Fatal Flaw?

[Bob_Robertson]

Originally Posted by haroldhecuba

I As far as fatal flaws, there is no greater flaw than in The Fellowship of the Ring when they're discussing what to do with the One Ring: Just have the eagle drop it into the volcano. Yeah, yeah, before all the Ring fans get up in arms about how the eagles wouldn't be involved in the affairs of man, blahblahblah...but you woulda thought SOMEONE would've mentioned it.

HH

bwahahahaaa

The Whitest Kids U Kbnow did a friggin HILLARIOUS skit on that....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwxA9O-q2o8

[Centos]

Not knowing anything about the story -- would embedding the memory chip into your protagonist work? He wakes up, disoriented, his neck is sore, and he receives a call -- if he's not at so-and-so by such-and-such -- a small explosive charge, connected to the chip, is triggered and he's dead. Maybe he's just returned from a trip to a foreign country. The "bad" guys don't care how they get the chip out (dead or alive) -- the "good" guy knows the code and how to disarm it.

That said, you could go the route of "District 9" -- just ignore the questions about how alien "power" juice can change the DNA of a human to that of an alien. I still liked the movie -- even with a plot hole so big you could fly a starship cruiser through it.

[Centos]

Originally Posted by haroldhecuba

As far as fatal flaws, there is no greater flaw than in The Fellowship of the Ring when they're discussing what to do with the One Ring: Just have the eagle drop it into the volcano. Yeah, yeah, before all the Ring fans get up in arms about how the eagles wouldn't be involved in the affairs of man, blahblahblah...but you woulda thought SOMEONE would've mentioned it.

I've seen the YouTube video, I thought it was funny, but this wasn't actually a plot hole. The only reason the eagles could just fly into Mordor at the end is because all hell had just broken loose. Remember that the whole reason the fellowship went to the Gates of Mordor for the futile battle was to draw the "eye of Sauron" off the hobbits as they progressed toward... can't remember... the mountain (Mount Doom?). Had the eagles attempted to just fly into Mordor at the beginning, Sauron would have seen them and he had plenty of weapons to deal with them.

At least that's the way I see it.

[Richmond Weems]

Let's see if we can get twenty pages out of this...

They could've used a bunch of eagles, or they could've just had the same Fellowship draw Sauron's attention off the eagles, or they could've had someone ask, "Why the hell didn't we just use the eagles?" And Gandalf could've said that the eagles don't give a sh!t, or that they've tried to use them in the past, or they could've attempted an eagle and we would've had a kick-ass scene of the Nazgul and eagle dogfight...

All kinds of things could've been used to explain why the eagles weren't used, but the fact is that Tolkien probably didn't think of it until it was already published, and then he had that V8 moment. Little did he realize that the hippies and beatniks that made Lord of the Rings such a huge publishing sensation didn't care either. Or, if they did, they just smoked the doobie, dropped some acid, and discussed it for three days.

HH

[Steven Jenkins]

Nobody ever discussed using the eagles cos all they care about are rabbits and flying.

And nobody would even dare consider risking having an eagle as a new dark lord cos then everybody would be made to catch rabbits, early worms, loose feathers and building 500 foot earies in stupidly inaccessible places.

Like the old addage: never send a bird to do a man's (or woman's) job.

Centos: sounds like a decent plot technique, but I need my man to do this willingly - even if he needs to get well p*ssed up first.

[Centos]

Originally Posted by haroldhecuba

All kinds of things could've been used to explain why the eagles weren't used, but the fact is that Tolkien probably didn't think of it until it was already published, and then he had that V8 moment. Little did he realize that the hippies and beatniks that made Lord of the Rings such a huge publishing sensation didn't care either. Or, if they did, they just smoked the doobie, dropped some acid, and discussed it for three days.

Thing is, Tolkein didn't leave *anything* to chance. He spent weeks getting the moon in the right place in the sky for on the right nights for everyone, scattered all over Middle Earth -- and, of course, he wrote several full languages for the various creatures. Apparently Tolkein -- as a boy -- had written several languages, but his parents threw that "rubbish" out when he moved from South Africa to England. If the Eagles could have taken on Sauron directly, that wouldn't say much about Sauron's power, would it?

[Centos]

Originally Posted by Steven Jenkins

Centos: sounds like a decent plot technique, but I need my man to do this willingly - even if he needs to get well p*ssed up first.

It was just an idea. That's the problem with trying to "fix" screenplays (on the other forum) without knowing where the writer is going. It's no longer their story.

Good luck, BTW.

[reddery]

Originally Posted by Steven Jenkins

My plot is about getting a mem-stick with vitally important data on it to a particular person & place.

My flaw is that this data could feasibly be uploaded to the person via the internet, or the mem-stick posted in the mail, which kinda undermines my hero's hazardous trek across the country.

lets stop there. 'posted in the mail?' and what's a mem-stick? you mean a flash drive.

If something is of importance to the protagonist, then(inciting incident) they act.
-just give him a reason to need to see the whole task through. like the data will help save his son from a fatal illness

I'm covering this flaw by exposing that the mem-stick is hardware protected, so if it's inserted into a standard USB port the data gets fried

hardware protected? hmm... like this device with will self destruct in 10 seconds... like Mission Impossible? That's like nineteen fiftys logic, where the flash drive would begin smoking.

They have software encyiption programs. Download WinRAR and zip any file on your computer password protect it.... encryption software can render data irrecoverable

and if it's posted in the mail it could get intercepted by the authrities who are hunting for the mem-stick.

just give him a reason not to trust them. An action scequence.
-A guy in Brown short tries to kill them, now there is no option but to take the device personally

PS: no one would believe that a hobbit would bu tt fvck Gandolf

[Mac H.]

Originally Posted by Centos

That said, you could go the route of "District 9" -- just ignore the questions about how alien "power" juice can change the DNA of a human to that of an alien. I still liked the movie -- even with a plot hole so big you could fly a starship cruiser through it.

To be fair, that isn't a 'plot hole' so much as something unexplained.

It would make sense if the 'power juice' wasn't fuel (as is assumed) - but instead the black goo is just a glop of repair nanos.

Once they are inside his system they will 'repair' the perceived damage and rebuild the expected alien body out of the raw material of his own.

It explains why it was needed for the ship too - it isn't to fuel the ship (although people talk about it being 'fuel') it is more of a fuel additive.

Heck - you know those old star cruisers - if you don't have the right fuel additive then the fusion injection points clog up before you're out of the solar system.

That's what the hero alien has been doing all these years ... adapting the existing medical repair nanos so he can fix the ship. And given the way they are treated .. do you really expect him to be up front about the true capabilities of the technology?

That is just one of dozens and dozens of explanations.

So isn't a plot hole - it is something that is left to the viewer to explain.

Mac

[Mac H.]

To answer the original question - don't explain it to the viewer.

SHOW it to them.

Just have someone try to send the data the sensible way first.
And then we see him get killed.

Our hero has the memory stick of what the guy tried to send, so it's up to him now.

And he's not going to make the same mistake we just saw someone get killed making.

It would also beef up the stakes by making him more of an 'everyday Joe'. He doesn't really understand the technicalities of what is on the stick or why he's being hunted.

And if his own personal stuff was on the stick that the bad guys (erroneously) recovered then now he and his family are at risk.

I vote for 'Let someone try the obvious way and get killed'.

Good luck,

Mac