MovieChat Forums > National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007) Discussion > Plot holes, mistakes, and general stupid...

Plot holes, mistakes, and general stupidities!!! (a list for fun)

posted 17 years ago by loveistheonlyway
159 replies | jump to latest

I *LOVE* this movie, but sometimes it's fun to just look through our favorites and find what's wrong with them (like in Harry Potter, one of my favorite book series EVER: why can't he see the thestrels in his first four years at Hogwarts? Why did Harry's father come out of Voldy's wand before his mother in Prior Incantatem? But I digress ;-)

This board really took off over on Andromeda Strain, so I thought we should try it here!

This is a list of plot holes, mistakes, and general stupidities we found as we watched (and rewatched) the movie. No criticizing, getting angry, or correcting the list please: this is all for fun!

I'll start:

1) During the car chase in London, Riley had his MacBook, which has a webcam in it, so why bother running the red light? Why not just take a picture of the plank with his webcam?

2) How does finding the city of gold prove innocence? He still could have been in league with the KGC!

3) with the Lincoln assassination scene: In reality, nobody heard the gun go off. People were laughing too loudly (and Booth knew to shoot him then because he was an actor and was familiar with the play).

[–] dries101 16 years ago

47) There is no way a nineteenth century cipher can't be cracked in less than a second by a modern computer.
48) Maybe conspiracy theorists would disagree with me, but how does the president exactly decide what will be in "the" tomorrow-morning newspaper.

[–] woodpusher 16 years ago

The cipher did require supervised cracking. Some of the symbols were doubtful -- so they had to do some guessing. Actually if they were going to exhaustively try every possible key then they might have gone down a few blind alleys before they found the real key.

[–] little-miss-chocolate 16 years ago

The only people who can see thestrals are people who've seen death and registered it. A one year old baby doesn't comprehend death (which I agree with), and obviously Cedric's death hadn't yet sunk in (a fairly poor argument, I know, but Rowling didn't want to bring in a new concept like thestrals right at the end of a book.

I'm anespeptic, frasmotic, even compunctuous to have caused you such pericumbobulations...

[–] mepwave 16 years ago

Check out my blog about this film:
http://movingfilms.wordpress.com/

Just because a movie is silly and full of plot holes doesn't mean it can't have it's worth!

[–] FanuelHall 16 years ago

How did the police know that the guy that had just attempted to kidnap the President was at the Library of Congress?

[–] woodpusher 16 years ago

The President told him. He didn't want Riley to read any more of the book than necessary. He wanted to give Ben extra incentive to find the treasure.

[–] Devrayne 16 years ago

This may be a flawed argument, but if, (in the end) where the water is rushing into the room and wilkinson has to stay behind and die, holding the turning wheel thing opens a big drain tunnel, why didnt they just all hold it open together and let all the water drain out. It must have drained on its own eventually otherwise they couldn't be back in there looking at the artifacts later......

~Relativity is Relative~

[–] aliensatemybuick 16 years ago

The problem with that, as I posted earlier, is that the water was coming in constantly (from the lake) and at a faster speed that the "drains" could handle...so the gate had to be closed after they wade their way past it.

[–] thevclub89 16 years ago

What drives me nuts is when they hold the piece of burnt paper up to the original diary and decide that is is a match. Why in the world is it a perfect match when there is no way that it burnt in the exact pattern that is was torn from the diary?

The theme of the Egg Hunt is "learning is delightful and delicious" as, by the way, am I. ~CJ Cregg

[–] Eris87 16 years ago

During the car chase Ben asked Abigale if her phone had a camera and she replied that it was broken.

[–] mmlovers90 16 years ago

Okay, someone already partly mentioned mine. First, how does the president decide what a newspaper has for tomorrow's headlines? And secondly, how does he already have a printed copy of tomorrow's paper?

[–] caramel53us 16 years ago

If I kicked my boyfriend out of my house and he broke in later while I was on a date... and then his father called me to tell me he was going to London... I'd drop everything I was doing and immediately hop on the next plane and get to Buckingham Palace and know exactly where he would be in the Palace and play along with his random shouting antics in order to get arrested with him because we were going to get back together anyway...

[–] shako 16 years ago

I dont know if it was previously mentioned, but Ben's dad, a historian that values very minute details, after 60 years just now realizes his beloved grandfather was told something by his beloved great grandfather with his dying breath. even if he had always remembered it, Ben, another historian that values very minute details, didnt remember that in his 40+ years.

[–] ReasonlsOutToLunch 16 years ago

Rallygolucky, I quote you here:

I must have missed something because I didn't get how the bad guy ended up being the one holding the door open so the others could get to safety when one second earlier he seemed to be pretty intent on he not being the one who was going to be left behind to die. /end quote

I was wondering the same thing, it seemed completely out of character. They should have had this tendency coming out at odd moments to show he was capable of this, I don't think people change like this at the very last minute especially in matters of self sacrifice.

