Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003) - 47 mistakes

Continuity: In the lab in Hong Kong, Lara is held down on a table covered in broken glass. Her head is pushed around, she is shown grimacing with pain and blood is shown on the glass. When she stands up, her face is unmarked.

Continuity: In the scene where Lara Croft escapes from the bad guy by jumping head first down a rope, look closely at her hair. As she runs to the rope, her hair is in a pony tail swinging freely. But as she heads down the rope, you can see her pony tail is bound with several elastic bands, giving it the appearance of being braided. The scene then cuts to the bad guys leaning over the rope and then back to Laura Croft and once again her hair is swinging freely.

Continuity: After Lara drives the Jeep through all the water, mud and dirt on the plains of Africa and gets where she is going, the Jeep is clean. I don't imagine they have too many carwashes in the plains of Africa.

Continuity: In the Lab, Lara attempts to destroy Reiss' computers by shooting them, but if you watch carefully she (and later Terry) only shoot the monitors.

Audio problem: In the end of the movie, after Lara and the gang get in the Jeep, she drives off, turning sharply and you can hear the tires squeaking, as if they are on pavement.

Continuity: After having driven through "half of China", as they leave their bikes behind to proceed on foot you can see that the bikes are squeaky clean; even the tires are spotless.

Continuity: When Lara and Terry first jump off the top of the construction building the suits they are wearing are separated between their legs. But when they open their legs in the air the material is together as one solid piece. There is no separation. But when they land on the boat, the material is separate once again so they can walk.

Continuity: When Lara and Terry escape from the cave by going down the rope, you can see that they have left their bags behind. However, when they get to the city, they are seen walking around the building carrying the same bags that were left behind.

Factual error: Every time Lara records something with the mini video camera, one of her fingers is right in front of the lens, which should ruin the recordings.

Factual error: The Luna temple is shown with water pouring in through cracks in the ceiling. Since it is submerged, air should be escaping up through the cracks and water should be entering at the bottom (through the passage along which Lara entered).

Audio problem: In Shanghai, when Reiss shoots Chen Lo's brother (just as he takes the box containing the orb), you can hear a shot BEFORE Reiss actually pulls the trigger.

Revealing: During the scene where Lara and Reiss's henchmen are fighting in the lab with the orb, look closely: the computer monitors in the background briefly flicker (as most monitors appear on camera), indicating they were shot in the background. During the close-ups, this does not occur.

Visible crew/equipment: During the base jumping shot, you can see what appears to be a camera man in one of the windows of the incomplete building.

Factual error: In the lab in Hong Kong Croft is in a gunfight against Til Schweiger and another baddie. She makes a leap, kills one guy and takes cover behind a table. Then she engages the slide locks and comes up to kill Till Schweiger. All this makes no sense because if the slides were locked backed after the first kill, the guns were empty. This means that she came out of her cover with two empty guns because she didn't reload them before but just engaged the slide locks. If she did in fact reload offscreen it still would make no sense because when she sees Schweiger's trap, she doesn't let off a single round but still reloads as soon as she is behind the table again. In this case she would have replaced two full magazines with two other full magazines.

Continuity: When Lara seats herself in front of the brown glass base that holds the Orb, you can see three fresh fingerprints. (Lara is on the other side, so the prints weren't made by her.) In the 2,000 year time span since someone last visited, they would have been covered by dust by now.

Factual error: When Lara is hooking up her phone and camera to the T.V. on the boat, she goes around back and flips off a cover to reveal wires. However, when she attaches her clip to a red wire, she clips it to the plastic coating instead of the bare wire itself. In real life, there would be no current able to go through the plastic.

Continuity: When we first see Lara in her silver wetsuit, there is a torch strapped to her left shoulder. When we see her underwater it is missing and when she emerges in the temple it is back again.

Continuity: In the scene at the end where Terry and Lara are talking in the Cradle of Life, Terry smacks her when she's says she won't let him leave with the box. After she stands back up, you can see that there's a cut on her lip (right after she spits). Then the camera angle cuts to Terry quickly and then back to Lara, only, the cut on her lip is now gone and it doesn't reappear.

Plot hole: When Lara and Kosa are leading the 20 natives in search of Pandora's box, Lara suddenly slows down and says, "We're getting closer." One of the natives (the one who said he'd stay with them to the end) says something to Kosa. Kosa says to Lara, "He wants to know how you knew (that they were getting closer)." Since Kosa had been translating in both directions, how did the native know that Lara said "We're getting closer"? An earlier response to this indicated that maybe the native "knew a few words of English". If you think about it, that's impossible seeing as how this would have been his first contact with the language. From the moment that Lara arrives in the native village, Kosa translates in both directions for everybody.

Continuity: When Lara and Terry escape from the building with the flying suits and parachutes, they land on the ship and are met by two people on the ship who quickly take them inside the Ship. The parachutes need some time to come down after they land, but when the camera goes to a wide shot of the boat, the parachutes have been gathered up already.

Continuity: When Lara emerges from the water and climbs up the ladder onto the boat in Greece the camera shows her jumping on the boat twice. She gets to the top of the ladder and jumps on the boat, the camera switches angles and she jumps onto the boat again.

Deliberate "mistake": When Lara and Terry escape the Shay-Ling, they are shown leaving the area and pass a sign that says 'Shanghai - 74 KM.' On a remote mountain passage, coming from a presumably well-secluded encampment. In English. Fat chance.

