The Core (2003) - 51 mistakes

Other: In the melting bridge scene, the space microwave was powerful enough to melt the bridge's thick metal but how come it could not melt the roof of the cars on the bridge?

Plot hole: When the crew's vessel gets stuck in the giant geode and the crystal jams the 'impeller', the magma begins to fill the chamber. They see it melting the crystals, yet they frantically continue working to free the crystal from the impeller and lose a crewman...and yet when they get back in the vessel, the magma indeed melts out the crystal that jammed the impeller. With 2 geologists onboard you would think they'd know that.

Factual error: When they realize they need to make the last nuclear explosion 30% bigger, they simply pull the fuel rods from the reactor and set them next to the bomb. This is ludicrous, a nuclear bomb is a carefully engineered piece of equipment, with carefully shaped charges imploding the radioactive material. Setting some fuel rods next to the bomb will accomplish nothing.

Factual error: When 'Rat' is trying to hack into Project Destiny control, he gets several '404' errors, but '404' is page missing, not access denied. It should say '401- Access Denied'.

Continuity: In the scene near the end where they are shooting across the F-115 carrier, you can clearly see about 15 to 20 jets parked on the carrier, the camera goes in the carrier for 50 seconds to a minute, then the camera shoots outside of the carrier and you can see that there are only 5 to 7 jets parked.

Continuity: At the end of the movie when they are looking for the survivors they have no signals and decide to give up. Rat is upset, we see a close up of him and his hair is long in the back. The next scene he is walking on the deck of the ship, he figures out the signal and calls to the general waving his arms and screaming. We see him in close up again and his hair is very short in back. Did he get a haircut on the way to the deck?

Revealing: In the burning of the Golden Gate bridge scene a man can be seen on the far top right side of the screen walking along the bridge just as it splits he walking along as if nothing is happening, even though under the extreme heat he would roast. (Widescreen only, cannot be seen on VHS).

Revealing: When the boats are searching for the 'virgil' in Hawaii, we see a shot with all of them going full speed through the water - and their anchor lines are down.

Continuity: When Drs. Keyes and Zimsky are explaining to the military guys at the Pentagon what is going to happen, Zimsky is wearing a wedding ring (or at least, a ring on his wedding finger). There is no reference to him being married anywhere in the movie, nor is he wearing a ring in any of the other scenes.

Factual error: Magnetic fields do not stop electromagnetic radiation (such as microwaves).

Other: The word "Storyboard" in "Storyboard Artists" during the end titles is misspelled "Stroryboard".

Revealing: In the Trafalgar Square scene when the double decker bus flips onto its side there is a shot of it from the front, and it has no engine or radiator.

Factual error: At the very end of the movie when the credits are rolling you see a panned view of the earth. The earth is rotating the wrong way.

Continuity: When Beck is in the command section of the ship with Zimsky and the rest of them in the weapons center, we can see that the screen she is looking at shows a shot of the black stuff coming towards them. The shot changes but then when it comes back to the screen, you can see the exact same footage used a moment ago.

Continuity: Just before the shuttle stops in front of the bridge, we can see the worker being "touched" by the shuttles shadow. In the subsequent shot we can see the shuttle is too far away from the bridge for this to happen.

Other: When the ship punches through the geode it is eventually stopped by a large crystal. Long shot of all the crew in the cabin - they are strapped into their seats and are bouncing around, finally being thrown forward against their seat belts as the ship comes to a sudden halt. Aaron Eckhart seated on the left remains sitting upright, no movement, no sudden pitching forward as the ship stops. He then turns his head to his left and mouths what looks like the magic 'f' word. Looks like he fluffed the scene and realized it.

Factual error: When the Golden Gate Bridge is destroyed by the sun's unfiltered rays (ya, right) the two towers of the bridge lean in the wrong direction. When the middle of the bridge is gone, only the tension from the anchor wires (connecting to land) would remain and they would pull the towers outward. However, in the movie the towers lean inward.

Factual error: At the beginning of the movie, the space shuttle is landing off course and they only have moments to figure something out. This makes no sense. Shuttles take a long time to land - about an hour from the time of the reentry burn to touchdown. After the burn, reentry begins about a half an hour before touchdown. There is at least 20+ minutes of glide time. Surely somebody would have noticed they were off course a lot sooner than they did.

