Let me tell you a story. When I was in primary school, probably around 8 years old, a kid didn’t turn up for school one day. The teacher asked if anyone had seen them, and I raised my hand and I told the teacher that, yes, not only had I seen the kid outside school that morning, but I’d also seen him talking to an adult and then get into a van with the same adult.
Do adults exists? Yes. Did this one? No.
You see, I’m one of nature’s story tellers. At the time in the 80s this was labelled as telling lies (hard to find a fault there) and spending a lot of time standing the class room corner, but damn it, I could see an opening and I went for it.
The kid turned up to school later (his dad had taken him to the dentist and forgot to tell the school or something – I dunno, I was 8), but this was well after I’d been whisked off to the head teacher’s office and the police called, where I embellished this apparent abduction with physical descriptions and a partial licence plate.
Off went the police, I was sent back to the class room reassured I’d been brave, and everyone was happy.
Only, that can’t have been the case, can it? Something happened, because the police were involved and they thought a child had been kidnapped. But I honestly never heard anything about the incident again, and it was never spoken of at school (I’d already moved on – never revise your old stories).
What’s my point? Well I’m glad you asked. My point is, not everything is tied up and explained away. Yep, I’m talking about “plot holes”.”
I hate plot holes. Not that they exists, but that some people jump on them as if they’re some kind of gotcha and validate their own opinion of their superiority. What these people call plot holes can be many things, but they’re usually down to the choices a character makes in fiction or on screen. The big one for me is Charlize Theron’s character running directly away from the rolling Engineer spaceship in Prometheus. “No one would run directly away from a threat!” they cry. Give me 30 seconds and I’ll show you a dozen videos of someone doing exactly that when practicing home arboriculture, and that’s without the terror of being hunted by aliens.
Humans are panicky skin bags, full of water and hormones, and we make stupid decisions even when unforced. Stick us in stressful situations – which stories mostly are – and those decisions become even more stupid. If everyone acted sensibly there would be no no drama, no stakes. No stories.
There’s an episode of Community where the characters discuss how to act in a horror film. IE, call the police, don’t split up and explore the creepy house – just stand back to back and wait.
Yeah. Sounds riveting.
There’s a saying from Tom Clancy that the difference between fiction and reality is fiction has to make sense. The problem with pithy sayings is they don’t always bear any relevance to actuality. Fiction, like life, doesn’t always make sense. But so long as it’s compelling, who cares?
There’s one plot hole I do agree stands up to scrutiny (plot hole in this case meaning ‘goes against the internal world logic of the story’ because the people who enjoy picking them apart can’t even agree on what a plot hole is), and that’s the first scene of Star Wars a New Hope with the artillery commander who decides to let the last escape go un-vaporised.
They destroyed all the others. The Empire is always about it’s soldiers following orders, and he followed them up to that point, and there was no reason of him not to follow them then.
But, had he given that one order Episodes 4 through 9 wouldn’t have happened.
Boring.
Wait….*thinks of A New Hope*….. slightly more boring.
The events in my primary school above were never tied up, but for one morning they made things a little more exciting for a few people….. and probably resulted in my mum being called in to see the headteacher about me making things up again.
Michael