Plot holes? Please.....

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Are you listing the plot holes people keep on saying and then say how stupid they actually are?

Half-Blood #18 and Son of Poseidon, Son of Adam, Gryffindor 7th year

I agree with you completely!! Isn't it a sci-fi movie? Well people it's normal we don't get it... It's not real!!!!!!! Olly crap i don't get why people keep dissing movies like that! The book was god the movie was good now please listen to this guy and stop whining! Thank you for spelling it out for them.

I would like to expand on your great post:
1.- Underground: As the box is being set in the lighted room full of the builders, we can hear constant explosions, even dirt falls in the entrance hallway. My bet is heavy bombing of a full scale war. Radiation poisoning and fallout would wipe humanity clean after 200+ years. Babies would be invaiable due to mutations in DNA.
After they exit into this same room, the entrance has been bombed heavily as there is no door to the exterior and it seems part of the building is missing, the hallway just opens to the outside environment.

3.- police, cemetery: when the man comes back from exploring the darkness he is arrested and taken somewhere. He returns from a place tha looks like a land fill, with lots of waste, including many plastic products. The people working here or guarding this exit, have plastic suites and gas masks, even a kid wearing this can be seen. This place is right next to the greenhouse.

4.- Huge animals: we only see a moth and a mole and part of a beetle horn or something. My guess is some of the animals have thrived in the rich underground environment given by the city, the mole eats through the food reserve of the city. Every time it appears its after food rations and only eats humans because they happen to be where the food is stored.
Mutation by radiation is unlikely is such short time period and on the exterior huge mutant animals would be waiting for them.

5.- canned food: it bugs me too, but being the only food source what else would people eat. Mayan beans buried in sites have been planted and waterd and germinated back to life giving scientist a chance to see species developed for crop by this ancient cultures. I guess its possible food can last, but sugary stuff, I think not, I once opened a can of syrup fruit or corn, and it smell horrid.

6- Box redundancy - It was dsigned as a one way, one time exit so leaving redudant ways, certainly someone would break out before time.
The multiple steps that were requiered make that pretty clear.
The turning of the crank is very strange. It would seem someone would be able to do it even by accident as it was in a changing room, but step 1 of the map is to activate the mechanism by pulling the central drawer if I recall, only after that, the crank activates the whole system.

7.- cave opening - First, the tremors caused by the jolts of main power generator must have opened this space because leaving this hole would have renderd the point of building underground mute. Then light bulbs covering the city dont let it be seen. The water able to get trough would not be enough to call attention as the panoramic view we get at the end, the hole is clearly very high above the city, or else they would just shout down onto them.
This was necesarry too because only two people would not be enough to start humanity.

Great post. As far as canned food goes, here's some facts. When I grew up, canned food didn't get expiration dates stamped on them. How did you know if it was bad? The can "spewed" when you opened it or it just plain smelled bad. Also, common sense was if it was rusty, it's probably bad.

My personal opinion is, only dairy need expiration dates. Marking canned goods and other staples like crackers, flour, etc., is just a gimmick to get you to buy more. Saying that, you should use common sense. Crackers get stale so don't go buying a ten year supply because they're on sale. They go stale but they won't kill you if that's all you have to eat.

Last thing. I was cleaning out my grandparents farm. We found home-canned foods (in jars) in the cellar house. There was a few jars marked Peaches '37. We opened them. They looked and smelled fine. After daring each other, my brother and I each ate a half peach. It tasted like it was canned the year before. That was in 1999. The peaches were 62 years old.

As for the canned goods, this story was meant to take place in a certain future. When the world ends it's actually like 60 years or something from now and they spent at least 40 years building and prepping Ember if you go off the time table in the novels. They very likely created a preservative of some kind that was expected to keep things fresh and viable for centuries. The movie doesn't portray the storerooms as described in the novel. They are there for probably 225+ years, the population isn't mentioned in Ember, but I believe 435 escape and they said many were trampled to death in the egress. The Builders had to obviously institute a specific manufacturing process to produce a necessary estimated amount of food just for Ember.

The giant creatures never existed in the story and were only added to the movie to make it more exciting. Hence why there is no explanation. In the novel, the only books that exist were written by Emberites. There was NO knowledge beyond Ember. They seriously believed that they were the entire Universe. So the book of insects that Doon had did not exist. The only "outside" book that was actually brought to Ember was The Book of Ember that was placed there by the Builders so it was considered sacred and holy and it only explained the laws, procedures, and general guidelines of the city.

It was also hinted that the dead ended up in a chasm at the edge of the city that surrounded it in the novel. The Builders surrounded Ember with it so that no one could accidentally find their way out.

Biggest pothole for me was that the city is established as being quite far underground. Then the vast amount of 'Down' they travelled during their escape in no way at all matched the amount of 'Up' they then climbed to end up so very far above the city. That amount of climbing after that plummeting descent would at the most have brought them back to Ember level, it wouldn't have taken them as much higher as they seemed to go to bring them out onto that cliff.