Factual error: While in the giant geode, the inflowing magma is referred to as lava. It is only lava when it is erupted onto the surface of the earth. In any case the mantle is nowhere near as liquid as is shown, it is almost completely solid.

Other: When Braz enters outer corridor to release interlocks, his 4500'F suit is battling 9000'F. His face mask never melts; his glasses crack and his face/skin never blisters.

Other: When the brackets holding "Virgil" in position are released, we can see all of them releasing simultaneously. "Virgil" should start to drop immediately, not after 1 or 2 seconds.

Continuity: When Dr. Brazzleton is first showing off the laser, we see both wide and close shots. In the close shots, the beams are cylindrical. In the wide shots, the beams spread out.

Continuity: When the EM tear hits the Golden Gate Bridge, we see a guy looking at the tear and the glass of the car's door is smashed up by the heat. The camera angle changes and we see the glass undamaged.

Factual error: When Becca is waiting to be called before the flight review board and while standing in front of the board she is wearing earrings that hang below the bottom of her ear lobes. Military regulations only allow small spherical conservative earrings centered in the middle of the ear lobe.

Factual error: When Dr. Keys is giving a lecture, he mentions that sound waves gain wavelength and lose frequency as they enter a denser medium. That's not completely true. Sound does gain wavelength, but frequency NEVER changes. It is velocity and wavelength which change to maintain the relationship velocity = frequency x wavelength. It is impossible for frequency (no. of waves per second) to change since that would mean waves get lost or created from nothing.

Factual error: When the vessel entered the geode (the great big empty hole), the crew was forced forward by the falling of the ship. They should have felt weightless - the ship was in free fall just like the "Vomit Comet" used by the Air Force to train astronauts and by Ron Howard to film Apollo 13.

Factual error: In the very first shot of the movie David's watch shows an invalid time. If it were 10:30, the hour hand would be between 10 and 11. The hour hand is exactly at the 10:00 mark even though the minute hand is at 30 minutes.

Audio problem: When the man in the car on the Golden Gate Bridge gets crushed, you can hear him screaming, but his reflection in the rear-view mirror shows that his mouth is closed.

Factual error: In a few shots through the movie the gauges or screens displaying information, they use "PPI" for pounds per sq. inch instead of PSI. PPI is wrong it's always PSI. The first time you see it is in the scene when they just launch the ship right before they pierce the crust with Braz and Serge for sure.

Continuity: During the "landing" of the space shuttle, Hilary Swanks character sets the air breaks to full. The first exterior shot from the back shows the breaks still engaged, the second shot shows them retracted. There was no command to retract them, besides the crew is still trying to slow the shuttle down, so they should still be deployed.

Deliberate "mistake": When the ship first launches, they switch on the headlights. They use a special device to see outside the ship, and the ship has no windows, so why does the ship have lights?

Factual error: When Victor and the crew are 2600 miles below the surface and Rat is trying to let Dr. Keyes know that Project Destiny is going to happen, he contacts the ship via radio and even transfers computer data to the ship. This would be completely impossible because the ground would block any radio signals from reaching the ship. By the time the ship had reached about a mile down, there would be no radio contact whatsoever, no matter how powerful their transmitter was. Audio communication would be unfeasible too....the ship would make too much noise cutting through the earth to allow for any communications to be transmitted through solid rock.

Continuity: When Serj is getting crushed in the last capsule, the same triangular piece of metal from the lower right closes across his face twice.

Plot hole: When they come up with the idea of setting off the 5 bombs separately, there is a computer screen showing a picture of the Earth and the shock waves starting and interfering with each other. Each shock wave starts off from a different point - they are separated by at least 2000 km. But when they are dropping the bombs, they manage to drop them all within 2 hours (judging by the timer that they set on the first bomb). How did they manage to travel 10000 km in 2 hours?

Continuity: When Josh is demonstrating the effect of the sun on the unprotected earth, he sticks a fork in a peach, cooks the peach with a flame and we are shown how it is charred. Then when he goes to put the peach in a pitcher of water, the peach on his fork unburnt, but then it is burnt in the bottom of the pitcher.

