Corrected entry: Robocop actually kills a guy (the "fuck me" robber) with a swing blow that sends the guy through a refrigeration unit. He KILLS a guy but doesn't report it. He says, "Thank you for your cooperation. Good night." He then shoots a rapist but doesn't report it. He says, "I will notify a rape crisis center," but he doesn't report the shooting. This guy is not a cop at all.
Charles Austin Miller
26th Aug 2023
Robocop (1987)
Correction: First of all, I'm not sure where you got the idea that him clotheslining the robber and making him fall through the refrigeration unit kills him. You're the first person I've seen make that claim. He just looks like he gets knocked out. Second, both instances you mention cut away before we see the aftermath. It's not too difficult to presume that he either booked the perps or contacted other police to come clean up after him offscreen. After all, we do see him arrest Clarence later, so we know he does arrest people.
14th Jul 2018
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Corrected entry: There is no way that the SS Venture could plow into the dock as depicted. Easily pulling a 30-foot draft, the Venture would have grounded out a mile away from the shoreline, unless the ocean was 30 feet deep right off the beach.
Correction: Of course it wouldn't have grounded, it was meant to dock at the pier. They had everything ready at the shore for unloading the ship once it was docked. The bay and dock is thus deeper than 30 feet.
Which does not negate the fact that a super-freighter-sized vessel cannot dock at a beach pier. The ocean floor would have to be at least 40 feet deep right off the beach.
It's not a super-freighter sized vessel, its a medium sized cargo ship, probably around 250 or 300 meters long with a draft of 30 feet at max, if it was full. The scene is shot on a fictional location outside of San Diego on a small dock, you have no idea how deep it is there. I don't see any beaches either so I don't know where you get the idea that its a beach pier.
The scene is post-production CGI, it wasn't shot at any location.
Have you ever seen a pier constructed elsewhere than on a shallow beach? No. Piers are not constructed in deep water.
A pier can be build at any type of location including a full fledged constructed harbor where cruise-ships or even aircraft carriers can dock at them, like in San Diego itself like the USS Midway Museum (called the navy pier). Piers can be constructed in very deep water, have to be in order for big ships to moor at them.
A dock is different from a pier, in case you didn't know. The construction in this movie is a wooden pier, not a dock. There is no way that a cargo ship (or a super freighter in this case) could pull up to a pier.
Doesn't matter what you call it, it's a place ships moor at. It's a fictional location and the fact it's wooden is totally irrelevant. If this ship is supposed to moor at it, then the water is deep enough for it to get there. Even if it had a 60 foot draft. Ingen built the dock, the pier, the harbor, everything, for loading and unloading supplies onto big ships.
Umm, yeah, it makes a difference what you call it. A dock is where ships moor (deep water). A pier is where people fish (shallow water). The SS Venture crashes into a wooden pier.
In American English the word is synonymous to dock. Doesn't matter, like I said, the place is meant to have a ship moored at it, it's not a fishing pier.
13th Jul 2017
Passengers (2016)
Corrected entry: At the end, Jim tells Aurora that the medical diagnostic and treatment unit "AutoDoc" can place her back into a state of hibernation so that she can complete the journey to Homestead II. She immediately objects, saying, "But there's only one AutoDoc!" (i.e., saying she won't do it if it means leaving Jim behind). Really? Only one AutoDoc unit on a half-mile-long starship with over 5,000 passengers and crewmen? Stupidity.
Correction: The auto-doc is a tool for human doctors, it was not meant to be the primary form of medical treatment. This is evident when the auto-doc refused to reveal a prognosis because there was no doctor present, and in another case, it refused to administer treatment without medical supervision, and someone had to choose the specific treatment (s) to apply. Plus, it's likely an extremely expensive piece of equipment and the for-profit company that built the ship didn't see a need to put more than one on the ship.
10th Apr 2015
Jurassic Park (1993)
Corrected entry: In the kitchen confrontation, the two little children are strong enough to successfully force the freezer door shut on a charging Velociraptor. Twenty seconds later, in the control room, the two adults are only barely able to hold a door shut against a charging Velociraptor.
Correction: There's not really a whole bunch of proof that this is valid. As we saw, the freezer floor was covered in ice, which would have negated some of the Raptor's momentum. The kids could have closed it. In the other case, there was no ice on the floor, so the Raptor had full swing.
13th Jul 2017
Passengers (2016)
Corrected entry: It's established early in the film that the Starship Avalon is travelling to planet Homestead II, a one-way journey of 120 years at approximately half the speed of light. So, even if they successfully make it to Homestead II, it would take 60 years to send a message back to Earth (at light speed) to say they had completed the mission, and that's not even taking into account the effects of time dilation at half the speed of light. So, we're really talking about over 200 years, easily, to confirm a single successful interstellar mission. But, when Aurora asks the ship's computer about the failure rate of hibernation units, the computer answers that no hibernation unit has ever failed in "thousands" of interstellar missions. That means thousands of missions that were able to report their success back to Earth, which necessarily means many centuries of interstellar travel before the Avalon was ever launched. Yet their destination is only Homestead II, the second colony; the technology hasn't evolved beyond half of light speed and hibernation units for centuries; and they're still listening to old 20th Century rock and roll on the ship's sound system.
