Corrected entry: There's no way Annie could have locked herself in the laundry room considering the lock is on the outside of the door.
Charles Austin Miller
29th Oct 2015
Halloween (1978)
Correction: It's not a figure of speech since the door magically locked itself because the wind blew it shut. She tried to open it and it wouldn't open because the lock is on the outside. Why do you think she was trying to get out the window?
The point is she didn't literally lock herself in - she was locked in. Personally I think it's a minor semantic difference - she may well just think she did something wrong that led to the door locking itself. Regardless it's a standard turn of phrase, if technically inaccurate.
27th Aug 2001
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
Corrected entry: Klaatu supposedly neutralised all the electricity on the Earth for 30 minutes, which would explain why gasoline-powered cars would stop, because the spark plugs wouldn't work. Diesel engines (used in many trucks and buses shown in the film), however, don't use sparkplugs, so they would keep running.
Correction: Diesel engines still use an electric stop solenoid on the pump to draw the fuel from the tank up to the injectors.
Correction: Http://www.biodieselmagazine.com/articles/3617/milestones-in-diesel-technology Diesel engines based on WW2 era technology used indirect injection and their fuel pumps were mechanically driven. Electric starter motors were widely used at that time however, so perhaps only diesel engines already running or so old that they could be started by mechanical means would have been operable. There still should have been a significant number of trucks and even some automobiles (i.e. Benz products) in operation.
Correction: Klaatu's technology could stop any human technology for the duration of the event, electrical or not; but his technology was extremely selective, such that airplanes didn't fall out of the sky, submarines didn't sink, and hospitals were unaffected. It was a powerful and complex demonstration designed to send a powerful and complex message.
2nd Nov 2017
The Great Escape (1963)
Character mistake: When Werner asks Hendley why, as an American, he fights alongside Britain, he mentions that the British burned down the U.S. capital in 1812. While it happened during the War of 1812, the burning of Washington actually occurred in 1814. (00:11:10)
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Suggested correction: The question was intended to demonstrate how far out-of-touch Werner was with United States history.
You misunderstand. Werner's question in and of itself is not the mistake; it's merely a point of contextual reference. The mistake is him giving the incorrect date of a historical event he claims to have read about; it's hard to believe that every book that he might have read on the topic are all wrong, so he must be remembering, and thus repeating it, incorrectly.
24th Oct 2017
Speed (1994)
Corrected entry: As the end of the conversation about Jack getting off the bus nears, there's a picture on the TV behind Payne showing the bus going down the freeway, but the bus is on the airport tarmac at that time.
Correction: The local news coverage is, typically, replaying earlier highway footage throughout the incident. But the bomber, Howard Payne, was watching the bus the entire time with a hidden camera that had nothing to do with local news coverage. The police tell a television news crew to record the private transmission and rebroadcast it in a continuous loop, to fool Howard while the bus passengers were offloaded at the airport. So, Howard is watching his private feed, not the local news coverage. Howard still thinks the bus is on the tarmac and under his control. Too late, he realises that he was completely fooled by the video replays.
18th May 2014
The Time Machine (1960)
Corrected entry: In any scene where observers either watch the time machine disappear (miniature demonstration) or find the machine "gone", the observers should actually see the machine still there. Consider that the time traveler (or machine) passes THROUGH every moment of time, rather than "skipping" ahead to any target time (as in "Back To The Future"). This is proven by the fact that the time traveler observes changing day/night, seasons, fashion changes on the mannequin, etc. So, really, his miniature demonstration would have looked lame, because the whirling machine would have just remained there from the observers' viewpoints, not disappeared. In fact, when advanced in time, it would stay in place for 100,000 years or whatever, no matter what happened around it.
