The Spy Who Loved Me

Corrected entry: In the first scene featuring Stromberg, he is onboard his submarine sitting at his dining table. In the background there is a fireplace against the wall with a lit fire in it. Having a fire burning in a submarine would not be a good idea as when the submarine is submersed there is only a limited oxygen supply and the fire would consume a lot of that valuable oxygen. Also, where are the fumes from the chimney venting to? Are the fumes supposed to vent outside the submarine whilst it is submerged, without seawater getting in and flooding the sub? (00:15:00 - 00:16:00)

Boatsnhoes

Correction: This is Stromberg's submersible fortress, and Bond villains are fond of ostentatious displays of wealth. His fortress having a large enough oxygen supply and adequate filtration system to have a fireplace would certainly be part of that display.

Captain Defenestrator

Corrected entry: Stromberg's ship "The Liparus" had to be large enough to house the three submarines, the operations room, the room with the weapons and missiles, and the rooms for the captured prisoners...but with a ship that had at least a few hundred crew, where did they sleep?

Correction: It's a giant supertanker that doesn't actually have any oil tanks. The crew quarters are probably in the normal place, and all the other things you mentioned are housed where the oil tanks would normally go.

Captain Defenestrator

Corrected entry: At the end of the movie when James Bond and the Russian major climb into the escape sub soaking wet, they sit on a round bed covered with a white comforter. When the Russian major leans over to hug James, you can see a red stain on the white comforter where she had been sitting. Most likely this is from her red dress being wet, but it looks really bad, if you know what I mean.

Correction: Where's the mistake? As you said it could be red dye from her clothes. What it looks like is irrelevant.

Corrected entry: Just before Bond overtakes the white lorry, there is nothing coming the other way. In the shot of him overtaking it, there is a blue lorry. After Bond has passed the white lorry, the blue one disappears.

Correction: The blue lorry was driving in the opposite direction, as it was frantically honking its horn at Bond. By the time Bond passes the white lorry, barely avoids a collision with the blue lorry, and then the white lorry explodes after being hit by the sidecar of the pursuing motorcycle, the blue lorry has already covered some distance. It would be unlikely that you would see the blue lorry in the next few shots.

Corrected entry: Agent XXX had been informed that her lover had been killed after becoming involved in a British Secret Service operation, yet her very next mission she finds herself working with a British agent and never considers it a coincidence.

jbrbbt

Correction: She knows it is a coincidence; she just doesn't voice her concerns about it on camera.

BocaDavie

Corrected entry: Why would the best British secret agent not burn Fekkesh's appointment book after he read it to prevent others (he knew there was competition for the microfilm) from knowing the location of the meeting?

poehitman

Correction: This is a question, not a mistake. Bond may have known that Anya was also looking for the microfilm and wanted her to show up at the meeting.

BocaDavie

Corrected entry: The electricity from a common light bulb would hardly be enough to shock someone, even if applied directly to Jaw's teeth, especially if the bulb is broken taking away the vacuum with which an electric current could carry most ideally. Besides, Jaw's natural teeth would not be able to conduct the electricity from his metal teeth that well anyway.

Correction: May I suggest that the poster applies the "electricity from a common light bulb" to his teeth if he or she is so sure. The purpose of the vacuum in a bulb is prevent oxygen from coming in contact with the element. With the glass broken, the element would very quickly burn up giving the electrical current nowhere to go except Jaws' teeth. Agreed they would be poor conductors but electrical shocks that close to the brain can be pretty disruptive even at low voltage / current.

tw_stuart

Corrected entry: When they dunk the white Lotus Esprit from the pier, the Russian major [Barbara Bach] is visibly startled at the concept of hitting the water with the car, but a few moments later she skilfully discharges a mine to destroy the pursuing mini-sub and boasts that she stole the blueprints for the car two years earlier. Wouldn't she know not to worry about the water if she had seen plans detailing that the car is really a submarine?

Correction: Doesn't mean she's ever seen it in operation, let alone been in the thing as it hurtles towards water at high speed. It's the difference between knowing something intellectually and feeling confident in that knowledge through experience. Emotionally, she's still in a normal car until she remembers.

Corrected entry: The transporter in which Jaws got Amasova and Bond to the ruins has its steering wheel on the right hand side. But Egypt has and always had left hand drive - on the right side of the road, that is. (00:43:35)

ichabod

Correction: Cars with opposite side drive can be imported into other countries as long as they meet certain criteria and legislation. Canada has always been right side of the road, left hand drive cars, but I see lots of right hand drive cars every week. I've also driven some, deciding whether I wanted to buy them.

rswarrior

Corrected entry: When Bond arrives at the pyramids, there's a shot of him walking towards them, with the seated audience at the bottom left of the screen. They're models or something, because look closely at them, and you can see what look like ripples going through them - clearly some kind of effect.

Jon Sandys

Correction: You can tell they are not models as there is visible movement amongst them. More importantly, the rippling effect seen is caused by heat diffusing into the air, this is often seen on roads in summer.

Corrected entry: When Stromberg's secretary is eaten by the shark, the video picture shown on Stromberg's screen is very close to her, however she is in the middle of the pool. Where is that automatic underwater camera placed?

Jacob La Cour

Correction: Zoom lens.

BocaDavie

Corrected entry: After the two missiles blow up the submarines, and then there is the scene with the nuclear explosion, you can see a palm tree at the bottom of the screen. The "globe map" shows the subs in the middle of the ocean.

