Factual error: Hugo detonates an incendiary device on Zapan's torso. Zapan's cloak catches fire, which he discards. The fire should burn (or at least blacken) his organic face and mohawk, but none of these happens. Zapan emerges completely unscathed. Most of his body is metallic - an excellent heat conductor. Zapan's organic parts should suffer serious damage. (01:27:25)
FleetCommand
4th Jul 2019
Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
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Suggested correction: Zapan is a total replacement cyborg, similar to Alita. That means that nothing on his body is organic, besides the brain inside. His skin, hair, eyes and everything else of his face is artifical. We see that when Alita cuts a part of his face off. So, we don't know how fire resistant those artificial materials are.
Even concrete walls (completely fireproof) get blackened by fire. Zapan didn't. Also, fire-resistant mohawk?
18th Oct 2018
Common mistakes
Corrected entry: Unless the character is being portrayed as a bumbling oaf then their car is always spotlessly clean inside and out. No empty sweet wrappers, drinks cans, receipts, window streaks etc.
Correction: How is this a mistake? Clean people do exist and it is not a mistake to want to film them. Cleanliness is a virtue, and the films might want to deliberately exploit the fact. Women with hourglass-shaped bodies? Now, that's a mistake.
Every single person? I've never, in my life, been inside a spotlessly clean car.
Bear in mind the vast majority of the time we aren't shown the entirety of the car. My car's pretty clean but has bits of leaves, etc. in the footwell because I never clean there - no movie ever shows the footwells! I don't throw random garbage around the inside either, it gets put in the side pockets, again, not somewhere that tends to be of great focus in movies.
Films are intended to bend reality. Wanting to have clean cars in the film is not automatically a mistake. It is at best a cliche or trope. Sometimes, it is advocacy.
10th May 2019
Star Trek (2009)
Factual error: USS Enterprise's onboard computer initially refuses to acknowledge Chekov's authorization code. The reason, it seems, is Chekov's Russian accent, which pronounces the letter "V" (pronounced labiodentally) like a British "W" (pronounced bilabially). Problem: Chekov pronounces his ensign authorization code in the NATO phonetic alphabet. ("Nine, Five, Victor, Victor, Two", which resolves to 95VV2) This alphabet is specifically designed to alleviate this exact same situation. The 26 code words in the NATO phonetic alphabet are assigned to the 26 letters of the English alphabet: Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliett, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, and Zulu. The slightly mispronounced "Wictor" should not be a problem. (00:42:05)
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Suggested correction: You're applying today's standards to a fictional future. We've seen in every iteration of Star Trek that security includes both a passkey/password and voice authentication. The actual mistake here is that regardless of how Chekov speaks, the computer should recognize it as his voice because he always speaks that way.
I am afraid the computer's error message leaves no doubt that there was no voice matching at work this time; only pure speech-to-text.
13th Dec 2018
Common mistakes
Other mistake: The hero can usually knock out henchmen with one or two punches, but the main villain (as well as the hero themselves) can take much more punishment. This is practically akin to enemies in video games. In fact, heroes are so confident of their abilities that they can knock an opponent down and know that they are down for the count without even having to verify.
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Suggested correction: How is this a mistake? Of course the main villain, the boss, is hardest to knock out. If his henchmen were just as strong or stronger, why are they just henchmen? See it like a race, the champion is hardest to beat, that's why he is champion.
Just to give an example, at the beginning of the movie "Goldeneye," James Bond knocks out a henchman sitting on a toilet with one punch. But at the end of the movie, Bond and Trevelyan are beating the crap out of each other and neither is knocked unconscious. It's certainly reasonable for someone to be a more formidable fighter than their underlings, but it wouldn't make them magically impervious to blows to the head.
The mistake is that the hero of the movie very rarely checks to see if a disabled opponent got back up. They are supremely confident that they are out, even if the hero literally just rolled them on to the floor. Makes for good movie magic, but is totally unrealistic.
This mistake has four aspects. (1) The hero knocks someone unconscious for good with just one hit. (2) The hero does this to several enemies in succession, with the same results. (3) The hero shows no signs of fatigue. (4) The hero takes on the tougher villains and takes them down too. Doing all of these requires immense superhuman strength. In films about superhumans, this is not a mistake. But there are films that deliver this and are cheeky enough to give the appearance of there being a modicum of reality in it.
It's not necessarily a measure of strength, technique has got a lot to do with it. When one goes for the throat for example or the jaw a knockout is almost always certain, if you know what you are doing. You have to if you got no time to hit someone twice because the next opponent is not waiting.
You are right. But we don't see proper technique either. I really have issues with people getting unconscious for good from a punch between their eyes, especially when John Reese does it.
I agree with you that some movies take it too easy. But is it really common? The first knock out of Goldeneye example isn't all that unlikely, he may even have hit that guy twice, but a blow to the head, a surprise blow to the head can definitely knock someone out, happens in boxing all the time. Even between the eyes, as long as the head is knocked around.
14th Mar 2019
Captain Marvel (2019)
Corrected entry: In the scenes set in June of 1995, "Vers" uses a Windows 95 computer to search the internet via dial-up. Windows 95 wasn't released until August 24, 1995, two months after those scenes were set.
Correction: A beta version of Windows 95 (probably build 347) was released before June, when this takes place. They could be using that. It included MSN, for internet access.
