Summary

• Maintaining continuity in film franchises is difficult, often resulting in plot holes and inconsistencies.
• The MCU and Star Wars have both struggled with maintaining continuity, with issues surrounding the Infinity Gauntlet and Leia's memories.
• Other franchises like X-Men and Alien have also faced challenges with continuity, introducing plot holes and conflicting timelines.

Maintaining continuity in a film series is an incredibly difficult task, and almost every iconic franchise has had their share of blunders in keeping a consistent narrative. For most big-budget Hollywood blockbusters, sequels have become an expected fact of life, with studios eager to capitalize on a guaranteed audience to rake in the big bucks. However, many iconic franchises have struggled to maintain contiuity as their series developed, with each installment building upon an increasingly shakier foundation.

This kind of dramatic reshaping of a film franchise is often done intentionally, hoping to revitalize a given series with the fresh injection of a new timeline. Other times, the disruption of continuity is less intentional, with plot holes or mistakes the screenwriters clearly didn't for muddying the waters. Whatever the case, the point of canon collapse can often be traced back to a single entry that violently destabilized the established plot.

9 The Infinity Gauntlet Has Made One Too Many Appearances

Avengers: Infinity War

The MCU fell victim to a disruptive error surrounding the origins of the Infinity Gauntlet. In Thor, the Infinity Gauntlet appears in the background as a blink-and-you'll-miss-it easter egg, but when Thanos shows up in Avengers: Age of Ultron's post-credits sequence, he already has the Gauntlet on-hand. Thor: Ragnarok explains this away as Odin having a fake Infinity Gauntlet, but the reveal that Thanos had the weapon custom-forged by the dwarf Eitri only further confuses things. It makes no sense that Odin would have a replica of Thanos' yet-unused weapon, leaving the possibility for a third glove to exist somewhere to inspire Asgard's fake version.

8 Leia Somehow Re Her Mother

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

The final installment of Star Wars' contentious prequel trilogy, Episode III explains how Luke and Leia were born, as Anakin's lover Pé dies in childbirth shortly after his heel-turn to the dark side. Despite this, Leia claims to have memories of her mother in Return of the Jedi, describing her as " [...] very beautiful," and "Kind, but sad." Even if she only had vague impressions, it makes no sense that Leia was able to her own birth, leading to supplemental Star Wars books trying to explain the error by claiming Leia was actually talking about someone else.

7 The X-Men Prequels Made Mystique Far More Important

X-Men: First Class

X-Men: First Class succeeded at injecting new life into the aging X-Men franchise, reinvigorating the universe with fresh casting and a compelling period adventure detail how the X-Men came to be. Unfortunately, this revitalization would come at a cost, bringing about a whole slew of plot holes, particularly in regard to Mystique's newfound importance as a character. The mutant shape-shifter not mentioning a previous history with Charles Xavier or Magneto in the first three movies is retroactively made unbelievable, not to mention the series' transformation into a gnarled mess of timelines, starting with First Class.

6 The Alien Movies Completely Distanced Themselves From The Predator

Alien: Covenant

Following the failures of Alien: Resurrection and Alien³, Ridley Scott's sci-fi horror touchstone attempted to save face by fulfilling a long-teased crossover with Alien vs.Predator. As cool as it was to see the two extraterrestrial terrors duke it out, the Alien vs Predator timeline was quickly isolated from the canon of both franchises. The Alien series in particular made it completely impossible for the galaxy to have room for the Predator, with Alien: Covenant telling the story of the Aliens' creation far later in time than the ancient murals depicting Predator-on-Xenomorph combat in Alien vs. Predator would suggest.

5 Mad Max Wanders Between Continuities With Ease

Mad Max: Fury Road

In the conversation for greatest action movie of all time, Mad Max: Fury Road was a visuals-driven masterpiece with little room for maintaining the continuity of the aging Mad Max franchise. The film has some visual references to The Road Warrior, with Max's leg brace, jacket, and the iconic Ford GT Falcon Interceptor all ed for, suggesting that the film takes place in between the first two films. However, the Interceptor is destroyed in Fury Road, marking the second time Max's ride has met its demise over the course of the series and ejecting Fury Road from any sensible order of events.

4 Somehow, Palpatine Has Returned

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

With a single line of text in the opening crawl, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker did irreversible damage to the continuity of the entire series, an almost impressive feat of canon destruction. The reveal that Emperor Palpatine had, in fact, lived through the events of Return of the Jedi caused a chain reaction of inconsistencies that are still being uncovered four years after the film's release. Why Palpatine's resurrection took so long, why he allowed the First Order to take over in lieu of the Empire, or how he managed to secretly build the biggest fleet of Star Destroyers the galaxy had ever seen all make for excellent questions films have simply no answer for.

3 Stark Trek Smashed Together Two Continuities

Star Trek (2009)

The 2009 reboot of the Star Trek franchise was an ambitious endeavor, tasked with endearing audiences to a brand-new version of the classic Enterprise crew. While the new crop of actors do a great job reminding Trekkies why they fell in love with these characters in the first place, the film couldn't resist re-treading old ground, incorporating Leonard Nemoy's Spock into the cast via time-travel hi-jinks. Clearly attempting to merge the two casts into one timeline in Star Trek, the film wound up damaging the continuity of the originals, altering the backstories of Spock and Kirk in dramatic ways.

2 Daniel Craig's James Bond Goes Back And Forth On Bond's History

Skyfall

Prior to Daniel Craig's run as James Bond, an argument could be made for most of the Bond movies taking place within a single universe that ages alongside our own, with the likes of James Bond, Q, and M all being code-names ed on over the generations rather than genuine individuals. Many references this theory, from Dame Judy Dench's M persisting across different Bond Actors to Daniel Craig himself mentioning how 007 agents have a short "shelf life", implying that he's only the latest in a long line of Bonds. Yet Skyfall and subsequent entries undo this idea, delving into Bond's past and making him a definitive, individual man with a complex history.

1 The Terminator Movies Have Three Timelines To Reconcile

Terminator: Genysis

Following the poor reception of Terminator 3 and Terminator: Salvation, Terminator Genysis opted to walk things back, starting from scratch as a direct sequel to the very first film. Sadly, this decision would exclude the excellent Terminator 2: Judgment Day from the canon, and Genysis' own critical failure would result in yet another timeline being made with Terminator: Dark Fate. If Genysis had played its cards a little wiser, it could've saved the franchise with a fresh start. Instead, Terminator fans now have to contend with three failed attempts at crafting a Terminator timeline, resulting in a mess of continuity that would need Skynet's time travel machine to be fixed.