Charles Austin Miller

Factual error: Late in the film, Nicolas Cage throws a grenade to kill the Japanese who have captured Roger Willie. The resulting explosion is a prolonged pyrotechnic plume with petroleum flames bursting out of the ground. WWII grenades didn't produce flames of any kind, and they still don't.

Charles Austin Miller

Factual error: Near the end, Emma Gaines drives a small fiberglass boat at high speed straight through the plate-glass window of a downtown skyscraper. Plate glass is incredibly dense, much more dense than the fiberglass hull of a boat. On high-speed impact, the plate glass might indeed shatter, but the fiberglass hull of the boat would be utterly demolished.

Charles Austin Miller

Factual error: We repeatedly see Ray Gaines and his daughter, Blake, swimming and thrashing about in crystal-clear floodwater following the tsunami. But floodwater from a tsunami is invariably inky black with thick, churning silt, sediment and debris. The same crystal-clear tsunami floodwater mistake appears in the movie "2012"

Charles Austin Miller

Factual error: Robbie is grabbed by the big, gnarly tree outside his bedroom window during a severe thunderstorm, and Steve rushes outside to save the boy as a full-blown tornado passes overhead. The tornado sucks up the tree (which certainly weighs several tons); yet, completely defying physics, Steve and Robbie remain unaffected by the powerful updraft, even though the two are directly beneath the tornado vortex.

Charles Austin Miller

Factual error: The government operatives go to great lengths to cordon-off and sanitize Elliott's home with extensive hazardous material preparation. Controlled airflow, Hazmat suits and everything. But as soon as E.T. "dies," everybody takes off their Hazmat masks. So, E.T. was only a Hazmat threat when he was alive? A real government Hazmat team would never drop their guard like this, as long as the alien body was still present.

Charles Austin Miller

Factual error: All of the PT boats in this film are painted in the same Navy Gray used by larger warships of the US Navy in WWII. However, the real PT 109 and the other PTs in its squadron were painted green in order to better blend into their daytime anchorages or moorings near island jungles. The common green color scheme of this period was designated as "Design 5P" and incorporated Navy Green over a base coat of Ocean Green.

Charles Austin Miller

Spock's Brain - S3-E1

Factual error: In the opening sequence, Spock identifies the alien ship as possessing "ion propulsion" which he says is "unique technology." Scotty is similarly impressed and says, "They could teach us a thing or two!" Kirk later comments that "Advanced ion propulsion is beyond even our capabilities." However, even back in the 1960s, ion propulsion was physically feasible, while Warp propulsion was complete fantasy. Ion propulsion of any kind could never even reach lightspeed and would be incredibly primitive compared to Warp technology. In fact, we in the 21st Century have already developed ion propulsion, but it will probably take many hundreds or thousands of years to develop anything even close to Warp technology.

Charles Austin Miller

Factual error: Virtually all of the CGI animals in this film are rendered at about 150% of their natural size. Additionally, even a small gorilla could tear the strongest human limb-from-limb, so Tarzan wouldn't have lasted two seconds in a hand-to-hand combat with an alpha male gorilla.

Charles Austin Miller

Factual error: Near the end, Jackie Chan's vastly-outnumbered forces resort to throwing stones to somehow utterly destroy a phalanx of Roman legionnaires in close-quarter combat. This scene flies in the face of what we know about Roman military superiority in the time of Tiberius. The Roman Army was the best-trained, best-organized, best-equipped military force of the Ancient World, specializing in tireless close-quarter combat and impenetrable defense. To suggest that Jackie Chan's frantic and disorganized group of fighters (throwing stones by hand) might overcome Roman legionnaires is like suggesting that cave men might overcome the modern U.S. Marine Corps.

Charles Austin Miller

Factual error: There are three major mistakes regarding gravity in the escape sequence in the asteroid field. Han and Chewie take the Millennium Falcon to refuge on an asteroid that, while visually huge, is still far too tiny to have sufficient gravity to allow humans to walk in anything like a normal fashion; yet, they walk normally both inside and outside of the ship. They also do not use pressurized suits outside of the ship, even though the asteroid's gravity should be far too weak to accumulate any significant atmospheric pressure; they use oxygen masks, but their blood should have boiled in near-zero atmospheric pressure. Finally, and most ridiculously, they fly straight down the giant cave worm's throat and land on the side of its throat (this is obvious in the shot where the Millennium Falcon lifts off and heads toward the toothy exit), and they get out and walk around on the side of its throat, which would mean the asteroid's gravity was impossibly perpendicular to its mass. (00:57:50)

Charles Austin Miller

Factual error: In the final duel between the Hulk and his energy-absorbing father in the remote lake, an aerial military task force drops a tactical nuclear missile on the lake, effectively sub-atomizing the Hulk's dad in an instant. While acknowledging that, yes, the Hulk himself might even survive a nuclear detonation, there is no doubt that the small lake (as well as Hulk's one-size-fits-all purple pants) should have been completely vaporized at temperatures of tens of thousands of degrees. However, immediately after the blast, we see the normal Bruce Banner drifting peacefully in the lake (which is not boiling nor even steaming) with his form-fitting purple pants entirely intact.

