The Road to El Dorado (2000) - 54 mistakes

Continuity: The number of natives holding onto the ropes to prevent the giant statue from falling keeps changing in the final scene. There are usually several huge rows of them, but in some shots there are no more than 15 or so.

Continuity: When the two men are climbing over the fence to get away from the bull, you can see that the the part of the fence they're climbing is made up of 15 planks, but in the very next shot it's made up of 9 planks.

Continuity: During the sacrifice scene, Chel throws out petals from a bowl. You can tell the bowl is almost empty, but a second later the bowl is much fuller than it previously was.

Continuity: After the ball game, there is a cut over Miguel's eyebrow. Right after this scene, the cut has disappeared.

Continuity: When Altivo the horse jumps out of the boat he has normal horseshoes, then after Cortes leaves he reveals his golden horseshoes, then when Chel stirrups him he is back in normal horseshoes.

Continuity: When the two men are running away from the soldiers, they see two water barrels and there is no board underneath them. A second later, the men jump into them, and now there is a board underneath them.

Continuity: The color of the weapon Tzekel-Kan uses to punch the victim into the whirlpool, changes from brown to white to brown again.

Continuity: The armor of the soldier Tulio bumps into in the beginning goes from being shiny enough to see his reflection in it, to not shiny at all, to really shiny again.

Continuity: When the men first arrive at the El Dorado island, their boat constantly changes position.

Continuity: During the song "On the Trail We Blaze" Miguel and Tulio pass by a rock shaped as an animal with its mouth open and there are vines hanging over it. Later in the film, Tzekel-Kan leads Cortes and his men to this rock, and the vines hanging over it are different.

Continuity: When Cortes comes to the El Dorado island, he sees that Miguel and Tulio's footprints lead directly from the boat to the jungle. But this is not what happened. Miguel and Tulio arrived to the island, bumped into two skeletons, ran back to the boat, walked around the beach for a while, and THEN went into the jungle. This is what the footprints should have shown.

Continuity: At the start of the film, when Miguel wins the map, he rolls it up vertically. Later in the film, when they first arrive at the El Dorado island, he takes it out of his shirt and unfolds it horizontally.

Continuity: While running away from the giant jaguar, Chel tells the men to get on the horse. In this shot, there is a throne standing in front of the staircase, but in the very next shot as the horse starts galloping away, the throne has disappeared.

Other: In the scene where Tzekel-Kan reveals the big tiger thing, he is on his knees facing it. He says "do as I command" and raises his right arm and the tiger raises his left arm. The tiger and Tzekel-Kan should both raise the same hand because the tiger is built to mimic Tzekel-Kan's exact moves.

Continuity: The position of the seagull changes after it dies.

Continuity: After Miguel unintentionally kisses the skull, the cracks on the skull change between shots.

Continuity: When Tulio puts the dice into his vest, he puts them into the right side. When he's scooping up the gold and the dice fall out, they fall out of the left side.

Continuity: When the two men are under the deck planning an escape, Tulio has a black eye. A little later, when they are escaping by boat, the black eye is gone. A black eye would have taken longer to heal.

Continuity: When Miguel and Tulio jump out of their rowboat yelling "It's land." you can tell there's nothing on the beach. But then they kiss the sand and a skeleton has appeared.

Continuity: As Miguel kisses the sand he bumps into a skeleton. The skull is the first part he sees. However when the camera rises over the skeletons, you can see the skeleton's arm is stretched out. It wasn't there earlier.

Continuity: When Miguel and Tulio first arrive to the island, they bump into a skeleton. When Cortes arrives at the island later in the film, there's only a skull. The bones that were there earlier have vanished.

Continuity: At the start of the ball game Tzekel-Kan puts the ball down on a flat surface, shouting "Play ball.' But in the next shot there are a couple of tiny pieces of rock near the ball.

Continuity: When Miguel kisses the skull after arriving at El Dorado's island it is facing towards the ocean. But when Cortes arrives later on, it is facing away from the ocean.

Continuity: When Miguel and Tulio first arrive at the El Dorado island, the moss and plants near Whistling Rock (shaped as an eagle's head) change between shots and also change later in the film.

Continuity: When the monster corners the two men at the edge of the cliff, there are no vines on the ground. Then after punching Tzekel-Kan, Tulio says "Tie him up" and vines have appeared.

Continuity: After Tulio tells the sailors that they have nothing to bet with one of them replies "Oh yeah, I got this" and shows them the map. When he does this, the face of the weeping woman on the map faces to the left, however later in the film when the two men use the map to identify where they are, the woman's face faces forward.

Continuity: After Tulio successfully rolls a seven and wins the map, the dice are visible near the large pile of gold. Then as Tulio begins scooping it up, the pile is much smaller, and the dice are not there anymore.

