Best adventure movie mistakes of all time

Please vote as you browse around to help the best rise to the top.

Jeepers Creepers picture

Continuity mistake: About 10 minutes into the movie, when the truck is chasing the 2 college students in the car and starts ramming them, the bumper and the trunk is smashed in. The shot changes and shows the car's rear end and it is in perfect condition. This repeats at least 3 times.

More Jeepers Creepers mistakes
Road Trip picture Road Trip mistake picture

Revealing mistake: When the boys drive the car over the gap in the bridge, look at the side view that shows the main jump, watch the front wheels, they lift up in the air unnaturally before the car leaves the ramp. (00:34:00)

More Road Trip mistakes
The Core picture

Plot hole: How do they maintain communication between the ship at the centre of the earth and the surface? There's no wire, and radio waves can only travel any distance without obstacles, and the earth's crust would be a pretty hefty obstacle...

More The Core mistakes
Midnight Run picture

Plot hole: At the end of the film Mardukas reveals that he has been wearing a body belt packed with cash - "in the neighbourhood of three hundred thousand dollars" - ever since Jack detained him in New York. Are we to assume that Jack Walsh, an experienced, hard-bitten ex-police officer, now a bounty hunter who routinely chases down violent and armed bail absconders who would kill him without a second thought, didn't even perform a perfunctory search of Mardukas when he detained him? This man used to work for the Mafia! What if he was carrying a weapon? A body belt with three hundred one thousand dollar bills in it would be uncovered by even the most casual pat down.

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: He was using $1000 bills. That's 300 bills in the belt which spread evenly absolutely could have been missed near his waist as part of his clothing.

Rubbish. I specified $1,000 bills as that would be the smallest package he could have secreted about his person, and it would still be instantly detectable. If he used $100 bills the package would be ten times larger, and he would have to carry a rucksack under his shirt.

More Midnight Run mistakes
Planet of the Apes picture

Plot hole: The "video history" of the crashed USAF ship makes it very clear that the planet is uninhabited when they "landed". I can understand how a race of apes develops - they had a bunch of them on board. I can understand how a race of humans develops - they are descendants of the original crew. What I don't understand is...where the heck did all the horses come from?

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: Humans refer to parts of their own planet as uninhabited even though they are crawling with animals - vast areas of the Arctic are "uninhabited" even though polar bears and seals are found there. Were we to find a planet with nothing but primitive horses on it, we would label it as uninhabited. Apes and humans came from the crashed spaceship, horses were always there.

Which still makes no sense whatsoever.

Charles Austin Miller

I agree with you Charles. Horses are native to Earth but, the Oberon lands on a planet light years from Earth so it's a big plot hole how horses from one planet could end up on another when the planet was not only uninhabited but, the Oberon was believed to be lost.

Again, the Oberon was a massive space station, genetically experimenting with many earthly lifeforms, including horses, apparently. The time/space-rift was very near Earth (Mark Wahlberg made the journey in about 25 seconds at the end of the film. Not years but seconds). The implication is that the Oberon passed through the rift, and much of the crew survived to continue their genetic research on what later became the Ape Planet. So, the Oberon initially arrived on a barren planet and introduced all of the biological and botanical species, including apes, horses, and everything else.

Charles Austin Miller

Suggested correction: According to the backstory, the space station Oberon was dedicated to genetic modification sciences. They were actually experimenting with animal genes in the safety of space (which kind of makes sense). Given that the Oberon was a truly gigantic space station, it's not too much of a speculation that they were experimenting on many different types of animals (not just apes). When the Oberon crashed on Ashlar, half its crew was killed, but half survived with a number of ship's systems still functional, and they continued their genetic research, possibly producing a number of Earthly species on the otherwise uninhabited planet.

Charles Austin Miller

I think this should've been posted as a question, rather than a plot hole.

Charles Austin Miller

That's just a wild guess. There hasn't been a single mention of horses on board the Oberon. Even if there were, why only horses?

lionhead

Wild guess? The Oberon was experimenting in genetic modification, which implies a broad range of research...and not just on great apes. The Oberon was gigantic enough to be an Ark.

Charles Austin Miller

So where are all the other animals?

lionhead

Exactly. Where are the birds, lions, lizards, etc?

More Planet of the Apes mistakes
Road To Perdition picture

Factual error: Tom Hanks is driving his car over a bridge in downtown Chicago in 1931. In the background is the elevated train structure. An aluminum bodied train passes on the trestel in the background. This aluminum bodied train is of 1980's contruction. In the 1930's the train cars were of wood construction and painted brown. They were still in service in the 1950's.

More Road To Perdition mistakes
Alice in Wonderland picture Alice in Wonderland mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Alice leaves to think over Hamish's proposal and chases after the White Rabbit, the heels on her shoes change, but when she falls into the hole the heels are back once again.

