Corrected entry: If "NASA doubles up on everything.", why didn't the nuclear bomb on Independence go off when it crashed? Colonel Sharp stops Stamper from hitting their bomb with a wrench since it would set it off, so why didn't the one on Independence detonate?
Vader47000
30th Sep 2007
Armageddon (1998)
3rd Jan 2017
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
Corrected entry: When Spock analyzes the call of the probe and compares it in a phylum search, he's presumably interfacing with the Federation memory bank as mentioned in Sulu's pre-launch status. However, the alien probe was disrupting all power and communications in the vicinity of Earth. It's extremely unlikely the ship could've interfaced with the Federation memory bank at the time of that search. (00:24:55)
Correction: There's no reason to assume the Federation memory bank is centralized on Earth, or not networked throughout several member worlds. The original series episode "The Lights of Zetar," for example, showed a Federation central library facility on a planet called Memory Alpha (which is where the Star Trek wiki gets its name).
26th May 2009
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
Other mistake: During the inquiry at the start of the movie, the Klingon Ambassador is going over the footage of the destruction of the Enterprise from all the exterior views. This is very nice, but how would they have access to all of these different viewpoints of the destruction? Bearing in mind no-one was there to film it. It couldn't have been the Klingon Bird of Prey that filmed it, because in most of the destruction scenes, the Bird of Prey would have been no-where near or in a position to film it, and was of course captured and still being commanded by Kirk during the course of the inquiry. (00:04:10)
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Suggested correction: Most of the visuals we see on view screens in Star Trek are created from sensors rather than cameras, so what we see doesn't necessarily have to be from the visual perspective of the ship taking it. Though yes, it is quite an amusing coincidence that it all looks exactly like they're watching a copy of Star Trek III on home video.
Suggested correction: It's possible the Grissom and/or the Bird of Prey launched drones into orbit to aid in the scanning of the planet or for communications or sensor relays, and this is where the footage could have come from. This isn't unlike the beginning of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, in which crewmembers of the space station mentioned such drones as the reason images of the aftermath of the V'ger destruction were able to be seen despite no ships being left.
30th Mar 2017
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
Continuity mistake: The Bird of Prey is the one captured by Kirk's crew in ST III. That ship's bridge showed Klingon Cmdr Kruge in his elevated command chair with his helmsmen arrayed circularly below him, and nothing else. ST IV has this same ship; however, the bridge now resembles The Enterprise layout with Kirk's command chair behind Sulu and Chekov at their rectangular helm, with Spock, Scotty, and Uhura at their usual positions.
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Suggested correction: According to the captain's log at the beginning, they have been on Vulcan for 3 months. As they prepare to depart, we see several Vulcan technicians moving equipment in and around the ship. It's quite conceivable that the bridge was reconfigured according to the crew's specifications to facilitate their use of the ship. This may seem a bit excessive, as the remodel includes the door onto the bridge, and the frame of the door, and possibly most of the rest of the ship. But it's not outside the realm of possibility. The real mistake, though, is why they would go to the effort of installing new workstations on the Klingon bridge and marking them with Klingon labels, instead of standard Federation text. Interestingly, though, the "Starfleet" style bridge layout of the Klingon ship is being used by the Klingons on the Bird of Prey in Star Trek V.
21st Jun 2019
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Corrected entry: When Thanos is struck by Mjolnir thrown by Captain America for the first time, he is holding Stormbreaker in his hands and trying to kill Thor. In the next shot with Thor and Thanos before Mjolnir returns to Captain America, Thanos is holding his sword. (02:13:00)
Correction: Stormbreaker is knocked from his hand. He could have easily picked up his sword instead.
His sword would have to be right next to where Stormbreaker falls to achieve that, but as Thor is thrown around several meters after he disarms Thanos I don't see how the sword could be in the same spot they are.
Actually it seems that Thanos can summon his sword, just like Thor can summon Stormbreaker. You can see it in 02:22:34, just before Ebony Maw notices Hawkeye with the gauntlet.
Follow the action, he throws Thor in the same vicinity.
Agreed about the proximity. Thor gets thrown around a few times before he summons Stormbreaker. In retrospect, though, Cap's lucky that when he hit Thanos in the back he dropped the axe to the side instead of forward, which would have pushed the axe more into Thor's chest.
Thanos' sword was thrown several meters away by Thor, hooked to Stormbringer. There is simply no time for Thanos to have moved to recover the sword and come right back to standing over Thor as shown.
