Love this list, which appears on Time magazine’s website:
There are an awful lot (29!) of films mentioned, and some of the “headscratchers” may be more a function of lapses in logic with the screenplay.
For example, there is no way to understand or explain why the alien invaders from the movie Signs decided to target our planet when it has the one item (water) that can effectively destroy them. The sad thing is that, for the most part, I enjoyed the film, but that lapse in writing logic really sunk the movie.
The movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, presented an ending that was also very ambiguous, at least in parts. As the article states, one realizes that there is story structure clearly evident before and after protagonist Dave Bowman’s “psychedelic” trip. The monoliths that take the Earth explorers out to Jupiter, and subsequently had Bowman enter a monolith floating out there and transform into a “cosmic” star child, indicated this was the next step in evolution. The scene also neatly replicated the first part of the movie, where we witnessed the evolution of apes to humans via touching the monolith and gaining an understanding of using tools. The question, of course, is then: What about the elegant room Bowman was in? His aging? His meal? Dropping the glass of wine? If you look closely at the scenes, Bowman is aging. He appears first as the astronaut he is in his full spacesuit. He subsequently (I believe, anyway), is allowed to live out what is left of his life in comfortable surroundings. Perhaps it is a gift of the alien race. Once he ages to the point of death, it is then that he is reborn as the star child.
At least that’s the way I saw it!
If you make it far enough into the list, at 29 they mention another headscratcher that, like the Signs example, I feel is a major writing flaw. The movie is the 2009 reboot of Star Trek and the issue cited is the convenient way the young Kirk meets the old (now alternate reality) Spock on Delta Vega following the destruction of Vulcan. When that scene played out in the theater I was watching it, I couldn’t believe it and for the reasons cited in the article. Far fectched doesn’t begin to do justice to the astronomical coincidence involved in Kirk and the elder Spock meeting in that barren planet. Yet the scene plays out straightforwardly and no one in the film questions Kirk’s incredible luck.
Anyway, the list is there for you to read, should you be interested.