Top 10 Unanswered Questions in Geek Movies

[The Grim Squeaker]

Top 10 Unanswered Questions in Geeky Movies

Even the best movies ever made leave unanswered questions in their wake. Some refer to these as “plot holes,” but why not give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt? Maybe they had a perfectly reasonable explanation in mind, and simply… forgot to include it in the movie.

Some movies’ unanswered questions are integral to their plots, as with Citizen Kane’s famous issue that nobody was around to hear Charles Foster Kane say “Rosebud” as he died. Most of the time the questions are less important than that, but still can affect your enjoyment of the film, for better or worse — yes, some movies are improved, because without unanswered questions to argue about, there would be little to really discuss about the movie. The Transformers movies are prime examples.

So, then, here is GeekDad’s list of the ten best unanswered questions from geeky movies. What do we mean by “best?” Well, these are ones that are fun to talk about, but that aren’t so significant as to seriously detract from the movie’s quality.
Image copyright Fox, used under fair use


10. Independence Day: The computer virus - This movie has so many unanswered questions that one is forced to conclude that most, if not all, really are just plot holes after all. But then there’s the computer virus that Jeff Goldblum uploads into the alien mothership, that is ultimately what allows the humans to defeat the invaders. Ask any software developer, and they will tell you that it is ridiculously hard to write a virus on a PC that works on a Mac, or vice-versa, and those are two computer systems that were designed and built by human beings. The likelihood of being able to successfully write a virus on a human-built computer of any sort that would affect a computer built by telepathic aliens is infinitesimal. Of course, this is an alien species that has managed to travel in huge ships across vast distances but has never invented a clock (hence the countdown timer they use before initiating their attack), so who knows what sort of vulnerabilities their computers might have?

9. Raiders of the Lost Ark: Indy on the U-boat- The Nazis stop the cargo ship and take the Ark and Marion to their submarine. The crewman tells the captain he can’t find Indy, but then notices that Indy has, of course, swum over to the sub and is climbing onto it. There’s stirring music, Indy waves at the crewmen, he climbs up onto the conning tower, he looks around for a second, and then… the movie cuts to the interior of the sub, where it gets underway, and then we see the red line moving across the map. So how, exactly, does Indy survive this journey? He has no special equipment, can’t get into the sub (the hatches have already been closed, since they’re about to get underway), and it’s about to, y’know, go under the water, in that way subs do. Now, I remember reading once that they scripted (and possibly even filmed) a scene where Indy ties himself to the periscope with his whip. This is, of course, patently ridiculous, since it requires that the sub go no lower than periscope depth on the whole trip and, even if that happened, he’d still probably die. But Indy does tons of things that should get him killed, so we’d have believed that if they’d shown it. But they didn’t.

8. Back to the Future: Marty’s parents’ bad memory - Even though Marty is only in 1955 for a week, he plays a pretty pivotal role in his future parents’ lives. It stands to reason, then, that they would remember him pretty well, don’t you think? Now, I’m not George McFly, but most men would probably have a few questions if one of their children grew up to look exactly like a friend from high school that their wife dated briefly.
Image copyright CBS Studios, used under fair use


7. Star Trek (the 2009 movie): Old Spock biding his time - Kirk gets marooned on the ice planet by Young Spock, and Old Spock saves his life. Then Old Spock tells Kirk that there’s a Starfleet outpost nearby, and they trudge through the snow to get there. Now, Old Spock was marooned there a while before by Nero, and he knew that Nero was going to try to destroy Vulcan. So why didn’t he seek out this Starfleet outpost he knew about until after Kirk arrived? Don’t you think that maybe it would’ve been a smart idea to warn Starfleet that someone was about to try to destroy Vulcan, and, oh, by the way, he’s from the future?

6. Spider-Man 2: Doctor Octavius’s arms - OK, so Octavius had to invent these heat- and magnet-proof metal arms, controlled by sophisticated AI, that attach directly to a human body and interface directly with the brain. So why, exactly, does he need Harry Osborn to finance his big fusion experiment? Is there any doubt that the technology behind these arms would be worth millions, if not billions, of dollars? He could buy and sell Harry.

