Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) - 24 corrections

Directed by Roger Spottiswoode, starring Colin Salmon, Desmond Llewelyn, Geoffrey Palmer, Götz Otto, Joe Don Baker, Jonathan Pryce, Judi Dench, Michelle Yeoh, Pierce Brosnan, Ricky Jay, Samantha Bond, Teri Hatcher, Vincent Schiavelli (add more)

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Updated today Bond and Wai Lin should have had one hell of a bend or an embolism when they popped up out of the water after diving on the Devonshire. Not only did they unnecessarily ditch their diving gear (they could have just pushed the tanks in front of them to get up that pipe) but they had an uncontrolled ascent from well over 30 metres depth. Yet they show no signs of any decompression illnesses and carry on as normal when they reach the surface. Impossible. [If they have not been under for very long, then they might not get decompression sickness (the "bends"). And it is possible to exhale the entire way up to avoid a pneumothorax or emboli.]
Corrected by shortdanzr Time
Updated this week When preparing for the HALO jump, Bond is told that there is a danger of him getting tangled in his parachute and drowning when he hits the water. This is extremely unlikely since he is already breathing from the cylinders on his back via regulator which is firmly attached to his face. There's no way the parachute or any of the cords would be able to constrict the HP air hoses on the diving gear. [Getting tangled in the parachute cords could also mean having the cords rip your face mask off; very likely if the cords wrap around the skydivers head when he (or she) pulls the rip cord.]
Corrected by BocaDavie Time
Entry During the car chase in the parking garage, Bonds's remote-driven BMW has video camera lenses mounted on the forward-facing surfaces of the outside door mirrors. They are dark, round spots about 3/4" diameter. These were installed so the rear-seated stunt driver could sit low and unseen and still drive the car. This is all documented in the behind-the-scenes stuff on the DVD. Unfortunately, every shot of the car before the chase scene shows the mirrors to be the normal type with no cameras mounted in them. [True to form of almost all Bond gadgetry provided by Q, this is because the cameras are concealed until Bond activates them. After all, he also needs to see where he's driving.]
Corrected by JC Fernandez Time
Entry Right at the end of the film M is told that "Carver went down with the ship" and that Bond got out alive, M dictates a short statement to Moneypenny. After this, in the next scene, the British fleet is looking for Bond and Wei Lin. [Not nessarily a mistake. They know he is alive, they just don't know where he is. And as he doesn't answer when they call him, it is obviously a common thing for Bond to disappear.]
Corrected by shortdanzr Time
Entry In the scene where Carver dies, why would the designer of the stealth boat make it possible for the drill to come all the way into the control room? [In all the chaos, the mechanics of the drill could have been damaged, enabling it to come into the control room.]
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Entry The officer who says "Sound the general alarm" right at the beginning of the film on HMS Devonshire is wearing a badge of the rank Lieutenant Commander when he is announcing that the MIGs are flying over. A second later when he says "officer of the watch, maximum speed" his rank has changed to Commander. [No, the man who says, "Sound the general alarm" is the XO (number 2 in command), and the man who says, "Officer of the watch, maximum speed" is the Commanding Officer (Captain). He just comes onto the bridge when he says so. He was probably off duty and in his cabin. The voices aren't the same.]
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Entry When the helicopter crashes into the building it destroys a wall, which bends inwards suspiciously like card or plywood before smashing to show daylight behind it. [They're in a very poor area of the city, it's not unlikely that the buildings would be constructed of cheap materials.]
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Entry When Bond and the Asian girl have jumped out of the window, they grab the banner to escape and rip it. A few shots later we can see the banner and it's not ripped. [No, the banner is ripped. You can see the black windows and white building color in the middle of the banner.]
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Entry In the first scene when Bond tries to get into the plane, the ladder falls during the fight. In the next scene it is intact. [He kicks it, yes, but it doesn't fall over.]
