Continuity mistake: When Norman is running through the spaceship, he runs through a doorway and you get a glimpse of his facemask. It's dry. After going through water to get to the spaceship, wouldn't there be water on it? (00:43:10)
Sphere (1998)
Plot summary
Directed by: Barry Levinson
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Dustin Hoffman, Liev Schreiber, Queen Latifah, Sharon Stone, Peter Coyote
In the middle of the South Pacific, a thousand feet below the surface of the water, a huge vessel rests on the ocean floor. Rushed to the scene is a group of American scientists who descend to the depths of the sea to investigate this astonishing discovery. What they find defies their imaginations and mocks their attempts at logical explanation. It is a massive spaceship, undamaged from its fall from the sky-and at least three hundred years old. What they then find boggles the mind as they discover a perfect metal sphere. What is the secret behind the sphere? Will they survive the mysterious "manifestations"? Who or what is creating these? They may never live to find out.
Suggested correction: On the first visit to the spacecraft, we're told there's heat coming from it. There's no water on the masks of the team during that visit either. If there's enough heat for them to feel it at that depth, it's easily plausible that there's enough heat to dry their masks.
Dr. Harry Adams: Anybody else wonder who the hell opened that door?
Question: After what seems like several hours of conversation between the crew and "Jerry", did the letters J and E occur in the text before the sentence "Don't call me Jerry" appeared and Dustin Hoffman realised the translation was wrong? I haven't watched the film a second time but surely we see words that contain J and E and still make perfect sense?
Answer: It's been a while, but as I remember it, this is explained better in the book. If I remember it correctly, since the translation program was made by Harry, he subconsciously added a section that simply mistranslated "Harry" to "Jerry". That doesn't mean every H became a J or anything like that. It only affected that word.
Answer: I did not read the book but I will say from just watching the movie I believe Jerry was changed to Harry during the duration of the movie with the idea that Norman wanted to believe Harry was the cause of all the problems. That is why we do not see a random J in all the words that needed an H earlier in the move. Or it was a giant error on the directors part but there were a lot of unanswered questions in the move.
Answer: The "Harry" is "Jerry" has little to do with transposed letters. Norman is a psychiatrist, so by nature he likes to talk to discover new information. The entire conversation is Norman's subconscious thoughts being projected on the computer so that Norman can do his job of being the psychiatrist and talk to an entity. He has no other reason of being there. Norman is basically talking to himself. So in psychoanalysis Norman has to find a twist, which is My name is not Jerry. Ted and Harry didn't mess up the code they are too smart.
Join the mailing list
Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.