Battlefield Earth (2000) - 15 mistakes

Plot hole: After 1000 years have passed (without any maintenance) the Harrier jets still function like new. Amazing.

Plot hole: The barbarians find a working 1000 year old flight simulator. Beside the fact that the machine should not be working to begin with after such time, they were lucky enough to find a working power source in the barren wasteland.

Plot hole: Travolta sends Pepper and crew to mine gold. He gives them all the equipment for mining including a working spacecraft. In essence, he is setting a "Batman Trap" by providing them the means of escape. The group waits for Travolta to depart and almost immediately leaves to train and gather weapons. For some reason Travolta doesn't notice that they are flying around the country or doesn't care.

Factual error: We see the nuclear weapon used to destroy the planet Psycho pulled out of a cruise missile. A warhead cannot be yanked out of the missile and detonated without the fissionable material being removed and built into an entirely new device. This a safeguard to keep them from being pulled out and used in exactly this way.

Plot hole: The cavemen, who previously had no concept of the principles of flight, are taught how to fly a Harrier on a simulator in one afternoon.

Factual error: The "cavemen" learn to fly Harrier jets simply from reading the instructions manual. And if this isn't amazing enough, they also manage to perform maneuvers that professional Harrier pilots are not able to perform.

Factual error: The cavemen Harrier pilots are shown using the hover mode frequently. Harriers, even with drop tanks as depicted in the film, can hover for at most 5-10 minutes, as the thrust required to keep the aircraft in the air without any lift consumes massive amounts of fuel and overheats the engine, and real-life Harrier pilots are instructed never to hover for long periods of time, unless absolutely necessary. The amount of time the cavemen spent hovering (hiding out of sight in a parking garage, sneaking up on the Psychlo gunships, etc.) would have easily caused their fuel to run dry.

Plot hole: At the end of the Denver air battle, one of the cavemen (presumably the leader) pursues a Psychlo gunship, and attempts to engage it, but when he runs out of missiles, he gets in position to ram the Harrier into the gunship. Before he crashes into it, he presses the Eject button, yet it doesn't work and he along with the plane slam into the gunship. Strangely, he is seen later during the end scenes, after Psychlo is destroyed. The ejection system was explicitly shown not to work, and even if it did, he wouldn't have been able to clear the plane in time before it impacted the gunship.

Factual error: When Jonnie and the other humans raid Fort Hood, a US Army base, for weapons and supplies, they acquire several caches of weapons, among them Colt 9mm SMGs, evidenced by their undersized magazines and short barrels. The US Army does not field such a weapon, so why would it be in a US Army base?

Factual error: Before the revolt, Ker has a discussion with Terl about the gold that ends in Ker's hand getting shot off. Yet Ker does not scream in pain, nor does any blood gush from the wound. Plus, the wound appears to have been cut with a knife, it is so precise and unlike a gunshot wound.

Factual error: During the revolt, Carlo (Kim Coates) is attacked by several Psychlo gunships on the dome's roof. He then uses a Carl Gustav recoilless rifle to destroy one of them. Strangely, the missile he fires is heat seeking, evidenced by it missing the target and arcing back around to strike the gunship from behind. Carl Gustavs are not designed to fire heat seeking missiles, as they lack the tracking systems necessary to do so, since the weapon is an anti-tank rifle in real life.

Factual error: The main character and several others take a Psychlo ship and head for Washington, DC, where they land in front of a building with a dome, with "Library of Congress" spelled out above the building's entrance. The Library of Congress does not have a dome like the one depicted, in real life. The building they landed near is actually the Capitol Building, evidenced by the building's design and the distinctive dome shape. The Library of Congress is housed in three buildings, none of which match the depiction in the film. Humanity has been enslaved since the year 2000, so they would hardly have been in a position to move or remodel a library.

Plot hole: Jet fuel takes about 20 years to degrade if it is left in a fuel tank. The AV-8 Harriers left in Ft. Hood for 1000 years should not be able to fly, because they have no fuel in their tanks. It has all evaporated by then.

Revealing: When Jonny is running away from Terl in the mall at the start of the film, he goes through several panes of glass, smashing through them. One of them breaks up before he hits it.

Factual error: The tyres, rubber and plastic gaskets, belt drives, upholstery, in fact all non-metallic parts of the thousand year old jeeps, aircraft, generators and so on found by the 'Man-animals' would have crumbled to dust well within the thousand years they have been sitting around before they are discovered.