5th Aug 2019
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Corrected entry: One of the big sources of tension in the heist is the fact that they supposedly have a limited number of Pym particles, as stated by Scott Lang. So after the test run they only have enough for everyone to take one round trip through time. Cap and Tony use their return supply to go to 1970, which is why they needed to steal more particles to get back. However, Ant-Man's shrinking tech is also based on the Pym particles, and his shrinking suit seems to work without restriction in 2012. They also have enough to both shrink the Benetar in 2023 and re-grow it in 2014. So either Scott is mistaken about how many Pym particles he has, or he is lying about them. And before someone says they calculated the number of particles it would take for the shrinking during the mission before assigning them to the team members, Scott discusses the limited supply before they had any plan of what they were going to do in the past.
Correction: Shrinking for those more common actions would not eat up as many Pym particles as say, shrinking enough to go sub atomic, as well as controlling where you're going and doing time travel.
This was addressed in the post. Scott calculated all the Pym particles he had on hand and said there was enough for 1 round trip each and 2 tests. Not '1 round trip, 2 tests and an indeterminate amount of shrinking during the mission which we haven't planned yet.' Plus, he uses a whole vial in mistakenly shrinking before the test, after which he says there's enough for 1 test, not 2. So, maybe there are enough extra Pym particles to do some shrinking after they plan the mission, but this is never brought up and would seem to contradict what Scott has already said about it and what we see onscreen about how many Pym particles it takes just to shrink (though the shrinking tech has never really been consistently portrayed in any of the films featuring it). So, a justification for one perceived mistake just raises a question somewhere else. There's just something off about how the film conveys the circumstances of using the Pym particles, however it is parsed.
Thanos has access to technology centuries beyond Earth. It's definitely possible his crew of henchmen were able to replicate the particles.
To add to Quantom X's correction: Thanos' men reverse engineered the Pym particles to allow evil Nebula to return with the others and pull the ship through the timestream. Remember it can take as long as they want to reverse engineer it before sending evil Nebula back, nobody would notice. There were never any more particles used than what Scott had available. Either more were obtained (from Pym himself in 1970's), or more made (by Thanos' men). I agree with the original correction that the small size shrinking obviously doesn't use up as much particles as the subatomic shrinking does and that's why he could do it.
The shrinking tech for Scott and the shrinking tech for objects are two different things, remember he has those red and blue discs that shrink and grow things and he uses the vial in the suit.
3rd May 2019
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Corrected entry: In the final battle Captain Marvel saves Spider-Man and gets the Gauntlet but she didn't use it. She probably has power enough to use the Gauntlet and save everyone, without sacrificing herself.
Correction: This is merely speculation. You don't know that she is powerful enough to survive and neither does she. The plan was to get the stones back where they belong. With the stones gone, they would have been able to fight off Thanos and his army. Keeping the stones around is a massive risk, and it has been shown in the comics that if you lack the willpower to use them correctly, it can have devastating effects on you and the area around you. It simply isn't worth the risk, especially with the less advanced Iron Gauntlet which was not made by the Dwarves.
Correction: But the plan was never to use the gauntlet again. They only wanted to bring everyone back. They didn't anticipate Thanos arriving. Not knowing someone could even use the gauntlet again the plan was made to keep Thanos away from it and beat him this time. Using it whilst not knowing if that person would survive would be too dangerous, Thanos could get to it. Tony improvised the last part where he decided to wear the gems and snap, as a last resort.
Another question would be, was Captain Marvel going to just fly into the time tunnel without a nanosuit or quantum tracker? It sure looked like it. And then Thanos, who is behind Captain Marvel, is able to throw his sword past her into the van to destroy the tunnel. If Carol has the power to fly into orbit, she can fly faster than a thrown object at ground level.
Thanos can throw a sword pretty fast I'd say, being strong enough to battle a god and easily overpower Hulk. But yes, She was going to fly into it to get the gauntlet and stones away from Thanos forever, that was the plan. However Carol is going to handle the situation of going through the tunnel without any plan is up to her, she is pretty powerful though and could find a way I'd say.
30th May 2019
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Corrected entry: While Clint's family is vanishing from his Iowa farm it should be night. The snap was in Wakanda, the other side of the world.
Correction: Clint's farm is in Iowa - Wakanda is roughly near Uganda, which is 8 hours ahead of the US. So without a clear-cut timeframe it would be perfectly possible for the snap to take place at say 4pm in Wakanda, which would be 8am in Iowa. Or even as late as 6pm/10am.
