Armageddon (1998) - 71 mistakes

Factual error: After crashing on the asteroid, A.J. walks outside surveying the wreckage while debris is strewn out burning on the ground. This is wrong, as oxygen is needed to make something burn, and there is no oxygen on the asteroid.

Factual error: During the scene where it shows people all over the world, just before the shuttles take off, it is daylight everywhere. It would actually be dark or near dark in parts of the world.

Other: A.J. gets dirt on his face although he is covered by an astronaut's suit.

Continuity: At the end of the movie, after the asteroid explodes, we see Grace looking through the glass and there are reflections of NASA controllers cheering. The same shot was used earlier in the film to depict Grace looking upset at some bad news. The camera zoomed into the picture a bit, but you can still see one controller cheering.

Revealing: There's grass on the edge of the cliff when the Armadillo finally lands - look just under the Armadillo while the astronaut's pulling himself up the road. Considering this is an airless, waterless asteroid, it doesn't really fit...

Continuity: When Harry is going to A.J's room, he bangs on the door with a golf club. You can see the white fan fall to the ground. Then when Harry walks in the fan is back on the ledge.

Continuity: The first meteor is a direct hit on a street vendor in NY where the dog is chewing on one of his Godzilla figurines. To start with he's chewing a small Godzilla, then it cuts to the vendor tugging on it, then it cuts back and its suddenly a much larger one.

Continuity: When they are in the shuttle trying to disarm the bomb, it is the pilot that is telling the munitions specialist, the guy that is supposed to know everything about the bomb, which wires to cut.

Continuity: When in the Russian space station, AJ is in a little pit fixing something. When we see him, he has a little snow hat. The next time he has nothing on. Then back again with the little hat.

Continuity: After Sharpe and Stamper have the argument on the asteroid, Truman says they need the radio back up. When he says this, you see the countdown clock for the asteroid which is at five hours and 12 minutes. A bit later in the film, after the nuke was shut down by a technician at NASA, one of the military officers takes the terminal. In the background, you can see the clock again but the time on it is at six hours and 49 minutes.

Continuity: When A.J.'s Armadillo needs to break out of the space shuttle, the crew shoot up the walls of the hull of the ship. But then when they drive the Armadillo through the hull, the ship breaks apart at the seams rather than at the bullet holes.

Visible crew/equipment: When on the asteroid, Rockhound starts to play with the gun. To stop him Harry goes over and pushes him off and they both go flying through the air. Just before they hit the floor you can see the zip wire they flew across on.

Continuity: Even thought the second shuttle takes off later then the first, they are neck and neck when they clear the atmosphere.

Continuity: When they are discussing the plan to jump the armadillo, A.J. Frost's left ear goes from having a clear earpiece over it in profile, to having a yellow earplug in from the front.

Revealing: When Bear is on the asteroid lifting the tubes to drop down the hole he is straining to lift them. Since there's minimal gravity on the asteroid, why is he straining?

Factual error: In the Russian space station, A.J. and Lev are running to the Independence shuttle. But as the space station is falling apart, a piece of it crashes into the other end of the hallway they are currently running through. There is no way they would make it to the shuttle even with it being a few feet away; they'd get sucked out in space almost immediately.

Continuity: During the scene where AJ is playing with cookies on Grace's stomach on the last night before the launch, the car behind them alternately appears and disappears as well as moves around. Best example - wide shot shows them well behind the car, then in a shot of Grace her head's right by the tyre.

Revealing: When the Independence crashes AJ goes over to the dead body of Oscar; when there is a spark in the background you can see Oscar blinking.

Factual error: In the opening sequence, an asteroid headed for Earth, and are told that this was the "Dinosaur Killer" 65 million years ago. The narrator says that it exploded with the force of "10,000 nuclear weapons." If we assume the asteroid that impacted was nine miles across (a typical number used for the impactor) and moving at 10 miles per second (which is actually a minimum speed; it almost has to be traveling faster than that) the impact should release something like 80,000,000 megatons of energy. Even if we assume a 100 megaton bomb, which is comfortably larger than any nuclear ever detonated, that's 800,000 nuclear weapons.

Continuity: Considering their space suits are made to measure, where did the Russian get his special anti-zero gravity suit from?