5. Star Trek IV: The ease of time warp - So, all you have to do to go back in time is slingshot around the sun on a carefully-calculated route, right? It’s the same thing they did in the TOS episode Tomorrow Is Yesterday. If it’s really that easy, then any warp-enabled ship can do it any time, so surely someone in the Klingon or Romulan empires must have figured this out. The Klingons might be too honorable, but why haven’t the Romulans taken advantage of this, and used it for all sorts of nefarious purposes?

4. Star Wars: The Death Star’s slow attack - So the Death Star follows the tracking device on the Millennium Falcon to the rebel base. They jump out of light speed, and, for no clear reason, emerge on the far side of the planet Yavin from the moon where the base is. This light-speed jump takes a split-second, but now they have to wait minutes so they can clear the planet. Not only that, but the Death Star is capable of blowing up entire planets, not just moons, so why don’t they just blow up the entire planet of Yavin? Surely that would effectively destroy anything on its moons as well.

3. Gremlins: Feeding after midnight - Don’t get them wet; OK, fine. Don’t expose them to sunlight; sure, why not? Don’t feed them after midnight; um, how’s that again? If you can’t feed them “after midnight,” at what point during the day does it cease to be “after midnight” so you can feed them again? For that matter, how does the mogwai know what time zone it’s in? Suppose I get my mogwai in New York and then take a vacation to San Francisco — should I not feed my mogwai after midnight Eastern Time or Pacific Time? And what about Daylight Saving Time? Considering the consequences, these details seem pretty important.
Image copyright Warner Bros., used under fair use.

2. The Empire Strikes Back: Time dilation - Luke and R2D2 leave Hoth to go to Dagobah at the same time Han, Leia, Chewbacca, and C3PO leave to go… well, they never really say what their initial destination is. Anyway, on Dagobah, Luke embarks on an intensive Jedi training course with Yoda — it’s never stated, but it’s heavily implied that this takes a long time; and besides, you would think a full course of Jedi training would take at least months, right? (We know it’s a full course, because when Luke comes back in Jedi, Yoda tells him he doesn’t need more training.) So, at the same time that Luke finishes this months-long training and runs off to Cloud City, his friends have clearly just gotten there a short time before. Yet all they did on the way was flee from a Star Destroyer and fly down the gullet of a giant space worm. That must have taken hours, not months. So was the Millennium Falcon flying at close to the speed of light (but not at light speed) for a while and thus experiencing time dilation? Yeah, that’s the ticket.

1. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Was all that really necessary? - It would really have been useful if Henry Jones Sr. had found out, or, if he knew, mentioned the bit about the Great Seal. You know, the Great Seal that the Grail Knight tells them the Grail can’t pass, and which sets off a highly localized earthquake when Elsa tries to pass with the Grail. Because, as it turns out, the whole race against the Nazis to get to the temple and giving a fake grail to Donovan so he could die gruesomely wasn’t necessary at all. The Nazis could never have removed the Grail from the temple anyway! I mean, leave aside the point that Donovan clearly had no idea how to get past the booby traps, and Elsa wasn’t much help to him, so without Indy and his dad there they probably wouldn’t have gotten to the Grail anyway. Once Henry Sr. had been rescued, they could’ve just gone home.

I highlighted the stupider ones. The DS and Yavin was explained by Yavin being a gas giant, and it's gravity well as I recall.

[Duckie]

The U-Boat one seems incorrect- U-Boats did not travel a majority of their time underwater, and indeed only submerged for attacks. So if he were holding on to U-Boat, and the U-Boat didn't find any targets, he could have totally just hid on the side of the conning tower until he got close enough to swim to where he wanted to go. The more strange thing is that nobody being a lookout in the conning tower noticed him.

Quite possibly he sailed away on it, waited until they opened the hatch again to send out the watchmen, and then did some dramatic theme-music punching out of the dudes and thus got inside.

That said mine is a technically nonsensical explanation because it shows the sub submerging, which is just odd since it by any reasonable standard shouldn't be submerging except due to the fact that nuclear submarines have changed how people view submarines and thus caused a brain-bug.

