Predator (1987) - 34 mistakes

Continuity: After Mac has stabbed the scorpion that was on Dillon's back, he puts on a box and crushes it with his boot. You see a clear picture before he crushes it and then after he lifts his boot away. It is facing a completely different direction than before he stands on it.

Visible crew/equipment: Mac and Dillon go after the Predator. The Predator is sitting in a tree, and Mac points him out to Dillon. They both agree that they see it and take position. Mac crawls underneath the alien and is killed by his laser. The Predator then sees Dillon and lasers his arm off. Dillon's arm falls to the ground with the gun firing. Quickly Dillon turns and reaches for the machine gun around his neck. When he turns you clearly see his bloody right stump and his right arm sticking out the bottom of his jacket. [Note: As far as I can work out, this has been cunningly edited out of the UK DVD version].

Other: In the scene where Dutch is being chased by the Predator, near the end, he jumps into a waterfall. When you see him take a high-dive, it is archive footage of a different person, filmed on a different camera. When it cuts straight back to Arnie, you can see that it was a completely different place as well. When you know to look for it, this is really obvious.

Continuity: The Indian guy carries an M-16 with a shotgun attached under it right when he leaves the burned village.  When it shows him again the M-16 has no shotgun attached to it. Right after that it shows him again with the shotgun attached.

Revealing: When the Predator self-destructs and the people in the chopper look out at the blast, the "painting" of the explosion is still and does not move or change like a normal explosion would.

Continuity: In the scene where the female prisoner falls to the ground and pretends to be hurt, then throws leaves in the soldier's face and tries to escape. She is stopped by another soldier, standing in her path with a gun in her face. The sequence with the gun pointed at her head is filmed in two shots. One looking up at the soldier holding the gun, the other with the gun hovering in her face. Every time it changes between these two camera angles, we find the soldier's hands in two completely different positions on the gun he is holding.

Continuity: After they catch the Predator in the net and it breaks free, the laser blast breaks a big part of a tree and it heads toward a soldier, hitting him head on. If you watch closely when they show an above shot of the tree hitting the guy, you can see an air pressured pad pushing the tree on the ground into him.

Continuity: When the Predator blasts free of the net and his laser blows off a tree limb; in the first shot you can see the limb is hollow as it is shot off [and I for one have never heard of a hollow tree, but even if they do exist...] as the free limb swings down toward Poncho, you can see that it is no longer hollow, but completely solid.

Continuity: On the attack on the village, Dutch fires an RPG at a grass hut and there is a soldier that slowly flips over from the blast. Seconds later, Poncho fires another RPG round, and that same soldier flips over again.

Visible crew/equipment: When the predator has been hit by Arnie, the camera and cable is reflected on his face. This also happens when Arnie is calling for Billy - you can see it reflected on his arm.

Factual error: Ventura carried the MXU-370A1 Minigun and an ammo pack which holds 500 rounds. At its firing rate, that ammo would be spent within a about ten seconds, not minutes as was seen in the movie.

Continuity: In the scene where Anna tries to escape for the first time, and is stopped by a gun to her head, her hat is hanging down over her right shoulder. In the next shot, as Dillon comes to picker her up, her hat is now on her left shoulder.

Continuity: During the big firefight after Blaine was killed, Dutch moves his hand forward to eject the clip from his weapon. An instant later, the side view shows his hand on the handgrip and the clip being ejected - way too quick to get his hand back on the grip.

Revealing: In several scenes, you can see the barrel plugs in the team's M16s, proving they've been rigged to fire blanks.

Factual error: In the scene where Dutch is making his improvised explosive arrows we get a close up of him dismantling a 40 mm High explosive grenade and dumping the propellant out onto a large leaf. Way to much powder came out. An actual 40 mm has only about an amount equal to a sewing thimble full.

Continuity: Near the end of the film, Arnold is lying in wait for the Predator after he lights the bonfire. It is pitch-black, except for the moonlight and the fire. But in the shot when the Predator jumps down through the trees, the skyline is brighter - almost early evening in brightness.

Revealing: When Arnold is heading into the trees after building his bow and arrows you can see a silver eye bolt on the top of the bow were the string would attach.