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Entry In the car chase, whenever tires get blown out, you can see that explosives were used. When tires blow out in real life, there is not a bright orange and yellow flash. [Oddly enough, in a blowout, tyres do in fact look like there is an explosion in them because of the heat of the air in them. This is the same principle as when the pump and tyre heat up when you manually fill up your bike tyres. Without the huge physics explanation, the jist is under extreme compression air heats up. As the car was driving, the air in the tyres would have turned hot and the pressure from the expansion of the gas would have caused the flash we see. This is the identical principle that causes cars to go faster with a supercharger. ]
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Entry When Bond and the girl are trapped in the sunken ship, they take a big breath from their tanks and swim up the tunnel- why couldn't they put the tanks up the tunnel and then swim up below them? [Character decisions are not movie mistakes. The tanks would obscure their view at the very least.]
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Entry In the opening scene with Bond hijacking the fighter plane he knocks out the pilot who then slumps in his seat. In the next scene Bond gets into the seat but the pilot's body is nowhere in sight. [The pilot he knocks out was sitting in the back seat, not the front seat.]
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Entry When the baddies are trying to break into the BMW in the hotel car park, sledgehammers are used to try and break the windscreen but they can't do it. Then a machine gun is tried on the bodywork but makes no impact. When Bond is driving it machine gun fire shatters the windscreen as if it is a normal one. [The security system that's used is never really explained - it's plausible that it hardens the windscreen to make it inpenetrable but unusable for regular driving, meaning the glass can be smashed when the system's disabled.]
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Entry When Bond goes for the missile in the final showdown, a guard comes down from a catwalk, and Bond shoots him using his silenced Walther. However, despite the silencer, the gunshots can be heard , and it is not that the silencer seems to have been worn down, which would have made the gunshots audible. [Silencers (more correctly, 'suppressors') are semi-mythical. They do not produce the faint 'sput.' of film legend, but a sound pretty much like the one you hear in the film. One mistake cancelling out another, perhaps, but the film is accurate in its depiction nonetheless.]
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Entry Carver gives off the impression that he is a very intelligent man, (as most megalomaniacs do), yes he is not smart enough to run out of the way when a huge drill is coming towards him. Bond punches him and leaves him to die, yet theres nothing stopping him from taking 2 steps to the right and avoiding the drill, which is several feet in front of him when Bond leaves. He just stands there and screams like a child, letting it kill him. [He was probably in shock, and froze.]
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Entry In Wai Lin's apartment she tells Bond that Carver said he was moving his plans forward to midnight, but what he actually said was that he was moving his plans forward by 'a few hours'. He didn't specify what time. [I think she was talking about General Chang, because she also mentions that stealth material was missing from one of his bases.]
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Entry In the scene with the Chinese agent at her apartment where she has all the gadgets and weapons, he needs her to type on the computer keyboard because he implies that he does not know Chinese. However, in one of the earliest Bond movies, he asserts that he studied and commanded the Chinese language at Oxford University. There are two variations in the Chinese written language, but every literate person is expected to know both. [Yes, Bond studies Chinese at Oxford, and yes, he acknowledges that he did in an earlier Bond film, but he hasn't used it for a while and could possibly have forgotten most of it.]
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Entry In the opening scene with the MiGs harassing the frigate, the stealth ship closes in. The stealth would be clearly visible from the frigate, yet no lookout announces its presence to the bridge. Even with modern defences/radar, lookouts are required. [When the MiGs fly over the Devonshire, it is dark, and since the stealth ship is black, it would not show up against the sea. Plus, if there was a lookout, I think he would be more worried about the hostile MiGs than looking around in the water for approaching stealth boats.]
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Entry How could a false GPS signal go unnoticed in the area of some of the world's busiest shipping lanes? Are we to believe that that one British ship had the only GPS receiver within range of that satellite? [No, but remember the signal was encoded (Mr. Gupta had the CIA's encoder). The errant GPS signal was sent on a coded frequency, and it seems the Devonshire was the only one using it. That's probably why they were so sure of their position. (Of course, if they really were where the movie says they were, they'd have detected the coast of China and Vietnam on radar and known something was wrong.)]
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Entry This isn't really a mistake, but why does Bond take a silencer equipped pistol if he is going to clobber the first guard he meets, steal his machine gun and start a fire fight with it? Isn't half the point of espionage to get out without the bad guys knowing you were there? [Bond did not expect to be challenged: It is no mistake.]
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