Corrected entry: Popeye's gun changes between a 6-shot Colt Detective Special and a 5-shot Smith and Wesson Model 36. Near the end of the movie when he thinks he's firing at Frog One, he shoots it eight times.
BocaDavie
27th Jul 2015
The French Connection (1971)
20th Aug 2008
La Confidential (1997)
Corrected entry: In the final shoot-out, Officer White advises Detective Exley that he is going under the building by pointing to a square open hole in the floor. The first shot of the hole shows it is clear with nothing blocking it; when White walks over to it there is now a board covering the hole that he has to kick through to break it.
Correction: The shot of the hole shows two openings with a board between them. The angle of the shot makes the hole in the foreground look larger than the hole in the back.
24th Aug 2010
Piranha 3D (2010)
Corrected entry: Sheriff Forester falls into the lake trying to retrieve Matt's boat when Matt's corpse surfaces next to her. Immediately afterward, when Forester and Deputy Fallon pull Matt's body from the water, she is completely dry: clothing, hair, everything.
Correction: She's not dry. Look at the other sheriff's outfit next to hers. Hers is darker in color meaning it's wet. So is her hair.
21st May 2013
World War Z (2013)
Corrected entry: In the scene where the Army is removing the historical documents from the National Archives you get a good look at the glass-encased Declaration of Independence. The one shown in the film has dark printing and is extremely easy to read. The real document looks nothing like this (I've seen it several times in the archives) - the printing is faded throughout and the parchment is not uniformly brown, as it is depicted in the movie. (00:37:40)
Correction: We see this document for less than 3 seconds - not enough time to get a good look at the prop. The real document is under very special lighting and environmental conditions; it would not be as we'll lit as it is in this scene. It is possible that the view we have, with the bright lights, could bring out detail we cannot see at the Archives. Also; there is nothing to indicate that THAT is the document being carried - it could be something else. There isn't enough detail to be sure.
21st May 2013
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
Corrected entry: *Spoilers* - Shortly after Kirk is killed by the radiation in the warp core, Dr. McCoy realizes that Kirk's cells can be regenerated by Kahn's blood. McCoy desperately tries to signal Spock to tell him not to kill Kahn because they need his blood to save Kirk. Apparently McCoy totally forget that they have 72 other genetically-enhanced members of Kahn's crew on board the Enterprise to harvest blood from. He even removes one of Kahn's crew from their cryo-stasis chamber so that he can use it to keep Kirk's brain cells viable; he actually had a genetically-enhanced man right there on a bed in sickbay to harvest blood from.
Correction: Khan's crew were frozen in cryo sleep for years. Removing them from cryo sleep willy nilly like that would most likely cause them to die. McCoy even states this shortly after the discovery of Khan's crew. Blood from a living member of Khan's crew stands a better chance to save Kirk's life and frankly the time it would take to unfreeze and revive a crew member would be extensive and time that they simply don't have.
24th Apr 2009
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Corrected entry: When Dave Bowman blows the explosive bolts on the pod to get into the Discovery, he flies into the long airlock, then back out towards the exit. Watch the pod through both of these shots; it doesn't move a single centimeter when the bolts explode and is in the exact same position when Bowman's body heads back towards the exit. Even with the best possible maneuvering thrusters automatically set to hold the pod in place, it would have moved significantly when the explosive bolts were set off. One corrector proposed that the pod would be held in place because the mechanical arms used to open the airlock would have held it there. Incorrect; Bowman released the pod's grip on the discovery in order to turn it around. The same corrector proposed that the expolsion would not overcome the forward inertia of the Discovery. Wrong again, the pod and Discovery are traveling at the same speed; an explosive decompression would push the pod forward at great velocity.
Correction: Not so. The pod would be weightless in outer space but it still has mass and inertia. The total change in momentum of Bowman and the air escaping from the pod, applied to a pod with about the mass of medium sized car, would result in the pod moving away at only about 50cm per second. That would be barely noticeable from our point of view, even if the change wasn't immediately corrected by an auto-pilot mechanism, which is feasible. We can calculate the reaction speed of the pod this way : assume a gas volume of 4 cubic metres, a mass for the pod of 2500 kg, a mass for Bowman of 150 kg, an average delta v of 100 m/s for the air in the pod, and a delta v of 10 m/s for Bowman - all of which yields a result of 0.5 m/s, and if air pressure in the pod were lower it would have moved even more slowly.
