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When Polly stands up while Joe is attacking the robots, she is on the corner of a sidewalk. A few shots later, when Joe flies over her and she says "Joe", she is at a different place on the sidewalk. She was walking really slowly, so it's impossible that she moved that fast. See more...

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Kerry Conran first started this film with a low budget. He wanted to make a film with his friends and his family in his house, but it became too long to achieve. Producer Jon Avnet heard about the six-minute film and was deeply impressed, so he approached Conran with the idea of turning it into a full-length production. See more...

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Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) - 25 corrections

starring Angelina Jolie, Giovanni Ribisi, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Laurence Olivier, Michael Gambon (add more)

Genres: Action, Adventure, Mystery, Sci-fi, Thriller

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

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Polly Perkin's charm bracelet has several pennies attached. The foremost penny shows the Lincoln Memorial. This penny did not replace the wheat penny until 1959. 20 years after this movie "took place". [This film "took place" in an alternate fictional timeline where the RAF has a flying aircraft carrier and the aircraft are submersible. Unless you can provide some evidence about when various pennies were taken out of service in this alternate fictional timeline, the mistake is not valid.]
Edit Corrected by SoylentPurple Time
In one of the dogfight scenes, there is a shot of Sky Captain pushing the stick forward, (which would result in the plane's nose lowering) with the following shot showing the plane rolling inverted and diving (that would be accomplished by pushing the stick to one side, followed by pulling it back.). [It only takes a split second to move the stick. Sky Captain could easily have moved it to the side as well as he begun his dive.]
Edit Corrected by Phixius
As the hanger is bombed, the film shows both landing gear legs of the P-40 rising together, while in real life one landing gear leg retracted first. [This is hardly a standard P-40.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker
When Frankie ejects from her underwater plane, she shoots up to the surface at an alarming rate. The decompression should be near fatal. [Not so - she doesn't 'compress' and therefore has no need to 'decompress'. She is in a watertight compartment and is wearing a full pressure suit and breathing rig, all of which could be kept at 1 atmosphere. That's unwise in terms of the structural design of the submarine, but the engineering limitations on flying submarines are not all that well understood.]
Edit
The newspaper we see at the beginning of the film triumphantly headlines the arrival of the Hindenburg III in New York. How long prior to printing of the newspaper would that have been? Twelve hours? However, the same edition of the newspaper carries the story of a Doctor Vargas, a 'Missing Scientist', who was last seen on the Hindenburg III itself. Not in their Universe nor ours would the Police, Press or anyone else be interested in a scientist who had been 'missing' for a few hours. [If Einstein, Oppenheimer, Telsa, or Fermi had dissappered without a trace for a few hours, I'm pretty sure many people would have cared. Same thing if Stephen Hawkings dissapeared today.]
Edit Corrected by Rlvlk
There is simply no way to engineer changes to Joe's P40 that would enable it to dive into open ocean at full speed. Even if you could somehow prevent the wings from being sheared off, the rapid deceleration would instantly kill anyone on board. [In 1954, a test pilot subjected himself to roughly -40Gs, by riding a sled at 600mph, then stopping within about a second. Since the P-40 had a top speed of around 360, and Sky Captain's could be expected to be slightly faster (but certainly not 600mph); he could easily survive that sort of deceleration. Likewise, if his aircraft was modified for underwater travel, Dex more then likely would have fortified the aircraft for that sort of approach.]
Edit
All the pods containing the animals are ejected several minutes before Sky Captain and Polly enter their escape pod. Yet when the pods start landing in the water, their pod is one of the first to land. [Their pod's parachute could have opened late, allowing it to pass most of the other pods before slowing down and landing.]
Edit
At the beginning of the movie, the robot assassin is shown crossing off the names of its victims on a paper list. A robot really wouldn't need a handwritten piece of paper to remember its targets. [No, but an android who was designed to appear completely human would also be programmed with completely human behaviour, such as making check lists. After all, the best cover story is something you practice all the time and in minute detail.]
Edit Corrected by Twotall
The snowflakes looks incredibly fake and don't melt on people. [The only time we see the snowflakes touching people are in the Himalayas. Considering they are in subzero temperatures, it's unlikely that the snow would melt right away, and we only see shots of people with snow on them for about a second. As far as the authenticity of the snowflakes go, that is probably left to the viewer. And there are so many varieties of snow - packed, powdered, small flakes, big flakes, etc.]
Edit
When Joe and Polly emerge in the swampy area of the island at sea level, they exit the plane and run through bushes away from dinosaurs. Through the bush and trees they have to then cross a deep ravine where Joe loses his gun. Surely not, as this was sea level only a few seconds ago. [After they exit the plane and begin walking, the shot fades to another before they encounter the dinosaur. This indicates that some time has elapsed between now and then, during which they very well could have ascended from sea level.]
