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The mayor is named Ebert and his assistant is named Gene. These two were parodies of two well-known movie critics: the late Gene Siskel (who died in 1999 from complication from brain surgery) and Roger Ebert. They gave bad reviews for "Stargate" (1994) and "Independence Day" (1996) which were also made by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, so this is also their way of getting back at them. The actors who play them also look similar to Siskel and Ebert. See more...

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Godzilla (1998) - 43 mistakes

Directed by Roland Emmerich, starring Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer, Jean Reno, Maria Pitillo, Matthew Broderick (add more)

Genres: Action, Sci-fi, Thriller

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Updated this week Continuity: Nick and company are in a plane after leaving Tahiti. A soldier goes up to the colonel and tells him about the fishing trawlers that were pulled under. Just after that, the camera shows three guys sitting down that look up. In the following shots those guys are gone.

Edit Submitted by mrfrede Time
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Continuity: Near the end of the movie there are 3 US Navy F-18 planes. The lead plane shows a graphic of 4 missiles, 2 of which he launches at Madison Square Garden. Then later, and without landing, the 3 planes fire at Godzilla, 2 missiles from each plane on both passes. This means the lead plane fired 6 of its 4 missiles.

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Continuity: Godzilla noticeably changes size throughout the movie. For example, he is shown lairing in a subway tunnel, but he cannot fit into the Hyde Park tunnel (taxicab scene), which is significantly larger than a subway tunnel. Also, compare the size of Godzilla's eye next to Matthew Broderick during the fish scene and Godzilla's death scene. The eye is way bigger in the latter.

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Continuity: When the Mayor of New York is talking to the crowds and people can feel the ground bouncing, Godzilla is a fair bit away, but when he is stomping through the streets the people don't feel it at all - shouldn't they be thrown into the air from that proximity?

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Continuity: The first footprint - the one Nick is standing in - is clearly smaller that those shown from the helicopter (watch the toes).

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Continuity: When the team is travelling to the cannery ship you see several people and a few vehicles going the other way. A helicopter flies over their heads and the camera shot from behind the chopper shows there is no one on the road heading away from the ship.

Edit Submitted by EMTurbo
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Other: At the taxi cab chase at the end, you can notice when the car is a real one and when it's CGI. Note how the real car has scratches and other things on the front of it, but the CGI car, if you look closely, has almost no imperfections, and even if it does have some, it doesn't match the real car one bit. You can see these things when the car drives off his mouth or when you see Godzilla running behind.

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Continuity: When Godzilla is chasing the taxi, the taxi crashes through a chainlink fence. As it rounds the corner shortly after going through the fence, the sign on top of the cab comes loose and is being held loosely by a wire toward the front of the cab. You can clearly see that the sign is loose, but a few shots later, the sign is attached firmly in place atop the cab.

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Continuity: As Godzilla is about to step on Animal, we see two cars are directly behind Animal (a yellow taxi and a gray car). Each shot of Animal from the front as the monster approaches (and he's trying to get the tape locked into the camera) shows portions of the cars. But in the side shot of the foot as it lands, no cars are right behind Animal at all.

Edit Submitted by johnrosa Picture Time
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Continuity: When they are tracking the monsters movement towards the pile of fish, on a computer screen the icon representing Godzilla moves forward and in the next scene repeats over the same territory.

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Factual error: The Apaches in the film are depicted with dual machine guns on each side of the cockpit, mounted directly on the windows. In real life, Apaches cannot mount such cannons, and instead use an M230 Chaingun in a turret underneath the helicopter, which the film Apaches have, but for some reason do not use.

Edit Submitted by Dom Time
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Revealing: When they are climbing up from the subway tunnel into Madison Square Garden, there are lots of half-dead fish scattered around from when Godzilla was feeding. Right before they enter the arena, in the overhead shot looking down on the actors, there is a wiggling fish in the lower left portion of the screen. If you look closely, you can see a string attached to the fish. A crew member is obviously tugging on it from below, to make the fish move.

