Why Plot Holes Matter (And Why They Sometimes Don’t)
Imagine you’re watching a movie at the theater. At one point, a character says something that subtly but directly contradicts a plot point from earlier in the film. Later, a different character who didn’t seem very important until now emerges from the ether conveniently supplied with tools or information that could have been a lot more helpful at the beginning of the story. Finally, our heroes reach the MacGuffin, the object or person that the film’s plot gravitates around, and as the climax reaches peak boil a thought suddenly springs into your brain: “Wait, didn’t they already have something that could do that? Why couldn’t they have just done X, Y, or Z instead of going to all this trouble?”
In a given theater audience, let’s say five out of ten people won’t notice these things at all. Three more of these audience members will be aware of some storytelling hiccups, but they’ll say they didn’t mind and still enjoyed the film. That leaves us with two more people, and while both will say that these discrepancies were significant flaws that tangibly detracted from the movie’s quality, one of those two will get very, very angry about them and will crusade against the movie to anyone unfortunate enough to ask them if they did anything fun this weekend.
Odds are good that you’ve been all four of these types of audience members at…
