Idiot Plot/Film

Examples of the Idiot Plot in include:

Films -- Animated

 * Thumbelina:
 * Will you get on the fucking bird that can take you home?!
 * That bird isn't blameless either, since he waited the whole movie to offer her a ride.
 * Thumbelina does ask the bird to take her home several times. It generally thinks that it's more important to abandon her in favor of finding Cornelius. Yeah.
 * The Simpsons Movie:
 * Right after Springfield is sealed in the dome, Professor Frink reveals that he has a laser drill that can break through it, but it's outside the dome. The trapped Springfield residents could have dug a tunnel under the dome, retrieved the drill, and started breaking through. Not a single person in town figured this out, even AFTER the Simpsons escaped the dome via the sinkhole in their back yard.
 * The residents spend most of the episode oblivious to the possibility that their problems could be solved with an old-fashioned town hole digging (Willie asks himself why he didn't think of that), and it is a guest star (Sting) who is the best digger. Springfieldians just are not very smart, especially when it comes to digging holes, since moreover in another episode they dig themselves into a hole and their plan for digging their way out is to "Dig up, stupid." The real idiot plot in this movie is Homer dumping waste into the lake after he was warned by his non-idiot daughter that this would be the death of everyone and everything he loved. But then again, it's quite common for Simpsons plots to exist because Homer willingly crippled his IQ (with a crayon) and did something stupid. Lampshaded in a later episode wherein the townspeople discuss the possibility of containing Springfield with a dome. Digging is mentioned.
 * The last third of Gumby The Movie falls into this. Someone even suggests calling the police after the blockheads have Gumby and the band kidnapped, but the agent says "No time for that". While it thankfully turns out well with the blockheads tied up and the robot substitutes deactivated...They literally just leave the blockheads tied up...in their lab...and within a meter of the controls.
 * We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story: Seriously, think about it. A scientist from the future goes back in time and collects dinosaurs, force evolves their brains so they're just smart enough to be able to speak and reason on a fourth grade level (except poor Dweeb, who's basically left functionally retarded), brings them to modern day New York and then just drops them off in the city with very vague instructions of finding a fellow scientist without any training or understanding of how modern life functions. Then a good chunk of the plot revolves around the dinos stumbling into trouble, being chased by the authorities and then trying to rescue two kids who stupidly signed a contract with an obviously creepy old man. If anybody in the movie put more than three seconds of thought into their actions, it would be a pretty short story.

Films -- Live-Action
"Ripley: "Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?""
 * Burn After Reading is one of the few examples of an Idiot Plot done deliberately. And thus, it manages to be hilarious and entertaining rather than annoying, like most straight examples.
 * Lampshaded in Aliens.

"Mike Nelson: They must be having a dumb contest. It's the only explanation."
 * Dumb and Dumber is one of the few movies that invokes this intentionally (it's in the title) and does it well.
 * The 2007 Christmas movie Christmas in Wonderland would be a 10-minute short film had everyone not been idiots. The family go to West Edmonton Mall to do some shopping, the dad lets the kids go, one brother leaves the younger kids alone to chase a girl at the Water Park, the two young kids find a bag of counterfeit money, not knowing it's counterfeit, spend tons of it, dad tries to use an expired card at Zellers, the two goons chase the kids around the mall for the money... and it gets worse as the movie goes on.
 * The Room. William Shakespeare could have been describing the film when he wrote "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

"- Hey Data, do you remember your evil twin Lore? No? Me neither. Let's transfer your knowledge, much of which is sensitive military information, directly into the brain of this mystery Soong-type android we just found. Yeah, good idea. - I'm in no hurry even though my DNA is fucked up so I'll die in 24 hours unless I kidnap you and drain your blood. No hurry at all, so let us wait till tomorrow, because ... because ..." "Oh, and I just also happen to look and sound like a monster that wants to take over the world now. Don't mind my creepy black cloak, my horribly evil sounding voice or my terrifying face. Also don't mind the fact that I'm yelling about creating a galactic empire run exclusively by me. No, no, no, you see it's the Jedi that are trying to take over. That warranted them all being executed by the army that is controlled by myself without any kind of evidence to prove what I'm saying is true. Yup, we just killed them all, even the children. Then we burned down their temple, and you're all just gonna have to take my word for it. Trust me, look at my face. Would this face lie to you? (cut to a poster saying "Vote Palpatine, 3036, or else!")"
 * Face Off:
 * Keep a dangerous terrorist lunatic in a coma in a hospital that three people know about under no security whatsoever while a top FBI agent pretends to be him in a super-secret high security prison. Oh, and leave the top FBI agent's face in the hospital so the terrorist lunatic can become the FBI agent. And don't tell the agent's boss, co-workers or the prison's warden about the plan so all the terrorist has to do to make sure no one knows (except the FBI agent, who's got the terrorist's face so no one will believe him) is kill two people. And he has an outgoing phone in his room, allowing him to call anyone if he wakes up.
 * This is not even to mention that the entire plot of the movie relies on nobody noticing that Nicolas Cage and John Travolta have switched faces in a process that apparently leaves zero scarring. Just their faces. There is a scene wherein Evil Cage-As-Travolta sleeps with Good Travolta-As-Cage's wife of about, let's say fifteen or twenty years, and she flat-out does not notice that her husband's body is completely different. Tattoos, body hair, scars, moles, musculature, weight, his freaking penis, she does NOT notice. She's been with him for as many as twenty years, she has NO IDEA A SWITCHEROO HAS BEEN MADE, having apparently only paid attention to her husband's face, and absolutely zero to the fact that Nick Cage and John Travolta are built completely and utterly differently.
 * Doesn't explain why Archer's wife doesn't notice anything different when she kisses Troy, mind, let alone sleeps with him.
