The Andromeda Strain

The Andromeda Strain (2008)

12 mistakes - chronological order

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Continuity mistake: The Army Humvee arrives in Piedmont and finds the townsfolk all dead. The timecode on the truck's video recording is 22:13 hours. When the team gathers to learn of the situation, they are shown this video. The General then presents a video he says is 2 hrs later, the view from the drone with infrared film. The time code on this, is 3:15. Both were shot in the same place, and both would be local time, so the time is wrong. More to the point, the original drone footage did not have any timecode on it. (00:18:40)

DavidRTurner

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Other mistake: When the team is in the grocery store, they rewind the security videotape (they play it backwards). They stop it at the last activity, when a man comes in and chainsaws his own head off. The body (and head) have gone blue/purple, and since everyone else died the previous night, we can assume that he cut his head off around 12 hours ago. At high speed reverse play, the time they spent rewinding would be only around 10 or 15 minutes of recorded time. (00:32:50)

DavidRTurner

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Factual error: When Tsi recalls the incident in China with the disease, the camera shows an Army officer banging on the door of the hospital; we can see that the glass is wire-reinforced safety glass. The officer (actually, it is an unexplained other actor) then uses the butt of his pistol to break the glass. In real life, this kind of glass is too strong for this to be possible. And even if a super-strong person could break it, it would fall clumped up, as safety glass is designed to do. But here, it shatters into several large shards. (01:08:00)

DavidRTurner

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Continuity mistake: The cop (Marty) enters the diner and shoots three patrons before killing himself. Moments later, the security tape that the Army watches, has the timing and positions of the characters a little different. Clearly, they had to re-shoot the scene from the different angle. (01:11:20)

DavidRTurner

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Visible crew/equipment: When Jeremy calls Jack, Jeremy is in an office alone. At one point there is a shadow in the background of a person moving around. Since nobody else is in the scene, it must be a crew member. (01:19:20)

DavidRTurner

Show generally

Factual error: When the doctors are testing the contagiousness of Andromeda on the rats and monkey, in a highly secure, bio-sealed environment, the robotic arm that does the work simply pushes the containers together - no seals, no suction or vacuum. There would be absolutely no chance whatsoever of a real bio-research lab doing this so casually.

DavidRTurner

Show generally

Continuity mistake: When Tobler (the male survivor) approaches the Humvee initially, the driver starts noticing his symptoms just as Tobler stops yelling. Later in the film, in flashback, in the same scene, the driver starts reacting a second or two earlier.

DavidRTurner

Show generally

Continuity mistake: When the team is checking out the grocery store in Piedmont, they exit the building and a Humvee is in the middle of the street where there was no vehicle before. They had driven that Humvee but had parked it elsewhere.

DavidRTurner

Season 1 generally

Factual error: When Jack escapes from the helicopter explosion, the chopper is destroyed. When Jack walks back, the two pilots' bodies are sitting in their seats, apparently unscathed. The whole rest of the chopper is missing - doors, windshield, dashboard... Yet they weren't blown to bits? (01:42:40)

DavidRTurner

Season 1 generally

Continuity mistake: When Jack is alone in the desert and the girl's Jeep stops nearby, he is positioned towards the right-front corner of it. But when he approaches it, he walks into the scene from the left-front corner of it. There's no reason he'd walk way around the area - he is suffering from the heat and would walk as little as possible, in a straight line to it. (02:02:35)

DavidRTurner

Season 1 generally

Other mistake: When Keene is hanging from the pipe in the shaft, he falls from it, and in the first second we see him falling naturally, in a 'standing' position. The camera angle changes, and he is now falling in a 'lying down' position. As well, when he hits the bottom (the nuclear cooling water), he doesn't splash further than a foot or so into the water. Falling from about 100 feet, he'd certainly splash down deeper than that. (02:33:40)

DavidRTurner

Dr. Angela Noyce: I think a linear time frame is a key part of what means to be human. If our really important choices could be sampled like a box of chocolates, then our decisions would lose their meaning. What would be at stake?

More quotes from The Andromeda Strain

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