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Cross-Disciplinary: Plot Holes versus 'Leaving it to the reader to decide'

  
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
14:41 / 28.11.03
OK, this thread is only going in the Conversation because it doesn't fit in any of the Spectacle forums. If anyone's got a better idea where to shift it, go ahead, otherwise, please don't rot me, okay?

OK, basically, having read a number of books recently, seen a number of films (Matrix Revolutions), watched TV shows (Buffy)and read comics (Filth and X-Men) I've been aware of a number of stories which have required a larger suspension of disbelief than normal or nifty mental footwork on part of the viewer to justify what went on (Why, in the last series of Buffy, did the main badguy for the season effectively lead Buffy to the one weapon that could destroy it's plans? for example). Recent X-Men and Matrix Revolutions have gone past with massive plotholes left unexplained. But some people complain when they feel they are been spoon-fed the plot, why aren't the writers crediting them with the intelligence to work it out for themselves?

Are these two things doomed to be mutually exclusive? Could, say, the Brothers Wachowski have written a good film which explained all the aspects of the Matrix which the version we got didn't, but at the same time done it in a way that still meant we had to use our brains to work it out, rather than trying to pluck explanations from thin air supported by only the flimsiest of evidence?
 
 
Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!
15:19 / 28.11.03
Spoilers?
 
 
Linus Dunce
15:44 / 28.11.03
I think that if everything in, say, the Matrix were explained and tied up, it would be very hard to suspend disbelief at all -- it would begin to encroach on our own experiences.

All memesis is limited by boundaries -- the start and end of the plot, the edge of the stage, etc. Even within those bounds, a "complete" story would take nearly forever to tell. And would be a bit dull, like a really long opera with no extra exciting bits. What's a few holes between friends?
 
 
w1rebaby
17:41 / 28.11.03
I suspect that, in cases like the Matrix, plot holes fulfil two criteria:

1. they get the otaku gossiping constantly about "what scene X where Y does Z really means", thus keeping up a certain buzz, even if the writer had no idea whatsoever

2. they're easier than consistency

With some series, I feel that plot holes are there to be filled consistently at a later date. I don't think this is a bad thing. I know when I was writing RPG scenarios, I would routinely leave holes that I could fill in later on to produce another scenario if it looked like anyone was interested. Expecting an author to already have every last detail mapped out before beginning the writing is unrealistic and probably not a good idea anyway - best to let the story evolve as the author evolves.

I suppose, even in a situation where holes have been left out of laziness or cynicism, a sufficiently compelling background (e.g. the Matrix series again) that drives people to speculate on the holes is stimulating creativity and so A Good Thing. But really, what you're doing there is not wondering what the Wachowski Brothers meant when Neo blah-de-blahed the thingamibob, you're really writing fanfic, because I suspect they didn't mean anything at all.
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
17:56 / 28.11.03
In that case, why not just collapse all of barbelith into one forum? Be interesting to see.

As for plot holes, depends. Could leave em like David Lynch (good) or Morrison or the Brothers W (very bad)
 
 
Bed Head
19:07 / 28.11.03
Maybe this isn't what you mean, but I always thought science fiction *should* be incomprehensible, or at least baffling. I'm fully capable of appreciating a well-structured drama, and yes, compelling stories can be told using the superficial trappings of sci-fi, but I always want to see things in speculative fiction that I don't understand. The very worst kind of science fiction (and in my head I'm thinking of Star Trek here, but it could apply to gazillions of films, tv series and comics), is just like today, but with spaceships and ray guns.

I once had the idea of a film set in a future where technology meant that a perfect computer-generated replica of anywhere else on the planet could be brought to where you were. Meaning, nobody would go anywhere at all, ever, because everywhere else would be adjacent to you. The way one would live and interact with others in a society built like that, it wouldn't make any sense at all, not without lots of hefty tech-y exposition throughout; but it'd be great to film it as just a baffling, non-linear collage which blithely corresponds to its own internal premise.
But you couldn’t sell tickets to see that.

