6 Important Problems That Famous Movies Forgot To Solve
If it was legally possible, every movie would end with Porky Pig popping out of the screen to say "That's all, folks," assuring that that the characters' problems are over. However, as we love to point out, that stuttering swine is a fucking liar -- plenty of famous movies have unresolved plot points that will inevitably come back to bite the protagonist in the ass, either because the writers forgot about them or because they thought no one would notice.
Well, we did, so ...
Pulp Fiction -- Marsellus Will Quickly Find Out That Butch Killed Vincent
Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) is a boxer who gets paid by crime kingpin Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) to lose a fight, only to literally punch his opponent to death and run off with the money. Marsellus has every intention of tracking Butch down and getting medieval on his ass, but through a series of circumstance that can only be described as "Tarantinoesque," they both wind up as captives in a pawn shop basement by a pair of hillbilly rapists and their leather-bound gimp.
After Butch breaks free, he makes the honorable decision to go back and save his arch-enemy and his butthole. In exchange for saving his life, Marsellus forgives Butch for double-crossing him as long as he 1) leaves town forever, and 2) never tells anyone what just happened.
"Actually, this is so improbable that no one would believe you, so go right ahead."
John Travolta. Or, more specifically, Travolta's character's corpse in Butch's bathroom. Remember, right before the pawn shop sequence, Butch stops by his apartment and finds Marsellus' top henchman, Vincent Vega (Travolta), using his toilet without asking, and kills him right there.
"I smell Pop-Tarts!"
When you're watching the movie, it's easy to assume that Marcellus is forgiving Butch for this, too. But Marcellus didn't know about it -- Butch runs into him (literally) on his way back to the apartment. When Vincent's bullet-riddled body is found inside Butch's bathroom, it's going to be pretty obvious who was responsible -- especially since Marsellus already knows Butch was at his apartment, since they had their encounter right outside the building.
"Usually my other henchman gets the doughnuts, but he just quit to become a drifter."
That changes everything. Marsellus might be willing to forgive Butch for ripping him off, but there's a good chance he'll change his tune once he realizes Vincent is dead. Remember, this wasn't just any random henchman -- Marsellus trusted Vincent so much, he asked him to go get hammered with his hot wife. We wouldn't trust our own ED-suffering grandpas with that.
Hell, even if Marsellus doesn't want to kill Butch, he still kind of has to. Once word gets around that the guy who killed a beloved member of the Wallace criminal organization is out there, acting like he has nothing to worry about (because he honestly thinks he has nothing to worry about), Marsellus is gonna look like a chump. One day, one of those henchmen Marsellus apparently pays to take years-long vacations is going to see Butch at a supermarket in Colombia or something, and he'll have no choice but to order a hit.
"Oh, and find out what they call the Whoppers over there before you come back."
Ben Affleck plays Nick Dunne, who becomes the most hated man in America when his wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike), goes missing and everyone just sorta assumes he killed her. Nick is so desperate that he even hires Tyler Perry to be his attorney, but then ... PLOT TWIST! It turns out Amy actually staged her own disappearance and is planning to commit an elaborate suicide to frame Nick for murder, all of this as revenge for him cheating on her with a young brunette.
Which we always assumed was the plot to Jersey Girl.
So, she changes her appearance, buys a cheap car off Craigslist and drives out of town, leaving her husband to dangle in the wind. But then ... DOUBLE PLOT TWIST! Amy's plan goes wrong, and she's forced to improvise a new one. She seduces her rich ex-boyfriend, Desi (Neil Patrick Harris), slashes his throat, and makes a dramatic return to Nick in front of the TV cameras, claiming Desi Howser, M.D., was holding her hostage until she bravely escaped.
Nice to know a blood-drenched woman can drive hundreds of miles before attracting any attention.
Everyone buys this, forcing poor Nick to remain trapped in a marriage to a complete psychopath. Man, she really thought of everything.
The car Amy bought, to sneak out of town? The last we see of it, she's abandoning outside a casino, while she was supposedly a "hostage." Which the cops will find and trace back to her.
"It was either her, or the chick from Grey's Anatomy."
Amy's original plan was to destroy the car before destroying herself, but when things go wrong she winds up dumping it in that casino parking lot. This here is the difference between real life and fiction -- in the latter, you can just make objects disappear when they're not needed for the story. In an action movie, when a character tosses a gun aside during a sidewalk shootout, we don't think about a little kid walking along and finding it five minutes later.