 * X-Men: The Last Stand
 * It features a triple idiot plot. The government hears that Magneto is raising an army to attack the mutant cure laboratory on Alcatraz. In response, they arm the guards there only with mutant cure dart weapons in plastic dart rifles, thus leaving them totally defenseless against an attack with conventional weapons (Magneto could easily take care of firearms, but the dart rifles should be able to use the Instant Sedation darts seen in the second movie). Then, Magneto's army attacks, and no one in it brings along any weapons. Magneto and his army are attacking an island compound in order to kill the mutant being held within, as his blood is being used to make a mutant cure. In order to get there, Magneto rips up the Golden Gate Bridge and hovers it over to the island, with his entire army standing on the bridge. This looks very cool. However, rather than dropping the bridge at the entrance to the island and then fighting a pitched battle to get to the mutant, Magneto could have literally dropped the bridge on the mutant.
 * The whole thing is full of "it's not as if" moments—Magneto is surprised to realize that the guns are plastic, partway into the fight, but it's not as if he had some kind of ability to sense metal at a distance that had been highlighted in the plot about fifteen minutes ago.
 * And then there's Magneto's apparent decision that he's playing chess rather than fighting a war during the attack by sending in the "pawns" while the queen sits around doing abso-frigging-lutely nothing. Apparently Magneto was so focused on scheming the rest of his war that it took up 90% of his brain cells. The "pawns" are mutants, the very people who Magneto has made perfectly clear are the superior form of humanoid life. Yet he sends them off to be killed and stands around watching it happen. Some mutants must be more superior than others.
 * At the end, the heroes need to stop the Phoenix, a mutant of great power in this continuity, but still a mutant. They have custody of another mutant who can neutralize other mutant powers just by standing close to them. So, of course, they take him AWAY from her.
 * The ending of the original Oceans Eleven movie. How stupid could the team have to be to . If the coffin in question was a regular burial coffin, and not the flimsy version used for cremation, then we either have a classic case of Did Not Do the Research, or a legendarily stupid operator at the crematorium (the other reason is that the film couldn't show a gang of criminals getting away with it).
 * Spider Man 3:
 * Much of the tension could have been relieved if Mary-Jane had asked Peter "You do realize my role in the play was replaced, right?" Or if Peter would have taken a deep breath and talked things through with her after "killing" Harry. On the other hand, he was under the effects of the evil suit, but it felt like he forgot her entirely after getting his revenge. In fact, there were a lot of problems with that movie's plot, many of which were pointed out in a HISHE episode.
 * Don't forget the admittedly in-movie (but treading actual What an Idiot! territory) stupidity of, on a whim,
 * Harry gets his memory back, and then threatens Mary Jane, telling her that he would hurt Peter unless she breaks up with him. Both Harry and Mary Jane somehow forget that Peter is just as strong as Harry, and has had far more experience dealing with superpowered people than Harry ever has. Mary Jane proceeds to break up with Peter, and forgets to tell him that Harry got his memory back, is once again dangerous, and that he threatened her.
 * Harry's butler tells Harry that Peter did not intentionally kill his father. Either the truth about Harry's father's death slipped his mind for several years, or the writers retro-actively made the butler an idiot to advance the plot, and make Harry and Peter friends again. (Word of God is that the butler is a hallucination which makes no sense since there is a scene where Harry talks to the butler in front of Peter and he doesn't notice anything off!)
 * Scientists detect extra mass in their experiment (which has to take place in a pit open to the environment for some odd reason), but rather than actually go check, they assume it's a bird (a bird with the mass of a man?) and keep going with the experiment.
 * Not to mention that Sandman, a man with ability to easily move an infinite amount of sand, decides that the best way for him to make money with his abilities is to be a criminal. It's not as if there are places with tons and tons of sand that need moving, perhaps to access a valuable resource of some kind.
 * Outbidding the guys who created the World Archipelago by a few million dollars would've netted him in excess of several billion. Even if we presume that such uses would be too boring for him, and he wants to be where he can hurt people with his sand; it's not as if the United States was not currently fighting a war, in a desert. Or as if families of active duty military did not get unlimited free health care. (Granted that he's currently a fugitive from justice, still, if the man can't convince the US government to trade one free pardon in return for a guy who can single-handedly kick the ass of the entire city of Fallujah without getting scratched, he's just not trying.) Hell, even if he just supplied sand to the construction industry he'd probably be doing better than robbing banks.
 * Chain Letter:
 * It is about a Serial Killer who sends a chain letter to teenagers and kills them if they don't send it to five others because he was tortured by insurgents for having a government-issued cell phone. If the creators were trying to send a message that technology is bad, they did it in a fucked up way.
 * Also why does he only target teens? Don't adults use cell phones and computers too? And shouldn't he be targeting government officials, not harmless teenagers who had nothing to do with his torture?
 * Into the Blue hinges almost entirely on the main character, Jared, being nosebleed-inducingly dumb at every possible turn. Why does he drive his girlfriend away by refusing to tell her that her life is in danger because of his dumb deals with the gangsters? Why doesn't he try to tell the gangsters why there's been a delay in the plan instead of getting into a firefight without a weapon? Why does he leave his girlfriend tied up at the mercy of the gangsters to dive in the water WITH his hands tied behind his back? Why does he destroy the drugs when they're the only thing the gangsters are interested in? Why does he randomly tell them all they need to know about the giant treasure?
 * Hellboy II the Golden Army:
 * This movie is rife with these. Beside the usual "I'm pregnant but I won't tell him as to maximize the angst" plot, the heroes rapidly capture one of the McGuffin the Big Bad needs to awake the titular Golden Army. Now, they realize that they have no particular need for that item or the Golden Army, but rather then destroying it by giving it to the one team member who can melt anything, they leave it with Abe's Shallow Love Interest, who told them explicitly that she acts as a magic homing beacon for the Big Bad. Guess what happens?