Super Grover

More Alice in Wonderland mistakes
Star Wars: The Last Jedi picture Star Wars: The Last Jedi mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Finn is going to an escape pod to run away, he puts his pack down in front of it, seen again in a later shot. When Rose realises he's trying to run away, his pack has moved itself inside the pod.

Awesomolocity

More Star Wars: The Last Jedi mistakes
Tarzan's Greatest Adventure picture

Continuity mistake: In the scene towards the end of the film where we see Slade's body fall, it falls onto a submerged rock just below the surface of the water and there is a splash of water. In the next shot Tarzan looks down from the cliff above and Slade's body is on a large dry rock, a little distant from where the body originally fell.

keiko

More Tarzan's Greatest Adventure mistakes

XXX (2002)

XXX picture

Visible crew/equipment: When Xander and Yelena are in the restaurant and they are shown through the window from outside you can see the reflection of a film crew member in the window. (01:04:35)

More XXX mistakes
Time Bandits picture

Factual error: When the Titanic sinks all six dwarves and Kevin end up in the sea clutching a lifebelt. The water in which the Titanic sank was freezing - that is how most of the casualties died, by freezing, not drowning. In water like that you'd be lucky to stay conscious for more than a few minutes. Despite this none of them show the slightest effect of the cold. Maybe the dwarves have some 'magical' ability to withstand lethal cold, but Kevin doesn't even react to being plunged into freezing cold water. He'd be screaming in pain, but he doesn't even show the slightest sign of discomfort.

More Time Bandits mistakes
Enola Holmes picture

Factual error: The old percussion double barrel shotgun is firing modern shotgun shells, which would never work or fit in that gun, and furthermore are also made of plastic, wrong for the era.

More Enola Holmes mistakes
Ad Astra picture

Factual error: It is not possible that Pitt could have gone up to the ship when it was already blasting off. There was literally fire in the tunnel.

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: It was a bit confusing, but what I saw was a shower of sparks or hot particles and some fumes, and no fire in the tunnel until he was through the hatch. The makers may have been influenced by seeing vapour prior to a rocket launch, and then some rockets use a shower of electric sparks to ignite the engines. It was implausible, but no fire in the tunnel.

More Ad Astra mistakes
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure picture

Other mistake: Beethoven didn't seem fussed nor resentful of Napoleon being part of the group. Historically he temporarily admired him and wrote the Third Symphony inspired by Napoleon's ideals of Europe's new hope of enlightenment but later despised him after he crowned himself Emperor of France in 1804 and furiously scribbled out his name off the title page of his Third Symphony and named it Eroica which he originally titled it as "Bonaparte Symphony" due to his former admiration of Napoleon.

More Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure mistakes
The Lost City of Z picture

Plot hole: Searching for the source of the river, the raft is going downstream. Return trip it's also downstream. Generally, no matter where they are going, the rafts keep floating downstream.

More The Lost City of Z mistakes
The Mummy picture

Factual error: It is roughly 120-135 dB inside of a C-130, especially one that hasn't been specifically modified. It is so loud that it is painful to be in the cargo hold without hearing protection (besides it being outside of military regulations) and you certainly couldn't have a normal conversation while it was in flight.

More The Mummy mistakes
More Maleficent: Mistress of Evil mistakes
Hot Tub Time Machine picture

Continuity mistake: When Lou and Nick are playing pool in the bar, Lou goes to break the rack and misses. When Nick goes to break them, the balls are racked in a different pattern. (00:50:10)

More Hot Tub Time Machine mistakes
Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade picture Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade mistake picture

Visible crew/equipment: After Indy and Henry have escaped from Castle Brunwald, Indy jumps into one of the boats, pulls the motor starter cord and jumps back out, then just as he bends over to release the boat from the piling, right between Indy's legs the black covered arm of a hidden crewmember appears from under the tarp taking hold of the throttle, steering the boat away from the pier. (01:02:40)

Super Grover

More Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade mistakes
Close Encounters of the Third Kind picture

Other mistake: One visual that has always bothered me that I could not find in your list were the scenes when the mother ship first appears. It's enormous scale appears to dwarf Devil's Tower and the whole surrounding area actually, but when it moves over to the "landing strip" area and begins to rotate 180° (right-side up?), it suddenly seems to shrink to a much smaller size and mass during the slow revolution. On its originally-seen scale above/behind the tower, one would think that either the great ship's outer prongs would have been torn off, or more likely the impromptu landing site and most of Devil's Tower would have been destroyed as the huge craft rotated itself. The visual scales just do not stay consistent throughout the film's climactic final act.

More Close Encounters of the Third Kind mistakes

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.