8 Movies That Completely Ignored Important Plot Points

By Danny Meegan / October 5, 2021

A common complaint about movies is that they’re too bloated or that they do too much explaining, but it’s just as annoying when they're missing important scenes, or when they don’t answer those lingering questions the plot leaves dangling.

Every movie aims to tell a complete, watertight story, but sometimes, for whatever reason - a trigger-happy editor, the writer forgetting to address a plot issue, or the writer choosing not to address a plot issue, and hoping we wouldn’t notice - something just feels like it’s missing.

This could be a conversation between two characters that really should take place, but doesn’t, a big event in the story not being followed up or addressed adequately, or something important happening without a sufficient explanation. Movies can often neglect or ignore vital parts of their plots, and it can be frustrating when this happens.

That being said, it can also be fun to point these out and imagine how much different the movie might have felt if that one part of the story had been given more attention, and wasn’t ignored like a straight-to-DVD sequel.

8. Toy Story 3 - Buzz And The Monkey

Pixar's excellent long-awaited threequel finds Woody, Buzz and the rest of the sentient toys languishing in the local daycare centre.

At night, Buzz has a sneak around the place and ends up following a group of rival toys into a makeshift casino atop a vending machine, where he learns that the centre may have a more sinister underbelly than its warm, welcoming exterior would indicate.

He's right of course, and the daycare toys quickly capture him and hilariously adjust his language settings. But the movie actually forgot that the entire sequence of events that led to Buzz finding the secret gambling room should never have happened in the first place.

Why? Here's why...

We later find out that the daycare centre is stuffed with CCTV cameras, and that - at night - an annoying, cymbal-clapping monkey watches over them. The plot makes this out to be a very big deal, and it's the biggest obstacle in the way of Woody and co. escaping and returning home.

So really, Buzz should have been spotted the moment he left the Caterpillar Room and began wandering the halls, but Pixar seemingly ignored the monkey just so the story could keep moving.