5th Jun 2012
The Avengers (2012)
Corrected entry: Towards the beginning of the film Steve Rogers is working out his frustrations on a punching bag in a gym. He finally hits the bag so hard that it breaks open and flies against the wall. Watch the chain it was hanging from when he makes the final punch. Despite the force of the blow the chain connecting the bag to the ceiling stays completely motionless.
Correction: The chain you see does not move, true. But that chain is in the FOREGROUND, even though it is hanging from the same metal frame that Steve mounts the punching bags on. However, it is not the chain that the bag was hanging from. You're talking about a single chain that hangs straight down, but each punching bag is hung from three chains connected by a metal ring, which he connects direcly to a hook on the large metal frame.
4th Jul 2010
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)
Corrected entry: The Cullens are watching a news report about the violence in Seattle. It is night time in the report, and the reporter says "this is CNN live.". Cut to the Cullens watching the newscast, and it is daylight out. Forks and Seattle are both in western Washington, it could not be night in one place and day in the other.
20th Sep 2009
Wall-E (2008)
Corrected entry: All satellites orbiting the earth experience a phenomenon known as "orbital decay" - the process of prolonged reduction in the height of a satellite's orbit. Larger satellites, like those shown in the movie, are especially susceptible to this as they collide with molecules in the outer atmosphere. The satellites depicted in the movie could not possibly have lasted over 700 years in orbit; the Skylab space station, for example, was only able to stay in orbit for six years before it crashed to earth.
Correction: Human technology presented here was able to create, among other things, a huge spaceship filled with a great number of humans over several centuries, with artificial gravity and a whole host of intelligent robots. Building satellites that are able to stay in orbit for a few centuries should be rather easy for them.
"Orbital decay" is the least of the problems here. Thrice throughout the film, we see a densely packed envelope of trashed satellites (which have lost the ability to fight orbital decay). The real threat to this envelope is called a "collisional cascade." The EVE's transport alone must have initiated one. At 0:33:34, we see the ship going through the envelope and... leaves it largely untouched. This is either magic or a movie mistake.
17th Jul 2010
The Dark Knight (2008)
Corrected entry: When the chase begins on the lower fifth the van carrying Harvey Dent is struck from behind by the garbage truck. When it hits they cut to a shot inside the van showing Dent being pushed back against the wall behind him in reaction to the crash. But Dent is sitting in a sideways-facing seat, facing the driver's side of the van. When the Van was struck from behind Dent's body should have been pushed to his left.
20th May 2010
Superman (1978)
Corrected entry: When Johnathan Kent has a heart attack and falls to the ground, Clark's mother yells out "Johnathan!" There's a reaction shot of Clark inside the barn with the dog, then it cuts to a wide angle shot. Clark runs out of the barn, but the dog is now outside towards the back, running along the outside of the building to catch up with Clark. Not nearly enough time between the two shots for the dog to run all the way out the back of the barn and around the side.
Correction: The dog runs out of the barn with Clark and is then offscreen for a full three seconds before the shot changes to the wide angle view with the dog along the *side* (not the back) of the barn. Considering it takes the dog less than three seconds to run the full length of the barn when he runs out with Clark, the fact that it ran less than half that distance in those offscreen seconds is not impossible.
7th Sep 2009
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Corrected entry: The outer layer of human skin is bonded to the subcutaneous layers beneath. When Raine is cutting the swastika into Landa's forehead at the end of the movie, the extreme close-ups reveal that the "skin" is a thin layer of rubber attached to a blood pack - you can see the edges peel up as he is making the incisions.
Correction: This is true for most skin, except the areas of the scalp and forehead - because of the unique nature of this skin, there often is more mobility and separation between these layers than in other areas of the body. I have watched these scenes again, and, as someone who has made incisions in these areas, I have to say this looks very realistic.
11th Jan 2010
Star Trek (2009)
Corrected entry: It is illogical for 'new' Spock to destroy the Narada drill when he has the ship with the red matter. The Romulans can't do anything with the hole if they don't have the red matter to put in it; taking time to destroy the drill only gives Nero more opportunity to recapture or destroy the 'squid' ship. Does he do it to anger Nero and ensure the Narada pursues him away from Earth? No, that's pretty much a done deal with or without the drill being destroyed. Maybe to prevent the creation of a volcano in San Francisco? That would be a secondary concern to saving the whole planet from the red matter.
Correction: Spock had no idea if the Romulans had already taken a red matter sample to launch into Earth's core. So destroying the drill was definitely the logical thing to do. Plus the drill was disrupting communications and transporter functions. Not to mention that we've seen that the drill being active interferes with the transporter. Kirk was in process of rescuing Pike. They wouldn't be able to beam back to the enterprise until the drill was destroyed.