Deliberate "mistake": In the New York meteor shower scene, most of the cars blow up without having been hit at all.

Factual error: The shuttle crews are taking on liquid oxygen from the Russian space station. During their briefing, Truman refers to the oxygen as their fuel. Oxygen is not the fuel; oxygen is the oxidizer. The fuel is liquid hydrogen.

Continuity: The montages around the world show a boy listening to a transistor radio. In order to make it look truly Americana the boy has an old-fashioned earphone in one ear but continues to hold the transistor radio up to his ear as though the speaker were working in addition to the headphone.

Continuity: When Harry goes into A.J.'s room, he gets mad and sticks the end of the golf club at A.J.'s throat, with the tip of the club to the right. The next scene, the tip of the club is facing to the left.

Continuity: Just after Harry says "prepare the world for bad news," air raid sirens start. There's a panning down shot of some air raid speakers next to a Coca-Cola ad, with a truck parked in front of it. The angle then changes to a shot down the street (same street, same speakers, same Coca-Cola ad), except the truck isn't in front of the ad any more.

Continuity: In the sequence where they are disarming the bomb. When the clock gets down to 00:24, the picture is reversed (the split second shot when they pull the clock out of the bomb). This one is better to go frame by frame on the DVD.

Other: The two ships that the astronauts and drillers are supposed to be new, military vessels that were top secret - and just happen to bear a resemblance to the actual NASA shuttle orbiter. But, when they are launched, on the wider shots it appears that the footage is just stock shots of the space shuttle taking off. It is only in the closer shots that they actually bother to show the fictional craft. (Additional Information: During the X-71 launch sequence, they used real Space Shuttle footage, and used computer graphics to stitch the image of the X-71 onto a shuttle rocket stack. However, at least once during the sequence, you could see they forgot or didn't bother to change the Shuttle to the X-71. They just left the video as it was, and you could clearly see that it was a real Shuttle, and not the X-71. )

Continuity: When the crews climb onto the buses to travel out to the shuttles, none of them are wearing sunglasses. When they exit the bus those that are seen are wearing sunglasses. However, the following 'slow mo' shot of everyone shows they aren't again.

Factual error: The surviving space shuttle takes off from the asteroid horizontally, like an airliner taking off from a runway. This is absurd. There is no air to provide lift for the wings, so the shuttle - with its engines providing thrust straight back - would simply trundle along the ground like a car (it doesn't use its maneuvering jets at any time). Second, they'd have to count on finding a clear length of ground on a debris strewn asteroid. Vertical takeoff, anyone?

Continuity: There are two crews boarding their spacecraft, called "Freedom" and "Independence." They are mounting a ramp and when on top, there is a crew member who directs the two different crews toward their ship: "Independence on the left, Freedom on the right." We even see the ships (in their initial launch phases) right next to each other - you can see one right next to the other as they launch. Then, once they're airborne, we see a long shot of the two bright engines, miles apart.

Factual error: Setting the thrusters on in the "Armadillo" while it is spinning, would cause the vehicle to spin either out to space, or to crash into the ground.

Deliberate "mistake": Before the two shuttles dock to the MIR station, Lev initiates a rotation to simulate gravity. The shuttles then dock with their side hatch pointing to the anchorage. As the gravity is pointing away from the centre of revolution and the station is revolving around its main corridor, the gravity would push the astronauts back in to the shuttle and not towards the floor of the gangways leading to the shuttle or towards the floor of the shuttle. Also, the artificial gravity would be reduced to almost nothing at the main corridor. But here the artificial gravity somehow points down in every part of the station, and appears to work equally well throughout the station.

Continuity: The front of the space shuttle explodes twice. After we see it explode the first time after it first gets bombarded with projectiles, in the very next shot, we see the front half of the plane with two crew members floating around inside at which point we hear: "Houston!". Then the front part of the shuttle blows up again.

Continuity: When the drillers are getting checked out at NASA to see of they are o.k. to go into space, the fat white guy is wearing a robe that is covered with blue dots. The next time we see him, he is in a plain white robe.

Visible crew/equipment: During the scene when the crew is trying to disable the bomb, the camera pans in from a wider shot to a close up twice, once at the start of the scene and once towards the end. During the second pan, on the left side of the screen, the matte box or some other part of the camera can be seen.

