Originally posted January 26 2014
As some of you may know (some may even care!) I’m something of an aspiring/frustrated writer, and one of my bugbears is bad plotting, lazy writing and a lack of attention to detail. Okay, so that’s three things, but they all come under the one heading: laziness. I’ve seen a good few decent movies (and some very bad ones) suffer from often a very simple slipup in the plot, a case of the writer forgetting or omitting to mention something, or assuming something happens when the viewer cannot reasonably be expected to make that assumption. It happens too often and I wonder it isn’t more widely marked; people in general seem to adopt an “Emperor’s new clothes” approach:
if nobody else saw that then I’m not pointing it out. I must be wrong if no-one else saw it. I must just not get it. And so on.
In this series I’ll be looking at some serious plot flaws in movies, good and bad, famous and niche, and pointing out where the writing got sloppy and how, if at all - and in most cases it really did - it affected the overall enjoyment I took from the picture. Also how it impacted on the main storyline, if it did.
The first one I want to look at is one I would not necessarily consider a good film, but in fairness that could be due to the glaring plot holes I’m about to describe. Without these, perhaps the movie would have come across differently to me. But as far as I’m concerned, screen writers are paid enough to check their work, or have it checked, before it hits the cinema, and anyone who lets incongruities of this magnitude through does not really deserve the title or prestige of being a writer.
Some of these holes in the plot I'm pointing out are small, granted, but some are large enough to take the aircraft in the movie down, were they to appear in its fuselage. And all told, there are not two or three, but twelve separate issues I have with this film. Yeah, twelve plot holes, of varying sizes, but they all contribute to a piece of writing that amazingly Roger Ebert described as "an airtight plot"! I respect the guy, but if he thinks this plot is airtight then I wouldn't want him designing any airlocks for
my space station, is all I can say...
Movie title: Flightplan
Year: 2005
Genre: Thriller/Drama
Stars: Jodie Foster
Directed by: Robert Schwentke
Written by: Billy Ray
Basic storyline: A woman (Foster) who is an aircraft designer is returning with the body of her husband who has died overseas. With her is her daughter. During the flight her daughter goes missing and Foster must try to convince everyone on the plane that she is not going mad; her daughter was with her, must still be on the aircraft.
Plot Hole One: While Foster’s character, Kyle Pratt sleeps her daughter, Julia, is apparently taken from her. Now, I admit that many of the passengers are probably also asleep, watching the movie, reading or just looking out the windows but surely someone on board that plane sees a strange man move in and take the little girl? And why does she go with him? She doesn’t know him and has surely been brought up better than to go with a stranger? I guess she could be asleep but it still should look suspicious. More, when she goes missing someone should remember seeing her being abducted.
Plot Hole Two: It becomes clear that the terrorists have manipulated Kyle into being the fall guy, but the plan is a little weak. In order for it to work, first of all they have to ensure Julia is onboard, and how can they make sure that happens? One or both of them could have missed the flight, it could have been cancelled, any number of things. But the coffin is on the plane, with the bomb inside. So if all elements of this plan didn’t come together, what were they going to do?
Plot Hole Three: How is it that of all the passengers on the aircraft not ONE of them can remember seeing a woman CARRYING HER CHILD onto the plane? Nobody saw that. And not only that, it’s not that they don’t remember her: they all assert she was not there. How do they know? How did NOBODY see Julia, not even the mouthy children of one of the couples?
Plot Hole Four: We find out that one of the flight attendants is “in on the conspiracy”, fine. But why does the other one, when she hears that Julia was not on the passenger manifest, say she did not see her either, when she must have seen her? Okay, so the facts may be blinding her but what about the evidence of her own eyes? Kyle and her daughter board first, they are the first passengers on the aircraft, which may have been pre-arranged by the "bad" flight attendant in order that nobody sees them getting on, but surely the other flight attendant would remember more clearly the very first passengers on, especially one carrying her daughter?
Plot Hole Five: Not that big but … why does the arab guy who Kyle accuses remark that he always watches his own children, and doesn’t lose them then blame someone else? Everyone up to now has agreed Julia was not on the plane: why is he saying she was but has now gone missing? And what was all this about Kyle saying she saw him looking int o her daughter's room the previous night? Is that just a red herring? Is she close to losing it? It's never returned to so it's just left as a very sloppy loose end, a vehicle for a rather clumsy post-911 blame-the-arabs-for-everything idea.
Plot Hole Six: When the captain checks with the mortuary in Berlin about Kyle's husband why do they assert that Julia died with her father? The director of the morgue is to be arrested so must be in on the plot, but was all his staff too? And are we to assume that when the details were checked it just happened to be him that answered?
Plot Hole Seven: Again, a small one, but where did Kyle get the key she uses to gain access to the aircraft’s emergency systems in order to create a diversion?
Plot Hole Eight: Assuming that they want her to believe that her daughter died with her husband, why is there no coffin with the child in it? Would she have left her daughter back in Berlin?
Plot Hole Nine: Again, a small one but ... Kyle handcuffs Carson, the Air Marshall who turns out to be the bad guy, so how did the "bad" flight attendant free him from his handcuffs so quickly? She didn’t even look for a key. One second she was approaching, next Carson was free.
Plot Hole Ten: Carson said they needed a credible hijacker who knew the plane. Why? What difference did it make? If she ran raving like a lunatic looking for her child without knowing about the layout of the aircraft, Kyle would still be seen as a madwoman. Why was it important she knew about the layout of the plane? And adding to that, she worked on engines. It's not to be assumed she would therefore know the full layout of the aircraft. These things are often assembled in sections, at different work stations. She might only ever have seen engines, not any other part of the fuselage. To imagine she could find her way around the innards of the jet, just because she worked on and designed the engines, is I think pushing it a bit.
Plot Hole Eleven: The attendant runs from the plane which is surrounded by cops and military, and nobody even challenges her, never mind shoots at her or orders her to show her hands? She just runs off into the night? Yes she is eventually captured, but would YOU just run out with all those guns presumably trained on the aircraft?
Plot Hole Twelve: Similarly, after BLOWING UP THE PLANE Kyle emerges from the smoke --- and remember, she’s the prime suspect --- and is not even challenged? Okay, so she has her daughter in her arms but still.
One of the most cloying and aggravating things about this movie are the voices at the end as Kyle walks away with her daughter. People say “I told you there was a little girl” and “She never gave up.” Yeah, well where were they when she was being accused of being insane, and weren’t these the same people who looked at her as if how dare she disrupt their flight, looking for a fictional daughter? Now suddenly they all believe, which is understandable, but now they all believed in the first place? Oh sure.
One final thing, and it is a small niggle but bugs me nevertheless. The movie is called
Flightplan. A flightplan is the information an aircraft lodges with the control tower and ATC as to where it’s going and how it’s going to get there. The “flightplan” referred to here seems to be the plan the three people have to get money out of the airline and blame it on Kyle. Not quite the same thing. Annoying, to someone who is an aircraft nut.