Timeline (2003) - 15 mistakes

Factual error: In the very beginning, the doctors are working to revive the man found in the desert. You can see the heart monitor is flatlined and they get out the paddles to shock his heart back into rhythm. However, even when he is shocked by the paddles the monitor doesn't register anything. The shock from the paddles alone would have made the heart monitor spike up for that second but you can see it's flatlined the entire time.

Continuity: When the team climbs out of the river they suddenly are very dry. Best evidence for this is their hair and clothes when they start to run away (those should have been heavier).

Continuity: The hairstyle and length of Chris' hair is changing constantly throughout the movie.

Revealing: When Kate, Chris and Lord Arnaut are in the hidden monastery tunnel, there is an explosion that shows them the way out. One of them crawls forward a little and puts his weight down on a big chunk of stone, which flips about like it weighs nothing. It's very obvious that it's a piece of styrofoam rock. A piece of stone that size would not move as freely as this one did from just leaning on it.

Revealing: When Chris brings the beers to Kate's excavation area and startles her, she then sits up and proceeds to turn down her iPod. However, she turns the wheel on the iPod clockwise, and for those of us who own iPods, we all know that either that scene was reversed, or she blew her eardrums out so she would not have to listen to Chris.

Other: Towards the beginning of the movie, Castelgard is misspelled "Castlegard" on the lab's computer screen when Doniger is first explaining everything to the soon-to-be time-travelling team.

Factual error: Both the English and French armies are wearing uniforms (English red and the French blue). An army would not have had a uniform at this time - each knight would have his own standard and colours - these colours would also have been worn by his squires. The peasants (bowmen) would wear their own clothes - usually a brown or other earth tone, and definitely not a red/blue tabard.

Plot hole: Throughout the film, anybody who speaks English uses Modern English, with either a British or French accent as appropriate. However, 1357 was solidly in the Middle English period. Although that language would not be utterly incomprehensible to modern-day travellers, neither would it be indistinguishable as it was in the film. The film specifically draws the viewer's attention to language at several points, making suspension of disbelief impossible. The French speak French, and very few of them speak English. There is a scene in which Andre is talking to Claire, and her lack of knowledge of modern idioms makes the conversation difficult; that should be true for all characters at all times. If the historical people were talking alone among themselves, I could accept that they're being "translated" for us. But they're talking directly to the modern travellers - it's too jarring.

Factual error: When the French are besieging the English Castle at night, their archers appear to be using longbows that were used exclusively by the welsh and English in the hundred years war.

Factual error: Whenever Lady Claire speaks French, she actually has a strong English accent, and makes a few syntax mistakes.

Continuity: After Chris and Kate smash the wall and enter the underground tunnel to the castle, they knock over a standing candle. In the next shot, as the monks look into the tunnel, this candle is suddenly standing again.

Revealing: In the scene where Chris and Kate and the French knights are coming through the roof of the tunnel after it caved in, the rock that the French knight kicks towards the bottom of the screen is fake. It moves around completely un-rock-like.

Continuity: Near the beginning of the film, Kate finds a bas relief that has been partially destroyed and replaced with unadorned stone. As it turns out, she destroyed it herself in the past. However, when she does so, she eradicates almost the entire framed portion. In the present day, only the lower part had been dismantled.

Factual error: In the scene where Marek is pushing Lady Claire in the hemispherical boat, the ends of the wire nails holding the boat together are visible behind her. Wire nails did not exist in the 1300's. I believe the wire nail was invented in the 18th century.

Factual error: Though an understandable mistake, it is worth noting that the medieval people are all speaking modern English. Before they leave, the group insists upon the French guy coming to translate for them, but they would hardly have been able to communicate with the English speaking people of the 1300's themselves. Lord Oliver and the English would have been speaking Middle English like in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tale's", and I doubt they would have been able to understand them any better than the French (who would not have been speaking modern French either). [This is covered in the book, as some people have noted, but doesn't apply here. In the book they're given translation devices (if I remember rightly), which let them understand but not talk back. Fine for the book, as throughout that the communication barrier is made clear, but here it's not relevant, as they understand everyone perfectly. "Movie language", ie. where everyone foreign speaks in English but with an accent doesn't apply either, as that's normally reserved for communication within the same group, not between cultures.]