Factual error: The skyscraper that Lara jumped off is in the Central CBD in Hong Kong, but she got on to the top of the building by catching a lift from a shopping centre in Causeway Bay (another HK suburb).

Continuity: Throughout the final cradle scene Lara has two lines of blood on her right temple and cheek. The blood spots change position slightly from shot to shot. This is clearest with the two spots under her right eye.

Factual error: Luna is the Roman name of the moon goddess. Alexander the Great would have dedicated the temple to Selene, which is the Greek equivalent.

Continuity: In Reiss' lab, the position of the glass shards on the table by Lara's head change during shots.

Audio problem: After Lara's two Greek partners have their throats slashed, you can hear one of them call out to warn her of Chen Lo's men.

Continuity: When Lara is looking at her guns and knives in the old Chinese lady's house, you can see that Lara's hair is at least six inches shorter than at any other time in the movie.

Continuity: When Lara first arrives on the boat, she removes charts, etc from a waterproof bag (it has a black plastic seal with yellow screws). Yet when she dives she appears to have only her standard Lara Croft-style backpack, which would not stand the pressure, even if it was waterproof. Further to this, when she escapes the Temple, she no longer has it, yet her headset and video camera survive the pressure and submersion of her shark ride and subsequent 3 days in the water.

Continuity: As Lara approaches the boat on the jet ski, her knife alternates between being strapped to her left arm and her right.

Visible crew/equipment: When Lara's two Greek partners are killed in the temple, electric lights can be seen reflected in her goggles.

Continuity: When Lara and Terry escape from the Shay-Ling on the ropes,upon reaching down they make a very unrealistic turn. They climb down heads first, and they flip so as to fall on their feet on the ground. But the motion is very "robotic". Even if they were very strong athletes, this would still be impossible, as the rope should be very stretched (should be fixed at both ends). Otherwise, it would not give them the support they need for such a flip. All the way down you can see that, at the bottom, the ropes go through some sort of pulley system. It is only after Lara and Terry are standing on the ground that the ends are shown swinging freely. So their dismount is realistic in one version of the scene, but unrealistic in another.

Plot hole: When we first see Lara in her wetsuit, she has a back pack attached to her harness, a torch on her left shoulder, some sort of pistol-thing on her thigh, her 5-barrel dart gun by her left buttock and a little pouch in the small of her back. In the temple she takes off the pistol-thing, dart gun and backpack, yet after climbing the statue manages to produce a video camera, safety spectacles and a cutting/welding device from somewhere.

Factual error: Terry Sheridan is described as a former commander in the Royal Marines. This is a Royal Navy rank, the equivalent Marine rank would be Lt. Colonel.

Continuity: when Lara is sliding down the rope, she fires at the guards at the top. However, when the action cycles, the shell would not clear the port before the slide came forward. Therefore she should have only fired one shot, then have a blockage.

Factual error: When Lara hops on the boat and asks if she can use their satellite dish they continue to watch TV even after she has moved the dish. Anyone with satellite knows how exact the aiming has to be and if the dish gets moved or bumped you get zilch for TV.

Audio problem: In the scene where Lara and Terry are riding the motorcycles through China, the tires squeal every time they take a corner. How can rubber tires squeal on gravel, dirt, and grass?

Factual error: Just after Lara puts the "Pandora's Box" back into the black acid, the screen fades into a horizon view of the mountains of Africa. Slight problem, though: doesn't mist RISE from mountains, and not drift down onto it like it backwardly does in the shot?

Factual error: For the scene in Shanghai, they actually used Hong Kong cars, the Isuzu truck and the Mercedes S-class, as the cars are right-hand-drive, like Hong Kong, while in China cars are left-hand-drive. Also the license plates are not real. The helicopter in the same scene is one that belongs to the Heli-Services in Hong Kong, painted black.

Plot hole: When Lara and Reiss (and later Terry) enter the cradle, Pandora's Box is floating on top of the black acid. After Lara kills Terry and returns the box to the acid, the box promptly sinks. Obviously, due to the lethal nature of the acid, the writers needed the box floating on top but there is no "story-line" reason as to why it would sink when returned to where it previously was.

Continuity: When Lara vaults over to the helicopter, in one shot Terry is kneeling down behind the wall but in the next shot he is standing up looking over the edge.

Continuity: When Lara and Terry break into Reiss's lab in Hong Kong, she knocks out a technician seated at a console, by swinging her pistol at his head. If you replay it at slow speed, you see that her gun misses his head by 12 inches or more.

Factual error: When Lara walked into Times Square in Hong Kong and looked up to the skylight: there is no skylight - just a ceiling in that building. Also had the shootout really taken place, dozens of police officers would have been at the crime scene within minutes, as you have policemen at every street corner.

Factual error: Lara's GPS gives her position as 22.15N, 114.10E. This is the position of Hong Kong airport which is over 20 miles from the city center where Lara really is. A rough calculation shows she should be around 114.4E.

Continuity: When in Hong Kong, flying off the building under construction next to Times Square, they pass/ fly by Chater Garden and the Lippo Centre. Neither of those, or the building under construction, are near the lab they're escaping from.

Continuity: Just before Lara skewers the antiquities dealer below the armpits, he's standing a metre or so in front of the crate. Immediately after, he's right up against it.

Continuity: Lara cuts her arm at the Lunar Temple before she leaves. There is no blood whatsoever until a quick shot shows her pulling her hand away from the cut (it wasn't covering it before while she was swimming) and the cut pouring blood, which immediately disappears as the shark shows up. The blood is never seen again.