[andrewgpaul]

3) I can buy the "not after midnight" thing - Perhaps there's some mystical connection with the sun being on the opposite side of the world from the Mogwai. What's slightly vaguer is how long after midnight does it stop being "after midnight"?

[The Grim Squeaker]

3) I can buy the "not after midnight" thing - Perhaps there's some mystical connection with the sun being on the opposite side of the world from the Mogwai. What's slightly vaguer is how long after midnight does it stop being "after midnight"?

They actually laugh at this in movie in Gremlins 2.

[Drooling Iguana]

Since it wasn't included in the OP, here's the link to the article.

[Ted C]

Top 10 Unanswered Questions in Geeky Movies

10. Independence Day: The computer virus - But then there’s the computer virus that Jeff Goldblum uploads into the alien mothership, that is ultimately what allows the humans to defeat the invaders. Ask any software developer, and they will tell you that it is ridiculously hard to write a virus on a PC that works on a Mac, or vice-versa, and those are two computer systems that were designed and built by human beings. The likelihood of being able to successfully write a virus on a human-built computer of any sort that would affect a computer built by telepathic aliens is infinitesimal.

Excuse: The US government has been in possession of an alien fighter for decades. We can only suppose that they managed to figure out the operating system in that time.

9. Raiders of the Lost Ark: Indy on the U-boat- So how, exactly, does Indy survive this journey? He has no special equipment, can’t get into the sub (the hatches have already been closed, since they’re about to get underway), and it’s about to, y’know, go under the water, in that way subs do.

Excuse: It's entirely possible that the submarine never submerged. That old German U-boat would be a diesel-electric, and it would be able to travel much faster for greater distances on the surface than under water. As there's no threat to the submarine from foreign navies (WW2 hasn't broken out, yet), there's no reason to submerge.

8. Back to the Future: Marty’s parents’ bad memory - Even though Marty is only in 1955 for a week, he plays a pretty pivotal role in his future parents’ lives. It stands to reason, then, that they would remember him pretty well, don’t you think?

Excuse: None whatsoever... that's a bad plot hole.

7. Star Trek (the 2009 movie): Old Spock biding his time - So why didn’t he seek out this Starfleet outpost he knew about until after Kirk arrived?

Excuse: Spock may well have started much farther from the outpost than Kirk. He could have been making his way on foot through the snow toward the outpost for quite some time and still not been any closer than Kirk by the time they met.

6. Spider-Man 2: Doctor Octavius’s arms - So why, exactly, does he need Harry Osborn to finance his big fusion experiment?

Excuse: None. It's a wallbanger.

5. Star Trek IV: The ease of time warp - If it’s really that easy, then any warp-enabled ship can do it any time, so surely someone in the Klingon or Romulan empires must have figured this out. The Klingons might be too honorable, but why haven’t the Romulans taken advantage of this, and used it for all sorts of nefarious purposes?

Excuse: As we've covered at length here, there would be no point; creating new timelines as Star Trek time-travel does would do nothing to benefit the Romulan Empire in their native timeline.

4. Star Wars: The Death Star’s slow attack - Not only that, but the Death Star is capable of blowing up entire planets, not just moons, so why don’t they just blow up the entire planet of Yavin?

Excuse: As we've discussed here, Yavin is so much more massive than a planet like Alderaan that it's destruction would probably take hours, during which the Rebels would escape. Also, the navigational limitations on something as big as the Death Star may not allow it to choose precisely where it emerges in a star system.

3. Gremlins: Feeding after midnight [/b]- Don’t get them wet; OK, fine. Don’t expose them to sunlight; sure, why not? Don’t feed them after midnight; um, how’s that again? If you can’t feed them “after midnight,” at what point during the day does it cease to be “after midnight” so you can feed them again?

Excuse: None. That's pretty damned unclear.

2. The Empire Strikes Back: Time dilation - So was the Millennium Falcon flying at close to the speed of light (but not at light speed) for a while and thus experiencing time dilation? Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Excuse: The Millenium Falcon apparently spent much of the time hiding in an asteroid field trying to get the hyperdrive working. When they gave up on that, they had to limp to Bespin on an appallingly slow back-up drive.

1. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Was all that really necessary? - The Nazis could never have removed the Grail from the temple anyway!

Excuse: There was nothing in Senior's notes about the seal, so Indy and company really had no way of knowing that the Grail was perfectly safe from the Nazis.

[Captain Seafort]

Excuse: The US government has been in possession of an alien fighter for decades. We can only suppose that they managed to figure out the operating system in that time.

Counter: They'd been in possession of a stone-cold heap of junk for decades. They only really started figuring it out after the others showed up and the power came back on.

[Drooling Iguana]

That Last Crusade bit could also apply to Raiders: If Indy had just stayed home, the Nazis would have found the Ark, opened it, and had their faces melt off. I don't remember Crystal Skull that well as I've only seen it once, but I'm pretty sure that things would have worked out the same way there without Indy's involvement: CommieChick gets skull, wakes up aliens, gets vaped, aliens go home. Really, Temple of Doom was the only time Indy's involvement didn't do more harm than good.

[Thanas]

Excuse: It's entirely possible that the submarine never submerged. That old German U-boat would be a diesel-electric, and it would be able to travel much faster for greater distances on the surface than under water. As there's no threat to the submarine from foreign navies (WW2 hasn't broken out, yet), there's no reason to submerge.

But the u-boot is shown to start submerging.

[Ted C]

But the u-boot is shown to start submerging.

After which the captain must have said something like, "What do you think you are doing, schweinhund? No one ordered you to submerge! Level us out and proceed on course as ordered!"

[Ted C]

Counter: They'd been in possession of a stone-cold heap of junk for decades. They only really started figuring it out after the others showed up and the power came back on.

I never said it was a perfect excuse. I can only guess there must have been some kind of battery back up that they got running at one point long enough to examine the OS.

[Azazal]

Been some time since I saw Spidy 2, but didn't Doc Oct create those arms as part of the fusion experiment? If so, sounds like he was using Osborn's money there.

[PeZook]

9. Raiders of the Lost Ark: Indy on the U-boat- So how, exactly, does Indy survive this journey? He has no special equipment, can’t get into the sub (the hatches have already been closed, since they’re about to get underway), and it’s about to, y’know, go under the water, in that way subs do.

Excuse: It's entirely possible that the submarine never submerged. That old German U-boat would be a diesel-electric, and it would be able to travel much faster for greater distances on the surface than under water. As there's no threat to the submarine from foreign navies (WW2 hasn't broken out, yet), there's no reason to submerge.

The whole idea is nonsensical not as much because the sub submerged, but because those things are ridiculously small, and there is no way to hide inside even a large Type IX for several days. Obviously, hiding on the outside causes its own problems.

The submerging itself is easy to explain: they submerged so that the freighter wouldn't be able to ascertain their course and radio it in to anyone who could cause undue inconvenience. Once they got far enough away, they'd probably surface and go on their way.

[Starglider]

The problem in Independence Day would have been greatly simplified (although still ridiculously hard) if the alien computers lack any concept of software security. This is entirely possible; they could have an insect-like society where the notion of someone trying to sabotage the system or access something they shouldn't is inconceivable. In which case, their culture would not bother with locks, access control, firewalls or virus checkers. Presumably they were too arrogant to think that a lesser species could ever exploit that.

[PeZook]

Just add two throaway lines. One, do away with the "Oh hey we cracked the ship in two hours" thing and have Area 51 scientists devise a virus from their DECADES OF RESEARCH, two, have Malcolm throw a line about how crappy their computer security is.

And for god's sake, don't have him come up with the idea when his deadbeat dad says he could catch a cold. Jesus, that was one painful scene.

[Thanas]

The submerging itself is easy to explain: they submerged so that the freighter wouldn't be able to ascertain their course and radio it in to anyone who could cause undue inconvenience. Once they got far enough away, they'd probably surface and go on their way.

No it is not. That would have required them to get out of the line of sight, which was several miles. U-boots like that typically travelled at a low speed underwater of 3-5 knots. Please explain how Indy is supposed to hold his breath for over an hour.