Charles Austin Miller

Factual error: Near the end, Zoe and Trey battle to the death, Zoe armed with a tomahawk and a knife, Trey armed with a Husqvarna chainsaw. During the battle, Zoe manages to amputate Trey's right hand, with which he was gripping the chainsaw's safety release and trigger (as his left hand gripped the support handle). Bellowing in pain, Trey continues swinging the chainsaw by its support handle with his left hand. Lo and behold, the chainsaw is somehow, miraculously, still revving in-and-out, which is only possible if the safety release is continuously depressed with the palm of the right hand as the fingers rhythmically flex to squeeze the trigger. Of course, with all major tendons in the wrist severed, an amputated hand cannot grip or flex or squeeze anything.

Charles Austin Miller

Factual error: The highly unstable explosive nitroglycerin plays a crucial role in the film, as it is painstakingly stolen and then used to obliterate a wooden bridge that separates the War Wagon from its armed escort. However, at the end of the film, a single bottle of this incredibly volatile stuff somehow survives to be stolen by an Indian brave who haphazardly snatches it (thinking it is a bottle of whiskey) and scampers away with it. Any one of the Indian's actions, from roughly snatching it to leaping off the wagon with it and impacting the ground, should have detonated the nitroglycerin. The leader of the Indian war party even chugs a mouthful of the Nitro and violently spits it out, the action of which should have exploded his head. But the nitroglycerin doesn't explode until the Indian leader finally throws the bottle to the ground.

Charles Austin Miller

Factual error: Clint Eastwood and Donald Sutherland go scooting around in open space (admiring a view of Italy on the sunlit side of the Earth) with their gold solar-screen visors retracted wide open. To avoid accidental instant blindness, real astronauts would never open their solar-screen visors during EVA on the sunlit side of the Earth; yet the astronauts in this film do it constantly, with no ill-effects.

Charles Austin Miller

Factual error: When Clint Eastwood catches an Indian arrow in his left shoulder, he instructs Shirley MacLaine to prime the arrow shaft with gunpowder, which he then ignites as she forces the shaft all the way through his shoulder. Presumably, the burning gunpowder would cauterize the wound all the way through his body, or that's what the filmmakers asked the audience to believe. In reality, gunpowder is historically well-known for causing gangrene in open wounds. With a shoulder full of gunpowder cinders, Clint Eastwood should have died of gangrene and sepsis by the end of the movie.

Charles Austin Miller

Factual error: The Sheriff clears all other police traffic on a specific radio frequency so that he can "secretly" chat with the two young boys. Of course, secrecy is crucial to the Sheriff's motivation all throughout the movie. However, police radios have extraordinary range, and police radio channels are constantly monitored by neighboring police forces, by other first-responder agencies, by civilian police scanners, and even by the news media. The Sheriff should surely know that it is impossible to conduct a "secret" or even "private" conversation over police radio.

Charles Austin Miller

Factual error: The last time Eleanor Arroway talks to S.R. Haddon, he's aboard the Russian space station Mir, and Haddon explains that he's up there because the "low oxygen" and zero gravity counteracts his cancer. In fact, there is no "low oxygen" environment aboard space stations or other spacecraft. Low oxygen content would, of course, kill any astronauts or cosmonauts in short order. The breathable air in spacecraft always has at least the same oxygen content as Earth atmosphere at sea-level. In fact, most Russian missions used excessive amounts of oxygen. S.R. Haddon's original dialogue was probably "high oxygen and low gravity," but the line was bungled and allowed to remain in the film.

Charles Austin Miller

Factual error: When Officer Cybil Bennett is burned alive over a roaring bonfire, we see her clothing start to smoke and the skin of her face blacken, split open and peel away from the intense heat (all of which are added digital effects, of course). Yet her blonde hair does not burn, smoke, nor even singe as her face is roasted. Her hair should have been the first thing to burn away.

Charles Austin Miller

Factual error: Jerry digs up a natural gas pipeline in the backyard and jerks it so hard that a pipe coupling in Charlie's house breaks, venting natural gas into the house for about 4 seconds. Then Jerry uses a cigarette lighter to send a flame through the pipeline, exploding Charlie's house like a fire bomb, catching virtually every room in the house on fire. In reality, it would take an hour or more for vented natural gas to accumulate sufficiently to blow up a house, for one thing. For another thing, Jerry broke the gas pipeline in the backyard in order to ignite it; so, while the broken pipeline leading to Charlie's house had no gas pressure, the pressurized side of the pipeline was still in the backyard with Jerry. Meaning, Jerry himself should have been engulfed in fire as soon as he sparked a flame.

Charles Austin Miller

Factual error: Early in the film, Chris foils a casino shooter, steals a car, and leads police on a high-speed chase through Las Vegas. He has a psychic vision of himself being smashed into oblivion at a railroad crossing, so he knows he must accelerate to 120 mph to beat the train. The camera cuts to a head-on view of the train, and this time Chris goes flying over the crossing, just barely missing the train. Oddly, there are no barricade arms with warning lights at the railroad crossing, even though this train is screaming through an urban area. Additionally, the car is already levitated about 3 or 4 feet in the air long before it ever reaches the railroad crossing, as if it hit an invisible launch ramp. Thus, Chris makes his escape as the train blocks any further police pursuit. We then see two angles of the fleeing vehicle suddenly make a hard left turn down a side street about a block past the railroad crossing. Which is physically impossible. Given that he air-jumped the railroad crossing at 120 mph, Chris could never have slowed down enough to make a hard left turn within one block. It would require more like 10 blocks to slow down to a manageable turning speed, if he could regain control of the car.

Charles Austin Miller