Well, in real life, when vehicles are abandoned in public lots, they inevitably draw the attention of the police (or hobos looking for a bathroom, then the police). The cops will then look up the original owner, who will say they sold it to some lady on Craigslist. But that person has probably seen Amy's face on TV by now -- if not during the initial coverage of her disappearance, then surely during the media circus her spectacular return caused. Hell, there were probably three Lifetime movies about her by the end of that week.
Lifetime presents Vanished Girl, The Girl Who Wasn't There Anymore, and Hey, Where Did That Girl Go?
And once the cops realize Amy was at the casino, her whole web of bullshit will collapse faster than, uh, an actual web of bullshit. And they will realize she was there -- after dumping the car, Amy met Desi inside the casino; unless the most inept investigators ever are assigned to the case, they'll eventually find surveillance footage of Amy sitting down and getting all chummy with her so-called "abductor."
"For the last time, Ellen Pompeo was in Grey's! I'm someone else!"
In conclusion, look out for the sequel where Nick hires a drag-wearing Tyler Perry to tear Amy apart on the witness stand, Gone Girl 2: You Madea Huge Mistake.
Beauty And The Beast is the best animated children's musical ever made about Stockholm syndrome. The Beast needs the love of a woman in order to break his spell and transform back into a human prince, so he holds Belle against her will in his castle until he wins her heart. Gaston, a jackass from Belle's village, finds this a tad horrifying and goes to Beast's castle to kill him. And he's not alone -- through the power of his excellent singing voice, Gaston riles up a small army of pissed-up folks to accompany him on his raid of the Beast's castle.
"Let's get contemporary on his ass!"
Eventually, Belle's love breaks the spell, turning the Beast into a person again. And they all lived happily ever after, except Gaston, who slips and falls into a pit.
The leading cause of death for movie villains between 1986 and 1992.
All the other jackass villagers who also want to kill the Beast. The last time we see them, an army of angry villagers were storming in and getting overwhelmed by the Beast's furniture/servants ...
Somewhere, one of them is getting assaulted by an angry bidet.
... but that doesn't mean they'll quietly go home and forget about the whole thing now. In their song, the villagers admit "We don't like what we don't understand" -- if anything, the Beast suddenly turning handsome through his heretic powers should only freak them out even more. Also, those people loved Gaston with the intensity of Justin Bieber fans: They sang a whole song about how awesome he was. How are they going to react when they find out he's dead? Sure, he fell by accident, but they didn't see that. For all they know, the Beast ate him. With sentient cutlery.
Honestly, it seems pretty clear this entire village consists of terrible people. At the beginning of the film, they sing a song about how weird Belle is for having the nerve to be an independent, free-spirited nonconformist. Later, they almost send her dad to an insane asylum for no reason. There's no indication the superstitious, close-minded villagers are suddenly going to accept these folks with open arms. If Belle, the prince, or the now-human servants ever step outside the castle again, don't be surprised if the situation devolves into a Disneyfied version of the French Revolution, guillotines included.
On the other hand, maybe the remains of the villagers are now buried under that floor.
Delivery Man -- Vince Vaughn's 391 Unidentified Children (Will Accidentally Bone Each Other)
Vince Vaughn plays David, a dude who made hundreds of anonymous donations to a sperm bank in the early '90s, and is now horrified to find out that there are 533 little Vince Vaughns out there. One hundred and forty two of his grown-up children organize a class action lawsuit to reveal David's identity; he fights the suit at first, but eventually learns a valuable life lesson of some sort and comes clean to them.
He also reveals his identity.
David's other 391 sons and daughters out there who still don't know who their dad is ... which, thanks to a little thing called genetic sexual attraction, will probably result in at least a few people accidentally boning a sibling.
It doesn't help that most of his kids are, like, Hollywood-movie attractive.
Fun fact: There are numerous documented cases of siblings meeting for the first time during adulthood and becoming sexually attracted to each other. Yeah, we lied, that's not fun. In fact, in one particular case, a British man had such a hard time dealing with his obsessive attraction to his long-lost sister that he nearly destroyed his marriage and considered suicide. There are actual real-life cases of men donating enough sperm to father over a hundred children, but people are calling for a legal limit to how many of your little swimmers can be handed out to prevent this sort of Korean movie-level horror.
That clearly wasn't a concern in Delivery Man. In the film, David made all his deposits at the same sperm bank, so it's reasonable to assume that most of his surrogate children grew up in the same area, went to the same night clubs, and noticed the same oddly specific mole on a sexual partner's back the morning after. Hell, it's still gotta be pretty awkward for the 142 surrogates who do know whose balls they came from. How would you feel if, from now on, you had to live with the possibility that anyone your age you feel attracted to might be your sister?