Correction: Actually, it shows them on either sides of the ocean as they prepare for the missile launch. The westernmost sub may have been close enough to the Carribean to be seen from a small island.

BocaDavie

Corrected entry: How can the transparent course map showing the tracking of the Ranger, which (apparently) has been sent by Stromberg's secretary, have exactly the same proportions as the secret course computer on the British naval base? It couldn't have been stolen from that computer - at the base - since Stromberg only had a submarine tracking system - not a hacking satellite.

Jacob La Cour

Correction: It could be a coincidence that the two course maps are approximately the same size, or, more likely, the Ministry or Defense received the course plot and enlarged it to fit the screen in the Naval Control Room.

Corrected entry: At the beginning of the movie, when 007 attempts the ski jump off the cliff in the Austrian mountains, dropping his skis and displaying the Union Jack on his parachute, you can see a beaten path on the mountain before the cliff. This suggests that either other people have been stupid enough to jump off that cliff, that the jump had been attempted before the actual shot was taken, or that the path was beaten down so that Rick Sylvester (the stuntman) could glide off of the cliff with ease. Whatever the reason, I don't think movie-goers were supposed to see that. (00:07:20)

Correction: There are a number of reasons the path could be there. Some skiers may have skied to the edge to look over then carried on; some may have been jumping off with parachutes as Bond did, in the late '70's version of extreme sports. You frequently see skiers skiing out of bounds on the mountains.

Corrected entry: Very early in the film, Soviet KGB agent Triple-X's combo communicator/music box plays Lara's Theme from the film version of "Doctor Zhivago". This is unlikely, since at that time Doctor Zhivago was still banned within the Soviet Union.

Correction: Unlikely but not impossible. Many banned items where available on the black market or to officials with connections. Also, just because the film was banned doesn't mean the piece of instrumental music was banned.

Corrected entry: When, near the beginning of the film, Bond puts the transparency on the screen, the lines match up almost perfectly. Then a few seconds later when we see the screen in the background, the tracks don't line up.

Correction: There is a layer of thickness, probably glass between the overlay and the displayed image. The overlay lines up perfectly when looking at it dead on. The later shot we are looking at the screen at an angle, thus can see the distance between the line of the overlay and the lines on the display. The lines still line up, just not from the second perspective.

Corrected entry: The stick shift on the Lotus Esprit doubles as a joystick for the torpedo guidance system. If this were a true analog control it would be nearly impossible to shift gears unless the entire transmission on the car was electronic. On the other hand, if it was a conventional mechanical gearbox, the gates for each gear would interfere with precise control of the guidance system.

Correction: The Lotus Esprit's shifter/joystick changes operations when the car switches from car to sub. Plus there's a wire that runs down the center of the shifter that makes that change.

Correction: I never heard M called Miles in "A View to Kill", I even checked transcripts of the film to see if "Miles" is ever said. Additionally, in "A View to Kill", M was played by Robert Brown, not Bernard Lee and Robert Brown played Admiral Hargreaves in "The Spy Who Loved Me." We know Judi Dench's M is not Miles, but a different character and M is also a title that's given. So the theory is is that Admiral Hargreaves became the new M, and thus wouldn't be addressed as Miles.

Bishop73

Correction: Gogol says, "After you, Miles" when M gestures to him to go before him in the scene where they walk across the catwalk in Q's laboratory. M politely offers him to go first by saying "After you, Alexis" but Gogol replies "No, no, no after YOU Miles." This was done to show how the two heads of the respective rival agencies have put their differences aside.

Correction: General Gogol, M's Russian counterpart, is introduced in this film. In later films, he and M are on a first-name basis, and he calls him "Miles," at least once that I can immediately recall, in "A View To A Kill."

Captain Defenestrator

Revealing mistake: The shot of the two nuclear missiles being launched is used twice, just reversed. They seem to have changed the saturation slightly in one of them to make it look different, but there are identical clouds at the top left/top right in both shots, ruining the trick.

Jon Sandys

More mistakes in The Spy Who Loved Me

Captain Carter: That armour plating must be inches thick. We'll never get through it.
James Bond: Come on, let's go to the armoury.
Captain Carter: The armoury? What do you expect to find there?
James Bond: A nuclear missile.

More quotes from The Spy Who Loved Me

Trivia: Due to his failing eyesight, cinematographer Claude Renoir was unable to see to the end of the supertanker set, forcing Production Designer Ken Adam to ask friend Stanley Kubrick to supervise lighting for the set. Kubrick agreed on the condition of complete secrecy of his involvement.

More trivia for The Spy Who Loved Me

Question: How does the Liparus explode and sink at the end? After the nuclear subs have been destroyed, the ship just starts blowing up for no apparent reason. Was there any explanation for it?

Gavin Jackson

Chosen answer: When the nuclear subs have been destroyed, there's an explosion in the control room, and one of the men cries out "Fuel tank!" Liparus has numerous internal fires raging after the battle with her crew. These uncontrolled fires eventually spread to her fuel tanks and ammo storages, one of which explodes in a huge fireball and finally causes Liparus to sink.

I thought the final explosions that sank the Liparus were deliberate self destruction after completing the mission in an attempt to destroy any evidence, rather like when Bolfeld manually triggers explosives after being thwarted in You Only Live Twice.

Liparus sinks slowly, and that would leave her crew plenty of time to evacuate. Angry and armed crew with a grudge against Stromberg.

Jukka Nurmi

More questions & answers from The Spy Who Loved Me

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