Have you ever watched a movie and felt the need to stand up and yell, "Hold on, that makes no sense"?
We hate plot holes. But a plot hole doesn't always exist just because the writer was lazy or didn't pick up on it. Sometimes, the answer to the question was supposed to be there, but ended up - for whatever reason - excised from the final cut.
Here are eight examples of movie plot holes which can be explained by moments that ended up on the cutting room floor.
1. Obi-Wan lying to Luke about Darth Vader - Return of the Jedi
It's always been assumed that Obi-Wan Kenobi kept Luke's true parentage from him because... um, well, actually we don't know why. Obi-Wan's line in Return of the Jedi that what he did tell Luke was true "from a certain point of view" is a pretty lame one, and looks more like gutlessness on old Ben's part.
Except that a crucial line of dialogue, excised from the final movie, reveals that it was actually Yoda who forbade Obi-Wan from telling Luke the truth. Reading between the lines, Yoda probably thought it would make Luke more susceptible to the dark side.
2. Taking out alien invaders with a Mac PowerBook - Independence Day
Whether you love or loathe the original Independence Day, it's a hard ask to defend that computer virus ending. The idea that David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) is able to upload a crippling computer virus with his 1996-era Mac PowerBook onto the aliens' mothership is the most preposterous scene in a movie chockfull of them.
Only in one of the deleted scenes, we see Levinson tinkering with his laptop inside the crashed Roswell ship, and realising the similarities between the signal he detected earlier and the aliens' computer system. So we're imagining that David was able to code a virus and, with the help of the crashed craft, translate it into their language... Okay, it doesn't fully excuse the ending, but it does help us understand it. A bit.
3. The invisible octopus - The Goonies
In the closing minutes of Richard Donner's eighties fave, a gaggle of news reporters cluster round our heroes, and ask the kids about their adventure, to which Data (Jonathan Ke Huy Quan) replies, "The octopus was scary!"
Eh?
Turns out there WAS a scene where the Goonies are attacked by a teen-ravenous octopus, except it was cut, presumably because the visual effects were kind of rubbish. Pity, because it's brilliantly bonkers.
4. The mystery of Il Mostro - Hannibal
In Ridley Scott's big screen take on Thomas Harris's giddily gruesome Silence of the Lambs sequel, there's reference made to a serial killer by the name of Il Mostro. It's a fleeting mention that's never properly followed up, and feels like it should have more significance than it does.
That's because there's an entire subplot, involving Detective Rinaldo Pazzi's investigation into the killer known as 'the Monster of Florence', that was chopped out of the movie. (There was also a return visit to Lector's old Baltimore prison cell that was scissored out, but that's another story)
5. Mary's magic hair dryer - Back to the Future
In order to convince George McFly to ask Lorraine Baines to the Enchantment Under the Sea dance, Marty McFly visits his future dad in his bedroom, dolled up as "Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan", with a 1985 hair dryer, posing as a raygun, attached to his belt. Except it's never explained where this item came from.
A deleted scene however would have told us that it was actually Doc Brown's hair dryer from 1985, having left a suitcase full of his belongings in the Delorean before those machine-gunning Libyans interrupted his time travel plans.
6. Finn's oh-so-sudden hero moment - Star Wars: The Force Awakens
One of the few brickbats thrown at The Force Awakens is that Finn's rejection of the First Order at the beginning of the movie appears way too sudden to be believable. In the theatrical cut, it's simply the death of his stormtrooper mate that seemingly prompts FN-2187's realisation that the people he's working aren't actually all that nice.
It would have been an easier swallow had JJ Abrams not blue penciled this scene, where Finn is confronted by a villager woman pleading for the stormtrooper to save her and her baby's life.
7. Who's funding Ferris? - Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Most of us cherish this John Hughes-helmed comedy so much that we almost don't want to face up to the whopping plot hole at its centre – how did this high school kid actually afford to do everything he does in the movie? He's clearly no Cher Horowitz, with a limitless bank balance and pushover parents, so what explains the no holds barred spending spree?
Turns out Hughes deleted a scene featuring Ferris half-inching one of his dad's credit cards, reasoning that it made the character too unsympathetic and more of a juvenile delinquent than a lovable rogue.
8. Indy escapes the Ark's power - Raiders of the Lost Ark
Indiana Jones is one helluva archaeologist, but the question remains, at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, how did he know to close his eyes when the Ark of the Covenant turned against the Nazis, melting their faces like Cornettos in the sun?
The answer lies in a deleted scene where Indy and Sallah visit an Imam in Cairo to have the Staff of Ra translated and are instructed not to touch the Ark or indeed look at it once it's opened. Problem solved.
