Best action movie mistakes of all time

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Plan 9 From Outer Space picture

Revealing mistake: When the UFO makes the huge flash that knocks everyone in the cemetery down, one of the police officers kicks a tombstone as he falls and it wobbles back and forth. (00:13:35)

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Kingsman: The Secret Service picture

Factual error: When the barracks are completely flooded, Eggsy uses his bare fist to punch through a large two-way mirror to escape. The fact is that any glass (or plexiglas) thick enough to contain hundreds (or thousands) of tons of water without bursting would be as impenetrable as concrete to Eggsy's bare fist. He would need a chisel-tipped jackhammer to penetrate such a mirror.

Charles Austin Miller

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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest picture Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest mistake picture

Plot hole: There are six metal bars mounted around the circumference of the water wheel's axle. In the wheel's interior, when Jack frees himself he lands on his feet, begins to run and promptly hits his head on one of those mounted axle bars, then falls out. Moments later, when Jack returns and runs in the wheel, he is shorter (way more than a foot) than all six of the mounted axle bars spinning with the water wheel, which would make that previous shot impossible, however humorous it is. (01:52:40 - 01:53:55)

Super Grover

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X-Men 3 picture X-Men 3 mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Magneto lands the Golden Gate Bridge on the island, as it hits land it is still very light. When the Brotherhood start to walk toward the island, it cuts to a wide shot of them still walking on the bridge, and it's suddenly dark.

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Transformers picture Transformers mistake picture

Visible crew/equipment: At Hoover Dam, after the salute, when Defense Secretary Keller speaks with Lennox and Epps, the reflection of the white reflector screen is visible on Keller's glasses. What's more, the boom mic's reflection is actually visible within the reflector screen's reflection. Two for the price of one. (01:35:30)

Super Grover

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The Meg picture

Factual error: Our heroes find a boat belonging to shark poachers, smashed to pieces by the Meg. Floating about in the debris are the bodies of a number of dead sharks. Sharks do not have swim bladders and dead sharks do not float - they sink.

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Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls picture

Visible crew/equipment: In one scene Ace is drumming large mushrooms supposedly growing on the side of a tree. When Ace knocks only one off (the very last mushroom, he hits it off the tree completely and you see) a metal spike that held all the mushroom props in place visible on the tree.

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The Cave picture

Factual error: When they go into the water, they put mouthpieces in, but, a few times, they talk to each other, which is impossible with mouthpieces in.

kh1616

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: Sorry to burst your bubble here but there is scuba equipment which allows for talking whilst using a regulator.

They're not wearing such equipment. In the movie they're just wearing regular mouthpieces.

In the DVD commentary the writers explain that the divers should have been wearing full face masks which allow for communication, but the director changed it for mouthpieces, but kept the talking in. They pointed out this mistake.

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Zootopia picture Zootopia mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Mrs. Otterton is in Chief Bogo's office holding her family photo with both paws, in the wideshots her purse is hanging in the crook of her left arm, but after a brief shot of Judy, when it cuts to Mrs. Otterton's closeup as she tells Bogo about her two beautiful children her purse is gone, then after another brief shot of Judy the purse is back in its place again in the wideshot.

Super Grover

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True Lies picture

Factual error: The terrorist with the AK47 is unaware of the fact that a Harrier is hovering just outside the window until he slowly turns and see it there. He does a double take when he sees the Harrier just five metres away! A Harrier is an incredibly loud aircraft; you can hear them from three kilometers away. At that range the floor would shake with the noise and he would have been in no doubt whatever that he had been under attack for some time.

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Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time picture

Continuity mistake: After being chased by soldiers after talking to his uncle, Dastan gets into a swordfight with Garsiv. As soon as it starts, Garsiv hits a pillar with his weapon knocking a significantly large chunk and a another smaller chunk out of it. In the immediate shot, the size and locations of the two chunks differ.

THGhost

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The Martian picture

Factual error: After Watney patches the blow out of one of the HAB's airlocks with plastic sheeting, tie down straps, and duct tape, he pressurizes the HAB and the plastic sheeting pushes out like an inflated balloon. Assuming the plastic and duct tape would hold this is correct, however the plastic would be much more taut given the pressure difference inside and outside.

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Suggested correction: The plastic would certainly be flexing in and out because of the pressure of the wind gusts during the storm. We saw earlier that the gusts of the storms were strong enough to blow a suited explorer off their feet and push them across the surface. Let's say that the HAB is pressurized as much as it can be without blowing out of the plastic, tape, and bungees sealing the airlock. A storm gust would still be able to push the flexible plastic in momentarily, and it would pop back out after the gust passed.

