Best movie factual errors of 2017

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Mary Shelley picture

Factual error: Allegra was said at the end of the film to have died aged 10. She was actually 5 years old when she died.

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Bleeding Steel picture

Factual error: When they get into Dr. Jame's lock box in the vault, inside is a camera. They turn it on and the video starts to play... despite the fact that it's been inside a vault without a battery charger for 13 years. (01:19:45)

Quantom X

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Factual error: Emmanuelle Devos goes to the airport to get her husband and daughter. Their plane landed at 7 PM (18:58 to be precise) as shown by the airport monitor. They get a cab to a hotel downtown, and then there's a scene when she books a restaurant from the hotel room. She tells her husband, who just took a shower, that they need to be at the restaurant at 8 PM. Her husband says that there's no rush then, since it's only 7 PM. Of course that's impossible, the Turin airport is about 20km away from the part of the city they are driving through, which at that hour has also significant traffic; if their plane landed at 7, at 8 PM they would hardly have any time left to spare. (00:29:00)

Sammo

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The Humanity Bureau picture

Factual error: When they come upon the nuclear reactor cooling towers there's a wide shot that reveals there are no electrical lines anywhere near the reactor. A reactor's central purpose is to generate electricity - all "real" (non-CGI) reactors are surrounded by electric power lines and transformers. (01:20:23)

ReRyRo

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Megan Leavey picture

Factual error: When Leavey begins her training at Parris Island in 2001, she and all the other Marines are wearing MARPAT (Marine Pattern). In reality, MARPAT would have just been designed, and not manufactured until early 2002. The standard camouflage for Marines at the time was M81 Woodland.

Matdan97

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Global Meltdown picture

Factual error: A group of people are traveling in a pickup truck escaping earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. They come across a mist that they identify as sulphur dioxide, mainly by its smell and effects on people. Then the plastic interior of the car starts to melt, and they attribute it to the sulphur dioxide. Sulphur dioxide can attack plastics and rubber, but only in its liquid form. It turns gaseous at -10° C. After that it is a gas. So the melting of plastic is not correct at ambient temperature.

toroscan

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The Sense of an Ending picture

Factual error: Tony writes a "postcard" on the back of a picture to Adrian and Veronica to an address in Cambridge including the postcode. This scene occurs in 1967 (we see the date on the letter he is responding to) but postcodes weren't in use in Cambridge until at least 1970.

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Downrange picture

Factual error: Following the blowout, Sara's phone is shown several times as being connected to Wi-Fi with a full Wi-Fi signal. Being in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by hills, it's highly unlikely there would be a public Wi-Fi connection for her to connect to.

gazza2009

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9/11 picture

Factual error: Just after feeling the explosion from the south tower, Eddie's watch shows 17:37 whilst others and himself are stuck in the North tower elevator. The planes hit the towers in the morning. (00:35:00)

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Breathe picture

Factual error: The RAF Dakota that flies Robin and Diana back from Kenya in 1959 has American markings and D-Day invasion stripes, marking it as a heritage aircraft rather than a service aircraft of the era.

Necrothesp

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Happy Death Day picture

Factual error: One of the deaths involves a burning candle, a car and a leaking fuel tank, resulting in an explosion. This wouldn't happen. Multiple independent test evidence that petrol/gasoline can't be ignited this way, a flame isn't hot enough. Only the fumes can be ignited, which isn't what happens here, and the tank wouldn't explode anyway.

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Stem picture

Factual error: No matter how sophisticated the STEM chip is, it would not enable Grey (Logan Marshall-Green) to go from a completely horizontal position to a completely vertical position in one fluid motion, without bending his knees, and he does this several times in the film.

wizard_of_gore

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Jigsaw picture

Factual error: The depiction of lasers is completely off in the movie. While surgical laser is indeed a real thing, such a highly concentrated beam with enormous cutting power seen in the film would take industrial size instruments and an extremely high power supply. Also, a laser beam simply doesn't look that way. Those scenes are way off into science fiction for an otherwise raw and realistic-looking thriller.

Dangar

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Professor Marston and the Wonder Women picture

Factual error: In the movie the professor's assistant says thst the professor was in OSS in the great war (WWI). OSS was first formed in 1941 by President Roosevelt.

Robert Christiansen

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The Book of Henry picture

Factual error: The opening shot is of a somewhat long and quite high bridge with an equally high waterfall behind it. After a couple views of the surroundings, Henry and Peter are standing in the middle (portion) of a stone barricade/wall (extension of the bridge?) with a huge lake behind it, waiting for the school bus. There's absolutely no legitimate or rational reason for such a location to be a school bus stop! School bus stops always have safety in mind, and this bus stop is anything but safe. (00:02:32)

KeyZOid

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Suburbicon picture

Factual error: The police Lieutenant Hightower is wearing the rank of Captain.

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Chappaquiddick picture

Factual error: The accident takes place the night of July 18, 1969, and they show there being a full moon. That night the moon was actually waxing crescent with only 14% visible, and set at 10:27pm while the accident happened about 12:45am, so there was no moon in the sky anyway.

jimba

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1922 picture

Factual error: The black leather chair of the Home trust banker is more modern than the movie setting in 1922. (00:59:35)

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Magellan picture

Factual error: The film informs us the gravity on Neptune's moon Triton is less than 8% of Earth's. But the whole physics of the rocks and his movement on the surface do not reflect that. The actual surface is frozen nitrogen. The difficulty he has in moving around is not well correlated by him only weighing 7kg. Https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5361488/.

PeterNZ

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The Man Who Invented Christmas picture

Factual error: In the beginning of the movie, during Dickens' visit to America, you can hear them playing the melody from the song "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy" written by George M. Cohan in 1904. This was 61 years after the events in the movie. In the ending credits they cite this as "Yankee Doodle Dandy" which was written many years before. But, that was not the melody that was being played.

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