D.A.R.Y.L. (1985) - 9 mistakes

Revealing: When Daryl plays F1 Pole Position, the camera shows the full television screen for four seconds. The time remaining for each lap is decreasing faster than time progresses. Within three seconds of film, roughly six seconds pass in-game. When the car moves faster later on, the screen is tightly cropped to hide effects on the statistics. From the graphics this is the Atari 5200 version, which cannot compute quickly enough to represent that speed visually, and the score of 79950 is normally attainable, so the game itself is unchanged. The only conclusion is that the video is simply sped up.

Continuity: During the car chase on the freeway, when Daryl drives the car with the doctor off a ramp, the camera shows the car head-on as it lands, again as it drives past the camera, and from the rear as it drives away. In both shots of the same ramp scene, a tall adult is in the driver's seat, and the passenger seat is empty. Less than a second later, the rear silhouettes of a tall person driving and a short person in the passenger seat are visible, and three seconds later Daryl is driving with the Doctor.

Continuity: At the beginning of the movie during the helicopter chase scene, there are two different makes of car used - a four door Nova and a two door Buick.

Factual error: While the problem with refuelling the SR71 is a real one for D.A.R.Y.L., he is never going to get that far. The SR71 had no self starters and required a trained crew with a starter generator mounted on a truck to get the engines going in the first place. D.A.R.Y.L. just pushes a button and away he goes. Not likely.

Factual error: When you see D.A.R.Y.L. in the SR-71 Blackbird there are many shots of the cockpit. There are too many screens, in fact, the only "computer" screen in the Blackbird is in the copilot's part of the plane, D.A.R.Y.L. also did not have a copilot. If you don't believe me, check out http://www.wvi.com/~sr71webmaster/image2~2.html.

Factual error: DARYL steals an SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance plane toward the end of the film. Conceding the absurd notion that a kid could fly it (computer brain or not), the problem is that SR-71 requires an in-the-air refueling shortly after attaining low cruising altitude. This is because the fuel tanks are designed to leak on the ground - the friction of high speed flight expands and seals them - and the afterburners required to get the plane up guzzle fuel. DARYL would have run out of fuel long before his flight ended, and the Air Force did not send up a tanker for him.

Other: During the eye exam, Daryl recites the eye chart but does not get it correct.

Continuity: The film starts with a helicopter chasing a car being driven flat out around a winding mountain road. At one stage you see that the nearside rear wheel has lost its hubcap. A few seconds later the hubcap's back.

Plot hole: If the government guys could see Daryl in the cockpit, they should have known they could finish him off. If they launched a missile, he would either be hit by it or cook himself himself trying to outrun or outclimb it.