Best action movie mistakes of all time

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Broken Arrow picture

Other mistake: When Christian Slater shoots 9 or 10 shots out of a 6-shooter, there is no possible way that he could have had time to reload in the time allotted.

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The Adventures of Robin Hood picture

Revealing mistake: When Will Scarlet finds the injured Much in Sherwood Forest about three quarters of the way through the movie, a white vehicle can be seen travelling from right to left in the background. (01:27:40)

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Suggested correction: No car, just light on the hilt of Scarlett's sword.

I verified the scene. It's definitely not from the light of Scarlett's sword. It occurs after Will gets off his horse and the horse is turning. To the right of the horse is a tree in the background. To the right of that is a small clearing, about level with the horse's mouth. For a fraction of a second you can see a white object go across the small clearing in the same manner as a white car driving by.

Bishop73

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Midway picture

Factual error: In the final scene, where Fonda and Holbrook are looking over the carrier at the crowds on the dock, you can see that only the first rows of people are dressed in period clothes. The rest of the crowd are dressed as they would have been in 1976 when the film was made. Also, between them in the background is a yellow Ford Pinto.

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Poseidon picture

Factual error: When performing CPR on Elena, Robert doesn't tilt her head back. As a former firefighter, he would know one of the first steps of CPR is to tilt the victim's head back to clear the airway. His rhythm is also way off.

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Suggested correction: Tilting the head back to clear the airway isn't practised any more, due to exacerbating possible neck/spinal injuries. Instead, one would do a chin lift to clear the airway. But alas, he didn't do that either.

Paramedic here. The head tilt-chin lift is absolutely still practised today and is definitely our go to manoeuvre for CPR. You're thinking of the jaw thrust manoeuvre where we do it when we suspect spinal injury, which Elena did not have.

Former Volunteer First Responder and Ambulance driver part-time but also volunteer here. It actually depends on the SOP of the company in which you serve. Liability purpose has us practising caution in otherwise duty-to-act scenarios. While you are always to remain either Red Cross or American Heart certified in CPR, ALS guidelines and SOPs still govern the practice in which you are performing and can be effected by the decisions of your local Medical Director, but I digress.

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Pearl Harbor picture

Factual error: In the scene where Admiral Kimmel is inspecting the crew of the battleship an aide comes up with a message to send some ships to the Atlantic. Admiral Kimmel starts complaining about the orders. No Admiral would ever do this especially in front of enlisted men. In fact he was placed in charge of the Pacific fleet when his predecessor complained about moving the fleet from San Diego to Pearl Harbor.

Clarence Daugette

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Dune picture

Other mistake: There is a scene in which Piter DeVries is talking about the Landsraad (one of the governmental organizations in Dune). Twice he mispronounces the name, saying "Lansdraad" instead.

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Tristan & Isolde picture

Factual error: The poem Isolde recites, John Donne's "The Good-Morrow", is a 17th-century work, which is centuries later than the movie's time period.

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The Hurt Locker picture

Factual error: In one scene they are playing on an Xbox 360, but the Xbox 360 did not come out until 2005, and the game being played, Gears of War, wasn't released until 2006. The movie takes place in 2004.

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Star Trek V: The Final Frontier picture

Other mistake: Spock lifts his crew mates with the rocket boots. He passes deck numbers 35 through 78 from bottom to top. First off, deck numbers go from top to bottom. The bridge is on deck 1. Second, the Enterprise of that class only had 23 decks.

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Midnight Run picture

Plot hole: At the end of the film Mardukas reveals that he has been wearing a body belt packed with cash - "in the neighbourhood of three hundred thousand dollars" - ever since Jack detained him in New York. Are we to assume that Jack Walsh, an experienced, hard-bitten ex-police officer, now a bounty hunter who routinely chases down violent and armed bail absconders who would kill him without a second thought, didn't even perform a perfunctory search of Mardukas when he detained him? This man used to work for the Mafia! What if he was carrying a weapon? A body belt with three hundred one thousand dollar bills in it would be uncovered by even the most casual pat down.

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Suggested correction: He was using $1000 bills. That's 300 bills in the belt which spread evenly absolutely could have been missed near his waist as part of his clothing.

Rubbish. I specified $1,000 bills as that would be the smallest package he could have secreted about his person, and it would still be instantly detectable. If he used $100 bills the package would be ten times larger, and he would have to carry a rucksack under his shirt.

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Planet of the Apes picture

Plot hole: The "video history" of the crashed USAF ship makes it very clear that the planet is uninhabited when they "landed". I can understand how a race of apes develops - they had a bunch of them on board. I can understand how a race of humans develops - they are descendants of the original crew. What I don't understand is...where the heck did all the horses come from?

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Suggested correction: Humans refer to parts of their own planet as uninhabited even though they are crawling with animals - vast areas of the Arctic are "uninhabited" even though polar bears and seals are found there. Were we to find a planet with nothing but primitive horses on it, we would label it as uninhabited. Apes and humans came from the crashed spaceship, horses were always there.

Which still makes no sense whatsoever.

Charles Austin Miller

I agree with you Charles. Horses are native to Earth but, the Oberon lands on a planet light years from Earth so it's a big plot hole how horses from one planet could end up on another when the planet was not only uninhabited but, the Oberon was believed to be lost.