 * There's also the fact that Nuala seems completely unaware of the fact that she ought to actually warn the Paranormal Investigation team about stuff. She just stands there with her mouth hanging open when her brother drops the Forest God seed, not telling then to keep it from water until it's two inches from a drain. She then oh-so-casually tells Abe that her very dangerous, psychotic, human-hating, murderous brother will be able to find their hide-out because they are mentally linked and thus he knows everything that she knows. Apparently this wasn't worth mentioning before bringing her there, so they could find some way to hide her without her figuring out where it is? Or that she only thinks to hide the map and crown piece when her brother is right at the door, breaking in? Or Abe deciding to get drunk and sing love songs after being told that Nuala's brother would be showing up for blood instead of warning the team?
 * Open Water 2 Adrift concerns six people who sail a luxury yacht into the middle of nowhere and decide to go swimming. It would have been nice if one of them had remembered to lower the boarding ladder first. The one hydrophobic woman who didn't want to go swimming gets thrown overboard by her 'friend' trying to cure her fear of water. So now we have six people trapped in the water and an infant alone on board. Believe it or not the stupidity level increases from there.
 * The three protagonists of Frozen (not the Disney film) are this trope, over and over again. Parker doesn't know a thing about how to ski, yet she acts all Damsel Scrappy and ruins her boyfriend's and his best friend's skiing weekend and setting in motion a catastrophic chain of events that ends up with . Not that they're entirely blameless either; they decide to bribe a ski lift controller for a last ride. When the resort is going to close for five days. With a snowstorm approaching. They deserved everything they've got. Dan is to blame too, for having brought his shrill of a girlfriend along when she clearly should've stayed elsewhere.
 * Star Trek V: The Final Frontier:
 * Sybok's Evil Plan is pretty dumb and only works because everyone else in the galaxy is apparently an idiot. He takes a Federation officer, a Klingon and a Romulan hostage so that a starship will be sent for him and his primitive followers to hijack. This plan relies heavily on only one of the three most powerful governments in the galaxy bothering to make a rescue attempt, that they sent one ship rather than a whole fleet, and that that ship would not have functional transporters.
 * Hilariously, Sybok is outraged when Kirk and company attack Paradise City, saying he didn't expect violence to result. Yes, how dare the Federation take the forced overthrow of Nimbus III as a hostile act! And that's to say nothing of how the Klingons or Romulans would treat it...
 * Taken cynically, it makes a bit more sense. Nimbus III was a marginally inhabitable wasteland populated largely by individuals that can be charitably described as scum. Any officers assigned there probably pissed off their superiors, and the Federation, being the only one who would care about its citizens would send a ship, but since Nimbus III is a worthless backwater, they wouldn't want or need to commit all that much.
 * Let's not forget that the Enterprise-A is malfunctioning mess that even Scotty is having trouble with. Nonetheless, Starfleet decides to send her into the conflict to save the day. Kirk himself asks why another ship isn't sent given the obvious problems with his. An admiral responds that there aren't any other qualified captains on-hand. So why not just loan Kirk and company a functioning ship?
 * This is especially ridiculous as an exterior shot shows the Excelsior in the same dock as the Enterprise! Or, what, is the engine STILL sabotaged from whatever Scotty did to it over a year ago?
 * Star Trek: Nemesis was mocked here for characters doing things the stupidest way available:
 * Con Air:
 * It starts off with an Army Ranger meeting his wife in a bar, and her getting hit on by a drunk guy who later tries to beat him up in the parking lot, along with two friends. The drunk guy had to rip off the lead's ribbons-several rows of 'em-before starting the fight. Poe, of course, rips 'em a new one, culminating in the first guy pulling a knife, whereupon Poe gives him a strike to the head that accidentally kills him. Cut to the courthouse, where his lawyer advises him to plead out so he can get a reduced sentence. The judge disagrees, citing the fact that Poe should be held to a higher standard because he's...an Army Ranger. Given that he was wearing a uniform before the fight, and the assailants tried to rape his wife and kill him, he should've gotten off with self-defense. The lawyer doesn't even have him dress in a spare uniform—or even rent a suit—at the trial. The rest of the film can be excused by Rule of Cool.
 * His wife implies that he was a hellraiser before he joined the army ("You were almost 'that guy' again"), Poe's wife runs before the knife comes out, and the guys' friends take the knife with them as they flee. This might make a self-defense claim risky...if there hadn't been dozens of witnesses in the bar to prove that the other guy started it earlier in the evening. The Idiot Ball was bouncing off every character in that courtroom.
 * In addition to being idiotic, its also full of Hollywood Law. In real life, a judge cannot dismiss the terms of a plea bargain while simultaneously keeping the defendant's confession on the record. Without the plea bargain being upheld, there is no guilty plea.
 * 28 Days Later:
 * Monkeys infected with a deadly and highly contagious virus, that makes them super aggressive and can spread by the slightest scratch or bite are held in steel frame cages? Check! A scientist discovers activists trying to release the monkeys, and tries to get them to stop by cryptically telling them the monkeys are infected with "Rage" and leaving it at that? Check! Said activists see said scientists getting all panicked about it, but don't bother finding out what he is so afraid of? Check, check, and double check!
 * Jim walks into an abandoned gas station, alone, because "we don't have any cheeseburgers." His companion Selena reminds him that they have plenty of food, but by God he wants those cheeseburgers. Surprise surprise, Jim finds a zombie in the store and has to fight it off on his own. At this point, everyone is holding the idiot ball. Jim is risking not only his own life, but everyone else's as well. What happens if he gets turned? Meanwhile, Selena, instead of restraining him or telling him he can't go in, shrugs her shoulders and walks away. This particular episode is Egregious because it doesn't even drive the plot, only some minor dialogue later in the story. A soldier tells Jim that there's no way he could have gotten this far without killing someone. Well, he could have if he and his buddies weren't all holding the idiot ball.
