhaal out the window. Batman, driven by his high regard for both human life and boobs, dives out of the building after her and performs a Bat-abulous mid-fall catch.
After awkwardly landing on a car, the two sigh in relief that everyone is safe. Yep! Everyone made it out of that situation just fine!
“You’re safe now.” Roll credits.
Cut To:
The party is over, and all of Gotham is trying to figure out what they’re going to do with a psychotic clown on the loose. At no point does anyone feel the need to discuss just what the fuck happened when Batman left a room full of Gotham’s wealthiest citizens completely alone with the craziest motherfucker in town.
“Sometimes I hear oranges.”
Keep in mind that before Batman arrived at the party, the Joker was literally about to cut someone’s face open in order to find Harvey Dent. Yet, when Batman jumps out the window to save not-Katie Holmes, he never returns. The Joker is alone with a crowd of unarmed victims. And Batman just bounces?
Eh, they’ll be OK. It’s not like he’s crazy enough to blow up a hospital or something.
OK, sure, Batman is right downstairs, so it’s possible that perhaps the Joker got spooked and made a run for it. But even if he did … well … Batman is right downstairs. How in the hell did he even escape the situation? He’s on the top of a skyscraper and Batman is the doorman. Did Batman get off that car they landed on and go get a burger or something?
I’ve seen The Dark Knight a half-dozen times. This issue never occurred to me. I guess that says something about my lack of cinematic savvy… or the power of the movie’s narrative drive that it just pulled me along to the next scene without giving me a chance to think about the logic of the preceding scene’s ending.
How about you? Did this issue bother you? And while we’re at it, what other movie plot holes have stuck in your craw all these years? Real WTF moments where the filmmakers tried to slip one past you, but it just didn’t work.
For five other movie plot holes you never noticed thanks to editing, you can read the rest of the Cracked article here.
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