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Continuity: During the scene right after the F-18's destroy Madison Square Garden, Godzilla goes after the taxi and Nick tells Phillipe to turn the car around. The problem is that on the street you can see that the first time they went through, Godzilla left some huge footprints and destroyed the street. When they turn around and drive up there a second time, the street is perfect. This happens again when they are stuck in the Hyde Park Tunnel and Godzilla shoves a claw into it and breaks up the road right in front of the taxi, but when Phillipe drives forward and then puts on the highbeams, the road is fine.

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Factual error: The ship shown in the film is a dry-bulk carrier, not a fishing vessel.

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Revealing: When the old guy is running down the pier as Godzilla smashes through it it's very obvious that he was just cut in from a bluescreen. The water never touches him even though it gets passed him and he runs straight even though the pier shakes and bends right under his feet.

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Factual error: The giant footprints in the movie are obviously dug out of the ground. If they were real, the ground would be heavy compressed in a footfrint shape. These look like they were dug with a foot-shaped shovel.

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Factual error: When Matthew Broderick teams up with the French Commandos and they are driving into the restricted area - when the French Commando says gum chewing makes them seem more American - they stop at the guard shack. Matthew Broderick leans forward to answer the guard who tells him "I wasn't talking to you, soldier!" In a military vehicle, the highest ranking person sits in the front passenger seat (where Broderick was sitting). The driver is just the driver - usually the lowest ranking member in the vehicle. There is no way a soldier would tell who is probably an officer to be quiet so they could speak to a private driver.

Edit Submitted by Robertus
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Factual error: A sergeant is neither called sir nor is saluted. Sergeant O'Neal is called sir twice and saluted twice. The first time is shortly before they dump the fish for bait the first time. Someone runs up to O'Neal, says sir and salutes him. He says something about ten minutes then salutes him again and runs away. The second time is when O'Neal is on the roof and looks over the parapet and sees Godzilla walking past. Right after that someone comes up to him and says "Sir, Godzilla has been spotted in section five."

Edit Submitted by mrfrede
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Other: When they are being chased in Madison Square Garden, Nick knocks over a rack of balls and a gumball machine. They show the dinosaurs slipping and sliding. Nick then runs down stairs and joins the others. Shortly, they turn around and see the dinosaurs slipping and sliding on the balls again even though they're now one level lower.

Edit Submitted by mrfrede
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Continuity: In the scene when Godzilla is attacking the three fishing trolleys, the big light posts fall over. When they hit the ship decks, the impact breaks the bulbs and the lights go out. However, a few shots later, as the ships are going under, the fallen lights are back on.

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Continuity: The mayor is giving a speech as Godzilla arrives in NY. There are five microphones in front of him. They move between shots, most noticeably the blue and yellow ones in the middle.

Edit Submitted by ployp Picture Time
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Revealing: When Godzilla's foot steps "around" Animal, then lifts, the large wall of windows in the background has no reflection of the foot, leg or any portion of the monster, yet our viewing angle would require it.

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Revealing: After the second attempt to capture Godzilla with the fish, she runs to the sea. You see her jump into the water, yet she makes a very small splash considering her mass.

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Other: When they are tracking Godzilla to the second pile of fish in Central Park, the tracking device says that Godzilla is moving with a speed of 175 mph. If you look at the shots before it with the soldier looking over the top of the building, it is impossible for him to walk at that speed.

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Revealing: When the two soldiers are in the subway tunnel just before Godzilla's eye opens at the end of the tunnel, check out the beams on the flashlights. When the flashlights shine on the walls of the tunnel, they are normal. When they shine FURTHER AWAY onto Godzilla, the light beams get narrower and more laser-like. The circle the light makes on a surface loses the dark circle in the centre when it shines on Godzilla too.

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Factual error: The guys in BDU's (camouflage) have their sleeves rolled up with the lighter colored inside material showing. They are supposed to be Army soldiers. Only the Marines roll their sleeves this way. The rest of us can roll our sleeves up but have to fold the outer layer in a way that the darker camouflage material is still showing.

Edit Submitted by EMTurbo
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Factual error: Another CG versus physics problem: When the creature attacks the helicopters from the back, it eats one and the remaining two try to escape. However, the helicopters accelerate at least twice as fast as they would be able to in real life - they start from being still in air and they reach a circa 60kph speed in under two seconds.

