10 Plot Twists That Defied Common Sense and Logic

Movies don’t always match reality. On some occasions, taking a creative license can help make a story more entertaining. However, some filmmakers can go overboard with narrative liberties, and this can result in stories that defy the laws of physics. So we’ll show you 10 cases in which some films ignored reality and offered us incredibly illogical scenes.

1. The magic torch — The Mummy

In The Mummy from 1999, in the last appearance of Kevin J. O’Connor’s character, Beni, we see how, after accidentally activating a trap to destroy the temple of Hamunaptra, he is trapped in a rather large room. When the trap was activated, all the light sources in the place were destroyed, so the only thing Beni had to illuminate the place was his torch. However, thanks to the magic of cinema, this meager flame was powerful enough to illuminate a large part of the huge room.

If we think back, before activating the trap, the characters had relied on fire lamps, mirrors, and torches of their own to see well inside the temple. That raises a few questions about what it was that Beni’s torch was carrying to be so splendid.

2. Michael “Flash” Myers — Halloween

In Halloween, the horror classic, we see how in multiple scenes, Myers chases the protagonist played by Jamie Lee Curtis. Nothing out of the ordinary, until we realize that Michael seems to have a supernatural walking speed because, no matter where Jamie is, he always manages to be one step behind her.

Considering that the protagonist normally gets around by car and assuming that Myers doesn’t take cabs to follow her, it doesn’t make sense that he’s always where she is. Even in the scenes where Curtis’ character runs to escape from Michael, he can catch up to her and others just by walking.

3. Overly intuitive security systems — Jurassic Park

“It’s a UNIX system, I know this!,” exclaimed Lex, Ariana Richards’ character in the first installment of the Jurassic Park franchise as she turned on the control room monitor, hoping to find something that would help protect them from the dreaded dinosaurs.

In this scene, the girl claims to know how the park’s security software works because it’s a system she’s familiar with. To top it off, Lex is actually able to operate it, which leaves us wondering: either the system has a very good user design or it is very vulnerable to security breaches.

4. Jack Sparrow’s supernatural luck — Pirates of the Caribbean

In this scene from the fourth installment of Pirates of the Caribbean, Jack Sparrow is cornered by his captor when he performs a dangerous maneuver to find the chalices needed for a ritual and has to jump off a cliff into a waterfall.

Leaving aside the absurdity of the idea, given that very few would survive such an event, the pirate comes out of it without a scratch. In real life, such a leap could cause serious injuries from the fall or from the impact of the seabed. In this case, both possibilities were quite high, given the sheer height of the cliff and the fact that the fall was a few feet from the shore, making it more likely that the site was shallower.

However, for the convenience of the plot, none of this happened. We have a theory that, given the pirate’s history of encounters with supernatural creatures, the reason is probably that he is bewitched because such good luck doesn’t have many other explanations.

5. The incredible endurance of the thieves — Home Alone

In the iconic Christmas comedy Home Alone, little Kevin, when left alone for the vacations, plucks up his courage and sets up his house with various traps to confront two men who plan to invade the place.

Unknowingly, the invaders fall right into them and each one inflicts a lot of damage in a very cartoonish way. Good thing this is a comedy, otherwise, all the blows the antagonists suffer would be enough to send them to the hospital.

6. The largest ice reserve — Edward Scissorhands

In this Christmas movie directed by Tim Burton, Edward Scissorhands, we see Edward make his first ice sculpture for Kim, played by Winona Ryder, and her family. But after being rejected by the town, he has to seclude himself again in his abandoned mansion.

In the final part of the film, we see an elderly Kim, who narrates the story to her granddaughter and mentions that she believes Edward is still alive because it is snowing, and it had never snowed in the village before he visited. We then cut to a scene where we see that, indeed, all the snow in town is coming from the residue of the ice sculptures Edward is making in the attic of the house.

This detail is just one more artistic device Burton uses in his storytelling. But, does Edward really have enough ice in his attic to make it snow all over town? In that case, surely Christmas must be the young Scissorhands’ busiest time of year.

7. Old-school dental care — 10,000 BC

In the movie 10,000 BC, we follow the story of two cavemen who embark on a journey into the unknown, where they encounter people who are much more technologically developed than they are.

Considering that the protagonists barely knew how to handle fire, we find it a little hard to believe that they had such a good dental health regimen to have such a radiant smile. Without a doubt, this is an example of a minor art direction oversight.

8. The inexhaustible battery — Jurassic World

In this scene, the children are looking for a place to take shelter from the dinosaurs. By chance, they find an abandoned area that had been left untouched after the incidents at the original park. Nothing had been rebuilt, much less maintained.

However, when the children inspect the site, they find a car and a battery that appears to have been left out in the open. Given the environmental conditions on the island, the vehicle should not have started with parts in such poor condition, not to mention the low probability that it would have had a full tank. The car miraculously starts, so the kids get a perfect getaway vehicle.

9. Indestructible suspension — Fast & Furious 7

The Fast & Furious saga earns a spot on this list thanks to its seventh installment. In this scene, Dom and Paul Walker’s character are escaping from a man who threatens to ruin their mission. The situation is particularly tricky because the chase is taking place inside a skyscraper. Finding themselves cornered and with nowhere to escape, Dom takes a risk and accelerates the vehicle to its maximum power to jump into the neighboring building and, at the end of the sequence, they end up going through the next one as well.

This scene is striking because a maneuver like the one seen on screen has a very low chance of being pulled off due to several variables such as the weight of the vehicle, the speed of the car, and the space available to give the car room to accelerate.

As outlandish as the scene is, James Wan is not the only director who has used sequences like this in his films to increase the adrenaline rush. In stories like James Bond, Mission Impossible, and Transformers, similar stunts have been performed. So much so that they have become a modern cliché of action movies.

10. Best movie costume ever — White Chicks

In the 2004 comedy, White Chicks, a pair of detectives decide to “turn into” women to complete a mission. At this point, the plot becomes ludicrous: the characters are disguised and no one seems to notice that there is something unusual about them. People do not perceive that these are men and not girls.

For this reason, this might be one of the movies that most defied any logic and ignored reality completely. However, situations like this are precisely what made it such a memorable comedy.

Do you prefer movies to stick more to reality or fantasy? What is your favorite action scene and why?