Correction: Inasmuch as Space and Time are one fabric, as Einstein correctly theorized, traveling through Space necessarily entails traveling through Time (as demonstrated by high-velocity manned space missions, which do indeed prove that time dilation occurs, such that the astronauts return to Earth a few milliseconds younger than they should be). On the same token, traveling through Time necessarily entails traveling through Space. As this pertains to the subject of the movie, the Time Machine was instantly moving forward through Time but also moving forward through Space. Think of it like this: Let's say that you and I are sitting face-to-face having this conversation when I activate my Time Machine and travel one day into the future, in just one second. In one day, the Earth naturally travels about 1.6 million miles in its orbit of the Sun. Therefore, I must travel not only 24 hours across Time (in just one second), but I must travel 1.6 million miles across Space (in just one second) so as to arrive at Earth's physical location in the future. To your eyes, as the observer, my Time Machine and I would simply wink out of existence, then wink back into existence 24 hours later in apparently the same location. You would be 24 hours older and I would be only one second older, but I would also have just traveled 1.6 million miles across space. So, to traverse Time just one day into Earth's future (in just one second) necessarily means the Time Machine must travel the distance to the Earth's future location in Space at a velocity over 8 times the speed of light. In the movie, the Time Machine is not only traveling 802,000 YEARS across Time in a matter of minutes, it is also traveling 802,000 years across physical Space in a matter of minutes, which would be such a blistering velocity that the Time Machine would be virtually invisible and undetectable to even the most careful observers.
27th Aug 2011
Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Corrected entry: When Holmes electrocutes the French giant, he jumps back at least 10 feet each time. Electricity doesn't do that to you. It causes your muscles to contract, which, if anything, would only cause you to jump forward, but never more than three feet.
Correction: I can tell you from experience that a powerful electrical shock can launch you backwards by several feet.
9th Jan 2008
I Am Legend (2007)
Factual error: Neville shoots the propane tank in the kitchen, driving the darkseeker out into the hallway. Shooting a propane tank without an external source of ignition or a tracer would simply result in the tank's gas escaping and maybe the tank moving across the room. The Mythbusters needed an armor piercing rifle bullet to get through a tank and couldn't ignite it even with tracer rounds. Propane tanks are very thick walled. Bullet sparks are a movie myth. Bullets are either lead or lead in a copper jacket. Neither will spark when hitting metal.
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Suggested correction: High-power rifle rounds can draw sparks off sand and even off wood.
26th Feb 2007
Final Destination (2000)
Corrected entry: At least one or two tragedies or accidents in each of the three final Destination films are based on real life events. In this movie, Flight 180 was based on Trans World Flight 800, which also crashed right after takeoff, leaving JFK for Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport, and both were carrying a group of students going to Paris on a class trip.
Correction: Screenwriter Jeffrey Reddick wrote the original speculative script "Flight 180" in 1994 (intending it for the X-Files TV series). The real-life Flight 800 crash didn't occur until 1996. Reddick went on to use his "Flight 180" script to launch the "Final Destination" franchise in 2000, and Reddick has publicly stated that "Flight 180" is not based on the Flight 800 crash. Source: http://bloody-disgusting.com/news/3349248/read-x-files-script-became-final-destination-exclusive.
28th Sep 2012
Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Corrected entry: In the scene where Holmes is defending himself with some sort of electrical prod, it's clear that the tips of the prod have the same electrical potential (they are connected to the same metal). Subsequently, this device could never be used to shock anyone unless they were standing on a metal plate that was connected to the opposite electrical pole of the prod tips. If it had a Leiden-Jar type power source, it would have been expended after the first jolt.
Correction: Actually, the rod wouldn't need positive and negative prongs on the same end. The negative terminal is on the opposite end of the rod. When Holmes is charging the capacitor, it rests in a cradle that makes negative contact on one end and positive on the other. So, fully charged, you would want to point the positive end toward your target; as long as that target was grounded, the capacitor would discharge through the target.
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Correction: It's a figure of speech when one says 'I/you locked myself/yourself in/out'. She was alone, nobody knew that Michael was skulking around, and she got locked in the laundry room. Anyone would say they locked themselves in.
dewinela
That's pure opinion, not a correction.
Charles Austin Miller
In this scene, you can literally see her turn the lock knob which is above the handle before she tries to get out.