Continuity: The first time Anna tries to escape she is stopped by Poncho. He confronts Dillon and tells him to put her on a leash, then raises his gun. Cut to Anna and he raises the gun again.

Visible crew/equipment: During the final battle, shortly after Dutch runs by a plant that moves and catches the Predator's eye, watch as the Predator takes a few strides from rock to rock. When he jumps down off the last rock you can see a cable above his head helping him make his jump. This same cable can also be seen a different shot about ten seconds later when Dutch runs into the Predator.

Continuity: As Dutch climbs out of the water he crawls through mud. He looks back at the pursuing Predator and crawls backward through the mud. Even with all this crawling there is no way that he would have been covered head to toe in mud. If you look closely every little nook and cranny is full of mud, he would have had to dunk his entire body in a mud pit to accomplish this.

Continuity: When Dutch (Arnold) has been shot in the arm by the Predator, the wound changes between shots.

Audio problem: After Dutch has fired the rocket at the Predator standing on the log, the Predator shoots several times. Then you can hear it shoot one more time, but you can't see any blast coming from it.

Revealing: Watch when the Predator reaches over to activate his self-destruct mechanism. The wristblades clip right through the glowing special effect on his blood.

Revealing: In the scene when Anna first tries to escape and is stopped by poncho, Dillon picks her up. If you look closely one of Anna's hands has slipped out of her cuffs yet she is still holding her hands together as if she's bound.

Visible crew/equipment: Dillan again, after having his (visible) arm shot off the Predator moves in and picks him up off the floor, at the bottom of the screen you can see the plank that is used to elevate him. (Only visible on the full-frame video).

Other: When the Predator sees Billy on the log bridge, there is a cold blotch in the middle of Billy's chest. He's not wearing anything that would make such a hole in his heat signature - it should be the same color as the rest of his torso. It doesn't even match up with the cut he made across his chest; the cut starts much higher than the blotch and the blotch is irregularly shaped, not indicating the smooth line of a cut.

Continuity: In the shot where Mac finally runs out of minigun ammo, the barrels stop turning. However, the whirring continues and the barrels are still turning in later shots. He didn't let go and pull the trigger again because the whirring was continuous.

Audio problem: When Anna hits Poncho and takes off running, Arnie "whistles" at Hawkins with his mouth closed and the camera is looking directly at him when it happens.

Continuity: During the montage scene of the remaining men setting the net trap for the Predator, all of the men are each doing individual jobs. Dillon does not take part initially, until Arnold says 'Instead of complaining, maybe you should help.' However, long before Arnold tells Dillon to help, Dillon can actually be seen helping out already. Watch closely...when Mac throws a rope across to Billy, Dillon is standing behind Mac, with his shirt off, fastening a rope to a tree, as if he was helping the whole time already. A similar shot occurs after Arnold's comment, but the first one is definitely before.

Visible crew/equipment: When Arnie says 'oh s***' and falls off the cliff, watch as the camera goes over the edge. If you look on the mountain, you can see a shadow of a black ball with a cable attached: this is the camera filming the shot which has been thrown off the cliff.

Revealing: In the scene where the Indian cuts his chest before facing the predator, it's obvious that there's a blood tube on the back of the blade. The blood gets "spread" onto his chest like butter on toast whereas in reality a cut forms and then blood beads out and flows moments later.

Continuity: When Mac is killed by the Predator we see a shot of the Predator fully cloaked standing over the camera. As he slowly moves off to pursue Dillon there is a brief shot of Mac's twitching body with an un-cloaked object rising through the branches above.

Visible crew/equipment: Watch when Arnie is sliding down the cliff: it shows a shot from his eyes looking down at his feet, and you can see the wooden platform he's sliding down.

Continuity: When Dutch is running from the Predator after he sets the grenade off in the tunnel sequence, he avoids the Predator's gun blast by leaping and swinging on the branch of a dead tree. As Dutch's flying through the air, you can clearly see that it is a real branch. But as the screen switches to an explosion and back to Dutch, the branch is now some prop 2x4 and collapses as Dutch now plunges into the pond below.