 * 28 Weeks Later:
 * The so called "shelter", where people are crammed in at the first sign of trouble without first checking whether the zombie that started the trouble is inside or not! And then demonstrate how the doors to this impenetrable shelter can be breached by zombies and panicked humans alike from inside - had no-one in the military heard the saying "don't put all your eggs in the same basket"?
 * That's not even the start of it. For no reason whatsoever, they turn off the lights which not only lowers visibility and harder to see the (so far) lone infected coming, but greatly panics the civilians before it even shows up. Wouldn't it have been easier/safer to tell everyone to stay in their rooms? And what's more, the infection started because a man tried to see his wife (who was an asymptomatic carrier of the virus) was able to enter the room. The room was completely unguarded, despite the military being well aware that she had the virus.
 * There's also when, after everyone in that shed get infected, the soldiers have gotten orders to shoot everyone in sight. Including people trying to hide, drive away, avoid gunfire; if they weren't such idiots, they would have figured out that zombies would not be doing any of those things.
 * Comedian Richard Jeni had an extended bit on the massive Idiot Plot that was Jaws the Revenge.
 * In Sliding Doors, so much trouble could have been avoided if James Hammerton had thought to say to Helen Quilley on their first date 'Oh, by the way I'm separated from my first wife and we're getting a divorce, but don't worry, it's all amicable'.
 * Bride Wars.
 * The entire plot is driven by everyone involved being petty, self-absorbed, vindictive, and above all stupid. Granted, it's a decent satire of wedding preparation insanity...
 * In his review, Film Brain notes that the entire reason for the movie - that the two women want to have their weddings on the same day, at the same hotel, is pointless, since the times of the wedding are still different. They could still both have their weddings on that day and at that place. The only handwave we get is the weak excuse that they don't want to have weddings on the same day. Somehow, just putting on a brave face and dealing with that isn't less difficult and more mature than completely trashing and ruining their lives and each other's lives.
 * Mamma Mia!:
 * Movie reviewer Eric D Snider felt that the film version had an Idiot Plot. Sophie invites all three of her possible fathers to her wedding, believing she'll just know which one is actually her dad when she sees him. And then when they individually figure it out and each tell Sophie that they're giving her away, she just goes with it.
 * That whole idiot plot could easily have been solved by a DNA test.
 * Of course, Sophie eventually figures out that it was a pretty dumb plan and her fiancée gets really upset with her for it, so yeah. One has to wonder why Donna didn't start to suspect Sophie having any hand in it though, especially considering that it was her wedding coming up at conveniently the same time all three men did and she gave an outburst about how sucky it is for a child to grow up without a father.
 * And then there's the fact that the entirety of Donna's angst over Sam is simply because he has to wait the whole damn movie to finally say two words:
 * For the record, that's the plot of the original stage musical too.
 * Star Wars:
 * Return of the Jedi. The idea of the Rebel scum falling into the Emperor's neat trap and only overcoming it because the strike team finds and allies itself with an unsophisticated but forest-capable warrior culture would work pretty well if those allies were Wookies, as was originally intended. Heck, judging by Chewbacca, the results could have been too brutal for that kind of movie. But when the furry aliens are instead Ewoks, short and cuddly teddy bears, the Imperial legions can only be defeated through the utmost incompetence, the officers losing 50+ from their IQs, and all the soldiers forgetting what "coordination" means. Top award goes to the officer who gets tricked by Han Solo into opening the bunker door.
 * It gets worse. Absolutely nothing about the Emperor's plan actually requires allowing the Rebel sabotage team to land on Endor at all, because they have no way to signal back to the Rebel fleet before it enters the Endor system. If they'd just tractored the shuttle into the Executor's hangar bay as it flew by, Vader could still have captured Luke alive and everybody else would be dead. Hell, they could have then lowered the deflector shield to make the Rebel fleet think everything was fine as it jumped into the system, then raised the shield again before they actually got close enough to shoot at the Death Star—but were already close enough for the Imperial Fleet to block their escape route.
 * Pretty much everything that happens in The Phantom Menace. Darth Sidious orders the Trade Federation to secretly kill the Jedi ambassadors when his whole plan hinges on the Federation's blockade being highly visible to stir up discontent in the Senate. When Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are trapped at the film's beginning, the Trade Federation sends in the battle droids instead of keeping the Jedi locked in a room filled with poison gas. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan split up and take separate transports down to the planet's surface without any way of knowing if they'll land remotely near each other. The Trade Federation lands its forces on the other side of the planet from their target. The captured queen is sent for "processing" rather than being held in the secure, occupied palace. The reason they need the queen in the first place is to force her to sign a treaty "legalizing" the invasion and occupation. Qui-Gon hatches a convoluted scheme involving betting on a slave boy entering a pod race to win spaceship parts (using the Force to cheat) instead of trying to get the parts from anther vendor, trading the ship in for a new one, buying passage on another ship to get where he needs to go, or just stealing the parts since he's willing to break the rules. The Trade Federation blockade is somehow devastating an advanced, civilized planet, and sends away all but one of its ships for the final battle. The Chancellor needs to send a committee to verify the testimony of the Jedi he personally sent to investigate a situation. When faced with reports of a Sith Lord running around, the Jedi council sends a whopping two Jedi to deal with him. The good guys commit to a ground war with the Trade Federation when all they needed to do was sneak some pilots into the hangar and shoot down the droid control ship, neutralizing the enemy army. And even after Anakin saves the day, nobody does anything about his still-enslaved mother.
 * Attack of the Clones. Obi-Wan impulsively jumps out a window to grab a droid without knowing where its going or what its armed with. A bounty hunter hired to kill Padme subcontracts to a second assassin instead of doing the job himself. When pursued into a nightclub, the assassin attempts to ambush and kill the pursuing Jedi warriors rather than getting the hell out of Dodge. The Jedi send the young, rash Anakin to guard a woman he already had emotional bonds with and was clearly flirting with. The safest place for the endangered Senator is evidently picnicking in romantic, wide-open areas on her home planet. Obi-Wan is told that the clone army was ordered years ago by someone impersonating a dead Jedi, but nobody investigates where this suspiciously convenient army came from.
