Continuity mistake: There's a scene where Ellie sleeps with Palmer, then gets up quickly to go to the lab. In her haste, she departs whipping on a shirt with no bra. If she had a bra inside that tight T-shirt the contours of the cups and straps would be visible and we would see her fitting and fastening it, instead she steps outside where suddenly it appears she is now wearing a bra.
Contact (1997)
Plot summary
Directed by: Robert Zemeckis
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, John Hurt, Jodie Foster, Tom Skerritt, David Morse, Jena Malone, Geoffrey Blake
Correction!! I made a small boo-boo.A small team of S.E.T.I. research scientists, led by Dr. Ellie Arroway and amid financial hardship, detect a legitimate alien signal. The discovery triggers a worldwide military, political, and religious upheaval. During which, a transportation device is built based on a schematic embedded in the alien signal. Influencing Ellie in this are three men: One is Dr. David Drumlin, Ellie’s superior who pulled the plug on her research project. He later undermines her role as the discoverer of the alien message and positions himself as the top candidate to make the trip through the transport machine. Another is S. R. Hadden, a billionaire industrialist who financially supported Ellie’s research after her NSF funding was cut. Hadden further assists Ellie during the raging political maelstrom and shares a key element he’s discovered to decipher the alien message. Third is Palmer Joss, a theology vs. technology expert and a religious adviser to the White House. Despite deep religious and philosophical differences, Palmer falls in love with Ellie.
More mistakes in Contact
Panel member: If you were to meet these Vegans, and were permitted only one question to ask of them, what would it be?
Ellie Arroway: Well, I suppose it would be, how did you do it? How did you evolve, how did you survive this technological adolescence without destroying yourself?
Trivia: John Hurt (S.R. Hadden) and Tom Skerrit (Dr. Drumlin) were both in 1979's Alien. They both died in each movie as well.
Question: In the few seconds (Earth time) it took for the pod to fall through the time travel device, it would have been impossible for Ellie to have become detached from the safety seat. It would have been even less possible for the seat to have become dislodged from the pod, AND for the seat to smash against the side of the pod with sufficient force crush it. I understand there was a cover-up (e.g., the 18 hours of static on her recording device), but Ellie, herself, would have remembered the dislodged, smashed seat. Why did she never bring it up in defense of her version of the facts? Was there a reason someone knows of, or is this just a plot hole?
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Chosen answer: Ellie defended her version of the facts with everything she had to work with, but the simple fact was that the government cover-up was just too strong for her to overcome. The points you raise are perfectly reasonable, but the version of events released by the powers-that-be denies everything that happened and, without any other proof, Ellie has only her word to convince people with. For some, that's enough, as we see in the film, even if a majority choose to believe the "official" version.
Tailkinker ★