Continuity: At the beginning of landing shuttles on the asteroid, Col. Sharp, pilot of Freedom, was wearing a black short sleeve T-shirt. At the moment of landing on the ground, he's wearing a flying jacket even not leaving his seat yet. Did he have enough time to put on his jacket during such an emergent situation?

Continuity: When the military come to get Harry from the rig, you see the shot going between the two. In three shots, Harry has a large speck of oil on his nose but on the fourth it has disappeared.

Factual error: After the shuttles drop their boosters and again after they fire their retros they bank and turn in space like fighters do in the atmosphere. Spacecraft don't move that way. They don't corner like a racing car.

Factual error: When A.J. starts up the Armadillo to jump the canyon, you can hear the sound of big, internal combustion engines. The Armadillo must have electric engines in order to function in the vacuum of space. Electric engines are virtually silent.

Continuity: When the two shuttles are trying to land on the asteroid, the shuttle Independence crashes, and it is shown crashing upside down and sliding across the surface of the asteroid. Later, having survived the crash, AJ and the Russian are outside the shuttle and it shows it sitting on it's belly, right-side up, with the words United States visible. How did the shuttle suddenly flip itself upright when moments before it was upside down?

Character mistake: In the President's speech he says that 'The Bible calls this day Armageddon'. That is not correct. In John's Revelation 16 verse 16 it says 'And he gathered them on the place which in Hebrew is called Harmageddon'. Even aside from spelling variations, Armageddon is a place, not a point in time.

Continuity: After Harry catches AJ in bed with Grace, AJ runs out of the room. Cut to the next camera angle taken from outside as AJ leaves - and he has a pair of boots tied together around his neck. They were not there in the previous shot.

Continuity: When AJ bumps into Bear his shirt is very dirty on his right side, but as he runs up the stairs it is much cleaner and has a sweat mark around the neck line. Next shot on the tower and the sweat is not in the same pattern. After he slides down the cable the dirt is in a different pattern again.

Factual error: It's explained in detail how the impact will cause a horrible freak tide, what it will do, and that one half of mankind will die in the nuclear winter. That´s absolutely irrelevant. The asteroid is "as big as Texas," that means several hundred of miles. Such an impact is called ELE (Extinction Level Event). A bigger part of the Pacific Ocean would evaporate immediately, so no matter if a wave or not. The earth would become "sterilized." So no lifeform will live long enough to die in a winter. (So it is nonsensical to compare that impact with the event 65 million years ago. It's much different.)

Audio problem: During the sling shot around the moon we hear a sound in more or less every shot of jet engines being revved up. They couldn't rev the engines up several times - it's not like such engines have gears.

Revealing: When AJ drives through the wall in the spaceship wreckage, the material flaps about in a very un-metallic way.

Factual error: When drilling you have to remove the debris. This is usually done with some sort of liquid as an agent and supporting machinery. As the asteroid has some gravity the debris won't just flow into space. No machinery/liquid to be found anywhere.

Continuity: When the astronaut Sharp comes to his senses and decides to disarm the bomb while it is counting down, the digital readout is just all wrong. Bruce Willis is talking to him and the time reads 40 seconds left. After a good 20 seconds of talking, he starts working on the bomb with a screwdriver and the time reads 35 seconds. Next time we see it, it reads 30 seconds, then when the cover that holds the timer is removed it looks like it reads 45 seconds.

Factual error: Okay, we know the astronauts can walk around on the asteriod because they have those thrusters. So how is it, then, that the lady pilot can walk around the shuttle without anything to keep her on the ground? She should be bouncing around like the moon walkers.

Revealing: When Ben Affleck riddles the shuttle's fuselage with the bullets from armadillo's gatling and then rams it to get outside, it can be seen that the side wall of the ship is paper thin. Now, I know titanium is a sturdy stuff but don't believe such a flimsy construction would be enough to stand the ordeal of a space flight with gravity loads during the start, escaping/entering the atmosphere and pressure difference in the vacuum of space.

Continuity: When they are boarding the shuttles, Harry and AJ have a brief chat and they get onto to bridge last. But somehow Harry manages to get in front of Rockhound and Max, and AJ manages to get in front of Oscar and Bear.