Correction: Just because this is the second planet to be named "Homestead" does not mean it is only the second planet to be colonized. We also have no idea what changes have been made in their interstellar technology, only where it is at when the film takes place. As for the music, well, we still listen to music hundreds of years old. Why can't they?
18th Jul 2017
Deepwater Horizon (2016)
Corrected entry: The British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon accident was erroneously characterized by environmental activists, by some U.S. politicians, by the press and by this film as the "worst" manmade oil spill in history. It was not. The Pemex Ixtoc 1 disaster off the Yucatan peninsula in 1979 was far worse, lasted much longer, and received almost zero press in the United States, even though it impacted virtually every coastline in the Gulf of Mexico for over a year. The Deepwater Horizon spill was hyped far above and beyond its comparatively minor environmental impact for purely political reasons (i.e., it was used to fuel opposition to offshore drilling).
Correction: It's hard to analyze "worst oil spill" because there's so many factors involved beyond how long it lasted, including death and injuries that occurred. However, the 1979 event resulted in 140 million gallons spilt and the Deepwater Horizon spilt an estimated 206 million gallons and resulted in 11 deaths.
The Ixtoc 1 is still considered the worst accidental oil spill in history. Ixtoc 1 remained uncapped and freely flowing for 9 months, releasing over 3.5 Million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. That's barrels, not gallons. The only larger spill was in Kuwait, when Iraqi forces deliberately destroyed oil wells in that country, releasing 8 Million barrels of oil into the Persian Gulf. However, Kuwait is considered an "intentional" oil spill, not accidental.
Ixtoc 1 is only considered one of the worst spills, but not the number 1 worst spill. Deepwater Horizon released 4.9 Million Barrels (which is 40% more oil) and resulted in 11 deaths. Yes, Ixtoc 1 took 9 months to cap where Deepwater Horizon took only 5 months to cap, but the amount split was still less than Deepwater Horizon.
But Ixtoc was not a deep well, and its spillage was carried across the entire surface of the Gulf of Mexico for 9 months. The Deepwater Horizon was an extremely deep well, and much of its spillage remained in vast pools on the ocean floor, where it gradually degraded (yes, under extreme pressure and low temperature, crude oil will sink rather than rise to the surface). That fact also makes it impossible to estimate the total spillage of Deepwater Horizon. Nonetheless, some Deepwater Horizon spillage did rise to the surface, but not even nearly as much as the Ixtoc 1. Deepwater Horizon's environmental impact was negligible compared to Ixtoc 1; but, as stated in the original post, Deepwater Horizon was hyped and sensationalized in the press for political purposes.
11th May 2017
The Happening (2008)
Corrected entry: When the boy, Jared, is shot in the head at point-blank range from a shuttered window, slow-advance reveals: The rifle muzzle moves near Jared's head for several frames; then a digitally-inserted muzzle flash appears behind Jared's head for one frame; followed by one completely blank white frame; followed by one frame of digitally-inserted gun smoke behind Jared's head. Jared's head does not move or react in any way to the gunshot, and his head is completely intact throughout this lightning-fast bit of digital editing. Of course, by the time we see the gun smoke, the bullet should have already passed completely through the boy's head, and we would certainly see his physical reaction and the mortal injury. The two frames containing the muzzle flash and the gun smoke appear to be identical still frames of Jared's profile, retouched in a simple photo-editor, and completely lacking any gore.
Correction: Per the rules of the site, anything requiring slow motion to see isn't a mistake.
23rd Jan 2017
San Andreas (2015)
Corrected entry: Near the end of the film, Chief Ray Gaines is desperately trying to save his daughter, Blake, from rising water inside a building. The water engulfs them both at the exact same moment, and Ray watches helplessly as Blake immediately drowns without struggle in only 22 seconds. However, virtually anyone can hold his breath much longer than that, up to two minutes or more. In fact, Ray continues holding his breath for an additional 30 seconds under continuous physical exertion as he retrieves Blake's body and swims to the surface.
Correction: Many people, especially when panicked, will actually pass out during their first breath. Blake could have easily gone into shock as well. So it's not unheard of for someone to drown in under 30 seconds, although they may still be alive and can be revived. But this was not the case with Blake.
30th Jan 2017
Starship Troopers (1997)
Corrected entry: When Rico is whipped, the guy with the whip is shown about 15 feet in the background. The lashes leave huge 18-inch stripes on Rico's back, implying that the whip is about 17 feet long. But the maximum effective striking length of a whip is only 12 feet, at most.
Correction: Even assuming the measured distances are correct, the fact is, 20' whips are sold and are routinely shown to be effective.