I believe the correction is wrong. I may be mistaken, but wasn't the family eating hot dogs? Unless you are positing that they were having that for breakfast, which is highly doubtful, it doesn't make sense that it was early/mid morning at Clint's farm.
Well, we later see in Spider-Man: Far From Home that the snap happened while kids in New York were in school. So maybe the snap happened at 7 p.m. Wakanda time just before sunset, and 11 a.m. in NY and 10 a.m. in the Midwest where the farm supposedly was, and they were enjoying a nice hot dog brunch.
26th Apr 2019
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Continuity mistake: In the final battle, Wasp and Ant-Man are in the van trying to get the quantum tunnel operational. We cut back to the fight and we can see Ant-Man there too, fighting in his giant form. (02:22:20 - 02:23:00)
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Suggested correction: He needed to hot-wire the van. It's quite possible he could have left the van for parts (he's seen slamming a Leviathan to the ground) or to protect it. It also could have been an illusion by one of Dr. Strange's people.
Sorry but the suggested correction makes no sense. For one Dr Strange's people have no idea what Ant-Man looks like, and secondly Ant-Man would have no idea where to get parts from in the middle of a battlefield, let alone know if alien technology would be compatible. Also the time frame given when the scene plays out allows no time for him to leave the van, this is a legitimate mistake.
Dr. Strange's people don't know what Ant-Man looks like? He entered the battle with them long before they went to the van. Earth has had access to the same Leviathan parts since the original Avengers. If Toomes can make wings out of it in Spider-man Homecoming, it's possible he can figure something out. Clint had passed the glove to Black Panther before Ant-Man is seen in the background. There was plenty of time. He also could have been defending the van while they brought the glove.
There is plenty of time for Ant-Man to have left the van and returned to it. As the scenes play out, Ant-Man and Wasp are in the front of the van trying to hot wire it. The film then cuts to the battle for several minutes, as we see the passing off the gauntlet, which includes the brief shot of Giant-Man in the background. A few minutes later the film cuts back to the van and we see Scott opening the rear door of the van. So there's plenty of time for him to have gotten out of the van, saw potential trouble with the Leviathan, turned into Giant-Man to stop it while letting Hope finish activating the tunnel, and then returning to check the final settings. Now, all this raises another question that has to do with the apparent ease Giant-Man has in traversing the battlefield, as in why not just give Scott the gauntlet, have him turn into Giant-Man, take a few steps over to the van, and then shrink back down to take the stones back in time?
7th May 2005
The Core (2003)
Corrected entry: When the ship first launches, they switch on the headlights. They use a special device to see outside the ship, and the ship has no windows, so why does the ship have lights?
Correction: Because the ship uses cameras, and the cameras probably use visible light to function. They were first entering water and you can see the light projected from the headlights light up the water around them and on their screens, that light is what the cameras pick up.
The lights and cameras aren't going to be made from unobtainium, so they'd melt not long after the mission starts, and provide a point of vulnerability for the magma to enter the ship.
24th Nov 2002
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Corrected entry: As the Pan-Am shuttle is approaching the spinning space station there as a shot of it from within the hub based dock. The star filled background is spinning as it ought to, but the shuttle, which is not yet centered on the dock, is seen swinging across the sky independent of the background. To do this the craft would be tracing a spiral through space.
Correction: We see it comes from one side, swinging across to the other as it tries to line up directly in front of the target. This is like driving a car from across three lanes of traffic to tailgate a truck - you will likely swerve a little too far and have to correct your position once or twice. In 3 dimensions, plus a 4th dimension of moving space as they orbit the moon, this becomes triply difficult to do. So yes, they'd be tracing a spiral, but take a soda can and spin it while flipping it end-over-end, and visualize how the opening tab moves through space - a 3-D spiral.
The shuttle would be tracing the spiral from the point of view of the station's docking bay, with the eccentricity of the spiral declining as it got closer until it were aligned with the docking bay. The point in the original post is not that the ship wouldn't be in a spiral from the POV of the station, it's that in order to appear flying in a straight line independent of the background from the station POV, the ship would have to be flying in an erratic corkscrew flight path that precisely matched the rotation of the backdrop of the stars. This is unlikely. The shuttle would simply need to rotate along its central axis to match the station's rotation until it docked. In the truck analogy, from the POV of the truck the swerving car would appear to be driving erratically, not in the straight line that would be analogous to the shuttle's approach.
