Best action movie mistakes of all time

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6 Underground picture

Continuity mistake: The green Alfa in the opening minutes has its side, and mirror, wiped out by a lorry. For the next 5 minutes it then drives around in perfect condition. (00:05:43)

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Mission: Impossible picture

Factual error: The vents that Hunt and his sidekick crawl down at CIA Headquarters are standard galvanized steel box vents; they are very common in the building trade. Try walking or crawling down one - you'll make a noise like the sky is falling down. People will be able to hear you for miles. Every person in that building would know somebody crawling about in the vent system. (This error applies to dozens of films, not only this one).

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Top Gun: Maverick picture

Factual error: The radar guided SAMs are consistently evaded/triggered by the pilots' flares, which in reality only work against heat seeking missiles. Radar guided missiles would be defended against using chaff, basically clouds of aluminium foil strips. It was mentioned in some interviews they didn't want use chaff as it wouldn't really be visible for the audience - hence why they only deploy flares.

Jon Sandys

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Star Wars picture

Other mistake: Before Uncle Owen yells for Luke, if you look very closely, a fly can be seen on the lens (best seen on the special edition release). The fly was removed in the 2019 release.

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The Gentlemen picture The Gentlemen mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Pierce's wife is walking in her auto shop they pan down to show her red Louboutin heels, then they cut to her walking in her office, and when they show her shoes again they have a tan sole.

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Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen picture Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Sam is in his bedroom, after he finds the Cube sliver it falls and dramatically burns a hole through the floor into the kitchen. But Sam's bedroom is over the living room (there is nothing on the ground floor below Sam's elevated bathroom, and in the first movie Jazz hides in this open space), and the kitchen is actually located between the den and dining room, at the other end of the house. If they were to follow the actual floor plan of the house, the Cube sliver would have landed in the area of the piano in the living room, but where would the fun have been in that? (00:12:30)

Super Grover

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Charlie's Angels picture

Factual error: Near the end of the film Knox is flying a Huey helicopter and the Angels hitch a ride by shooting it with a spear gun and dangling on the line behind it. Suddenly adding about 200kgs to a Huey in flight like that is going to cause all sorts of problems with the trim and airspeed of the aircraft - the pilot would know immediately that something was wrong. (01:23:20)

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Suggested correction: Knox wasn't a trained pilot. Either he had no clue to what was going on, or he thought something may have been wrong, but didn't know what to do about it.

Taking off and landing a helicopter are by far the most intense and difficult part of a pilot's training. Seriously, 99% of learning to fly is learning how to land and take off. If the pilot is skilled enough to take off in a Huey he is easily skilled enough to notice a massive additional drag on his helicopter due to the additional weight of the angels and the air resistance put up by such a bulky protrusion on his aircraft. If he isn't skilled enough to notice that, he isn't skilled enough to take off in the first place.

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Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi picture

Revealing mistake: When Luke is being fed to the Rancor, in Jabba the Hutt's dungeon, there are black outlines around the beast's legs, from the composite's blue screen special effect. This was edited out in the special edition rerelease.

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Blue Thunder picture

Other mistake: Murphy lands the helicopter on a railway line so an oncoming train will destroy it completely, and this happens exactly on cue with huge, dramatic explosions and flying debris. Apparently the train driver doesn't think this is important enough to interrupt his busy schedule - he doesn't stop the train. We do not hear brakes being applied - the wheels would make a noise like the sky coming down - and the train doesn't slow down at all - it just keeps on going.

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The Great Escape picture

Factual error: Why is Hilts not wearing a uniform? A serving officer captured behind enemy lines in civilian clothing risked being shot as a spy. If a prisoner's uniform was too worn or damaged to wear, it was routine for the German authorities to replace it - a P.O.W. in civilian clothes is an obvious escape risk. He is wearing a pair of tan chinos, a cut off sloppy Joe sweatshirt, both ridiculously anachronistic - Sixties hipster fashions - and nowhere even close to a World War 2 uniform. He is also wearing Army Type III Service boots - something that would never have been issued to a fighter pilot.

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Anna picture

Factual error: The movie starts in 1985, jumps '5 years later' and then back to Sasha Luss, then '3 years earlier'. So, in her crusty apartment in an impoverished neighbourhood of 1987 Soviet Russia, Anna is filling a form on her notebook-style laptop, too modern for the era. It looks like a NEC UltraLite (considered the first notebook style laptop) which didn't even come out until 1989, let alone the likelihood of someone in the USSR having one.