Okay, and back on to what you were talking about in the first post (and many, many apologies for letting that out: its been stuck in the back of my head for years, ever since I first came up with it when I was stoned and frustratingly lacking the power of speech), the perfect example of leaving things unexplained is of course, The Invisibles. It’s the reason many of us are here and we’ve all spent years debating different aspects of it in one forum or another, and there’s STILL plenty left unexplained. It’s the very fact that so much is left unspoken or implied in the series that means that we can read it and interpret it in a variety of different ways, and I think the ‘accepted’ meaning actually evolves in tandem with the individuals on Barbelith and where they are in life. The Filth is admittedly a much thinner work, but I think there’s still plenty of scope for interpretation and one reason why there’s less discussion about it is that it doesn’t fit in your life the way the Invisibles does. Nobody can be bothered debating to death about the way some pretty basic lessons are told.

The Matrix is thinner still, thinner than piss after drinking a bottle of water, and is possibly worth spending a couple of hours watching for cheap kung-fu thrills wrapped in PVC, but anyone who feels the urge after that to spend yet more valuable time discussing it really needs their head examined, IMHO

If all this is irritating blather/woefully off-topic, I apologise. I’m new. Don’t hit me!
 
 
Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo
20:12 / 29.11.03
My problem with plot holes in movies is that it is painfully obvious that at some point in the process, someone said, "Cut that scene, we don't need it". No, we DO need it. Stories should be well made, and bit plot holes are a sign of sloppiness. They make me think that the people making the story either don't care, or think we are stupid.

And I don't like being thought of as stupid.
 
 
PatrickMM
20:24 / 01.12.03
In the case of Revolutions, the ending was so fast, it didn't really give the reader enough information to make a decision about. I think that the best stories that seem to have plot holes on the first viewing (Mulholland Drive, The Invisibles) in fact resolve enough, it just takes multiple viewings to see it.
 
 
"See me for what I am, OK?"
22:20 / 04.12.03
Okay, Revolutions I don't want to talk about ("For me, the pain is yet too near"), but Buffy and New X-Men I'll bite on.

Buffy season 7 - I'm over it now. Really. But still...it all went wrong. As well as the First essentially leading Buffy to the scythe (as Our Lady notes), the entire arc for the season ended up a plot hole. In "Conversations with Dead People" (the best Buffy ever? Maybe) the First notes that it is "done with the mortal coil". So how, by "Chosen" is its' plan to raise a big army of Turok-Han, make the world evil and BECOME CORPOREAL? What? Was Joss too busy crying over Firefly? Was everyone else rubbing their hands at the idea that by episode 8 of Angel season 5 we'd have a big Angel-Spike fight? (It is a good fight!) The last third of the season became one story, repeated. Even when they commented on this (in "Storyteller"), they didn't break away from it. And it disappointed. Also, bringing Faith back with little explanation unless you watch a half-dozen episodes of Angel (from seasons 1 and 4) was cheap. Rant over.

As for New X-Men, GM is doing good - rather than "plot holes", what we have is reality. Things go on when the reader isn't looking. What we see in NXM is a small slice of life for the team. I know that most of the bad feeling comes from the big gaps in 'Planet X' - Magneto taking down NYC, not seeing most of the team since part 1, and so on, but I think that it all works. From a story perspective, what we have is the POV of Magneto's followers, interspersed in part 3 with a "meanwhile" that gives us perspective on what is going to happen in Mags' story at the end. In part 4, the new Brotherhood breaks like the Fellowship, with Basilisk dying, Beak branching out on his own quest and the rest stuck fighting a war they don't want. So we get new perspectives, as they go. We see what Beak sees, and so the theme continues.

