Corrected entry: During the scene in the elevator the captain says that there are 13 hostages, but there are only 9 people in the elevator.
Tailkinker
29th Jul 2014
Speed (1994)
17th May 2014
Skyfall (2012)
Corrected entry: Before the final battle at Skyfall, M, Kincade and Bond have laid out a few guns on a table. These are the only available firearms since M distressingly asks, "And is this is all we got?" Among them is Bond's pistol, only usable by him because of the fail-safe hand-print sensor. However, we can see M firing with what appears to be Bond's pistol in the ensuing battle scenes.
Correction: Bond loses the personalised gun in the Macau casino. Once he returns to London, he's seen carrying a replacement gun of similar appearance, but there's no indication that this is also supposed to have the personalisation technology built into it, so M firing it during their last stand in the movie's climax is not unreasonable.
13th May 2014
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
Corrected entry: If only two months went by between the explosion of the Klingon moon and the meeting at Starfleet Headquarters, when exactly did Chang and his cohorts have the time to construct the bird-of-prey that can fire while cloaked? Two months would not have been long enough to build such a vessel, and since there was no reason for the peace talks until after the moon exploded, there would be no reason to have such a vessel being built before the events of the movie happen.
Correction: No reason? Seriously? Up until the destruction of Praxis, the Klingon Empire has been in a state of cold war against the Federation for over twenty years - while outright conflict was banned under the Treaty of Organia, this certainly didn't prevent a number of incidents from occurring. And the Federation is only one of their neighbours who could potentially threaten them. Developing the technology to allow a ship to fire while cloaked would be of obvious interest to the Klingon High Command, so it's not remotely unreasonable that a prototype could exist that Chang could commandeer to disrupt the peace process.
1st Nov 2013
Person of Interest (2011)
Corrected entry: When Shaw is released from the trunk of the kidnapper's car, she slams him in the face with a tyre iron and then, using her teeth, easily frees herself from the duct tape binding her hands. Why didn't she free herself from the tape while in the trunk?
Correction: We don't know much about the situation. Shaw is unconscious when she'd loaded into the car; she may only have woken up as the car drew to a halt. If so, given the reasonable assumption that the boot would be opened within seconds, her priority would be to arm herself, rather than spending valuable seconds freeing her hands, particularly as having her hands bound would in no way impede her ability to swing the tyre iron.
13th Jun 2010
Bad Boys II (2003)
Corrected entry: The flag shown in Cuba is not the Cuban flag. (02:12:50)
Correction: Not every flag is a national flag. Most countries will have dozens of flags in regular usage, representing regions, particular cities, organisations or even important individuals. As such, there is no reason to expect that any flag appearing on screen must be the national flag of the country the scene takes place in, particularly in a fleeting shot during an action sequence like this one.
12th Jul 2013
Pacific Rim (2013)
Corrected entry: Dr. Newton makes it very clear that nothing can get through the portal unless it has Kaiju DNA. Yet somehow both Mako and Raleigh manage to escape and return safely to Earth.
Correction: The Kaiju DNA thing is a security protocol, set up to prevent any Earth retaliation from coming through the breach into the alien realm. The same security isn't necessary travelling the other way through the breach, from the alien realm to Earth, and could even prove counterproductive should the Kaiju's creators wish to send something non-Kaiju through. As such, there's no need for the protocol to exist in that direction, allowing Raleigh and Mako to make their escape.
30th Jun 2013
World War Z (2013)
Corrected entry: The area outside the Jerusalem safe zone is swarming with zombies, but the military helicopters don't decide to carpet-bomb and strafe the crowd with machine guns until AFTER the infected have scaled the wall. What in hell were they waiting for?
Correction: Given the size of the undead swarm and the relatively large area that it covers, there's no possible way that the military helicopters could be carrying enough firepower to take out a significant proportion of them, and making that sort of noise would only serve to attract even greater numbers to that location, making such action counter-productive as best. As such, it makes more sense to simply monitor the situation and only take offensive action in the event of a direct threat, as they do once the zombies begin to scale the wall.