Sammo

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Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back picture

Audio problem: When Luke says, "Now all we gotta do is find this Yoda, if he even exists," if you look closely, his mouth never moves.

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Species picture

Character mistake: Fitch, who professes qualifications in biology, genetics and biochemistry, says that they made Sil female because she's a natural predator and so she'd be more docile. In almost every species of predator on earth the females are the hunters, aggressors and killers. The males may be socially dominant but they are the 'docile' ones. There are exceptions but Fitch speaks as if female and docile are the same thing - and they definitely are not.

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Suggested correction: This entry is so wrong, I don't quite know where to begin. The idea that all species, without exception, have the females as the aggressors and the males as docile is absolutely one of the most ridiculous things I have ever read. It is not backed up by fact in the slightest. They also did use human DNA; they added the sample of alien DNA to it to create Sil.

The posting states that there are exceptions to the rule and specifically states "almost every species." The mistake is not that a female must be "docile". It is that a scientist professing qualifications in biology, genetics, and biochemistry would make such a stupid statement, believing it to be invariably true.

However, there are exceptions; any one species makes this possible. I will start with African Lions. In Africa, the female lions are the main aggressors.

Noman

Suggested correction: They never said Sil was a natural predator when they created her. She was half human and half alien and it was their belief that human females are more docile (i.e. more motherly, more gentle, more empathetic, and less aggressive than human males). Although the reply to "more docile and controllable" was "you guys don't get out much", meaning that girls aren't that docile and controllable.

Bishop73

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Gladiator picture Gladiator mistake picture Video

Visible crew/equipment: In the "Battle of Carthage" in the Colosseum, one of the chariots is turned over. Once the dust settles you can see a gas cylinder in the back of the chariot. (01:22:55)

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Battlefield Earth picture

Factual error: Amongst the essential parts of a nuclear weapon's detonation mechanism is a radioactive isotope of tritium, which has a half life of just 12 1/2 years. The tritium in every nuke on earth has to be replaced every ten years or so. This is by no means unusual; there are other perishable parts including detonators made of conventional explosives which would be completely inert after a thousand years. After lying dormant with no maintenance at all for that amount of time the nuclear weapons the 'Man-animals' find would be big shiny paperweights and not much else.

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Die Another Day picture Die Another Day mistake picture

Continuity mistake: In the final fight scene on the plane between Jinx and Agent Frost, Jinx is slashed across her stomach, drawing blood. In a later scene, when Jinx and 007 are pouring diamonds over one another in the hut on the cliff, her stomach is unblemished. (02:02:25)

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Commando picture Commando mistake picture Video

Continuity mistake: After chasing down Sully, the yellow Porsche is totally wrecked on the left side, until Arnie drives it away, and it's fine. Later, when Arnie and Cindy arrive at the hotel, the car is wrecked again. (00:39:50)

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Die Hard 2 picture

Factual error: It is impossible for a stream of burning jet fuel to follow a plane through snow and catch up. Not only is jet fuel extremely hard to ignite, almost as soon as the plane was off the ground the fuel stream would be too dispersed for the flame to climb up into the tank, and even if not it wouldn't burn fast enough to catch the plane.

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Sonic the Hedgehog picture

Visible crew/equipment: When Tom and Sonic pull over and the mini drone explodes, knocking Sonic unconscious, the camera pans away and you can see emergency vehicles blocking the road on the right of the screen, presumably closing down the road for filming. (00:59:55)

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Con Air picture

Factual error: The whole basis of the trial and conviction of Cameron Poe is a crock. The judge can not arbitrarily mete out a sentence that is harsher based on the ability of someone to defend him/herself. In justifying the harsher sentence because of Poe's military skills, the judge effectively says that Poe is more guilty than an average person due to his honorable and decorated service in uniform to his country. In my entire time in law school, I never read one out of the literally hundreds of cases I was assigned in which a judge issued a harsher sentence because of someone's innate or learned abilities to defend themselves. But since this was a movie court room proceeding, the fact that Poe had a witness to the fight (his wife), the fact that he was injured in the fight, and the fact that his uniform was torn and otherwise ruined as a result of the fight are never examined. A D.A. wouldn't have taken this to a grand jury on a bet, because they would have never returned an indictment or "true bill."

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