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Continuity: When Nick has first contact with Godzilla, he signals to the soldiers that they should not shoot. How the soldiers can see from that far and in the heavy rain what his fingers are pointing is one question, the bigger problem is that when we see a close-up of the guy's fingers, there's no rain.

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Other: It's difficult to spot (it's easier on DVD, but I don't have the timecode). Godzilla has just left Central Park after suspecting the trap with the fish. As he rumbles down the street, hundreds of Apache helicopters swarm in and attack. When they begin firing their cannons at Godzilla, if you look carefully, you'll see the tracer fire from one gunship overlap over another gunship. The cannon fire is heading away from the camera and getting smaller, so it should at least go through the other helicopter and disappear on the other side, but it remains superimposed on the Apache. A little special effects mistake.

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Continuity: They go into the broadcast booth in Madison Square Garden. While Audrey is broadcasting, the French guy moves the vertical blinds to his left to look out the window and sees a dinosaur raise its head. Just after that the view switches to the dinosaur's side and he is now holding the blinds to his right.

Edit Submitted by mrfrede
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Factual error: At no time does the military use standard radio protocol such as "Over" "Over and out" etc.

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Other: When Godzilla goes to eat the pile of fish, it only takes about 3 mouthfuls from the top of the pile before being chased off. In the later shot, all the fish have been eaten.

Edit Submitted by Gavin Jackson
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Revealing: When Godzilla attacks the fish market, the creature picks up the seafood/fish truck with the driver still inside. As he's being knocked out of the cab, you can see dozens of boxes set up where the truck was once parked for him to land on.

Edit Submitted by DarkNITE Time
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Factual error: When Godzilla first attacks New York and then disappears, we are shown the MetLife Building, which has a massive gaping hole in it. The immense structural stress of a gigantic lizard smashing through the building, not to mention most of the center supports being taken with it, should have collapsed the building, yet it still is standing.

Edit Submitted by Dom Time
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Deliberate "mistake": The pile of fish in the first fish trap is much taller than the trucks. That's impossible without some sort of lifting equipment - and no such thing is around in the aerial shots.

Edit Submitted by Jacob La Cour Time
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Continuity: The ground does not shake every time Godzilla comes - only in some of the first scenes. And only when approaching - not when he is walking away.

Edit Submitted by Jacob La Cour
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Other: When the first fish trap is set up and Nick realises that the manhole covers need to come off, the first covers come off, with the pile of fish in the background about one block away. Nick then runs another 1/2 a block to a block to remove another manhole cover before Godzilla sticks his head up through the road. Taking into account Godzilla's size, we can assume he is about 3 blocks away from the fish. When the shot cuts to the computer screen in the command centre, it indicates that Godzilla is SIX blocks away from the fish.

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Factual error: The Apache gunship helicopters seen in the film have three weapons pylons under each wing. In real life, Apaches have only two pylons under each wing. It's possible the makers of the film gave them the extra pylons to make them look "cooler".

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Factual error: When the F-18s are inbound to Madison Square Garden, the lead pilot arms a pair of AGM-84 harpoons, but he says he is arming LGBs, which stand for Laser-Guided Bombs. Harpoons are not laser-guided, they are radar-guided sea-skimming anti-ship missiles, which make them impractical for destroying a building.

Edit Submitted by Dom Time
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Continuity: Watch the roads during the chase scenes. They go from soaking wet to dry to wet again scene to scene, in the same street as they turn around.

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Continuity: When Viktor and Audrey fall from the ventilation ducts, Viktor's camera goes skidding across the floor about 6 feet or so away, yet when Jean Reno comes over to step on the camera it is within a foot of where Viktor fell.

Edit Submitted by Sparky6640
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Revealing: When they have the second fish trap, Godzilla runs from the army and the chasing Hummers drive right over the deep massive footprints smoothly.

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Continuity: When the reporter is chasing Godzilla in New York, just before he stops his hat falls on the ground between him and a taxi. But in the next shot of him when Godzilla is about to crush him, the hat is gone and is never seen again.

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