25th Nov 2009
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Corrected entry: In the movie Gunny Hartman tells the recruits that Lee Harvey Oswald was such a great shooter because he was trained by the Marines. In 1956 Oswald joined the United States Marine Corps, and was trained as an Aircraft Maintenance Repairman. Despite stories to the contrary, he never learned to fire his rifle as an "expert" and was never trained as a sniper.
Correction: Marines spend three to four weeks of their 12 week boot camp learning to shoot. The other three branches train for one. Marine marksmanship training is also more in-depth than any of the other services. Indeed, a basic tenant of Marine service is "Every Marine is a rifleman." which is repeated constantly during rifle training. There are four possible results qualifying in the Marines. 1. Expert 2. Sharpshooter 3. Marksman and 4. Noqual (or fail). Oswald qualified as a sharpshooter.
7th Jul 2009
Star Trek (2009)
Corrected entry: Kirk is promoted to Captain in an auditorium filled with the Academy cadets that were present at his trial for cheating on the Kobayashi Maru. The faces should almost all be different - the only surviving cadets from the trial would be the ones who were assigned to the Enterprise; all the others were killed in the battle with the Narada.
Correction: Most of the faces are not recognizable in either scene, particularly the latter one. The concentration of black/gray uniforms at the front of the auditorium in the latter scene indicates that it's filled with more academy and Starfleet brass than the earlier scene.
18th May 2009
Star Trek (2009)
Corrected entry: The first shots of the Enterprise in space show it docked at the massive space station with the bridge facing the center of the station. When they show Spock entering the bridge for the first time (when the ship is still docked) you can see the view out of the front viewscreen/window. You should be able to see the huge space station, but all you see is empty space.
Correction: The space station is visible on the viewscreen. As Captain Pike enters the bridge, he walks across the view of viewscreen from right to left, and on the far right side of the screen, you can see the main central hub of the space station.
16th Feb 2009
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Corrected entry: In almost all of the outer space shots the stars in the distant background "twinkle". When looking into space from earth stars appear to twinkle because of the distortion caused by the atmosphere; when viewed from space all of the stars should have a consistent glow - no twinkling.
Correction: Thats not entirely correct. The Mutara Nebula features heavily and is cloud like, and clearly stretches far beyond what is visible, this alone can account for the twinkling stars.
12th Sep 2008
Batman Forever (1995)
Corrected entry: A conservative estimate of the acid-filled vault's weight is about 4 tons, most likely much more (a previous corrector suggested it was a special light-weight safe that Two-face installed. You can tell from Batman's difficulty in lifting the door that it is solid metal). The strongest industrial cable would need to be at least 1/2 inch thick to hold the weight, even more considering it would have to withstand the additional force as the vault makes its downward arc. The 1/8 inch thick cable that Batman uses would have snapped like a thread under the weight, no matter what it was composed of.
5th Sep 2008
Casino Royale (2006)
Corrected entry: In the Miami Science Museum, Bond stabs Dimitrios in the side with a knife, killing him instantly. No one would die so quickly from such a wound, especially someone strong enough to hold their own against 007. Even a severe laceration to the liver (the area where Dimitrios is stabbed) would take minutes to bleed out. Listed as trivia only because the Bond mythology is replete with instantaneous deaths; villains don't get to die slowly.
Correction: As you point out, villians die fast and quick deaths and there is nothing rare about it. Deaths in many Hollywood films are altered primarily for ratings. For example someone dying with blood everywhere and having it slow and painful will get a much higher rating than someone being shot with a silencer and almost no blood being spilled.
20th Aug 2008
Shoot 'Em Up (2007)
Corrected entry: Smith is attacked by several henchmen in his warehouse apartment. He grabs the baby and jumps on the rollers of a conveyor, sliding across the room and shooting two of the bad guys in front of him while a third runs up behind the conveyor. When Smith gets to the end of the rollers he stops himself, hangs down over the end of the rollers, and shoots the man at the far end of the conveyor in the chest. If you work out the math on the angle he is firing from and the length of the conveyor, it is an impossible shot. The man would have to be at least 27 feet behind the conveyor for the bullet to clear the rollers and hit him in the chest; in reality he was standing much closer.
Correction: This falls into the category of willing suspension of disbelief. Most people wouldn't get killed by a carrot to the head, either. It's just one example of the over the top nature of the movie, and can't be considered a mistake since it was done on purpose.
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Correction: This would only count as a mistake if the type of gun changed between shots...if that's what is meant, the specific time it happens should be made clear. Also, he reloads in the final scene, so firing eight total shots is not a mistake.