Other: When the crew are entering the geode, we can see the blue/purple crystals on screen and the empty space is shown as black. A minute earlier we were informed that empty space showed up as static and black patches were what they could not pass through. Apparently empty space is too dense to travel through?

Deliberate "mistake": In the scene with the first demonstration of the digging laser, they dig/blast quite a hole in the mountain. Even assuming the laser can very easily shatter the rocks substance, still the debris would have to go somewhere, yet there appears to be none. And the amount of power needed to convert matter into energy is not practical.

Factual error: While Dr. Brazzleton is turning the hydraulic gear, his glasses fragment. If it was hot enough in his helmet to fragment his glasses, then his face should've been burned.

Continuity: After Beck gets her speech from the Commander, the team sees the high level static discharge in the sky and they run into the hanger to get more info. As they approach the main control area you see Serge being the first to get to the area using a napkin near his mouth, the Commander behind him and then Josh and then the others. The camera angle changes and the napkin Serge had is no longer there and somehow Josh is now in front of the Commander.

Continuity: After Josh's first meeting with Dr.Zimsky, he walks out of the room and passes another scientist. The camera angle changes and you see Josh walking by the same scientist again.

Deliberate "mistake": At the end of the film when the carrier battle group is searching for the deep earth team the carrier captain is wearing a baseball cap which reads "CVN-72 USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN". In the credits he is described as "USS CONSTELLATION CAPTAIN" but in the acknowledgments it thanks the captain and crew of USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Factual error: The scientists were surprised that the space suits were able to withstand the intense pressure encountered when they were walking around in the geode 500 miles below the surface of the earth. They should have been - the suits were made of flexible materials. No matter how heat resistant they were they would have to be completely solid (like the white deep-sea suit worn by the bad guy attacking Bond in "For Your Eyes Only") to provide protection from thousands of pounds per square inch of external pressure. The scientists should have been crushed like eggshells the second they stepped off the ship.

Continuity: When Zimsky comes up with the plan, he's seen exhaling smoke from his cigarette. The camera angle changes and he exhales smoke again but he never took another drag from the cigarette.

Continuity: When the radiation hits San Francisco, the General tells Rat to bring up the power grid and you see Stickley leaning on Rat's chair. The camera angle changes and Stickley is no longer leaning on the chair. The camera angle changes again and she's leaning on the chair. She's even seen leaning on the chair with one arm on Rat's left side during a closeup and then the arm behind his head with a wide view.

Continuity: When the FBI go to Rat's apartment you see Rat throw a bunch of CD's into the microwave and then turn it on. The next time you see the CD's in the microwave they are neatly stacked.

Continuity: When Josh and Serge are at the bar talking about how Dr. Zimsky tried to give Josh his autograph, Serge makes the comment and then puts the napkin, which is in his left hand, near his mouth. The camera angle changes and the napkin is no longer near his mouth and it's in his right hand which he's now using to wipe his left hand.

Factual error: If you are in the military, you will note that all of service dresses worn by army and air force officers have their U.S. insignia pinned onto their collars incorrectly. The insignia is supposed to be pinned so that the letters are parallel to the ground, not parallel to the bottom collar. It's a complete myth that movie uniforms are frequently deliberately incorrect to avoid prosecution, so that's not a valid reason.

Continuity: When they are going to go aboard the ship, it's raining, but they aren't wet.

Factual error: When Eckart is decrypting data from Qualls using primes, the first number he enters is '1', which is not prime. [Some people have debated this, saying that as primes are any numbers not divisible by any number except themselves and 1, 1 must be prime. While it technically fits the description, 1 is generally considered NOT to be prime (http://www.utm.edu/research/primes/lists/small/1000.txt)].

Deliberate "mistake": So the entire centre of the Earth is transparent? In all the exterior long shots of Virgil when underground, you can see 'through' the intervening mantle, just like it was water.

Factual error: When Delroy Lindow is trying to save the ship, the heat in that compartment is enough to melt the piece of metal he has with him. Yet there are no convection waves in the air when he opens the door. If a hot freeway can produce them, I assume 5000+ degrees in a closed environment can.