Stupidity: A young Jack Sparrow outwits Salazar by tricking him into the Devil's Triangle. Jack uses a bootleg turn to dodge the same fate. However, the film shows Jack's ship within the striking range of Salazar's ship. Salazar could have used a cannonade to both destroy Jack and turn his ship to the starboard side, avoiding the Devil's Triangle. In fact, despite being a naval genius, Salazar did little to escape doom. (01:06:12)
FleetCommand
20th Mar 2024
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)
Plot hole: The puzzle box that Miles sends to his friends opens and closes on its own, but its hinges are not connected to any electromotors or kinetic mechanism.
25th Jan 2024
Focus (2015)
Stupidity: With the threat of strangulating Jess, Garriga coerces a false confession from Nicky about the complicity of Jess. Garriga then laughs, calls Nicky out on it, and points out the confession's deficiencies. The film treats the whole scene as an astute reveal à la Sherlock Holmes! Nobody notices, let alone points out, that a coerced confession is worthless. In reality, Garriga would feel very stupid because he almost murdered someone. For the same reason, Jess must feel very angry.
23rd Jan 2024
Focus (2015)
Plot hole: Nicky steals the EXR formula from Garriga's "server" by hacking it remotely within 48 hours. That's impossible. Garriga wouldn't carry his servers to race tracks. He needs only the fuel with which to race, not its formula. That means Nicky was left with penetrating air-gapped R&D servers inside Garriga's factory. This task is worth an entire film unto itself. It can't be done in 48 hours.
23rd Jan 2024
Focus (2015)
Plot hole: Garriga shows a small thumb-sized device, claiming it changes his password every 15 minutes, thus protecting his servers against brute-force attacks. In real life, remote servers are resilient to brute-force attacks because they restrict wrong guesses. Worse, changing the password every 15 minutes means Garriga would never know a password that can be reused indefinitely within 15 minutes! In real life, we use time-based one-time passwords (TOTP) and 2FA instead.
13th Jan 2024
The Bricklayer (2023)
Plot hole: At the 0:36:00 scene, Vail explains to Kate that Radek was the CIA's hitman, having killed a smuggler called Boris Popov on the CIA's order. Except Kate knew. She relayed the same info to Vail at the 0:06:55 scene.
13th Jan 2024
The Bricklayer (2023)
Plot hole: Kate suspects Vail, searches his bag and finds receipts for two burner phones. She holds him at gunpoint and finds the burner phone in his pocket! So, what we have here is a veteran CIA agent who discards neither his "burner" phones nor their receipts! Does he even know the meaning of the word "burner"? Does anyone involved in the making of this film know?
12th Nov 2023
Fracture (2007)
Plot hole: In this film, a murderer (Mr. Crowford) goes free after recanting his confession (alleging duress) and concealing the murder weapon. The film forgets the most damning evidence: The perp and the victim had been alone in a closed room from which witnesses had heard shots fired. The perp himself establishes that he had motives. He cannot go free without an astounding alibi.
7th Feb 2023
Lightyear (2022)
Factual error: The film gets basic physics wrong while trying to depict relativity. Buzz Lightyear leaves T'Kani Prime for a trip around its sun, travels with near-light speed, and returns four years later. This could only have happened if T'Kani Prime's sun were at least two lightyears away! It gets more ridiculous. Buzz's last trip takes 26 years, even though he has traveled at faster-than-light speed. Overall, T'Kani Prime is experiencing either a mysterious time slow-down or a rapid orbit expansion.
7th Nov 2022
Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
Other mistake: The film's premise is attacking a target that GPS jamming protects. As the attack starts, it is becomes apparent that no such protection is in place. GPS jamming is a form of radio frequency jamming. It would severely affect all radio communications. But planes and their command carrier are in constant, undeterred radio contact. Moreover, the enemy uses radar-guided SA-3 Goa SAM units that would have been unable to operate properly in jamming conditions.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: GPS jamming is transmitting radio signals on GPS frequencies, not all radio frequencies. It might prevent GPS being used for navigation or weapon aiming, but it would have little or no effect on radios or radar which use different frequency bands. At the risk of oversimplifying, it's like you could shine a bright flashlight to blind people trying to see you, but it wouldn't stop them using infra red (or hearing or smell or whatever else).