24th Jun 2013
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Corrected entry: After the insect crawls out of Chekov's ear and Khan beams up Genesis, Admiral Kirk says to Khan, "you have Genesis, but you don't have me. You were going to kill me. You're going to have to come down here". Khan beamed up Genesis, so why didn't he beam up Kirk who was only a few feet away? I know he said, "perhaps I no longer need to try. I've done worse than kill you: I've hurt you" which indicates that Khan accepted his failure to kill Kirk: it was not premeditated to leave him there. Further, if he didn't want to kill him, why did he try later in the movie? (00:15:20)
Correction: Khan isn't "accepting his failure" to kill Kirk, he's simply found an alternative that he considers to be even more poetic, that of marooning Kirk, just as Kirk marooned him after their first encounter. As revenge, this is much more satisfying than simply killing his enemy, which is very swift, leaving Kirk behind with plenty of time to contemplate the fact that Khan beat him. Later, once he learns that Kirk has escaped, Khan reverts to the idea of simply killing him.
17th Apr 2013
Oblivion (2013)
Corrected entry: The flight recorder from the spaceship with the cryo-pods that crash lands on Earth is retrieved by Jack and Julia in the year 2077. However, later in the film, when Jack is delivering the nuke to the Tet, he listens to the recording which took place in 2017. In a flashback, we see that the flight recorder was on the part of the spaceship that went onto the Tet. The part of the spaceship with the cryo-pods, which crash lands on Earth in 2077, has already been separated from the part of the spaceship that Jack and the flight recorder are on, so the flight recorder shouldn't be on it when it crash lands on Earth.
Correction: It would be a highly logical design, given that the ship's modules were specifically designed for separation, to have multiple flight recorders, one in each module. This would ensure that the necessary data gets back to base in the event that the primary module is destroyed or otherwise lost. With such a design, it would make sense that data transfer would occur wirelessly, so that all recorders would continue to store information even after module separation.
Correction: This is possible, however, moments before that it was already established that all electronic communication failed in proximity to the Tet, so it would be reasonable to assume that wirelessly transmitting a sync between the two recorders would not be possible.
17th Apr 2013
Oblivion (2013)
Corrected entry: How come with all the scanning done by drones, Sally does not notice it is not Julia in the stasis pod?
Correction: While we don't know the full specification of the drones' scanners, while they can locate a lifeform from some distance, they appear to rely on visual and audio cues to actually identify a specific individual. With Malcolm concealed within the stasis pod, their ability to identify him is severely compromised. With no reason to suspect that it might not be Julia, "Sally" simply didn't look too closely.
17th Apr 2013
Oblivion (2013)
Corrected entry: Where did they get the second stasis pod from used for the switch? All but one were destroyed by the drones.
Correction: Any sensible design would include enough pods for all crew members, allowing them all to survive should a major disaster affect the ship. Thus, while the drones targeted the occupied pods, the empty pods allocated to Jack and Victoria would have remained untouched. The first pod he happens upon is labeled 01 and is empty. Through the gun scope, and once back in the tower afterwards, you see Julia's is 06. Later after he puts Julia into one, the one he drags out of the bunker is 01. And at the very end at we see the pod with Malcolm he took up to the Tet is numbered 02. So we can reasonably assume pods 01 and 02 were Jack and Victoria respectively and were not shot up by the drones because there was no one in them.
23rd Mar 2013
X-Men (2000)
Corrected entry: In the scene where Logan is trying to save Rogue from the mutation generator, he jumps down between the rotating rings to claw her free. However, the rings were moving much too fast for him to just simply leap down between them given the speed he falls.
Correction: Shots of the machine when stationary make it fairly clear that the rings are not complete - they're more like horseshoes, open at the top. Logan simply got on top of the machine and dropped safely through the gap at the top of the rings.
21st Mar 2013
Skyfall (2012)
Corrected entry: The car used in the chase at the beginning has Turkish number plates. However, it also has an EU (presumably a UK) country disc. Turkey is not in the EU.
Correction: While Turkey is not, as yet, a member of the European Union, it has been a member of the European Customs Union since 1995 and thus their number plates include the blue "Eurostripe", but without the European flag symbol (which is correctly missing in the film).
20th Mar 2013
Star Trek (2009)
Corrected entry: After realizing that the Jellyfish was on a collision course, ordering the Narada to open fire wouldn't have helped at all; destroying the Jellyfish would have led to containment breech of the red matter, which in turn would have swallowed up the Narada as well. A better option would've been to simply warp away. From the previous scene, the Narada was able to jump to warp in a matter of seconds to pursue the Jellyfish, meaning that jumping to warp is a relatively quick and easy task. Even after the missiles were fired, Nero still had plenty of time to order a warp retreat.