Again, the Oberon was a massive space station, genetically experimenting with many earthly lifeforms, including horses, apparently. The time/space-rift was very near Earth (Mark Wahlberg made the journey in about 25 seconds at the end of the film. Not years but seconds). The implication is that the Oberon passed through the rift, and much of the crew survived to continue their genetic research on what later became the Ape Planet. So, the Oberon initially arrived on a barren planet and introduced all of the biological and botanical species, including apes, horses, and everything else.

Charles Austin Miller

Suggested correction: According to the backstory, the space station Oberon was dedicated to genetic modification sciences. They were actually experimenting with animal genes in the safety of space (which kind of makes sense). Given that the Oberon was a truly gigantic space station, it's not too much of a speculation that they were experimenting on many different types of animals (not just apes). When the Oberon crashed on Ashlar, half its crew was killed, but half survived with a number of ship's systems still functional, and they continued their genetic research, possibly producing a number of Earthly species on the otherwise uninhabited planet.

Charles Austin Miller

I think this should've been posted as a question, rather than a plot hole.

Charles Austin Miller

That's just a wild guess. There hasn't been a single mention of horses on board the Oberon. Even if there were, why only horses?

lionhead

Wild guess? The Oberon was experimenting in genetic modification, which implies a broad range of research...and not just on great apes. The Oberon was gigantic enough to be an Ark.

Charles Austin Miller

So where are all the other animals?

lionhead

Exactly. Where are the birds, lions, lizards, etc?

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Resident Evil: Afterlife picture

Continuity mistake: Right after Bennett takes off in the plane, Claire throws a gun to Alice. Between the slow-motion shots, the gun switches position in mid-air before Alice catches it. In the shot of Claire throwing it, the barrel is facing to the right, meaning that it should be facing to the left in the shot of Alice catching it. But it still faces the right when she does. (00:58:30)

THGhost

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Star Wars: The Last Jedi picture Star Wars: The Last Jedi mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Finn is going to an escape pod to run away, he puts his pack down in front of it, seen again in a later shot. When Rose realises he's trying to run away, his pack has moved itself inside the pod.

Awesomolocity

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Doctor Strange picture

Factual error: In the first scene where Dr Strange is preparing for surgery he uses improper surgical gowning technique breaking aseptic protocols. Strange puts on a mask after washing his hands, contaminating his clean hands by bringing them in proximity to the non-sterile environment of his face. Surgical masks must be worn before the full washing of hands. Another error is that he inserted his hands all the way through his gown to don gloves. Hands must never leave the sleeves and gloves must be put on with the sleeves still covering.

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Tarzan's Greatest Adventure picture

Continuity mistake: In the scene towards the end of the film where we see Slade's body fall, it falls onto a submerged rock just below the surface of the water and there is a splash of water. In the next shot Tarzan looks down from the cliff above and Slade's body is on a large dry rock, a little distant from where the body originally fell.

keiko

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XXX (2002)

XXX picture

Visible crew/equipment: When Xander and Yelena are in the restaurant and they are shown through the window from outside you can see the reflection of a film crew member in the window. (01:04:35)

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Back to the Future picture Back to the Future mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Marty chases after Biff on the borrowed 'skateboard', Marty is wearing a dark grey belt and a red/blue print shirt under his red/beige jacket. However, when Marty is hanging on to the front of Biff's car as they turn a corner (and in another shot), Marty (stunt double) is wearing a light brown belt and solid tan shirt. (01:07:00)

Super Grover

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World War Z picture

Factual error: An An-12, the aircraft the main character uses to fly all over the world, has a maximum range of about 3,500 miles. Hardly enough to fly from the US to South Korea or from South Korea to Israel. The An-12 also miraculously transforms into a C-130 in a couple of filler scenes. And why is this ex-Soviet aircraft marked in USAF markings, assigned to McGuire AFB?

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Suggested correction: Can't speak to the second half of your paragraph (should really post as 3 separate mistakes) but as for the first, a range of 3500 miles, aircraft such as the kc-135 exist and aerial refueling is fairly common place. Considering it's a mission supported by the acting UN Secretary General to stop a world crisis, resources could have been diverted for refueling.

The initial launch from the carrier is a C-130 which can do this (if empty, minimal fuel, has the full length of the flight deck and the carrier is steaming full ahead into the wind). It then morphs into an AN-12 and back to a Hercules. They make the point that this small fleet is what is known to remain of allied forces so not sure where any tanker support will come from. Many movies have ridiculous range issues with aircraft anyway.

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The Expendables 3 picture

Factual error: Their 'spot' for drinking is apparently in the French Quarter because of the street signs. That said, they are drinking Budvar beer. If you know about Budvar, it is the original Budweiser beer from the Czech Republic. Budweiser sued Budvar and won, preventing them from using the name 'Budweiser', even though Adolph Busch came up with 'Budweiser' after going to Pilsner, Czechoslovakia. Budweiser being the bully, and their lawyers and all, won the lawsuit. So now the beer is sold as 'Czechvar' in the US and 'Budvar' everywhere else, meaning they couldn't be drinking it in the USA.

22theman

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