 * Everything about Anakin's training. In The Phantom Menace, Qui-Gon Jinn is established to be a bit of a Jedi Hippie, defying the Jedi code. Qui-Gon Jinn discovers a 9 year old slave boy who has great potential for power. Qui-Gon goes through ridiculous lengths to free the boy (which itself is part of another Idiot Plot) and presents him to the Jedi Council to request to take him on as his apprentice. The Jedi wisely tell him to fuck off, telling him that he's too old and his attachment to his mother and his past as a slave (which would be traumatic for any child) make him dangerous and a possible threat. Even Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon's apprentice and best friend, tells him that the kid is dangerous. Some shit happens and Qui-Gon gets killed by a Sith Lord, who is swiftly killed by Obi-Wan. Qui-Gon's dying wish is for Obi-Wan to train Anakin, based on some ancient prophecy that says someone would rise to bring balance to the Force... despite the fact that there are only ever two Sith Lords at a time (no more, no less) and that Obi-Wan just killed one of them, and the fact that all things considered the Force is pretty balanced. Ignoring the fact that there is a good chance Anakin will fall to the dark side, ignoring the fact that there is a Sith lord out there no doubt looking for a new partner (remember, no more or no less than two), and ignoring how the kid is clearly troubled, sweating and scowling during his examinations, Yoda decides to let him become a Jedi anyway. Essentially, all these Jedi Masters' instincts keep telling them what a bad idea training Anakin would be, and they repeatedly mention how they don't trust him, how he's dangerous, how sending him off on these missions is risky - but they do it all anyway, so Darth Vader can happen.
 * No reason is ever given as to why the Separatists would follow Sidious. In the second movie the Trade Federation only follows Dooku because he claims to be opposed to Sidious after he betrayed them in the first movie. All of Palpatine's plans seem to rely on every leader of both factions being completely incompetent, to the point of leaving obvious clues that the Separatist leadership commissioned the clone army specifically to be used against them. A lot of the problems in the trilogy could be explained as him making things extra convoluted for his own amusement, just because he could get away with it. His hologram doesn't even hide his face or change his voice.
 * RedLetterMedia points out many of the above problems, and paraphrases Palpatine's addresses to the Senate in Revenge of the Sith as follows:


 * Transporter 3.
 * The villain uses an elaborate setup to force the transporter to do a job, including bracelets Made of Explodium. The villain also has literally hundreds of Mooks positioned along the route to keep the pressure up on Frank. The job: Drive a girl across Europe. It's never explained why they need Frank badly enough to justify the fuss about him or even why this big and well-organized crime syndicate needs an external expert for moving a person from A to B.
 * A different idiot plot point revolves around the whole plan to get the girl's father to sign this agreement in exchange for his daughter's return when any contract signed under duress wouldn't hold up in an international court of law. Might as well just forge the signature or forcibly move his hands to sign it for all the legitimacy it would bring.
 * The part where he saves himself from drowning by filling an inflatable dinghy by letting out the air from the car's tires. All the while breathing the same said air himself.
 * In Idiocracy the point of the plot is that everyone is an idiot except for two average people from 2005, and even then Joe is very naive and panicked by his situation.
 * Paranormal Activity; basically the whole reason the demon keeps getting stronger is Micah, who is practically suicidal with stupidity. When an expert on the occult tells him to not aggravate a supernatural and malevolent demon, what does he do? He taunts it constantly. His perpetual skepticism about the demon flies in the face of ON CAMERA, concrete evidence that yes, it exists.
 * The Strangers; if the two leads had a brain cell between them, the movie would've been a lot shorter and NO ONE would've died.
 * Subverted in Ils (aka Them), the French film from which The Strangers cribs its premise. The two leads may be frightened, but they're not idiots, and they do pretty much everything right.
 * A Sound of Thunder, which the Agony Booth's recap describes as an "Idiot Plot fractal".
 * Orphan:
 * The only one in the movie who wasn't a complete idiot was the mother. Esther breaks her own arm in a vise to frame her, and the doctors somehow believe that the mother was able to do it one-handed. Daniel (her son) decides not to reveal Esther's violence until he has evidence, even though the mother had already asked him about it and would believe him anyway. But Maxine (the deaf daughter) swept the medal podium at the Too Dumb to Live Olympics. Maxine watches Esther break a young girl's leg and murder a nun, but covers for her out of fear. Okay, I'll buy it, even adults can be cowed by threats. But then Esther tries to murder Maxine herself twice, tries to murder Daniel at his treehouse (Maxine at least intervenes), and then succeeds (in certain cuts of the movie) in murdering Daniel at the hospital - Maxine never tells a single adult.
 * Throw in the fact that Esther was a little creeper right from the start. Maybe the family really did want a slightly different child, but surely there were less morbid ones at the orphanage?
 * In Best Laid Plans, the entire plot is moronic, but the viewer doesn't learn this until near the end. It starts with a deadbeat kid (Nick) learning that he's inheriting nothing from his dad (he'd expected to get a tidy sum of money so he could move away and start a new life). Nick meets a girl (Reese Witherspoon). They hit it off and become a couple. A co-worker asks Nick to help him rip off a drug dealer. Nick would get $10,000 just for driving. Nick agrees, they pull of the job, but end up getting caught by the drug dealer who demands Nick pay him $15,000 in return. Nick then plots to steal a valuable artifact from a house where his friend is house-sitting. To keep his friend from reporting the theft, he sets up a scenario where his girlfriend has to sleep with his friend and she threatens to charge him with rape. The friend panics and cuffs the girlfriend to a pool table and calls Nick. Nick pretends to kill his girlfriend and puts her in the trunk of his car. The drug dealers steal his car, then let him walk home where they're waiting for him, so the reason for stealing the car is beyond me. When they ask him for the money, he finds out it was all a scam because there are peanut shells on the floor and his supposedly-dead friend eats peanuts. He realizes they weren't drug dealers after all. They were college graduates who set up the elaborate scam to pay off their student loans. Aside from the other intricacies of the plot, four guys committing numerous felonies and faking the death of Nick's co-worker hardly seems worthwhile when the payoff is only $3,750 each, which would only make a small dent in most student loans. Plus, their reasoning was overly optimistic. They had thought he had inherited some money, but then assumed he would turn right around and pay the $15,000 on demand.
