Cast Away (2000) - 38 mistakes

Continuity: I've now seen this for myself and am making an executive decision. Towards the end of the film, when Helen Hunt runs after Tom Hanks, she definitely does shout "Jack! Jack!" It's not Chuck by any stretch of the imagination. Regardless of whether they could have corrected it or not, it's a mistake that could have been avoided.

Continuity: When Tom Hanks cuts his hand and loses his temper, he picks up the volleyball with a bloody hand and throws it. When he picks it up, you can see that his fingers are spread. When you see the handprint that he makes "Wilson" with, you can see that the fingerprints are together and parallel.

Continuity: When Chuck is attempting to start a fire his hands are so badly scratched/blistered that he ties a piece of fabric around one of them. Once he has started the fire and is doing his little dance on the beach his hands face the camera and there is not a mark on them.

Factual error: In the scene where a boy runs on the streets of Moscow, he passes by the famous Moscow landmarks: St Basil's cathedral, Moscow State University, Big Stone Bridge etc. In reality it would have taken him a good four or five hour run to do that.

Continuity: When Chuck finds the dead pilot, he buries him and marks his death as 1995, so we can assume the crash was in 1995.  His Jeep is a 1999 model - you can tell by the wheels and the roof rack.

Factual error: As the plane hits the water, Chuck falls backward, toward the rear of the plane. This violates the physical law of inertia. He actually would have continued traveling forward toward the incoming water.

Continuity: The final sequence of the film has a whole load of stuff different. Just before Chuck walks into the crossroad, we see there's a solid double yellow line on the main road, a dirt track to one side, and another road on the other side - that one has one solid & one dashed line on it. It cuts to a wider shot, and the dashed line has suddenly become solid, the Texas state sign has moved closer to the stop sign, and a big shadow (of a telegraph pole or similar) has appeared next to the stop sign. There's then another cut looking down the adjoining road - Tom Hanks' shadow's done a complete 180, the shadow of the telegraph pole's disappeared, the line's gone dashed again, and the Texas sign's moved away. Basically, in one 20 second clip at least 4 things change significantly - they used two very similar, but not identical junctions, for no good reason. A veritable spot the difference competition!

Continuity: Throughout the film, Tom Hanks has a dark lump above one of his eyebrows. This seems to come and go from scene to scene.

Continuity: After becoming stranded, Chuck discovers the first package to wash ashore. While he is walking towards it, you can clearly see some of the stretch of beach behind him (as well as some in front of him) This shot is somewhat of a tight one. When the camera "seamlessly" cuts back to a shot of him bending over to pick up the package, you can clearly see that the beach is now covered with dozens of jagged rocks. The rocks would have been seen in the shot before this. But in this case, the shoreline was cleared of them in the first shot. (The beach is not cleared of the rocks; they are underwater. Still a good continuity error submission, but caused by filming the shot at high tide and low tide - it is the same section of beach)

Continuity: When Tom Hanks opens the FedEx packages he finds the ice skates. When he decides to cut a bandage for his cut leg he uses the skates to cut the material to wrap his leg. If you look at the skate while he cuts the material there is no shoe tie on it but when he drops the skate to get the shoe tie it is back on it.

Continuity: When Chuck first lands on the island he gets up and looks around.. he starts to walk down the beach and after a little while he looks back and sees his own footprints. He turns back around and the camera cuts to a wider shot.. you can clearly see his footprints get washed away by the waves. The camera zooms in as he picks up a FedEx box and zooms back out as he turns around again and his original footprints are there.

Continuity: The scene where Tom Hanks goes inside the cave for the first time during the storm, he has the flashlight from the dead pilot with him. The flashlight is in front of him when he sits down, but you can see shadows on the rock wall beside him in the wrong places.

Continuity: When we first see Chuck washed up on the island in daylight, as he gains consciousness and awakens inside the life raft, he is clean shaven. A moment later when he is walking down the beach collecting the FedEx boxes, he has grown a full day's worth of beard stubble.

Revealing: When Chuck is writing on the rock waiting for the wind to change direction, you can see that when the wind changes direction the trees behind him are duplicates.

Audio problem: In the scene where Chuck is throwing coconuts at the rock, the sound of the coconut hitting the rock comes after the coconut actually hits it.

Continuity: Near the end of the movie Chuck and Kelly are standing in the street in the pouring rain. Chuck leads her to the passenger door of his car and she gets in, still dripping wet from being in the rain. Then Chuck goes around to the driver's side and gets in the car, but amazingly he is not dripping like Kelly; his face and hair are somewhat dry for someone just coming in out of a downpour. (Tom Hanks must have a problem with doing his lines with his face wet because, ironically, he did the same thing in a scene in Forrest Gump after jumping off his boat to meet Lt. Dan.)

Visible crew/equipment: When Chuck is crawling on the floor of the plane to reach the watch, the compartment behind him where the raft was stored, you can see the stairs leading down into the set.

Factual error: Since the can that breaks through the net is an AMJ on the right side of the plane, they must be in either a DC-10 or a MD-11, as those are the only 2 planes that are wide enough to fit AMJs on the right side. However, when Hanks is in the ocean looking back at the plane, it shows the tail as it is sinking into the water. It shows enough of the tail (which has suddenly lost all its paint, in particular the FedEx logo) to determine that there is no intake on it, which signifies that they were on an AirBus.

