12 Giant Plot Holes In Successful Films

What makes the perfect story? Is it love, romance, drama, the spirit of adventure? How about some narrative coherency? You know, like the story actually making sense?

Writers and directors are often lost in their search for artistic merit and commercial success, to the point where the finished product sometimes lacks the sensibility that was initially envisioned in the project, resulting in the contrivances, contradictions and glaring plot holes that at once perplex and infuriate fans. This is often a symptom of ambitious storytelling and complicated world mechanics, however, it can simply involve a lapse of attention and effort on the part of the development team.

From gods and monsters, dreams and the time travel paradox, terrible writing errors and lapses in narrative judgement; finding a wholly coherent film plot without any holes becomes an unenviable task, at which point the viewer must wonder: how can a director or writer fail to spot a hole in the narrative when viewers can dissect the film after a single run?

12. Star Wars: Episode IV No Hope For Tarkin

Who exactly runs the Death Star? Grand Moff Tarkin? Wow, if this guy didn't die in the destruction of the space station, he was in for one hell of an end of year appraisal.

Tarkin's administrative overseeing of the Death Star ends up being an utter shambles. Never mind the fact that the intimate details, designs and flaws of the Death Star were available on a single san disk floppy, the Imperials demonstrate utter incompetence in failing to destroy the pod capsule that ejects from the station at the beginning of A New Hope.

Droids, drones, robots and technology have become a rival force to human and alien life forms in the Star Wars universe. Armies are constructed entirely of droids, robotics are used to perform human and manufacturing tasks, and even Darth Vader is described as "more machine" than man, therefore, failure to destroy C3-PO and R2-D2's pod capsule was an anomalous one. It should have been very conceivable that no life signs would be detected on board and it would still be an issue.

And then there's the other side of the Forcer. One would have expected Ben Kenobi to send Luke into hiding, after learning of Vader's survival on Mustafar. Why on earth was Luke allowed to keep the name Skywalker, in a location that Vader was likely to investigate given his recent history and ties to Tattooine? Did Tatooine just fall into insignificance in the eyes of the Empire, after Tatooine's criminal enterprises refused any clear allegiance to the Empire? Or perhaps Vader simply forsook the memories of his family following Padmé's tragic death.

Literally any explanation would be nice.

And of course, it's still curious that Emperor Palpatine and Vader were unable to sense Luke and Leia's presence or connect telepathically through use of the force.