 * Tim Burton's Beetlejuice.
 * The entire series of escalating problems encountered by the main characters (almost culminating in their destruction) stems from their inability to comprehend the Handbook for the Recently Deceased which was provided to them, and failing to heed the advice of their caseworker. Clearly the handbook itself was not incomprehensible, because every character in the movie except the Maitlands seemed able to understand and make use of the book's contents. The running gag was "this thing reads like stereo instructions." Adam quotes one part of the Handbook, "Geographical and temporal perimeters: Functional perimeters vary from manifestation to manifestation." (slaps book shut in disgust, spraying dust in his face) Lampshaded (and arguably justified, since it was the reason he picked them) by the title character, whose first scene has him reviewing the obituaries, seeing the Maitlands, and saying, "What have we got here? The Maitlands, huh? Cute couple. Look nice and stupid, too." Truer words were never spoken.
 * Everybody here's a Turn of the Millennium troper who can confidently use and troubleshoot computers and text editing software at the basic level at the very least. Remember The Eighties joke about how only geniuses could program VCRs? The Maitlands were Country Mice - a small-town architect and a housewife. The Deetzes were yuppies - and so were the caseworker and her fellow afterlife bureaucrats!
 * The main reason Fritz Lang's Woman in the Moon is remembered for its accurate rocket launch sequence and nothing else is because the rest of its overlong running time is a melodramatic idiot plot. The most glaring example is that the heroes take the villain along on the mission, fully knowing his evil intentions. Yes, he threatened to blow up the ship if he didn't go with them, but did it occur to none of the crew that they could knock him unconscious and leave him behind just before liftoff (or better yet, have him arrested) and go to the moon and he would be helpless to retaliate? The entire third act would've gone much smoother, especially since no villain would have meant no gunfight which means no bullet hole in the oxygen tank which means no depleted oxygen supply which means everyone could have happily gone home with their gold, the end. But no, they had to be idiots.
 * The NeverEnding Story 2 - The Next Chapter.
 * Bastian has an item that will grant an unlimited number of his wishes. No further commentary is really needed here, but for the sake of it, we'll go a bit further: He spends the first half or so of the movie being inexplicably reluctant to make any wishes at all despite repeatedly being confronted with deadly situations and surviving at the last second through other means. At one point he accidentally creates an incredibly destructive dragon, and then has to spend a chunk of time hunting it down and lucking into it being blown up instead of just wishing it became nice or any number of similar solutions. He then discovers that any time he makes a wish, an evil witch uses a machine to steal one of his memories. His wishes are now limited by the number of memories he has left. It never occurs to him to simply wish for all his memories back, and for the machine to explode, and the witch to vanish, or any big picture solution at all until he's down to his last wish.
 * It's worse then that. Bastian easily gets a confession out of the villain that she's the one responsible for all the bad things going on(after seeing the monsters guard her castle). Her and her bird-boy lackey(who makes no attempt to pretend he's not working for the villain) have been urging Bastian at every opportunity to make wishes. Bastian, who has held out pretty well until now, starts making wishes like crazy, because it never seems to occur to him that doing what the bad guys want you to do is a bad idea. He also starts getting really chummy with the villain, doing what she says, despite the fact she's supposed to be HIS prisoner and even believing Atreyu is plotting against him (despite the fact he knows and should trust Atreyu far better), because the villain says so. What's incredibly sad about all of this is that Bastian is supposed to be a very well-read kid (in the first film he rattles off a list of classics he's read....at ten years old) so you'd think he'd be a bit more Genre Savvy.
 * Then there's also this part: Bastian is trying to climb up to the top of a tower. Problem: He's outside and the walls are too smooth to grab on to. So he decides to wish for steps in the wall on which he could climb (not very stupid). At about the half way point, the steps stop and Bastian can't get higher unless there are more. While a normal person would just wish for there to be enough steps to make it to the top, Bastian does something that takes more time and was much more harmful to him. He wishes for more steps. INDIVIDUALLY. That's right, he makes 20 or so wishes that are the exact same thing, "I wish there was another Step! And another! ..." Even if Bastian DIDN'T know that he was losing his memories at that point, he still wasted valuable time and wishes doing something a five year old would have been able to do more competently.
 * The villain Xayide also acts like an idiot. She can summon giant killer robot monster-things, teleport anywhere at will, and who knows what else. She could just zap to Bastian's location, surround him with monsters, kill him and take Auryn for herself. Of course, she does no such thing.
 * Drop Dead Fred seemed to move along only because Elizabeth was clearly insane, and not a single character called her out on it until halfway through the movie.
 * In Zack and Miri Make a Porno two friends who are Platonic Life Partners decide to make ends meet by creating a porno. Together. With each other. The question that just popped into your head? Yeah, that happens.
 * Mars Attacks! Admittedly, it's a parody, but it doesn't make watching almost all of the characters make stupid decision after stupid decision any easier. Especially because a lot of the scenes are filmed in the style of a straight drama.
 * Fright Night features a boy who tells everyone that his new neighbor Jerry is a vampire. Including the vampire's henchman. He is then surprised when it appears nobody believes him, and further surprised when said vampire tries to kill him. Vampire Jerry, for his part, is stupid enough to get stabbed through the hand by a sharpened No. 2 pencil.