The movie took liberties with the physics of Mars. The gusts on Mars wouldn't be able to blow over a person or a spaceship, let alone push them across the surface, but they needed it for the plot. But using the same physics they then have wedded themselves to, it could then be strong enough to cause the plastic to flap, even though in real life it wouldn't. This is more of a deliberate mistake than a factual error since the writers certainly knew what they did didn't match reality.

Except they didn't 'wed' themselves to their fictional physics. Towards the end of the film NASA tells Watney that a flimsy plastic covering on his ascent vehicle will not be dislodged on acceleration to Martian escape velocity because the atmosphere is too thin to cause any problems. That's cheating in anyone's books.

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Alone in the Dark picture

Revealing mistake: When the team descends to the bottom of a hole and one female member is first wounded and then dies. After checking her pulse, the others pronounce her dead and begin moving out. As the last one is leaving, the "dead" actress lifts her head up off the ground and looks left. (01:13:10)

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Spider-Man 2 picture

Plot hole: Harry tells Doc Ock that in order to find Spider-Man he must find Peter first. Doc Ock finds Peter with Mary Jane in the cafe and throws a car through the window straight at them, then later throws Peter against a brick wall. Any normal person would've been killed instantly (or very badly injured), and Doc Ock doesn't yet know that Peter is Spider-Man. Given that Peter is his only lead on Spider-Man, it makes no sense that Doc Ock would try to kill him.

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Suggested correction: Doc Ock is being controlled by the arms. They aren't behaving rationally.

Creating a series of silly explanations for obvious plot holes never resolves them. These arms were not behaving irrationally. In many scenes they were shown to be very intelligent. A good example is the scene where they attack doctors who try to remove them from Doc Ock's body. Saying that they weren't behaving rationally is absurd.

He may not have been trying to kill Peter, he could've been trying to make more of a scene of his entry, so Peter would take him more seriously and tell him where Spider-Man was. He could've been thinking of it as a risk of killing Peter though, but his arms made him go crazy.

This is only a theory. Theories never resolve mistakes.

It's not a theory. When Otto is first giving his demonstration to everybody at his apartment, a woman asks if the advanced AI for the tentacles would make him susceptible to being controlled. Otto says that yes it would so he shows everybody the inhibitor chip that he designed so he would not fall under its control. After the inhibitor chip gets destroyed, it's seen that the tentacles have not only taken control of his mind by forcing him to commit crimes, but have slowly driven him insane.

This scene is much too confusing for many people. This entry is correct. This is a mistake.

If these tentacles wanted him to finish the experiment then they wouldn't make him kill the person who has valuable information for him.

The arms are influencing his thoughts but not controlling every part of him. Doc Ock still seems to have control when defending himself but they seem to work in tandem with Ock. The only time they work on their own is when he under anesthetic. As we don't see him before he throws the car, we can only speculate the arms were trying to hurt Peter by themselves.

Lummie

It's a cool scene regardless man.

Rob245

Killing Peter would probably send a message to Spider-Man as well, so Ock probably wasn't concerned about being gentle.

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Bad Boys picture Bad Boys mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When the two female characters enter the fancy hotel room, they make a point to say they will only be there for a couple of minutes. It is daylight when they go in. The visit is cut short (the one that's supposed to be a few minutes long) because of a gun battle in which one of the women dies and the other escapes. The escaped one gets out through the roof into an evening's sky. There's still light visible, but for a visit that lasts all of 4 minutes, it's far too quick a change. (00:23:00)

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Transformers: Age of Extinction picture Transformers: Age of Extinction mistake picture Video

Visible crew/equipment: Just after Lockdown stabs Optimus in the chest with his own sword, Cade runs closer and shoots at Lockdown. He then hides behind some bricks. In that shot, the bricks are a broken wall that is two separate pieces. Then it cuts to a different shot as Lockdown returns fire at Cade, and now the wall is one piece. Not only this, but some random guy suddenly appears in the shot next to the wall and right where the explosion happens where Lockdown shot the wall. He is wearing the same color clothes as the wall and only visible for a moment. There was no other guy present until that moment and he just suddenly appears behind Cade and gets hit. It's presumably a special effects member setting off the charge in the wall by the looks of it and it detonated before he got out of the shot. (02:30:55)

Quantom X

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Mortal Kombat picture

Continuity mistake: When Johnny Cage is fighting Scorpion, and he does his human spear, Johnny runs until he stops at the tree. The spear then catches up, and becomes wrapped around the tree in front of Johnny. When the camera changes view, the spear is just leaning on the tree. The camera changes view again and the spear is wrapped around the tree again. When Scorpion pulls the spear back, it goes straight back, and doesn't unwind around the tree.

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