Does that make any sense? It is 20 past midnight...
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
23:54 / 04.12.03
Doesn't it have more to do with the writer's intent and good faith? Using the examples we've got here, the Invisibles has plot holes but Morrison is clearly leaving them there as something to savor. If some things are left unresolved, the story never really ends--you've got a few mysteries to keep working over if you want them (example: the whole deal with Boy is never really explained). He's gone out of his way to explain other things, so you don't get the sense that he's trying to mystify you, or that he simply forgot or didn't think something through. The Matrix, however, spends a great deal of time and energy laying out a line of cheap textbook heresy without expending a scrod of original thought or genuine emotion, then squanders its own dramatic tension. We feel hussled because the writers didn't justify the suspension of disbelief.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
00:21 / 05.12.03
Aren't we getting two completely different issues confused? Buffy, Matrix and friends have gaps in them because of poor continuity through studio pressure/lack of organisation/lack of self-discipline/whatever. That's a hugely different thing than a writer deliberately leaving some things unexplained because parts of the story *require* a lack of closure to be effective.

Best example of the latter in film that I can come up with right now is Mulholland Drive, where Lynch doesn't explain certain bits of the tale because he wants the audience to bring their own interpretation to them.

The other example I'm thinking of is PKD - it's not, strictly speaking, a plot hole issue, but a number of his stories have endings that many feel are disappointing. I'm probably wrong in thinking this, but I've always considered that to be done on purpose - why have a neat, tidy ending when life isn't like that? It's more a case of "here's a story about something that happened. It doesn't have an ending, because after it happened life carried on."
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
00:41 / 05.12.03
I didn't comment on Buffy because I haven't seen it, nor have I read the last New X-Men arc.

I read an introduction to some PKD novel (it might've been Clans of the Alphane Moon) that talked about how Dick wrote. He was supporting a family and a chemical dependency on pennies-per-word, so he would crank out novels with "modular" (the intro-writer's word) characters and plots that he could reuse and sell in bulk. Many of them were awful, and published pseudonymously, Kilgore Trout-style. If you read, I dunno, Ubik, Flow My Tears, and Eye in the Sky back to back, you can see the intro-writer's point.

So, there were "studio" pressures there, too. I think the sense you get of purpose behind what might be seen as a flaw in PKD's writing... well, I said it already. He acted in good faith. He was trying to tell good stories, not taking advantage of you as a reader.
 
 
diz
19:47 / 05.12.03
i think there's a difference between mystery and ambiguity on one hand, and poor plotting on the other.

with ambiguity, something may or may not be fully explained or comprehensible, but there's a sense that it makes sense to someone, even if it doesn't to the viewer. in other words, a character might appear, and do something we don't understand, but we understand that the character at least makes sense in hir own head, that ze has some sort of goals or whatever and that hir actions make sense to hirself. examples of this, in my mind, are the Harlequinade in The Invisibles and the Cowboy in Mulholland Drive. we can't fathom what's going on in their heads at first glance, but they seem to know what they're doing.

plot holes are different. plot holes exist when something is basically fully explained and/or comprehensible, but then something happens which doesn't make any sense with what is already known about the people or events in question, and the discrepancy goes unaddressed. we know what someone supposedly wants, and the types of things that they say and do, and they either do something inexplicably out of character, or, perhaps more often, fail to do something that would seem both obvious and in-character. in Return of the Jedi, the whole mission to Endor goes forward because the Rebel's sooper-reliable intelligence tells them that the Death Star is totally unguarded excpet for the shield generator, and that presents an opportunity they can't afford to pass up. then, when Han and Leia and Luke pop up in the stolen shuttle, the very first thing they see is Vader's freaking flagship, just hanging out, which conflicts with what they thought they knew about the situation and totally invalidates their whole reason for being there. do any of them comment on this? no, of course not. do they say "hey, holy fuck, our intelligence is totally fucking wrong, and the fleet is walking into a trap?" nope. they carry blithely on without even discussing how totally fucked up the whole plan is. then, later, the Rebel fleet shows up and everyone's totally shocked to find out that the Imperial fleet is there. hello? anyone home? this is not weird mystery, this is not ambiguity, this is just shitty plotting.

i think a lot of people treat mystery as poor plotting, because they want to have everything spoon-fed to them and feel betrayed when it's not, and i think a lot of people tend to romanticize plot holes in certain types of movies because they want to feel smart. both tendencies are kind of obnoxious.
 
  
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