Continuity: It already shows us that the wings of the plane are submerged in the sea. When Hanks surfaces, he turns around to see an engine (attached to a wing) bearing down on him. Physically this would be impossible even if it didn't show the wings, as the aft part of the plane would have been too heavy to hold that much of itself above the water.

Revealing: When Chuck is lying on the raft, and sees the giant cargo ship that rescues him, there is a closer shot of him and the raft as he stretches his hand out. He's supposed to be out in the middle of the deep ocean, but the water below him is pale green and very shallow. You can even see the bottom. It's obviously the water tank they were filming that scene in.

Revealing: As Tom Hanks escapes from the sinking aircraft, it shows him still underwater, looking back and the plane breaking apart. It shows an AKE-shaped container (which fits the contour of the bottom of the aircraft) which has no markings at all, it appears to be just a computer generated solid with no color.

Continuity: In the scene where Chuck is floating in the water on the raft you can see that the raft is yellow. When he gets on land and puts the raft up by the trees it is orange. Through out the whole movie you can see that the raft changes from yellow to orange.

Factual error: The orientation of the plane is all wrong. Hanks goes into the bathroom, which is located aft of a crew door, and against the front of the cargo area. The bathroom on all the wide body aircraft (Airbuses, DC-10, MD-11) is located between the cockpit and the jumpseat area.

Factual error: On Tom Hanks' doomed flight, there is no smoke curtain or solid bulkhead in place. This is a heavy, opaque curtain or solid wall that separates the the topside cargo area from the seating area, designed to keep smoke from a fire away from the crew. On DC10/MD11 aircraft, this is generally a solid bulkhead, and on Airbuses a curtain. This plane should have been grounded until one was installed.

Factual error: As the plane hits the water, Hanks is pushed back into the cargo area. He travels through an empty passageway between rows of containers. Though this load configuration is possible, it is not used because it makes no sense. Furthermore, he finally stops against a container that reads AEE7480FX. This creates a couple more problems, as AEEs are not only no longer in use, but they were belly containers, with an angled side on the bottom that fits the contour of the bottom of the aircraft. There could not have been one of these on the topside of the aircraft.

Continuity: When Chuck first goes over and sees the cave, it changes the camera angle and the sunlight is significantly dimmer and more orange, indicating a sunset.

Factual error: The container that breaks the net is made up to be an AMJ container, with the 45 degree angle on the upper corner to fit the contour of the plane. However, as the camera zooms back out to show Tom Hanks, you can see that the side of the container towards the center of the plane is entirely clear, with packages visible. If it was a real AMJ, this side should have a white or purple curtain covering almost the entire side. That can is a prop.

Factual error: The aircraft interior is of a DC-10. (The emergency exits are the plug-type DC-10 doors) The digital cockpit is of an Airbus not an old analog DC-10.

Continuity: When Chuck is looking through the wallet of the dead pilot, you can see the corner of a dollar bill, then the shot breaks away, when he takes the photo out, the dollar's disappeared.

Continuity: When the plane crashes and Hanks swims to the surface, in the shot from under him, he is barefoot, but when he reaches the shore, he takes off his socks and shoes.

Continuity: During the scene where he is first at the cave, look in the sky. First, there aren't any clouds then there are in the next scene. If you keep watching, the clouds vary from the different camera angles.

Factual error: A FedEx car is shown clamped next to the Spassky Gate on the Red Square. Cars are not allowed to be parked there at all as a security measure - they'd be towed away, not clamped.

Continuity: On the island, immediately after the title indicating "4 Years Later" Tom spears a fish. The spear hits the fish hard and swiftly, and as the camera pulls away the spear is very close to vertical. For the spear to hit that hard and vertical it had to be thrown close to the fish and almost straight down. But as the camera continues to pull further away, you see Tom standing too far away to have thrown the spear in that way.

Continuity: After the plane crash, when Tom Hanks is in the raft, he falls asleep and awakes only when the raft hits a rock on the island and a section of the raft deflates. How did the raft get over all those gigantic waves on the reef without capsizing? (Especially with the high waves that would occur after a storm.) Did Tom sleep right through it all?

Continuity: Right before he sees the light on the ship, Chuck goes to take a leak. If you look close, you can clearly see that it is computer-imposed, considering it stops and starts at the same length.

Continuity: When Tom Hanks first drifts onto the island and is asleep his head is facing out to sea. In the next scene when he gets out of the raft his head is in line with the rest of the beach.

Continuity: When Tom Hanks is on the plane he sets down the pocket watch in the lower right corner of the groove in the seat, after an instant angle change it is closer to the upper left corner of the groove, with no time for it to move.

Factual error: Chuck's plane supposedly went down in 1995. During the early parts of the film, you see several Fed Ex aircraft with only two engines (one on each wing) which are Airbuses. Fed Ex had only a handful of these class of aircraft around 1995 making it impossible to see so many of them on the ground in Memphis, or in the Soviet Union for that fact at that time.