Into the Wild

Other mistake: The closing captions state that Chris McCandless' sister Carine flew "his" brother's ashes home, instead of "her" brother's ashes.

Other mistake: When Chris is sleeping in his yellow car during the thunderstorm, he gets hit by a flash flood. Afterwards he abandons his car and removes his licence plates. His plates are: UW4-924. A few minutes later his parents decide to visit Chris in Atlanta. We then see a shot of a white car on the freeway, which has the exact same licence plate (UW4-924).

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Mistakes

Factual error: Most of the semi trucks shown in the movie are much newer than 1990, even 1992. One of the trucks that gives Chris a ride has a DOT color-coded inspection sticker in a style that was not around in the early 90's.

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Quotes

Christopher McCandless: If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.

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Trivia

Trivia: While certain details of the story were altered for the confines of film, the characters Jan Burres played by Catherine Keener and Ronald Franz played by Hal Holbrook were both, according to research, entirely accurate. In fact when Jon Krakauer, the author of the book with the same name, contacted both people, they remembered Chris well and expressed great loss when learning of his death.

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Questions

Question: Alexander shoots the moose with a rather rapid fire action: it sounds as if the rifle is semi-automatic. What was the true story, and why did Alexander specifically ask for a a cal .22 rifle? Was it because he planned to hunt small game, and knew that a heavier rifle/calibre would be unsuitable? To plan for moose hunting, he would choose something like cal.308.

Answer: Having read Krakauers book: The rifle was a .22 Remington scoped semiautomatic. Accounts at the time mention that this may not have been the best choice, and it is clear that McCandless did not have enough experience to live in the wild, although it is impressing enough that he managed to survive for 16 weeks.

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