Plot Holes Quotes

Action films have a certain illogicalness to them. They're what we call, when we're working, 'exaggerated realism.'

The thing I don't like on television is when somebody does something that makes absolutely no sense just for the shock of it.

You do have to wonder how Jack Bauer, maverick hero of '24,' can stay hidden for so long when no matter where he goes, he always seems within range of a TV camera. Or six.

I've started movies without screenplays both on 'Clash' and on 'Hulk,' and that is tremendously stressful because you have a tendency to overcompensate with effects. You haven't tested it in your head. You didn't run it over and over again and covered all of the plot holes and figure it out. It's a marathon that you sprint.

I can't stand characters with contradictory information.

One of my biggest peeves is when the writer hasn't given you enough information to figure everything out. You should be able to go back to the beginning of 'Gone Girl,' after you've already read it and you know everything, and say, 'Check - check - yes, she gave us that information.'

In a zombie apocalypse movie, nobody's ever seen a zombie movie. Or in an alien invasion movie, nobody has ever seen an alien invasion movie, like 'Independence Day.'

When a writer is already stretching the bounds of reality by writing within a science fiction or fantasy setting, that writer must realize that excessive coincidence makes the fictional reality the writer is creating less 'real.'

But it isn’t a rough draft either. The one I turned in several months ago was rough. There were some bad plot holes, some logical inconsistencies, pacing problems, and not nearly enough lesbian unicorns.

One of the greatest sins in any story is false suspense. The kind of 'suspense' that disintegrates the moment you give your reader one second to think about it. And it's an easy trap to fall into, so watch carefully for it. If your story hinges on the question, 'Will Superman be pushed so far in his battle against Lex Luthor that he'll have to kill him?', or if your big cliffhanger moment is, 'Wow, is Spider-Man really dead this time?', then I understand Food Lion is hiring.

When I was shooting 'The Bourne Identity,' I had a mantra: 'How come you never see James Bond pay a phone bill?' It sounds trite, but it became the foundation of that franchise.

At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.

Any time two characters are talking about a third, the scene is a crock of s***.

It's much easier to make a movie with kind of stylistic pyrotechnics because you can hide behind that if there's a gap in the story.

After "Jack Reacher" the parts I didn't like, most of it was silly.

I write, and when see a movie in which it's supernatural, some other worlds, or some other aspect to our world that we're not aware of, and [they] don't explain what the rules are, that kind of stuff drives me crazy.

Sometimes television can just jump from one bit of plot to the next, and the words fill in the in-between.

It annoys me when contemporary films and television shows create artificial tensions that could easily be resolved by a quick email or the use of a search engine. 'La La Land' was guilty of this several times, as well as a more generalised aesthetic nostalgia.

I'm not looking for is the audience going to like it [the film during the first screening] or not. I want to hear somebody try to poke a hole in it. I want to hear why they saw the logic was flawed or why that scene was not believable.

Personally, I avoid deus ex machina like the plague - if you have to use one, it means you failed to set up the universe and the plot properly. It's like a whodunnit where there's no actual way for the reader to identify the perpetrator before the climactic reveal: there's no sense of closure for the reader.

I know, a lot of the films I've done, it's obvious I'm going to beat up six guys and just walk out the door. There's not a lot of motivating factors - it's just action for the sake of action.

The great thing about 'Breaking Bad' was they were able to write themselves out of anything.

If something is crucial to the plot, then I'd better be sure I've got my facts straight. Readers of crime novels are smart and savvy, and they'll waste no time letting me know if there's a hole in my plot.

I get fed up with plots that are driven by someone constantly getting information on a computer.

My big thing was when you see a superhero movie where their powers ain't consistent - like, they lift a truck but then struggle to fight just a regular human being - it makes it harder to believe.