This correction is a mistake in itself. Without wide-spectrum jamming, the U.S. Navy never needed to use NAVFLIR for payload guidance. The site would be open to attacks from other radio-guided weapons, such as NAVCON guidance, standoff missile, and operator-guided bombs, especially since they were hard-pressed to guide their payload through a small window and ensure the survivability of their pilots.
In the movie they say GPS jamming, not wide spectrum jamming. GPS could be affected, but radar etc would still work. Like you say, the site would still be open to other attacks, and be able to use various defences.
It doesn't really matter. Maverick was told that GPS is jammed, so he threw all kinds of attack plans based on radio guidance out of the window, behaving as if there was a full-spectrum jamming in place. And his commanding officers didn't mind. Either the film's mistake is in its depiction of U.S. Navy's understanding of aerial warfare or its depictions of aerial warfare itself. There is huge mistake in there, it is only a matter of where.
21st Apr 2022
Belle (2021)
Factual error: All Arabic texts in the film suffer from wrong directional rendering. Arabic is a right-to-left language. Its letters have different joined and disjoined forms. The film, however, has rendered Arabic texts from left to right in disjoined letters. These texts aren't semantically wrong, though. For example, deciphering the Arabic message at 0:40:45 point gives "أليس "التنين فنان؟ Translation: "Isn't the Dragon an artist?" The film has even adopted a good font for them.
21st Oct 2021
Appleseed Alpha (2014)
Continuity mistake: Briareos' VTOL fires all of its forward missiles twice. (The forward missile bays have distinct markings in the form of a set of three white rectangles at each side). (01:15:26 - 01:16:40)
21st Oct 2021
Appleseed Alpha (2014)
Plot hole: The main plot of the film involves Iris and Olson's mission: Destroying the Mobile Fortress 000. But Iris is a special gynoid. Her primary function is to activate the Mobile Fortress. The antagonist of this film could unleash calamity if he had Iris and the fortress. So, which idiot has sent Iris on this mission? The logical course was to send a demolition team, or better yet, send no-one at all. Anything is better than sending the activation key outside the safety of the Olympus.
17th Sep 2021
Appleseed Alpha (2014)
Character mistake: Olson discovers a "microchip blocking the self-assessment program" and says, "it's a worm"! It is not. "Computer worm" is a type of malware that propagates over a computer network. What Olson discovers is an act of sabotage of malicious nature, but definitely not a worm. (00:25:39)
15th Sep 2021
Appleseed Alpha (2014)
Continuity mistake: When Talos enters Two-Horn's room, he doesn't have a pistol. A minute later, he does. (00:31:04 - 00:32:00)
17th Dec 2020
Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day (2020)
Factual error: The film consistently mistakes Absinthe ban with Thujone ban. The United States Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) lifted the ban on Absinthe in 2007, 13 years before the events of this film. Thujone is still banned, and Absinthe products must contain less than 10 mg/kg Thujone content.
26th Oct 2020
Enola Holmes (2020)
Factual error: Linthorn meets his end when Enola knocks him off his feet. He hits his temple against a heavy and sharp furniture protrusion. Death must have been instantaneous, but instead, he lives to speak a few words. (01:39:18 - 01:39:55)
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: He suffered a serious injury, but didn't die right away. There's no indication death was instantaneous.
Every word of what you said is correct. And that's the mistake! Death must have been instantaneous... that is if there was any. A "head trauma", as medical doctors call it, does not have slow-timed effect. The effects range from dizziness to more severe ones, e.g. loss of consciousness, loss of memory, or death. All of them are instantaneous.