Good guess. That preview version was available for $19.95 in the U.S.
I think that's a reach - especially back then beta versions were much harder to come by - you couldn't just download it, you'd have to apply and receive a CD or floppies. She's in an internet cafe if memory serves, and why would they go to the hassle of installing a beta OS which most people would never have used before, and which would run the risk of having bugs, etc.?
Windows 95 had one of the most expensive advertisements and launch programs to this date. (Second to Windows 8's.) Microsoft had special personnel known as Evangelists who went to potential customers encouraging them to test Windows 95 and give feedback. They didn't send the 3.5" diskettes with post; the Evangelists delivered them personally. Microsoft didn't become a software giant by sitting on its behind, waiting for customers.
Correction: The month is never specified in the film.
True Lies was released on home video on July 15th - any cardboard standee in a Blockbuster would be for an upcoming or very recent release. By late August something else would have replaced it.
When they're looking at the black box recording, there's a calendar on the wall that reads June.
Correction: The recycle bin icon on the desktop is an oval shape which was first introduced in Windows ME, which wasn't released until 14th September 2000.
The corrected entry mentions a scene searching the internet via dial-up; the computer in that scene has indeed Windows 95 with a square-shaped bin. Since then this entry has kinda been more about the plausibility of Windows 95 in a public internet cafe in June than anything else. There's a separate entry about the scene when they use a totally different computer, the one at her friend's house, which has the bin you mention and is a ME edition.
It's not, it's the rectangular bin.
1st Feb 2018
Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Corrected entry: During a mid-credit scene, while traveling in space en route to Earth, the Asgard refugees ship is ambushed by another colossal ship. This, however, should have not happened. Science fiction fans know that ships don't go gallivanting in empty space on conventional drives. Instead, they use a faster-than-light mode of travel method as "performing hyperspace jumps." Moreover, Asgard and Midgard (Earth) are two of the nine realms. There is one hyperspace jump between them. (02:04:00)
Correction: Stumbling upon something is not a mistake, whether in real life or in the movies.
Correction: Asgard and Earth are not one hyperspace jump away, just because you can get to earth in one step from Asgard using the bifrost. Secondly as seen in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 a ship has to go through a jump point in order to go into hyperspace which this ship is apparently not near one yet. We have also seen that ships require fuel and we can assume that when not in a hurry they will only drift until needed. We are also not aware of what this or Thanos' ship is capable of.
I didn't say anything about Bifrost and hyperspace being that same; and the fact that there is one jump point between the Midgard and Asgard is not my inference from this film. But all of these aside, ships still don't go gallivanting in empty space on conventional drives. Sanctuary II didn't pull them out of the hyperspace either. They were in empty space, doing pretty much nothing. Sanctuary II stumbled upon them. That's a mistake.
Stumbling upon something is not a mistake, whether in real life or the movies.
But gallivanting in empty space on conventional drives is a mistake, both in real life and movies.
They're not "gallivanting" - as the original correction stated, GotG2 showed you need jump points to travel significant distances, and the Asgardian ship is presumably en route to one when it's intercepted by Thanos.
They don't seem to be heading for a jump point. They seem to be totally aimless. "Presumably" is a word that renders this whole site purposeless; if it looks like a mistake, it is a mistake. Plus the first Captain America film and the first Thor film state that Midgard and Asgard are part of the nine realms connected by Yggdrasil (or, as Jane Foster puts it, an Einstein-Rosen wormhole).
"Presumably" is just as valid as "seems to be." :-) We have no clue as to their fuel status or intentions, beyond going to Earth...somehow. And as you repeatedly keep ignoring, GotG and indeed Thor 3 itself have demonstrated that interplanetary travel needs a jump point or a wormhole. As such at the very least they're making their way to one of those under conventional power, because what other option do they have? This isn't a mistake, it's pure conjecture. Just because space travel doesn't work in the MCU the same way it does in other sci-fi movies, that doesn't make it a mistake.
13th May 2016
Under Siege 2 (1995)
Factual error: The film's plot violates the third of the Ten Immutable Laws of Security by Scott Culp. The premise of the law is: When one has physical access to a computer system, given enough time, he can take over the system. In the film, the reverse happens: Dane takes over an ATAC site remotely while people inside (who have complete physical access) cannot do anything to wrest the control back. In the real world, it is usually possible to simply cut the connection cable or antenna and take control back. (Even Windows XP and later have such simple lockdown provisions as part of Windows Firewall.) After the lockdown, the passcodes can be changed and other measures taken.
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Suggested correction: They don't have physical access to the satellite. It is in orbit, it is impossible to have physical access unless they had someone on the satellite.
That would be a plausible explanation, had it been in the film. But in the film, Dane hacked into ATAC system, not the satellite. That's how he implemented bogus satellites.
You also have to remember Dane designed and wrote the software that ATAC is using. He may have written in access stuff that can't be disabled. So they couldn't have disconnected the building and gotten back control of their systems. There is no way that they could have gotten back control of their satellite.
An yet, the exact opposite happened at the end of the film: Ryback shot Dane's laptop, severing his persistent remote connection. Immediately, ATAC personnel regained control of the satellite. It appears you're smarter than the filmmakers and would make a better film if you tried. But it also appears that they've made not one but several mistakes here.
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