Correction: Characters are allowed to be fallible, to make wrong choices without it being considered a mistake. Nero's angry, he wants to see Spock dead, and, being a miner by profession rather than a warrior, lacks the training to overcome his anger and consider his options rationally. If this leads him to make a wrong call, that's just him screwing up, not a plot hole.
11th Mar 2013
The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
Corrected entry: Dennis Leary issues a warrant for the arrest of Spider Man. Only a judge can issue warrants for arrest.
Correction: A judge officially issues the warrant, but Captain Stacy instigated the process and therefore can be reasonably said to have played a part in issuing it. They could have shown the whole process of him going to the judge and so forth, but it would be a waste of valuable screen time.
3rd Mar 2013
Sherlock (2010)
Corrected entry: In the scene where Holmes, Watson and Lestrade are looking at the woman's body, Holmes keeps saying that she has mud splashed up her right leg, but the splash is on her left.
Correction: Having double-checked the scene, the splash marks are on her right leg. You may have mistaken her shoes, seen on the right of the close-up image, for the bottom of her identically coloured coat - had it been the coat, you would have been correct.
11th Mar 2013
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)
Corrected entry: When Richards is dancing at his bachelor party his clothing is stretched as well as his body, but he's wearing regular clothes, not his Fantastic Four suit.
Correction: Hardly unreasonable to think that Richards could have created clothing of regular appearance that still stretched along with him, for those occasions where he didn't want to wear his uniform.
26th Feb 2013
Aliens (1986)
Corrected entry: In the extended version especially, the fact that Ripley was lost in space for almost 60 years and at the exact time when she arrives on earth the colonists find the eggs and the company loses connection to them is an unbelievably huge coincidence. In the theatrical version the timing of the events remains a bit more unclear - the colonists may have died even years ago, at any time between those 57 years time period and the company noticed that after they found Ripley and decided to communicate with them to check. But in the extended version this possibility is killed as we see the colonists' situation, and one just has to believe the above described huge coincidence.
Correction: Coincidence? It's made very clear in the film that it's anything but. Once Ripley was found and told her story, Burke sent instructions to the colony ordering them to investigate the reported location of the derelict alien ship, leading directly to the infection of the colony and the death of all the colonists bar Newt. There's a pivotal scene where Ripley confronts Burke about it, angrily telling him that it was all his fault, something that he attempts to dismiss as "a bad call" on his part, shortly before he attempts to infect her and Newt by releasing the facehuggers. Rewatch the movie; the chain of events is made very clear. It's no coincidence.
19th Feb 2013
Skyfall (2012)
Corrected entry: In the government committee shoot-out scene. The same Black police officer gets shot twice. He comes though a door, and gets shot by Silva. Scene cuts a wide shot, the officer is crawling across the floor. Scene cuts to Bond, then cuts back to Silva shooting. Cuts to the same door the officer just came though, and he comes though again and gets shot again.
Correction: He's initially shot near the door (which he doesn't enter through - he's already in the room). He survives the first shot, as we see him crawling to take cover in the recessed doorway. Once Silva is distracted by Bond's arrival and Moneypenny shooting at him, the officer takes the opportunity to attempt another shot, moving out of cover in the doorway (once again not entering through the door, which is still closed) to give himself a better chance. Unfortunately, this only gets him shot again, this time apparently fatally. A clear sequence of events, none of which represent a mistake.
18th Feb 2013
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
Corrected entry: When Spock and Kirk theories over who the probes signal might be meant for, Spock say "The President did say it was directed at earths oceans", the president never said that, he only said it was vaporizing the oceans, he never mention it being directed anywhere.
Correction: If it's vaporising the oceans, it's hardly an unreasonable assumption that it's aimed at them. If it was having negative effects across the world, affecting everywhere, the President would hardly have singled out the oceans to comment on.
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Correction: There are multiple shots throughout the sequence showing the interior of the elevator where more than nine passengers are visible. The highest number of passengers visible in a single shot is twelve, but, as no shot shows the entire interior, it's fair to assume that thirteen is, indeed, the correct number.
Tailkinker ★