Biggest plot holes in film history?

Somewhere toward the middle of All About Eve, the sarcastic maid, Birdie (Thelma Ritter) just disappears.

"Citizen Kane": the whole plot revolves around Kane's dying word "Rosebud" but he dies alone so how does anyone know what he said?

"Fantastic Voyage": what happens to the wrecked sub left inside Benes after the crew members make their escape?

"The Big Sleep": who killed Owen Taylor? There's a huge set piece in which Taylor's car is pulled out of the bay but afterwards he's all but forgotten. Neither Raymond Chandler nor John Huston could work it out. Although someone claims to have killed him, neither book nor film ever clarify it.

The entire basis of Alien 3 is based on some egg in the Sulaco nonsense, which is impossible. In Aliens, when we see Ripley, Newt & Bishop leave the Dropship, that is as soon as they get back. There was no time for the Queen to go around laying eggs.

Some people have speculated that Bishop was a bad guy after all & smuggled one when Ripley went to rescue Newt, but that doesn't work because Bishop already had an incapacitated Hicks to use as a host. He could have just flown off instead of risk being caught in the explosion.

Cameron made it clear he was a good guy the whole time. Alien 3 was a lazy mess.

re. Citizen Kane, the butler tells the investigator Kane kept saying 'Rosebud' over & over, & he was the last to hear anything. This really gets overblown.

"Citizen Kane": the whole plot revolves around Kane's dying word "Rosebud" but he dies alone so how does anyone know what he said?

"Fantastic Voyage": what happens to the wrecked sub left inside Benes after the crew members make their escape?

"The Big Sleep": who killed Owen Taylor? There's a huge set piece in which Taylor's car is pulled out of the bay but afterwards he's all but forgotten. Neither Raymond Chandler nor John Huston could work it out. Although someone claims to have killed him, neither book nor film ever clarify it.


We don't know that Kane was alone when he died. The short scene goes by in a dream like fashion in, mostly, extreme close-up. We have the shot of Kane's mouth saying "Rosebud,"  another close shot of the globe falling from his had and smashing on the floor in slow-motion, then a cut to a shot of a nurse coming through the door. We never see the entire room, the mode is expressionistic, and there is really no reason to think Kane is alone. This is a meme that cropped up a long time after the film was released.

In "The Big Sleep," that old tale about the screen writers calling Chandler to ask who killed the chauffeur is probably an urban legend. In the novel, there is no question. The entire murder plot is very clear. The screenwriters could have found it easily. If there IS any truth to the call, it has been speculated that Chandler just didn't care about their question and, basically, said, "I don't remember" and hung up on them.