I'm gonna start by saying that i love this game, i think its awsomness, but i'm not a fanboy and i can recognize faults.
Basically, there are 2 sections of the story that seem utterly random and completely pointless in some respects when you think about it:

1) Is it just me or does the Temple of the Ancients become an important part of the game out of nowhere? It quite literally walks up and says "Oh, hello. I know you've just crash landed in your little redundant airplane/boat but your supposed to randomly find your way to me where i clear a lot of shiz up"

2) I cant for the life of me see the logic of Cloud and his crew going off on a tangent and hunting down the huge materias. I mean, so far as i can tell, Shin-Ra were planning on using the huge materia on making a bomb and taking out the meteor right? Granted, there would most probably be some malicious intentions, but still, surely it would be better to take these regardless and let the meteor be sorted with. Case in point, with just one (or none) of the huge materias left on the rocket ship a sizeable chunk was blasted off of the meteor, so it could be argued that if all 4 were still there the crisis could have been over there and then.
Admitedly that happening would pretty much render the rest of the game defunct (unless Sephiroth would be able to use the black materia again) but its just lack of care like that which annoys me haha

Anyhow, can anybody shed any light on either of those points?

These are pretty much just plot holes in the story... I think there are quite a few others, as well.

yeah i know the game has some pretty shocking plot holes....they're probably the biggest flaw of the game.
I picked these 2 out cause they were what i deemed to be the main ones and i was wondering of anybody could offer some justifications.

Justifying plot holes is like trying to fill a fishing hole on a frozen lake with a very large and very hot rock - it just makes it bigger.

Final Fantasy VII should be put to bed. It's old and it's tired and despite the good times most people would rather keep the sense of nostalgia that comes from it intact without having to think too much into it. Ten years ago for a lot of people on this board is back into childhood and teens - where the imagination is generally at it's best.

I'm sorry I can't shed any light, but I can shed some advice, just let it go! ;)

That analogy shall stay with me to my dying day, so thank you haha
You do raise an interesting point, however, as long the constant flame war between the unbearable fanboys and the equally unbearable fanboy haters/ final fantasy purists exists, FF7 will never be put to bed.

I just raised this point cause after having a quick scan i realised it hasnt really been discussed before, plus i'm bored to the depths of hell of "is FF7 over rated??? O_o O_o O_o (aka - look at me i'm cool cause i agree with all the purists) or the uncountable numbers of threads bashing fans of FF7 (not always necassarily fanboys)

That analogy shall stay with me to my dying day, so thank you haha

You're more than welcome for the analogy.

I'm not quite I know exactly what a Final Fantasy VII purist is, but I certainly know a fanboy/girl when I see one, and they often strike me as rather annoying to say the least.

I think that Final Fantasy, being such a highly acclaimed game, and a revolutionary step in the RPG world was always going to be under scrutiny even back in its prime - and I suspect most of the negative attention was derived from the fanboys of Zelda on the '64'. From as far back as I can recall, the Sony vs Nintendo debate was rife and those two games trying to occupy space in the realms of esteemed opinion caused a lot of controversy between the two sets of consoles and their followers.

For those that have later looked back at Final Fantasy and literally tried to rip it to peices are in my humble opinion just being rather negative for no apparent reason other than to highlight their stupidity in not accepting that YES, the game is over ten years old, and YES, there are superior titles out now, technically, graphically and whatever other 'ically's you want to throw in that relate to games and gameplay.

The plot was never really consistent with anything, and the release of Advent Children never really dished up any dirt on what was actually going on either but lest, the point I tried to force about the nostalgia of the game that most people can relate to that still settles on their grey matter which is ten years old. Why exhume an Egyptian Pharoah, who's been laid to rest in gold, talked about for millenia, and then start to point out that infact, inside the box, your Pharoah is nothing more than a set of delapidated bones.

You could, if you wanted to? But rather keep the good times fresh in the mind.

Good point, but, I think I can fill in the second point...

The reason cloud & co. decide to save the huge materia is, as far as I can follow, that the gang doesn't want the knowledge of the ancients to be lost, and you can't exactly claim that, after the temple is nicked by sephiroth (as the black materia (The temple, not him)), there is much of that knowledge left, is there?

Hope that helps.