15th Oct 2015
Phone Booth (2002)
Corrected entry: Just before Stu makes his public "confession" from the phone booth, a SWAT member is shown on the balcony, loading a rubber bullet round into a 12 gauge shotgun. In the extreme close-up, he releases the spring-loaded receiver with the touch of his finger and it snaps shut (plainly indicating that it is a semi-automatic shotgun). However, in the immediate next camera shot, the SWAT guy is now handling a tactical pump shotgun. Pump shotguns do not have spring-loaded receivers.
Correction: The Benelli M3 can be used as semi auto or pump. This shotgun resembles the M3 quite closely.
31st Dec 2016
Cube 2: Hypercube (2002)
Corrected entry: About half-way through the film, there is a montage of the captives climbing through various cube doors. Part of that montage shows them emerging from the floor, which should be impossible, as the cube cells are a good 15 feet tall. There is no evidence or indication that gravity changes direction in any of the Cube movies, so emerging from the floor should be impossible.
21st Dec 2015
Z Nation (2014)
Corrected entry: From the first time we meet the character 10K, he states that his goal is to kill 10,000 zombies (hence his nickname), and he prefers to carry out his mercy killings with what is only vaguely described as a "sniper rifle." Currently, sniper rifles trend toward larger-caliber rounds, between .338 and .50 caliber, for their long-distance accuracy. For the sake of discussion, let us assume that the character 10K is using the smaller .338 sniper rifle. If so, he must be secretly carrying an ENORMOUS bulk of ammunition: Just ten .338 rounds weigh approximately one pound; a thousand .338 rounds would weigh approximately one hundred pounds; ten thousand .338 rounds would weigh approximately one thousand pounds (half a ton). The character 10K has already killed over a thousand zombies by the first time we meet him. By the end of the second season, he has scored well over 3,200 kills (he counts them off in every episode), even though he only shoots two or three zombies per episode. This suggests that he's used several hundred pounds of ammo thus far; yet, we have never seen him carry anything other than a small-sized backpack. Unless he's buying, bartering or stealing hundreds of pounds of "sniper ammo" behind the scenes in post-apocalypse America (an unlikely proposition), there's no way that 10K could lug around the volume of ammunition that is suggested, particularly since the team is on-foot much of the time.
Correction: In the first and second season from what I've seen 10K carries a variety of different rifles, some of them not necessarily sniper rifles. For some time he had an SR20, in another episode I saw him with a Mauser 98k which would infer that they re up on weapons and ammo in between the parts of the show that we actually see.
27th Feb 2016
Watchmen (2009)
Corrected entry: When Rorschach and Night Owl confront Adrian and engage him in hand-to-hand combat, normal physics seem to go out the window. Night Owl executes a rapid series of upper and lower roundhouse moves that Adrian easily dodges. Night Owl then tries a flying kick, which Adrian counters with a front kick that lands on Night Owl's right knee or shin. For some reason, this blow to the lower leg sends Night Owl's full body mass hurtling away like he bounced off a brick wall.
10th Dec 2015
Immortals (2011)
Corrected entry: After placing his mother's body in the tomb, Theseus discovers and retrieves a magic bow embedded in stone. He cautiously tugs at the bowstring, revealing its magic power. As Theseus tugs and releases it, the bowstring vibrates loosely for nearly 4 full seconds, like a really, really bad guitar string. Such a loosely-strung bow would be useless as a weapon. Ancient Greek recurve bows were actually strung so tight (at well over 100-lbs draw) that they only vibrated with a THUMP for a fraction of a second upon release. The bow in the movie was probably strung loose so that Henry Cavill could make an "effortless" full draw moments later, but any archer would recognize the error.
11th Sep 2015
Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)
Corrected entry: When the barracks are completely flooded, Eggsy breaks the two-way mirror with his fist, and only a few hundred gallons of water pours into Merlin's observation room, spilling the trainees onto the floor. A moment later, the floor is merely moist, and Merlin is apparently dry. If the watery contents of the barracks (flooded 9 feet deep) had suddenly gushed through the window, it would have completely flooded the observation room to several feet in depth in a split-second, and with lethal explosive force.
Correction: In the scene, the room actually has a large gap between the floor and the walls, which most likely leads to drains to keep the water from flooding the room.
25th May 2015
Back to the Future Part III (1990)
Corrected entry: When Marty time-travels to 1885 and stashes the DeLorean in a desert cave, a black bear inexplicably appears and chases him. There are no bears of any species that inhabit the desert badlands.
Correction: The fictional town of Hill Valley, California, is not in any desert badlands. In BTTF III, a railway map shows Hill Valley as being in Northern California, near the Sierra Nevada Mountains, where there's lots of bears.
Correction: They may not live in the badlands, but they do travel through them. Several years ago, a bear in New Mexico made a journey of 70 miles through the desert from the forested mountains to the Pecos River near Roswell.
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Correction: We don't see everything he does or doesn't do. Much like other cops in movies, films would be pretty dull if they took some action and we then had to watch them in real time have a conversation on the radio about it followed by hours of paperwork.