Mark Jobling, I get your annoyance, I don't like when people mangle slang either:

44. It's "bubble and squeak", not "bubbles and squeak" - not a plot hole, but definitely annoying, along with Mr Cage's Dick-Van-Dyke-in-Mary-Poppinsesque English accent/end quote

But, remember he is an American and we have a tendency to get other countries slang wrong and it actually added to that scene to make it seem like a more authentic moment because an American isn't going to know the right terms, it would have been weird if he said it right.

Kitty on skates:

Also, the city is what several hundred years old, and has been underwater the whole time and the gold is tarnished only on the edges. Something doesn't seem right about that./end quote

Just an FYI, gold doesn't tarnish.

[–] huber_tylor 16 years ago

What i was wondering is this:

When there is a book of Secrets, that is so important, that only the President of the US may read it. Then, why doesnt the President actually HAVE it?

[–] bcoaggiemom09 16 years ago

This may have been mentioned on another thread, but I haven't seen it on this one. When Abigail goes to London and is going up the stairs at Buckingham Palace, Ben is coming down the stairs and she calls out to "Nick", not the character's name "Ben".

[–] moviefreak92 16 years ago

She calls Ben.

I find this post really, really entertaining. Congrats and thanks to the OP, I never noticed many of these plotholes before.

What really bothered me was how Thomas Gates' innocence was proved at the end of this movie. After reading every single post before mine on this thread, I think I am to understand that the name on the page was forged, and of course Dr. Nichols knew this, because he was in league with Mitch Wilkinson, as is shown later on. Still...they could have made that a bit more clear, IMHO, instead of just Mitch's half-explanation to Ben in the scene at Cibola.

The whole cell phone thing bothered me, too. Where, pray tell, was Ben's phone during the car chase? I might be willing to believe it was in his pocket and he couldn't get to it at the time...but Riley would definitely have a working phone, being the technical genius he is...

Don't get me wrong - I love this movie, but it is slightly ridiculous.

"We pretty much make our living on crazy."

[–] even_ask_mike 16 years ago

Biggest flaw:
how the hell did Cage's toupe stay on?

[–] cableaddict 16 years ago

"City" of gold: After 500 years, the oil in those troughs was just waiting there to be lit, so they could see.

OK, assuming that the oil was not somehow washed away by the water, then it would have EVAPORATED.

Oil does that, you know.

+1 on all the other (more obvious) stupidities. This screenplay must have been written by a 12 year old.

[–] btmette 16 years ago

don't know if this was mentioned...but the lake where they found the city is not right behind mt. rushmore...its actually several miles away...and in the delete scenes when they are "on top of Harney peak"....the shortest trail is a 3 hour hike (and yea..i know they probably took a helicopter) that starts at the lake in which they found the city...but by the looks of the scenery...they aren't even on the same mountain...

[–] strat516 16 years ago

This movie was so full of outrageously unrealistic BS I wouldn't even know where to start the list. I don't even know why I watched it -- I can't stand Nicholas Cage's so-called "acting".

Even worse than Gate's ability to get into impossible places like Queen Elizabeth's bedroom, the Oval Office, and with the President alone in some underground tunnel was his ability to solve a ridiculous daisy chain of puzzles and riddles in about 30 seconds each.

This movie is the biggest waste of time since "The Day After Tomorrow".

[–] corek1949 16 years ago

Getting into the Queens bedroom is not that hard, as Michael Fagin found out in 1982.

[–] refer-me 16 years ago

Luna Lovegood says Thestrals can only be seen by those who have "seen death". I think it is Hermione? who mistakenly assumes that this means those who have SEEN someone who has died, but I think it means - those who *themselves* have died. This only makes sense if you assume/understand that in reality, we dont just die once at the "end of life" but actually we die and are continually regenerating and evolving throughout our "life". So from that perspective, Harry had died and a new abiity was activated in him, the ability to see what none of the others could, except Luna.

The boundary between reality & fiction seems increasingly blurred these days! It makes sense tho when I remember taking a parachute jump 20yrs ago after which an unknown person passed me by and whispered "You forgot to attach yourself to the aircraft". That was strange cos A) My memory of the event was of an enjoyable descent concluded by a 7/10 landing, not of splatting into the ground at 120mph. And B) Release cord attachment was the Instructors job! More recently, after having had a strange experience of feeling that my house was unsafe and was going to explode (yeh, I know!?) I was invited to have dinner at a friend's house; she went into her hall and from there said "You left your oven on". Ive got this strange suspicion that some of us are living events that are the source material for things like horror films or Simpsons Itchy & Scratchy sketches without even knowing anything about it cos our memories are being wiped afterwards!?

Scary Biscuits.

[–] macemace 16 years ago

Refer-me: I think you've accidentally stumbled into a different Nicholas Cage movie.

"Mediocre Marx Brothers is better than no Marx Brothers!"