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When everyone gets out of their cars in the traffic jam and watches the comet pass overhead, they were really looking at a crew helicopter passing over. In post production, the helicopter was covered up with the comet. See more...

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Movie Mistakes blog

Deep Impact (1998) - 20 mistakes

Directed by Mimi Leder, starring Elijah Wood, James Cromwell, Morgan Freeman, Robert Duvall, Téa Leoni, Vanessa Redgrave (add more)

Genres: Sci-fi, Thriller

Mistakes

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Continuity: During a scene where the boss of the TV station is talking to his staff, when he finishes he takes off his glasses and starts to move off his chair. Yet in the next shot he gets off the chair still wearing his glasses.

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Factual error: When Sarah's family is fleeing Richmond, the highway sign says "Interstate 66." That highway is about a hundred miles north of Richmond; it starts in Washington DC.

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Factual error: While the tidal wave is enveloping Manhattan, there is a scene where Washington Square Park is destroyed. A large arch is hit by the wave before reaching the rest of the park. The problem is the arch is on the UPTOWN side of the park, not the DOWNTOWN side which according to the movie was the direction the wave was coming from.

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Revealing: During the scene where the two teenage stars are outrunning the tidal wave through the hills, the girl is supposedly carrying her baby sibling strapped to her chest. However, the legs that can be seen dangling out of the baby-carrier belong to a dummy.

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Factual error: After the initial impact of the small comet, the clouds are all blown away. Yet in every further scene there is normal cloud cover, including the shots from space.

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Factual error: Leelee and Elijah are supposed to live in Richmond, Virginia. However, the hill supposedly behind Elijah's house is too high and too open for the Virginia piedmont and clearly looks like California. (Similarly, the hills around the Ark project, supposedly located in the Missouri Ozarks, also look very Californian.) When the couple are escaping the tidal wave on the motorcycle through the woods in the mountains to the west, they are going through a very open forest of what appears to be some kind of western pine trees found in semi-arid areas. In reality, the underbrush in the moist Virginia Blue Ridge would be too thick to drive through outside of a road or wide trail.

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Plot hole: The government would have no chance of hiding the existence of the comet for a year. Most comets are discovered when they are very faint, literally thousands of times fainter than Wolf-Beiderman when Leo found it. Long before the events in the film take place, probably even before the government itself would be notified, the comet would have been discovered, an orbit calculated, and people panicked. The whole premise of the first half of the movie is thus based on flawed logic.

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Plot hole: How could they have figured Leo was dead with Mr Wolf? Surely the observatory would have showed no records of a Beiderman working there not to mention there would only be one body at the crash scene.

Edit Submitted by Jason Sieberg

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Continuity: At the end of the film, when the comet hits, the tidal wave washes over New York City, smashing first into the Statue of Liberty, then Downtown and the World Trade Centre, then sweeping uptown, depositing Lady Liberty's head somewhere in Midtown. The only problem with this is the fact that Manhattan Island doesn't face East. It doesn't even face the South. It lies on an angle in a Northeast/Southwest direction, top to bottom (1:00 to 7:00 on a clock face). That means a wave that started in the middle of the Atlantic would have to take a pretty sharp right turn at Brooklyn (over 90 degrees) to travel uptown in a North-easterly direction.

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Factual error: Many scenes showing the tidal wave approaching land and buildings is factually inaccurate. Its already stated that the tidal wave will be moving faster than the speed of sound, and reach a height of over 1000 ft by the time it hits land. That being the case, there would be a massive pressure wave of air in front of the tidal wave, that would clear a path long before the tidal wave hits. Buildings would start to topple and crumble before the water struck, and certainly people would not be able to stand in the path of the tidal wave, because the air pressure would blow them away.

Edit Submitted by GalahadFairlight

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Continuity: Just after Jenny Lerner talks to her Dad in the rain, she hails a taxi with her left hand, in the very next shot she is hailing the taxi with her right hand.

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Visible crew/equipment: When the kid is on the motorcycle looking for his wife, you quite clearly see a camera and crew filming another scene. It's when we see the traffic jam and the rental van shot.

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Continuity: When Leelee Sobiesksi gets on the motorcycle with her husband, the baby's head cushion moves from full coverage of the baby's head to partial coverage, to full coverage, back and forth, several times.

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Factual error: When the Beiderman comet hits the Earth you can see from the audience's view that it stays about the same size from when it first enters Earth's atmosphere and when it hits the ground. This is not possible; the heat and pressure generated by the velocity of something as large as a comet slamming into the Earth's atmosphere is enough to even deteriorate rock and metal partially upon reentry, and Beiderman is a comet, meaning it is made mostly of ice, which melts much faster than an asteroid made of rock would. Realistically, even by conservative estimates, a great deal of the Beiderman comet would have been burned off or separated during its entry into the Earth's atmosphere, certainly enough to visibly reduce its size.

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Audio problem: At the end after the President gives his speech in front of the White house, you hear the crowd cheering and clapping, but looking at the crowd, they are standing still, hardly in joyous uproar.

Edit Submitted by Cybermoose

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Factual error: When the asteroid crashes on earth you see people looking up at it, to see it fall. In reality the asteroid would burn everything on the ground due to the heat it develops.

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Revealing: When Jenny Lerner is first having drinks with her mother at the beginning, her mother's cigarette is obviously fake. It is not emitting any smoke throughout the entire scene.

Edit Submitted by Jason Sieberg Time

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Factual error: Otis Hefter is introduced as the Director of the mission and prior to the launch of the Space Shuttle, greets someone with, "Welcome to Houston!" Hefter is then portrayed as the person "in command" of the mission, including the countdown and lift off. This is incorrect as Ground Control at Cape Canaveral, Florida commands the mission until the spacecraft has cleared the launch tower and actually begins its flight and mission. It is only then that the command of the mission who be handed over to Hefter and the crew in Houston.

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Plot hole: The president says that people will be taken to the ARK by military transport, and that all unauthorized travel is not permitted. It would be incredibly difficult then, for Leo to hitchike all the way from Missouri back to Virginia.

Edit Submitted by Jason Sieberg

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Continuity: When Leo Beiderman and his family are watching the live report from the White House, in which the President tells the world about the asteroid discovery, he also mentions that the asteroid will be named Leo Beiderman. After a moment the phone rings because someone heard about Leo on TV and when the door bell rings Leo opens it and he sees all his neighbours. It's absolutely impossible for them to get to his house that fast. They only just heard his name on the TV and after a few seconds all of them are already at his door.

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