 * Played intentionally and lampshaded in Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay.
 * Nothing would have happened if Kumar had the patience to wait until their plane touched down in Amsterdam, where weed is 100 percent legal, to start lighting up. And that's just the beginning. Similar to the original, the severity of their situation is only heightened by the stupidity (and, often, racism) of all the people around them.
 * Further Lampshaded in the Choose Your Own Adventure-esque feature on the DVD ("Dude Change the Movie") where if you have Kumar instead choose to not smoke on the plane the entire movie plot is discarded. (In it's stead you get Harold and Kumar Go to Amsterdam which is, tonally, very different from Guantanamo Bay.)
 * The 2004 Disney Channel Original Movie Stuck in the Suburbs follows the life and times of a teenage girl who accidentally switches cell phones with a celebrity pop singer and proceeds to royally screw with his life for teh lulz. The entire plot hinges on the assumption that a famous musical artist wouldn't cancel his phone service and buy a new device as soon as he discovered the mix-up, or at least get someone who works for him to.
 * Die Hard 2:
 * The planes are shown having nearly two hours of reserve fuel, with that much they could easily divert to dozens upon dozens of airports. Even the ones on fumes should easily reach Reagan National, BWI, or Andrews AFB - all of which are required to accept an aircraft in distress (One of the other airports in the area was explicitly stated to have been shut down due to the weather, but that still doesn't change the fact that at the time the planes were instructed to circle, Holly's flight had enough fuel that they could have diverted it to JFK International in New York if they wanted to). At one point, the engineer even gets on the radio and tells the pilots about the threat but doesn't divert them to new airports. The airport police continue to accept "employees" at face value after being outright told that the terrorists are infiltrating secured areas. The villains take a 747 and fly off without a single hostage meaning that there is literally no reason why the Navy wouldn't blow them out of the sky. Not that it matters, because McClane destroys the plane - creating a large fire on the runway which the other planes use to land visually. Something the heroes could have easily accomplished at the very beginning of the movie.
 * In addition, the plot is happening because the Department of Justice was having a high-profile prisoner delivered to Dulles. On Christmas Eve. They were having a high-profile prisoner flown to a civilian airport during one of the busiest travel times of the year. Between people waiting for flights, people coming off of flights, and people picking travelers up, there were probably thousands of people there, making securing the place for a prisoner transfer pretty much impossible. If they had been flying the General to Andrews AFB - a military airfield that is much easier to secure - the story wouldn't have been possible.
 * Did they actually say the original destination was Dulles, or did the General only change destination from Andrews to Dulles after he hijacked the plane? One would imagine that if the plane was going to Dulles anyway it would have been simpler to just let them land and then pretend to be the team who was supposed to pick up the General rather than risk the life of the guy the entire mission was about by having him single-handedly hijack a plane.
 * Ebert's review of Key Exchange gave us the (possible) origin of the term: "The movie comes dangerously close to exhibiting an Idiot Plot, defined as a plot that would be over in five minutes if everyone in it were not an idiot."
 * Dennis the Menace US Strikes Again:
 * Mr. Wilson being constantly swindled by a pair of very obvious conmen played by Brian Doyle-Murray and Carrot Top. At one point we see a long montage of these same conmen conning Mr. Wilson many times in a row in different disguises. While it's pretty believable that Carrot Top's disguises would fool him, Brian Doyle-Murray has a very distinctive voice.
 * Margaret tries to win Dennis's heart by pretending to like bugs. Rather than actually getting real bugs, she makes obviously fake giant bugs, and Dennis and all his friends except Gina fall for it. Later, they get back at Margaret by dressing Ruff up as a very obviously fake giant bug and she actually falls for it and gets scared.
 * A lot of films by The Coen Brothers also depend on characters being idiots. But most of them are acting in-character, as such it works. Some even manage to subvert it, like in The Big Lebowski:
 * No Country for Old Men -The movie should have been over in about 10 minutes were it not following this trope in spades. Llewelyn is initially shown to be a somewhat crafty and aware veteran, but makes two horribly stupid mistakes that serve no purpose other than moving the plot forward.
 * 1. After successfully taking the money from the botched drug deal with no witnesses, he returns to the scene of the crime probably at least six hours later to bring a bottle of water to a man on the verge of death. Not only was it incredibly risky, it seems somewhat pointless because the man would likely have been dead anyways. This idea is so bad that even the character admits he's about to do the stupidest thing he's ever done. You can practically hear him say, "but if I don't do it, how else is this movie supposed to go on?"
 * 2. After going on the run with the bag full of money, he doesn't look in the bag and find the transponder for several DAYS, as he wonders why he keeps getting found. So, he never decided to count the money, see if there is anything else in the bag like guns, drugs, etc. Once again, had he simply looked in the bag from the start, the movie would have been over.
 * Aside from Llewelyn, everyone who deals with Chigurh loses 50 IQ points. After pulling him over and handcuffing him, a deputy simply holds an entire phone conversation with his back to the man and gets strangled. The Sheriff realizes that this hired contract is running around killing people and going after Moss, and instead of contacting federal authorities, other law enforcement officials, etc.....he basically does nothing and just retires. Also, an idiot ball to anyone who works with Chigurh as he apparently is quite willing to off any employers or associates if it strikes his fancy.
 * Fernando Meirelles' film adaptation of Saramago's Blindness has a brilliant premise but doesn't make much sense.