[FOG3]

Almost the entire point of the part of Independence Day before the Aliens start shooting stuff up was David Levinson, MIT grad, cracking their communications that was being hidden in the normal signal traffic. And if people think a heavily used com signal trick cannot be cracked, they need to look up WW2 history.

The cut away didn't exactly force time for his tinkering with figuring out how to hack the Alien system to be that minimal either, and delivery was through a hard connection to the critical systems. Not exactly even vaguely beginning to start to compare to the normal computer vulnerabilities depicted in SF, making it an utterly ironic choice to bitch about. If anything I find the suggestions here more stupid then the actual execution.

Bottom line however was Independence Day was a movie that took itself only slightly more seriously then Men in Black.

[Jarek Densaku]

7. Star Trek (the 2009 movie): Old Spock biding his time - So why didn’t he seek out this Starfleet outpost he knew about until after Kirk arrived?

Star Trek2009, as a movie, makes such nonsense on it's own i could ask at least 50 unawnsered questions only about this movie.

[Aaron]

No it is not. That would have required them to get out of the line of sight, which was several miles. U-boots like that typically travelled at a low speed underwater of 3-5 knots. Please explain how Indy is supposed to hold his breath for over an hour.

Could he have hid inside the conning tower? Between the upper and lower hatches?

[Thanas]

No it is not. That would have required them to get out of the line of sight, which was several miles. U-boots like that typically travelled at a low speed underwater of 3-5 knots. Please explain how Indy is supposed to hold his breath for over an hour.

Could he have hid inside the conning tower? Between the upper and lower hatches?

They would have submerged to such a depth (standard travelling depth was 30m, iirc) that this would not have been an option.

Even if it was periscope depth, he would have only been able to survive by clinging to the periscope (preposterous - it is not like the german's would not have noticed their periscope suddenly weighing a lot more and there is no reason they would have had the periscope up in the first place). And if he hid inside the connning tower - (not an option due to the aforementioned reasons) then don't you think the crew would have noticed someone walking on their hatches?

[Aaron]

They would have submerged to such a depth (standard travelling depth was 30m, iirc) that this would not have been an option.

Even if it was periscope depth, he would have only been able to survive by clinging to the periscope (preposterous - it is not like the german's would not have noticed their periscope suddenly weighing a lot more and there is no reason they would have had the periscope up in the first place). And if he hid inside the connning tower - (not an option due to the aforementioned reasons) then don't you think the crew would have noticed someone walking on their hatches?

I mean that he climbs in before they submerge and waits there. When he gets on the boat the deck and tower are completely empty and yes there is absolutely no were for him to hide inside, or outside the hull for that matter. Actually just disregard the whole thought, I'm going to wave my hands and say it's magic, not much else makes sense.

[PeZook]

No it is not. That would have required them to get out of the line of sight, which was several miles. U-boots like that typically travelled at a low speed underwater of 3-5 knots. Please explain how Indy is supposed to hold his breath for over an hour.

What I meant was to explain why the sub submerged. Indy's survival was a giant plot hole either way and I agree: he couldn't have hidden on the deck, and they'd have spotted him in the conning tower, unless he did some really crazy acrobatics: and even then, one mistake or suspicious sound and the crew would've easily found him with a minimum of effort.

[Shroom Man 777]

Then he must've done some really crazy acrobatics!

[NecronLord]

Excuse: The US government has been in possession of an alien fighter for decades. We can only suppose that they managed to figure out the operating system in that time.

Counter: They'd been in possession of a stone-cold heap of junk for decades. They only really started figuring it out after the others showed up and the power came back on.

There's a novel that details what they did with it; in short, they did manage to get it going for a bit, but only partially.

[Oskuro]

Please explain how Indy is supposed to hold his breath for over an hour.

Pice of cake compared to surviving a nuclear explosion. The man is pure concentrated awesome.



As a side note, on the adventure game Indy: Fate of Atlantis there's a similar scene, in wich you sneak inside a german sub and have to find a way to free the girl and get some documents. It was ridiculously easy to get caught and thrown out to the sea, killing you (in a Lucasarts graphic adventure, anathema!).