Plot Holes (AVP)

Well im well aware your all pretty good at tearing AVP apart so il be very dissapointed if you guys dont fill this topic up ;)

Continuity: Alexa's "warrior" marking on her left cheek disappears in overhead shots.


Continuity: When Alexa and the Predator are running from the explosion, across the whaling station, her "shield" changes hands.


Factual errors: The full moon for October 2004 would be on the 28th, not the 10th.


Continuity: The large pulley and winch setup for lowering equipment and people down the ice tunnel completely disappears when the equipment sled comes rocketing back out. If it was in place, the sled would have slammed right into it.


Factual errors: Icebreakers have round prows, not angled ones.


Continuity: The film gives confusing and inconsistent accounts of geography of the island and the pyramid. The pyramid is supposedly under 2,000 feet of ice, yet the tunnel leading down to it begins at the (sea level) whaling station. The whaling station is thus supposedly built on ice instead of rock; this is a ludicrous proposition as it would only be constructed in a region where ice melted enough each summer to allow whaling ships to dock. Anything built on ice that thaws significantly each year would not last 100 years. This arrangement also places the pyramid and a large amount of ice below sea-level; the buoyancy and natural flow of the ice pack makes this highly unlikely and is not something that could be accurately described as an island in the first place. The top of the tunnel is at the whaling station and descends at a "perfect 30 degree angle" to the pyramid (thus placing it over half a mile away horizontally), yet we are told satellite imagery shows that it is directly beneath the whaling station. Further confusion is caused by the scene at the end of the film in which a large tank falls into the water and plunges hundreds of feet towards an unseen ocean floor, supposedly directly offshore.


Factual errors: The story is set in October (summertime in Antarctica). It should therefore be daylight on the surface, and yet it's dark as night.


Continuity: When the Predator and Alexa turn around after the whaling station falls into the ground, the shot of them is reversed (notable by the marking and pressure tubes on the predators helmet).


Plot holes: It's claimed that the pyramid will move every ten minutes because the Aztec calendar is based on the metric system. Modern measurement of time (60 seconds for every minute) is not based on the metric so there would be less time to every minute based on modern measurement than to every minute if it was based on the metric system. This means that the pyramid would move every sixteen minutes.


Continuity: The second Predator is killed by an Alien when his head is punctured by the Alien's inner mouth. When the shot changes and the Predator tilts his head back there is no wound.


Factual errors: Alexa is wearing only a thin sweater (and no hat) after the Alien burns her jacket, yet she doesn't even shiver while outdoors in Antarctica.


Errors in geography: The captions show the icebreaker approaching the island/pyramid from the Ross Ice Shelf. The island is in fact on the opposite side of the Antarctic continent.


Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Despite their haste and detailed satellite imagery of the pyramid, the expedition must have missed that the whaling station is located on a large ship-worth bay. Instead they choose a more remote anchorage that required a land journey over some significant elevation.


Factual errors: Sebastian refers to "the Long Count" while describing a calendar that he refers to as "Aztec". The Long Count was a feature of the Mayan calendar system; the Aztec calendar, although based on the Mayan, didn't use the Long Count.


Errors in geography: It is said by one of the team that the whaling station is directly above the pyramid. However a geographical survey (as well as the obvious in-story shots) show that the ice tunnel slopes gently down towards the pyramid entrance, therefore not on top at all.


Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Graeme Miller's description of the aurorae as being caused by protons and electrons in the atmosphere is inaccurate. Aurorae are caused by the interaction of high energy particles (usually electrons) with neutral atoms (oxygen, nitrogen...) in Earth's upper atmosphere. However, as a chemical engineer, his knowledge of atmospheric photochemistry may be expected to be somewhat rusty.


Continuity: When Alexa Woods is climbing the Lho La ice fall in Nepal, she's about 10 body-lengths from the top edge. From the moment she answers the phone she reaches the top in about six steps. You can't take steps longer then your body.


Continuity: When Alexa is climbing the Lho La ice fall in Nepal, you can see a overview of the edge where is climbing to. There is nowhere a helicopter too be seen, yet after 30 seconds (duration of the phone call) the helicopter manages to land, turn off the engine (spinning down rotors takes much more than 30 seconds), and let Maxwell Stafford out of the helicopter and walk towards the edge to meet Alexa, all without her hearing or noticing a thing.


Revealing mistakes: During the first battle, when the Alien falls to the ground after the Predator kicks it through a pillar, a wire can be seen holding its tail up.


Continuity: The legs of the practical and computer-generated Aliens don't correspond. The practical ones have human-like joints and feet, while the CG versions have an extra joint at the ankle and much longer toes.


Revealing mistakes: When the first-killed Predator is thrown to the ground, its extended wrist blades bend when they hit the ground, revealing that they are actually made of rubber.


Plot holes: The characters correctly predict that the walls will move every 10 minutes, because the Aztec did everything in multiples of 10. However, the Aztec would not have known how long a minute is.


Continuity: The Predator cuts off the tip of the Alien's tail, spewing green acidic blood, and then tosses him through a column and into another room. As the Alien flies in slow motion, you can see that there is no blood on his stump, but immediately after, it's covered again.


Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Sebastian erroneously says that the Aztec calendar was metric (based on 10). It was in fact vigesimal (based on 20) with twenty days in 18 "months".


Factual errors: Alexa looks at her GPS watch to determine her position. GPS relies on having direct line of sight to orbiting satellites and would not work deep underground.


Factual errors: When the expedition first reaches the hidden pyramid, one of the characters examines the wall markings after rubbing away the cobwebs from the stone. Are there any spiders that thrive 2000 feet below sea level in Antarctica?


Revealing mistakes: When Miller get's cocooned and kills the first face hugger, he fires six shots from Verheiden's Desert Eagle. After Miller realizes he's in trouble and the shot pulls back into the hall, he fires six more times before he screams. The maximum magazine capacity for the Desert Eagle is nine shots for the .357 Magnum.


Continuity: When Lex catches the alien on the spear, it swings its tail at her and punctures the wall. Then the camera cuts back to the alien for a split second, then back to Lex as the alien attempts to hit her on the other side. You can clearly see that there's not a scratch on the wall that was just punctured.


Revealing mistakes: When Alexa enters the egg chamber, she sees the face hugger at Miller's feet. The face hugger is missing the huge bullet hole that was there after Miller shot it with his first six shots.


Plot holes: If the temple is to rearrange itself every 10 minutes the total time it takes for the eggs to be delivered, the eggs to hatch, the aliens be born and for the aliens reach adulthood is a mere 20 minutes. (this includes initial activation and rearrangement for aliens to be set loose) This is inconsistent with any other alien movie in which the alien life cycle takes hours if not days.


Continuity: As the Predator ship passes by the Moon on its way to Earth, we can see the far side of the moon lit up, so from Earth it should be a new moon or at least a crescent. Yet, minutes later, it's a full moon.


Factual errors: The penguin lurking in the abandoned Antarctic whaling station is a Humboldt penguin (Spheniscus humboldti), a species found in coastal Peru and Chile - not the Antarctic region.




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