"Just so you know, I'll require a DNA test before we can have sex."
"I just asked for the time."
However you look at it, if any of these half-siblings procreate with each other, we're looking at an entire generation of people opening up Average Joe's gymnasiums while saying "You're so money" to everyone.
Training Day -- Denzel Washington's Corrupt Cop Buddies Will Come After The Hero
Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke) is an L.A.P.D. rookie who is teamed up for a training day with veteran narcotics detective Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington), and wacky hijinks ensue between the comically mismatched partners: Alonzo murders people, steals $1 million in drug money, and blackmails Jake by coercing him into smoking marijuana laced with PCP. You know, the usual buddy cop movie cliches.
A similar scene happened in 48 Hrs., except the cameras weren't rolling, and Nick Nolte was alone.
Alonzo then tries to have Jake killed, but Jake survives and tracks him down to Baldwin Village. After Jake reclaims the stolen money, Alonzo is assassinated by the Russian mob while trying to flee the city. Thankfully, the L.A.P.D. has always been a paragon of honesty and virtue, so Jake's bound to be hailed as a hero, right?
Pretty much every other cop in this movie is a corrupt piece of shit. For starters, Alonzo had four other cops accompany him during the raid on the dealer's home, and they all took a share of the drug money. If they don't kill Jake to prevent him from ratting them out, they might do it anyway just to avenge their dead buddy.
The police force that hired Dr. Dre is corrupt? Whaaat?
And then there's the "Three Wise Men," a trio of high-ranking police officials who take dirty money, help orchestrate Alonzo's illegal activities, and just seem very fond of Alonzo in general (he was a very sociable guy). But let's say that despite all of this, Jake still goes to his superiors and tries to expose Alonzo -- why should anyone believe him? He has the drug money as evidence, but his only witnesses that Alonzo had it are a bunch of gangbangers who probably won't sound too credible.
Unless Terry Crews concludes his testimony with the Old Spice tune.
Oh, yeah, and then there's the PCP in Jake's system, which will immediately discredit everything he says. However things turn out, it's safe to say that Jake's police career is over and that his best-case scenario for a Training Day sequel is a crossover with Paul Blart.
But you know who has it even worse?
Mr. & Mrs. Smith -- Their Evil Bosses Are Still Alive
Brangelina portray John and Jane Smith, a married couple who somehow live together for several years without realizing what the other one does for a living. It turns out they're both assassins employed by rival firms, but then, in one of the most illogical movie plans ever, both firms conclude that the best thing to do is to coerce the Smiths into assassinating each other.
After surviving multiple attempts on their lives (by people they're not married to, as well), the Smiths join forces to stave off a shit-ton of assassins during a climactic department store shootout. The last scene features John and Jane in a session with their marriage counselor, implying that the mutual slaughter of bad guys is a great stimulant for their sex life.
"I can only get it up if she's killed someone in the past 10 minutes."
"Mother" and "Father," the shadowy figures behind John and Jane's respective people-killing firms, who only communicate by speaking through computer screens. Unless they were both secretly Vince Vaughn's character, they're still out there, and still have the motivation and the resources to murder these lovebirds.
All we know is their names are "Jennifer" and "Billy Bob."
The Smiths survive the department store siege, but what's stopping Mother and Father from sending another truckload of assassins after them? Both of the firms are still functional and seem to have practically unlimited resources. Organizations which make their livelihood from assassinating people generally don't just say, "Aw, they learned that love is the greatest bounty of all. Might as well let them live."
It would be one thing if the ending established that John and Jane got new identities and disappeared to start a new life, but the last scene shows them in a session with the very same marriage counselor they've been seeing the entire movie. When you've left a trail of nine dozen bodies in your wake, you might want to consider breaking away from your weekly routine just a little bit. We're willing to bet there's probably another group of assassins waiting just outside the office door, ready to counsel the Smiths with hundreds of bullets.
"We're moving in as soon as they finish talking about the sex stuff. Making great insights there."
Robin Warder is the co-owner of a pop culture website called The Back Row and worked on a sci-fi short film called Jet Ranger of Another Tomorrow.
For more unseen consequences in movies, check out 6 Movies That Didn't Realize They Let The Villain Win and 6 Huge Movie Plot Twists That Caused Even Bigger Plot Holes .
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