26th Oct 2020
Enola Holmes (2020)
Factual error: Mrs. Harrison travels to a random, remote country mansion (kilometers away from any civilization), meets a woman who is not her pupil, forcibly takes her measurements, insults her, and slaps her! Nobody in the right mind would do that because they know they would be murdered, harmed, or handed over to the police for trespassing, assault, and battery. (Such outcomes are recurrently portrayed in Sherlock Holmes stories.) Schoolmistresses did use corporal punishment but only on their pupils and within the bounds of school, where they have relative safety. To make matter worse, Mycroft warns Mrs. Harrison in advance. He describes Enola as "unbroken", "a wild and dangerous woman", "a wild child." (Indeed she is; she beats people during the rest of the film. How did Mrs. Harrison escape unscathed?). (00:11:43 - 00:13:46)
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: How was she trespassing or going to a 'random' mansion? Mycroft, who owns the mansion and is Enola's guardian, specifically invited her there and enrolled Enola as Mrs. Harrison's pupil. Slapping Enola was out of line (Mrs. Harrison seems to immediately regret it), but not unheard of. And Enola still holds out hope that Mycroft will change his mind. Fighting Mrs. Harrison would just prove to him that she needs discipline. She'd rather play it safe and escape before being sent to school.
The slap wasn't just out of line; in the real-world 19th-century England, it was defensible by death. Enola could kill all three, call the police, and allege killing trespassers. The worst verdict an inquest could return was "death due to misadventure." Or Enola could just kill all three and nobody would be the wiser. Read the original Sherlock Holmes books to find out why. Things didn't happen as they they'd happen in real-life... because the director said so.
Except it would be incredibly easy to prove that they'd been there at Mycroft's (the homeowner's) invitation, and Sherlock and the housekeeper also knew they were guests. It would also seem rather out of character for Enola to kill a teacher, let alone a couple of innocent dressmakers, don't you think?
Proof of Mycroft's invitation merely changes the inquest's verdict from "lawful killing" to "death by misadventure." It is out of character for a real-world Ms. Harrison, the epitome of decorum, to slap someone outside the school without fear of reprisal. (Does she have no self-preservation instinct?) It is out of character for a real-world Mycroft, an upper-class mansion owner, not to kill Ms. Harrison in defense of his honor. The Mycroft of this film is a 21st-century American redneck.
He's a redneck because his first response wasn't to kill a woman? It's a moot point. Enola never told anyone she'd been slapped.
Mycroft Holmes, the smartest man in the world, must have deduced something was wrong at point 13:53 when he saw the distressed Enola. After all, his inferior brother Sherlock has made more impressive deductions. And yes, the Englanders of that era could be deadly when somebody stepped out of bounds. Most importantly, you've stopped defending the original mistake and are now content to attack me for whatever reason. I think we're done here.
9th Oct 2020
Enola Holmes (2020)
Plot hole: Enola and Tewkesbury make an unpremeditated decision to visit the Basilwether estate. This decision was made on the spur of the moment, and no-one knew about it. but when they arrive, Linthorn, who is supposed to be in London looking for Tewkesbury, is waiting in ambush to kill them. (01:32:45 - 01:34:31)
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: Linthorn saw them in London. He travelled back to the Basilweather estate, and waited for them to slowly make their way there.
Enola and the young Tewkesbury were in London two weeks prior to Enola's forced enrollment in a boarding school where she was supposed to spend her next few years! Furthermore, there is no evidence of Linthorn having seen them.
9th Oct 2020
Enola Holmes (2020)
Plot hole: No sooner than the film begins, Mycroft becomes the legal guardian of Enola; Sherlock accepts it without question. How on Earth did that happen? No coroner would grant a transference of guardianship just because someone's mother stepped out of the house and didn't return for a day or two. (00:11:37)
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: The brothers obviously think that Enola's mother is out of her mind; Being the elder brother, Mycroft would immediately have had to take responsibility over Enola. Even if the mother did only go away for a day or two, Enola would still have required a guardian.
The brothers might as well think whatever they want. The UK's laws still mandate an inquest and a coroner's decision.
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.