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GIANT plot holes

posted 18 years ago by curtis-8
5 replies | jump to latest

Everyone talks about how the CGI is what ruined The Touch. For myself, I could have lived with the crappy CGI, if only the story hadn't been messed up so horribly.
The Touch has an old, very overused plot. But even given that, the filmmakers didn't even follow through on it in any logical way. I mean, even if they'd just totally copied, word for word, some old adventure story and plugged in some wire-fu and Dane Cook, the film would have at least made sense (and been funny).

Here's the biggest example of what I mean:

The whole freaking premise of the story is that Michelle Yeoh and company are super-acrobats, trained through generation after generation so that ONLY THEY would be able to get to the secret medallion by performing a series of virtually impossible acrobatic feats. Right? But then at the end EVERYONE is capable of performing these feats--the bad guy, all his henchmen, etc. They all easily get to the secret cave (or whatever it was) and end up flying around in the bad CGI. What's the freakin' point of building up this entire premise of the super acrobats and then just throwing it away at the end? The movie was full of stuff like that.

And by the way, when I first saw this a few years ago, I thought that henchman "Bob" was head and shoulders better than anyone else in the film. Now I find out that he was played by rising standup comedy superstar Dane Cook! Go figure!

[–] Coolestmovies 17 years ago

Sadly, plugging more Dane Cook into this would not have made it funny.

[–] WhoLead 17 years ago

Actually, Karl and his crew got to the caves by brute force, technology, and a lot of education. You say they were able to do everything Yeoh and her family did? When did they do that? I don't recall Karl - or even Bob - doing anything of the sort. In fact, Karl would probably never have found the monk in Dunhuang if not for Tong. He also would never have found the tree so fast if not for Michelle and Chaplin's characters getting there first. And they were swinging around the cave using their rappel line guns rather than ropes or scarves, which Michelle was using. As a matter of fact, Ben Chaplin's character wouldn't have gotten up to the hole in the ceiling without the rappel gun line.

Your argument makes no sense. It is fine if you didn't like the movie though it is too bad. I really enjoy this movie.

[–] curtis-8 15 years ago

Sir--your argument is the one that doesn't make sense! If all it takes is climbing equipment to reach the medallion, then Michelle Yeoh's family HAS STILL BEEN WASTING THEIR TIME. They were supposedly trained to be the ONLY ONES physically capable of reaching the medallion--not "finding it," mind you--getting to it.
So the plot point of them being trained for generations for this task makes no sense if ANYONE CAN DO IT, even if that anyone is using different means.

For the plot to have made sense, acrobatics would have to have been the ONLY WAY to get to the medallion.

AND I guess I was dreaming when I saw all the bad guys swinging from ropes and jumping from pillar to pillar as though gravity didn't exist!

PLEASE! There are things all mankind can agree upon! Water is wet! The sun is hot! This movie's main plot point makes NO SENSE!

IT IS SETTLED.

[–] cine40 17 years ago

… so that ONLY THEY would be able to get to the secret medallion by performing a series of virtually impossible acrobatic feats. Right? But then at the end EVERYONE is capable of performing these feats--the bad guy, all his henchmen, etc.

May I suggest that you actually watch, and make at least *some* effort to understand what you are seeing before you try to ”criticize”, and “analyze” a film?

Getting into the (trapped) cave didn’t require any special knowledge or competence. Any idiot capable of reading and writing, and having access to the key scroll could do that. But, doing the final leap over the great divide *beyond* the cave definitely did. *That*, and nothing else, was what the acrobat family had trained for, for hundreds of years. This is very explicitly pointed out in the film, and it is also very clearly shown that *no one* but Pak Yin Fay could perform this stunt, and then *only* with the aid of her little brother Tong, serving as a midair “stepping stone” or sling.

So your comment: “But then at the end EVERYONE is capable of performing these feats …” has *nothing* to do with the film “The Touch”. You are criticizing the film for things that simply are not there. Shape up or shut up.

This is not great and heavyweight film art (it’s a “family” film for God’s sake!!), but it’s pretty good film entertainment. There are no serious “plot holes”, and the goofs are no more disturbing than in any other normal film. Besides, one gets absolutely wonderful landscape shots from eerie Asian deserts. Anyone into Asian film and culture should definitely add this film to her/his film library.

"Why is it that men are so much more interested in women than women in men?"
Virginia Woolf

[–] curtis-8 15 years ago

Cine 40--

My statements are directly related to the film and were written by a person with a fairly wide experience with films of this type and, I might add, were written IMMEDIATLEY after seeing the film on DVD. I find your undeserved attack on my WELL-INFORMED OPINIONS to be the best indicator of which one of us has trouble "understanding" what we're seeing in a film. Is it wrong to "analyze" a film or a story that doesn't make sense? Only if you're an idiot who is incapable of doing so. And if the story makes no sense, an intelligent person has to analyze it to even try to figure out what the storytellers were trying to say in the first place. I have analyze such things for a living, so don't even start that nonsense.

Also, the logic of your argument is, to use your term, idiotic. In the film, anyone with the right equipment could have "made the leap." Simply having a character in the film state that the heroes are the only ones who could does not make it so (not to anyone who can think above a Looney Tunes level, that is). So we're to believe Yeoh's family trained to be gymnastic supermen and women like that for generations just so they could "jump far"? That is idiotic as well. Why not just train in jumping far?

And do you mean to actually tell me that I didn't see virtually EVERY character in the film's climax swinging through the air and jumping from pillar to pillar and such? Really? Was I high and hallucinating then, or did we see different films?

And I know this was supposed to be light entertainment, but even the lightest, most rudimentary storytelling at least has to make sense by its own rules. The Touch, while it was well filmed and while I really like Michelle Yeoh, represents a complete failure of basic storytelling.

Just my opinion, of course. But not an idiotic one. And nothing you stated in your posting put a single dent in what I originally posted.