Continuity: When Miguel and Tulio see the fountain shaped as a weeping woman, there are plenty of trees nearby and rocks are visible in the middle of the river. Later in the film, when Tzekel Kan surfaces at this area after falling into the whirlpool, the nearby trees are totally different, and the rocks in the river have vanished.

Continuity: When the two men arrive at El Dorado, someone runs off to tell the chief. This person has yellow clasps around his arms, but when he finally gets to the chief he is wearing red clasps.

Continuity: When Miguel is pulling the leeches off Miguel's back, the position of the leeches change between shots.

Continuity: When the crowd has Miguel on their shoulders, in one shot his arms are raised, but in the next they're lowered.

Continuity: When Miguel and Tulio are hiding in the barrels on the ship, they push the corks out so they can breath, but a second later the corks have disappeared from the ground.

Continuity: The shape of the spear that Tzekel-Kan's assistant has, changes in the scene where he first sees Miguel and Tulio next to the waterfall.

Continuity: After Tzekel-Kan pushes his assistant into the potion, the bowls and items that were there previously have vanished.

Continuity: When Miguel and Tulio are lost at sea in the rowboat, a seagull lands on one of the oars and then dies. They try to get it, but a shark gets to it before them, and bites off the oar while doing so. In the following scenes, the oar is intact again.

Factual error: The real El Dorado (Spanish for "the gilded one") civilization was in South America. The art scheme of the film is Mayan, a Central American civilization, as are the names of the Indian characters. The ball game, too, although not restricted to the Mayas, is, culturally speaking, Central American (and more specifically, and technically, Meso-American). In addition, the Mayan architectural elements found in the movie are typical of the Mayan culture of the Classic Period (c. 250-900 C.E.), roughly 600 years before the arrival of the Spaniards.

Continuity: During the scene when Miguel and Tulio are having an argument, Tzekel-Kan, who is listening to them, changes position between shots.

Continuity: After Tulio and Miguel arrive in El Dorado, Miguel's earrings disappear and reappear between shots.

Continuity: Miguel and Tulio are in a barrel of water when they stowaway onto the ship. So when they burst out of it, why aren't they soaking wet?

Continuity: When Miguel and Tulio first enter the city there are plenty of vines at the entrance. But when they sail out of it at the end, there are no vines.

Continuity: When Tzekel-Kan puts the ball on the floor shouting "Play ball," the shadow of the ball is at a completely different angle than it is in the next shot of it.

Continuity: When Tzekel-Kan introduces the ball-playing team, he states that there are 15 of them. In the next shot, as the team runs back to where they came from, there are suddenly only six of them. The number of players changes constantly throughout the entire ball game.

Continuity: At the end, Miguel notices that Tulio's sail is stuck, so he rides his horse down a huge staircase and jumps onboard in order to save him. In the shot of him jumping on the horse for the first time, the natives are seen in the background on the same level, holding onto their ropes. Then Miguel starts riding down the staircase, and suddenly they are all the way at the bottom, by the river.

Continuity: When Miguel and Tulio are sailing out of El Dorado and almost hit a stalactite, between shots the stalactite becomes more pointy.

Continuity: When Miguel and Tulio first arrive at El Dorado, the volcano is visible near the palace, but it disappears later in the film.

Continuity: When the people of El Dorado are bowing after Miguel and Tulio 'make' the volcano stop erupting, Tzekel-kan's assistant magically appears in the hallway in front of them.

Continuity: When Miguel is feeding the birds, they switch position between shots.

Continuity: Altive kicks Tzekel-Kan's jaguar-like monster in the eye, leaving several cracks, The cracks constantly change between shots, particularly in the scene where the monster has cornered Miguel and Tulio at the edge of the cliff over the water.

Continuity: The skull that Miguel and Tulio meet at the beginning, is very obviously different to the one Cortes crushes later on.

Continuity: In one scene the ball players are kneeling in the background while Miguel is protesting Tzekel-Kan's intention on sacrificing them. In this shot, one of them has blue feathers in their hair and one has red feathers. A few seconds later, they lift Miguel on their shoulders, and none of them have any feathers in their hair.

Continuity: When Tzekel-Kan says "This is how the gods should play ball", the vines, moss, and grass that were covering this arena a few seconds earlier have vanished.

Continuity: When the two men bump into the skeletons, one of them has a sword sticking out near its head. A few minutes later, Miguel grabs the sword, and now it is much further away from the skeleton's head.

Factual error: Hernando Cortes is featured as the main background villain. Only thing about his appearance: according to the history books, he never actually ventured into South America to do any conquests; his actions were limited to Cuba, Mexico and California.

Continuity: When the sailor unrolls the map to show Miguel an Tulio, the stone symbolizing the gods is to the left of the skull. But when Miguel is reading it and says "Look, look" the stone is directly under the skull.