Starship Troopers (1997) - 24 mistakes

Continuity: Toward the end, Carmen Ibanez gets stabbed through the shoulder when she is brought before the big master alien thing. If you were to sustain such an injury, there would be so much swelling, not to mention just destroyed tissue, that you wouldn't be able to move that arm for weeks. Yet a few minutes later, she is seen hefting around a very large assault rifle, and seems to have no difficulty. I guess it's a pretty standard action movie "heroes can temporarily ignore injury in order to save the day" kind of oversight, but it just seems exaggerated in this case, considering how severe the shoulder trauma looked.

Revealing: When they are learning how to throw knives, the guy gets one thrown through his hand. If you watch this in slow motion, blood starts coming out of his hand before the knife hits.

Continuity: In the first battle with the Roughnecks, Rico, Diz, Ace, and the other guy are confronted by a bug and they shoot at it. If you look at where they are aiming they are shooting above it, but the bullets hit it in the middle.

Visible crew/equipment: When they capture the brain bug, just before Carl says "It was a man called Zim [who captured the bug]", you can see the shadow of the camera on his shoulder. (It was the DVD version, not the cinema).

Other: Just after Rico and Ace rescue Carmen, the other guy has hold of the nuke, which explodes. Watch when the rocks collapse behind the three characters, you can see a nice square block lower from the ceiling, almost like a door being lowered. The crew could perhaps have made it look a little more realistic.

Audio problem: When the troops are lined up on the fort's wall near the end preparing for the waves of bugs, Lt. Rasczak is walking at a fast pace behind them and shouts something before aiming his gun. Before he aims his gun, he is seen shouting the same thing as he walks past them, but there's no sound coming out of his mouth.

Continuity: Rico is riding on the back of the acid bug, when he blows a hole in the back of it and drops a grenade he is thrown off. As soon as he hits the ground he ducks behind a dead bug that is maybe 3 feet away from him. The camera shows him getting thrown off at a wide angle and that bug wasn't there previously.

Factual error: Rico lives in Buenos Aires, which has no hills within a couple of hundred miles. The city shown in the film has hills.

Continuity: When Rico is defending the fort, he takes off his helmet to make a radio call and his hair is all weird. However, before placing the helmet back on, he is seen again with perfect hair.

Revealing: Just before Dizzy gets skewered by a warrior bug, you can see breakaway panels on her body armor at the points where the CGI bug impales her, to cover the squibs used to make the holes. The shot is already shown in slow-mo so it's easy to spot.

Revealing: When Rico jumps on to the back of the tanker alien and starts shooting at its back, you can see the outline on the back of the tanker that is going to be shot up before Rico starts shooting.

Continuity: As the Roger Young is breaking up, the ship's captain is running from the bridge and falls down with the large door descending and striking her midriff. As it hits, she spews blood from her mouth against the side of the door in a arching/sweeping motion. When Carmen returns to help free her, the blood is not displayed in the same pattern, more concentrated to one area as opposed to swept.

Continuity: In the scene when they are doing the live fire training course and the big guy gets shot in the head the bullets rip about 1/4 of his head off, but in the aerial view you can see his head is completely intact.

Visible crew/equipment: In the scene towards the end, in the cavern containing the brain bug, there's a pyrotechnic set-piece of a massive quantity of ammo being used up. This was filmed from a number of angles, and in one shot, looking down across the cavern there is a camera man and an assistant visible in the mouth of one of the tunnels leading in. I don't know if this is corrected in the DVD release, but it was certainly there in the UK theatrical version.

Continuity: In the first mission with the roughnecks Rico defeats the acid spraying tanker bug but when he's thrown from it and lands on his back his helmet chin strap breaks free and lands behind him. Next scene it's back on.

Continuity: Rico is running up the ramp to capture the red flag and drops his gun; it lands with the strap towards the top of the ramp. In the subsequent wide shot, the strap is towards the bottom of the ramp.

Visible crew/equipment: When Rico gets thrown from the tanker bug and lands on his back on the ground, a piece of the flap covering the mattress pops up.

Other: When escaping from the Roger Young, Carmen manages to pilot the escape pod through a debris field, re-enter the atmosphere, bounce off an outcrop of rock, through a rock wall, and bounce off another wall,all without wearing a seatbelt and managing to stay seated.

Continuity: At the scene where they get trapped at the fortress, you can see they are not shooting in the direction of the bugs.

Continuity: In the scene where Rico is getting ready to go to the end of school party, he puts on his black jacket and for a brief moment, we can see the collar is turned up at the back. During the following conversation with his parents he never adjusts his collar, yet when he turns his back, the collar is neatly in place.

Factual error: In the English DVD subtitles, during the first commercial at the beginning of the movie, the announcer has a line that reads in the subtitles, "They're doing they're part." The second "they're" should be a possessive "their", not a contraction.

Continuity: In the scene where Rico is first in boot camp and Dizz says she is being transferred to the unit, she gets ready to fight the drill sergeant. She drops her papers, her jacket, and her bag. It cuts away for a few seconds, then goes back to the drill sergeant and Dizz in fighting stance. The piece of paper is farther back than before, this can be overlooked because of wind, perhaps. But the jacket and bag are both gone.

Factual error: When the large dropships are releasing the smaller craft with the ground troops onboard the large ships are in orbit around planet B, but there seems to be two different types of physics at play because when the small ships are released instead of using thrusters to push away from the large ship and begin descent into the atmosphere they are already using thrusters to slow the speed of the descent, even though they are still in orbit.

Plot hole: A Bug meteor knocks our Rodger Young's communications. She dodged it at sublight maneuvering speeds, indicating that it is moving fairly slowly. If it is so important that she warn Earth it's coming (which is how we know their comm was damaged), why doesn't she jump back to tell them or destroy it herself? Even if she has no capital ship weapons (she is a troop carrier), there is no indication that her faster jump drive is damaged or needs longer than they have to warn Earth to charge for a jump, or that she can't leave her patrol station, etc.