20 Movies So Good You Ignore Huge Plot Holes

Rise of the Planet of the Apes was an unexpectedly great prequel movie that gave the Planet of the Apes an interesting new backstory. Rather than the world being destroyed by a nuclear war, it was an engineered virus that did it, a virus that makes apes smarter but is actually fatal to humans. This was a clever narrative device, but the way this man-made apocalypse is brought about doesn't actually make sense.

During the test of a new Alzheimer's drug, a lab technician named Robert (Tyler Labine) is accidentally exposed. He becomes ill, and when he's trying to warn fellow scientist Will Rodman (James Franco), he decides to go round to Rodman's house instead of just phoning or emailing him. Unsurprisingly, this goes badly wrong, as Robert sneezes blood on Rodman's neighbour, an airline pilot who soon spreads the virus around the world. 

Furthermore, even accepting that the company Will and Robert worked for was corrupt and foolish, it's still hard to believe they would be so reckless with a new drug or fail to quarantine Robert after he became ill. It's likely that such a powerful virus would always have killed a lot of people, and yet, had these scientists behaved in a remotely believable way, it might not have destroyed the world.