Edit
When Polly Perkins pulls the lever and all the animals fall into the sea, a considerable proportion of the rocket's mass is lost. From Newton's Laws, assuming a constant force from the engines, the loss of mass means that the acceleration should increase. There's no sign of this. [After the animals are jettisoned The rocket starts to disintegrate, presumably because the acceleration is too high for it to withstand.]
Edit Corrected by tw_stuart
Several P-40 related mistakes here: 1 - The P-40 Warhawk did not have the range to fly from the continental United States to Asia without stopping. While this is a common plot device, it defies belief; 2 - I cannot find any references to a two-seat P-40, although it can be argued that the plane was quite heavily modified, considering its other "features." Additionally, travelling great distances in such a two-place cockpit would be very uncomfortable. 3 - There is a scene where one of the P-40's wings catches fire due to a fuel tank hit. This is possible, but unlikely, as self-sealing fuel tanks were introduced in the P-40B. Given the nature of the film and the fantastic nature of the story, these are not huge mistakes, but since the technology is loosely based on our own history, I found them to be rather irritating. [You more or less explain yourself why these are not mistakes. 1) You cannot make any assumptions about the plane's range since it is heavily modified and based in a different universe. If they're able to make flying carrier ships they should be able to extend the range of Sky Captain's plane. 2) The plane is modified, and being uncomfortable is not a mistake. 3) Dex is a genius, he made the plane work under water so a self-sealing tank should be a small matter for him.]
Edit Corrected by Andreas[DK]
The barriers on the bridge connected to the airfield base would have been destroyed by the robot when it was dragged into the hangar by the two trucks. There was only room enough for two vehicles and the robot was much larger so the aerial shot later of the bridge couldn't have had the barriers intact. [There is no shot of the trucks crossing the bridge. It is just as plausible that whoever was transporting the robot would have known of the inadequacies of the bridge and used a barge to move it.]
Edit
In addition to Joe's and Polly's clothes and camera becoming contaminated by the uranium in the mine, Polly's film would have been exposed by the radiation as well. Radioactivity was first discovered by accident when a sample of pitchblende, the principal ore of uranium, exposed photographic plates stored nearby. Any further use of the camera would have been pointless. [Well Polly and Joe might not know the effect of radioactivity on film, since it can't be considered common knowledge. And Polly wouldn't find out her film was ruined before she had it developed. So it can be considered a character mistake but not a plot hole.]
Edit
When the airplanes go underwater, a rock gets stuck in a flap of Sky Captain's airplane, causing directional difficulties. After Frankie destroys the enemy ship, the rock magically disappears. [The blast from the enemy ship dislodges the rock.]
Edit
Polly and Sky Captain wear their own clothes on Totenkopf's island, but they were burned by the monks in Nepal. [The clothes that were burned by the monks were the winter clothes - warm jackets, snowshoes, etc. Polly and Sky Captain both left their original clothes behind, in order to change into more suitable apparel for trekking the Himalayas. Note the part when Sky Captain tosses Polly a wrapped bundle, tells her that her clothes stay behind and that she won't be needing high heels where they're going.]
Edit
In the final scene, as Polly lifts her camera for her final shot, there is no lens cap on the camera. Therefore Joe's hilarious line of "lens cap" is not needed, although it makes for an extremely funny ending. [It's not a mistake for him to remind her about the lens cap whether he can tell if it's on or not. My whole family automatically does this to my mother all the time as she is notorious for leaving the cap on and/or forgetting to turn it on. He's just poking fun.]
Edit Corrected by Myridon
Totenkopf has the ability to manufacture gigantic war robots and interplanetary spacecraft, and a huge industrial complex to support both, yet he has to raid New York City to steal electrical generators? Why not build his own generators? To say that he needed the generators to run his plant makes no sense, since he needed the plant to build the robots to steal the generators in the first place. It's a chicken-and-egg problem. [Totenkopf probably had a set of generators for his initial robots. To build more robots, he would need more power, but building new generators would've been a waste of resources, when he could easily use his robots to steal generators, as they did.]
Edit Corrected by Xofer
Joe and Franky jump into their respective aircrafts. We see Franky slide her canopy shut and grin at Joe. We cut to Joe, grinning back at her and sliding his canopy shut as well. Then we cut back to Franky sliding her canopy shut again. [The second canopy being shut is not Franky's, but rather another member of her "Amphibious Squadron." Notice that the pilot shown is absent of an eyepatch.]
Edit
When Joe's plane goes underwater for the first time, the propeller blades are shorn off by his power dive. When the plane re-emerges, the blades are back. [The propellors aren't "shorn off", they're are retracted into the prop housing before the dive into the water.]
Edit

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