19th Jul 2010
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Corrected entry: In the scene where we see the Moonbus landing at the Tycho Excavation Base, its descent engines raise dust that billows rather than falling in an arc straight back to the ground as would normally be the case in a vacuum. (00:50:35)
Correction: Previously posted and corrected. This is an accepted film technique, not a mistake. You cannot film in a vacuum.
Vacuum chambers certainly existed at the time. NASA tested Apollo spacecraft in them. It may have been difficult, but it certainly would have been feasible to film models in a vacuum at the time. Further, why should an "accepted film technique" forgive an obvious mistake in physics. If anything, it would be an intentional mistake if there was no way to simulate the effect of dust in a vacuum.
Correction: Dust particles will billow out in the manner we see if they have gas molecules to bounce off. Normally on the moon they have no such thing but in this case they do - the exhaust plume of the landing spacecraft. Until it slowly dissipates it will react with the dust molecules just like an atmosphere does.
12th Apr 2018
You Only Live Twice (1967)
Other mistake: At the beginning of the movie James Bond is on a submarine underwater in Hong Kong harbor. Then, he is launched from a torpedo tube and is in Tokyo shortly afterwards. It's 1,800 miles from Hong Kong to Tokyo.
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Suggested correction: Bond is on a submarine that has the capability of traveling from Hong Kong to Tokyo. Bond's meeting with M is even interrupted with an announcement that they're about to get underway. There's also a cut from Bond leaving M's office to Bond in a wetsuit preparing to exit the sub through the torpedo tube, a cut that could encompass the time period the sub took Bond into Japanese waters.
It takes several days for any submarine to travel one thousand eight hundred miles. There is no way, no how that submarine could have traveled 1,800 miles in a few hours. Not even the Disco Volante hydrofoil from Thunderball could have traveled 1,800 miles in a few hours, let alone a submarine traveling underwater.
12th Aug 2005
Apollo 13 (1995)
Corrected entry: When Jim Lovell rips off his biomedical sensors, he says "I am sick and tired of the entire Western world knowing how my kidneys are functioning." The biomedical sensors don't measure kidney function, only breathing and heartbeat.
Correction: Lovell is just expressing his anger, this is a character mistake, not a movie mistake.
It's not even a character mistake. Lovell is simply using hyperbole to express his frustration over feeling micromanaged.
3rd Sep 2007
Apollo 13 (1995)
Corrected entry: When the astronauts are preparing to dock with the Lunar Module, one of the people in Mission Control says, "If Swigert can't dock this thing, we don't have a mission." In fact, all three crew members were trained to peform the LEM docking, and had Swigert run into any trouble, Lovell or Haise could easily have done the procedure instead. This is confirmed in the DVD commentary.
Correction: Presumably Swigert is the best trained since this is his primary task, it's a reasonable, if not necessarily correct, remark to assume that if he can't do it then nobody can.
Someone in mission control says it in a voiceover that seems like it was added for exposition to build tension for the audience related to the "Jack is new to the mission" subplot. The idea that someone in mission control would be unaware of the cross-training of the astronauts to handle each others' tasks in an emergency is a dubious claim at best. And Lovell had served as the CMP on Apollo 8 (which admittedly didn't have a LM to dock with, but he was certainly familiar with how to fly and dock the craft).
19th Aug 2007
Apollo 13 (1995)
Corrected entry: The scene showing the astronauts thrust towards the forward panels, and then violently back into their 'couches' is meant to show the massive thrust from the ascent and second stage engines. In fact, this sequence is inaccurate: The earlier Mercury and Gemini rockets did indeed create this massive 10 to 15-G load momentarily upon the astronauts, but the Saturn V did no such thing. The Saturn V never exceeded more than 2 Gs during any portion of lift off or ascent, and was in fact referred to as the "old man's rocket" by astronauts in reference to its relatively mild G-loads during flight.
Correction: This actually happened with the Apollo 13 mission. It wasn't supposed to, hence Swigert's sarcastic comment about "some little jolt", but a slight mistiming in the engine firing caused it.
I think the point of the entry is that Lovell tells them to expect the jolt, implying that it was a feature of a Saturn V launch and that Lovell would be aware of it since he had experienced a Saturn V launch before, with Apollo 8. The scene as written is meant, then, to demonstrate Lovell's experience in spaceflight, even though the jolt would have been a surprise to him too.
2nd Mar 2014
Apollo 13 (1995)
Corrected entry: In the scenes where all three astronauts are wearing their space suits, they all have a red collar on the helmet and red markings on suits. The LEM pilot (in this case Fred Haise) would have blue markings and a blue collar so that Houston (and others) could distinguish between the Commander and the LEM pilot when they were on the moon.