Factual error: When Oscar Choi is talking to A.J. about "Star Wars," A.J. is measuring something with a dial indicator, but he is holding it like a micrometer. A dial indicator needs to be fixed to something to measure how far the arm moves from your work piece.

Continuity: The first shuttle takes off some time before the second. Nevertheless we see a picture of both shuttles in the air shortly after they clear the towers.

Factual error: Throughout the time span the crew was on the asteroid, no signs of any gravitational changes occured. In fact, the gravity was much like Earth's, even though that's scientifically impossible.

Deliberate "mistake": When the bomb is going to be remote detonated, on the inside lid of the briefcase, the remote destruct warning says that upon activation, the warhead will detonate in T minus 10 minutes. When the countdown begins on the bomb however, it is only for 6 minutes.

Continuity: As Harry's crew is about to start drilling, Rockhound analyzes the surface. The drilling head is already bellow the asteroids surface. When the camera pans back to Rockhound the drill head can still be seen slowly turning on the upper right corner.

Continuity: When they are drawing straws to see who stays on the asteroid, they show AJ pulling his straw. It's the same length as the other straws shown, but when it cuts back to AJ he all of a sudden has the short straw.

Continuity: When Chick's son recognizes him on television, the camera shows a close up of his ex-wife with the phone in her right hand. However, the next shot shows her dropping the phone receiver from her left hand.

Continuity: When Stamper is banging on AJ's door, a fan and about six cans are on the shelf. In the next shot, the fan has fallen off, but there are only three cans on the shelf.

Factual error: In the scene on the asteroid, Steve Buscemi's character flicks away a fly, and you can see it buzzing around.

Continuity: When Harry is golfing off of the oil rig, the holes on the golf ball are spaced about a yard away. In the next shot, before he hits it, the holes are right together. It also goes from saying just "Srixon" to "3 Srixon," then the lettering gets angled, then he finally hits it.

Character mistake: As they're unbuckling after the rough landing on the asteroid about 1:20:00 in, it sounds as though Steve Buscemi calls Bruce Willis by his real name and not his character's name.

Audio problem: When the Russian space station is on fire, and the crews are running out, you can hear Harry say, "Where's the rest of the team?" but his lips don't move.

Continuity: When Grace throws down Thurman because of frustration, she first grabs him by the back, but in the next shot he's facing upwards.

Continuity: During the scene when AJ is yelling out for any other survivors in his crashed shuttle, we hear Lev calling "A.J.", but with no Russian accent. Then Lev gets his accent back when he says "I'm here."

Continuity: When Harry goes into A.J.'s room, he gets mad and sticks the end of a putter golf club at A.J.'s throat. The next scene the club changes and is not a putter anymore.

Continuity: The two ships that the astronauts and drillers are supposed to be new, military vessels that were top secret - and just happen to bear a resemblance to the actual NASA shuttle orbiter. But, when they are launched, on the wider shots it appears that the footage is just stock shots of the space shuttle taking off. It is only in the closer shots that they actually bother to show the fictional craft.

Continuity: When the team meets the flight crews for the shuttles, there are two munitions specialists - Gruber and another astronaut. We see this other astronaut board the shuttle, then he's never seen again, not even his body.

Audio problem: When Freedom shuttle is being destroyed by the asteroid field, you can hear Harry say, "Sharp, what the hell is that? Is that the Independence?" but you can tell by Bruce Willis' mouth that he isn't saying any of those words.

Factual error: In the beginning of the movie, in the scene when the oil well "blows out," pipe starts flying into the air and oil shoots out everywhere. It does not happen like this. When an oil well "blows out" while drilling, the drilling fluid would be the first to come out, followed by the oil. Besides, the crew would shut the blow out 'preventers' long before the fluid would fly out as forceful as in the movie. Also the pipe would not fly out unless no preventive measures were taken. In a subsequent shot, they show one of the roughnecks turning a valve to shut the well in. In real life, the blow out preventers would have to be closed by actuating a hydraulic closure ram.

Factual error: Both teams have to drill an 800-foot hole in the asteroid (even though only one team made it to a drilling location). They are doing this in an area that the ground is mostly metal and they are using metal drill bits. The bits the drillers use in the movie are known as "rock bits" and will not cut through metal. There are special bits known as "milling" bits to do that.