 * There is an epidemic across the city that renders people blind. The people who are blind are almost immediately thrown into concentration camps despite no one knowing anything about the virus. While hysteria and quarantines would be expected, the movie decides to crank Humans Are the Real Monsters and Humans Are Morons Up to Eleven by having the blind tossed in prison and forgotten. There is never any attempt to learn what the virus is or how to cure it. Julianne Moore is the only woman in the camp who can see. She goes along in order to help her husband but decides to pretend to be blind to both the inmates the few guards that come by. Since she is immune to the virus, she could easily be an asset in finding a cure. She doesn't help at all. As for the inmates, they stop caring about hygiene for whatever reason, going so far as to take dumps in the middle of the hallways of the prisons. The stupidity doesn't stop there. A guy sneaks a gun into the prison. Apparently, when he was arrested and placed there by government agents, no one decided to search him, nor did the man decide to start shooting. So the guy with the gun holds the entire prison hostage and even . You might remember that Moore's character can see perfectly fine while the GUN MAN is totally blind. You might also remember that he has no idea that she can see. Before you ask, no she isn't too scared to act. She openly defies him and even threatens him while he has the gun. She also has no problems sneaking around him and could have snagged the gun at any time, so her choice not to fight back can only be chalked up to lazy writing and drama. She does eventually , which renders her past inaction even more of a wall banger.
 * It is an Idiot Plot because the politicians in the novel and the sequel SEEING ARE idiots. Fortunately, no real politician would act like them.
 * Oh, and the filmmakers are of the belief that not only do people stop caring about hygiene when they go blind but they will be reduced to crawling around and acting like animals.
 * It should be noted that, in ALL of those aspects, Meirelles was merely being faithful to José Saramago's novel, and Saramago's point is exactly that society is a very fragile structure and can easily collapse into chaos. Moore's character is exactly an anti-heroine, and a big plot point is exactly how hard it is for her to accept her role and her responsibility. Also, nowhere is it implied that the blindness is caused by a virus. Basically, the "stupidity" described in this item are, at least according to Saramago, only human nature. It something should be condemned for this, it's the book, not the film.
 * In Johnny Mnemonic, the bad guys looking to suppress the data stored in Johnny's head are, for some reason, bent on specifically cutting off Johnny's head and cryogenically freezing it, even though suppressing the data would be as simple as killing him and destroying his head (which is even easier and only requires a gun and a bullet to achieve). Johnny also gets the bright idea that the data in his head is "worth a lot of money," despite that among the two factions who want the data, one doesn't want to use it for anything at all and the other wants to give it all away for free; nobody is in any position to get any money or make any money from the data.
 * To be fair, while they have no plans to sell the cure, since they themselves are not immune to the plague they have every reason to want to keep a copy around for their own use.
 * Unknown:
 * Played for laughs in Mystery Team.
 * A fine example of this trope not being bad is the Creepshow segment "The Lonely Death of Jordy Verril." Everything that goes wrong in that segment is a direct consequence of Jordy being an ignorant idiot, which is how he's characterized from the first frame.
 * In its last third or so, Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy rapidly becomes an Idiot Plot. By the end of the film, only two characters remain sympathetic: Banky, who started off as an idiot and becomes slightly less of one; and Hooper, who spends most of the film pointing out the idiocy of others.
 * The spread of the disease in Outbreak is only made possible by repeated instances of utter stupidity on the part of several characters, many of whom are supposed to be qualified professionals. An outbreak of a virulent disease is discovered in Africa. A biotech company illegally transports an infected monkey back to United States. Then, an employee steals what he knows to be an intended test animal to sell in the black market. When he fails to find a buyer, he sets the monkey free in the wild. As if this wasn't enough, a lab technician who was working with the blood of one of those infected by the monkey manages to break a vial and infect himself.
 * The whole plot of Speed 2 Cruise Control is predicated on the cruise ship passengers being unable to jump off the ship, as they'll supposedly be sucked into the ship propellers. Wha--?
 * Underworld Evolution features what is intended to be a crack squad of elite troops trained in killing vampires and werewolves. At the climax, they must seek out and destroy a lair of werewolves before they can unleash the Big Bad. They are surprised to find this lair is only accessible from an underwater entrance, but that's fine—they have scuba gear. Oh, wait. They forgot the silver ammo for their werewolf hunt, so if they go in, they're incapable of doing any damage to the enemy before werewolf bites turn them into werewolves. So they go in anyway.
 * The Comic Strip Presents: The Supergrass would have been about 15 minutes long had the police actually bothered to investigate Dennis and find that there was no truth to his claims of being a drug dealer. It's the Comic Strip, after all.
 * In Star Trek: Insurrection, Picard learns about a plan by an under-the-table Starfleet, working with an alien race, the Son'a, to move another race, the Bak'u, off their homeworld so they can take advantage of their world's fountain-of-youth powers, so Picard decides to stand against them to protect the Bak'u. Except there's no need to move the Bak'u anywhere. IT'S A FREAKING PLANET! The Bak'u are comprised of only six hundred people, so Starfleet could easily set up colonies far beyond the reach of the Bak'u. And if it got overcrowded, they could set up stations in orbit of the planet without the Bak'u ever discovering them.
 * It's made clear in the movie that they are not setting up long term colonies but plan to explode the space around the planet making it uninhabitable for centuries. Or rather, that's the villain's plan, because, they are too close to death to become immortal by the natural effect of the planet. Why the Starfleet people went along with that—when the natural healing effect is already enough for any non-villainous purpose—is never brought up.
 * Night of the Lepus: "We have to stop this insurgence of rabbits, so let's inject one with a serum I know absolutely nothing about. That should do the trick!"
 * The Grey: The entire plot is started by Liam Neeson's character, in defiance of any survival guide such as this one, decides the group should start walking away from the crash site. This is also in spite of the fact that the crash site has shelter, fuel, and materials to make weapons with.
 * The Woman in Black: Harry Potter is a grieving lawyer who travels to a small village to sort through the paperwork of a recently deceased woman who lived in an Old Dark House. Rather than taking the paperwork back to town and looking through it, he decides to stay there. He spends most of his time wandering around and looking at creepy things without doing anything at all. Message on the wall written in blood under the wallpaper? Huh, I'll go wander around more. The one thing he tries to do doesn't work. He also doesn't get a lick of paperwork done.