Correction: The colours of the suit collars are in fact, correct. The difference in colour on previous flights was not to tell them apart from Houston (impossible with the black and white camera on Apollo 11). It was so the ground crew could tell the difference between an A7L (original / blue colour) and an A7Lb (upgraded / red colour) suit. The vent ports in the helmet wouldn't line up if the two styles of suits were mixed, so they changed the colour of the components to avoid that problem. By Apollo 13 astronauts only used A7Lb suits with red collars.
In addition, it was Lovell's suit that has red stripes on it (seen in the moonwalk daydream sequence) to distinguish between it and Haise when they would be on the moon. Apollo 11 and 12 suits had no such markings, so distinguishing between the astronauts was difficult, leading to the addition of the red stripes on the commander's suit.
4th Jan 2016
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
Corrected entry: While at Maz's castle, Finn's blaster suddenly goes missing. He had it when Maz gives him the lightsaber, but once he comes out of the castle it is gone. He even tells Maz that he needs a weapon. She reminds him about the saber. He has the blaster when he gets to the Resistance base.
Correction: There's really nothing sudden about it. Finn has the blaster while in the castle's basement with Han and Chewie, when Maz hands him the lightsaber, but then the First Order's attack rocks Maz's castle. After this we have no idea what transpires while they're all inside the castle, and quite a bit of time passes until we see Han, Chewie, Finn, and Maz climb out of the castle rubble, which is when Finn no longer has that weapon. And Finn does not have a blaster with him as he exits the Falcon, when they get to the Resistance base.
We do know what transpires when they're in the castle. According to deleted scenes and the novelization, Stormtroopers capture them and force Finn to drop his gun. Then Han begins to insult Snoke and the First Order (revealing he noticed Finn was wearing Stormtrooper boots and that's how he knew he was lying about who he was) and Maz uses the Force to collapse the corridor on the troopers, allowing them to escape. But Finn left the blaster behind.
26th Jun 2003
My Blue Heaven (1990)
Continuity mistake: When Vinnie uses the price gun in the meat department he takes all the meat he used the gun on and puts it in his cart. In the very next scene he's seen trying to push the cart but he's having trouble because it's suppose to be filled with all those meats. The only problem is that there's no sign of the meat he just put in the cart and the cart is not even 3/4 full.
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Suggested correction: Vinnie's cart trouble isn't about the meat. He's not used to shopping and thus is having trouble controlling the cart on the slick floor of the market, which is isn't used to. So it's a joke both about his inexperience shopping for himself and the cliche about supermarket carts being hard to control.
11th Jul 2017
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Corrected entry: The Staten Island Ferry is shown transporting motor vehicles on its lower level; this hasn't been done since the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Correction: Trying to claim a factual error two describe difference with the MCU and real life seems like a stretch. Just because in real life the ferry doesn't transport cars like that doesn't mean that service couldn't have resumed in the MCU version of New York. If this is a "factual error" as far as the film is concerned, then it is also a "factual error" to have Stark Tower in the middle of New York (it doesn't really exist), and it's a "factual error" to have alien technology drive the plot since the Battle of New York never actually happened in real life. And you might as well say it's a "factual error" every time a fictional character shows up on screen since they don't exist in real life. In other words, it's part of the story this movie is telling. Or, to put another way, had they had filmed a scene in which someone says "we reinstated the car transportation ferry, " would it still be a factual error simply because it's a fictional digression from the real world?
Despite being a very wordy correction, pretty much everything you said is wrong. Fictional places and people can exist in films set in the real word without it being a factual error. Real world places, people, historical events, etc. can also exist in fictional films, but anything that is factually wrong is a valid mistake (unless something in the film suggested otherwise, which in this case it didn't).
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Correction: A crash wouldn't set a nuclear bomb off; it takes a very precise set of events to occur for that to happen, which a crash couldn't possibly replicate. Nor, for that matter, would hitting one with a wrench, which Sharp undoubtedly knows, but with the fate of the Earth riding on that bomb, he can't risk Stamper damaging it. The easiest way to ensure that he doesn't do it again is to tell them that it might actually go off. It's not true, but Stamper and his men aren't going to know that.
Tailkinker ★
A better question would be why they couldn't remote detonate the Independence nuke from the ground at the same time they try to activate the Freedom nuke.
Vader47000