Corrected entry: Characters that are supposed to be blood relatives, but have no familial resemblance.
Common movie and TV mistakes since 4 Dec '18, 00:00
This is a list of mistakes, things done wrong, etc. that happen so frequently onscreen we barely notice any more. 'Movie logic', stupid behaviours, and everything related.
Corrected entry: In movies in which men dress up and pretend to be women (eg. Tootsie, Mrs. Doubtfire, etc), when going out as a "woman", they are wearing dresses 100% of the time, but real women around them are commonly wearing pants a lot of the time (something the men as women don't do).
Corrected entry: When a man proposes to a woman and gives her an engagement ring, it always fits perfectly on her finger.
Correction: Choosing a ring takes a while as the man/woman will always try to find the "perfect" ring. It's likely that the recipient's partner will know which ring size to choose. This does make sense as the couple will have known each other for a few years at least.
Factual error: Rainfall in movies and television is almost always depicted as a sudden and heavy downpour (sometimes cued by a crack of thunder and/or lightning strike) as opposed to gradually building up to it. This is pretty rare in real life.
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Suggested correction: Cloudbursts and showers are that way, and they are pretty common in some areas, specially near mountains. I don't know about New York but in several Latin American countries they are not eyebrow rising worth.
I'd add that along with the rain suddenly pouring, it falls in straight lines - with the exact same distance between streams - that are perpendicular to the ground. (All rainfall is vertical, never at an angle).
Character mistake: People who run after cars when they drive away expecting to catch up with it on foot.
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Suggested correction: Generally, people aren't thinking too forwardly or rationally when someone they're pursuing is about to get away. Their lizard-brain just thinks "getting away -> chase," not considering how unlikely (though not impossible) it is for them to either catch up with the car before it fully accelerates or when it makes a turn, then either pull the driver out of the car or jump on the car.
Corrected entry: Whenever a man goes into the ladies' restroom to talk to a woman, it's always conveniently empty.
Correction: This is more of a cliche than a mistake. I have entered hundreds of public restrooms in my life and a good number of them have been empty when I did. It's not a mistake for a movie to show an empty ladies room in a particular scene, no matter how many other films do the same.
Corrected entry: When somebody gets shot and dies, they don't grunt out in pain. Their brain shuts down, along with the central nervous system, and they drop like a sack of potatoes. In pretty much every movie when a bad guy gets shot they exhale an "ahhhh", or an "uhhhh." That can happen when one is injured and in pain, not when they're shot dead. Plus when somebody is shot at a distance it's impossible to hear sound especially through deafening gunfire. Even the sound of suppressed weapons are louder than a grunt.
Correction: This is incorrect. Even when the brain is severely damaged it often takes a few seconds for someone to actually expire. The "dying breath" or "death rattle" is a very real phenomenon and even happens when people have been shot in the head. A fatal brain injury doesn't shut down the entire body as quickly as flipping a light switch makes the room dark.
Corrected entry: When men wake up in the morning they often look clean shaven.
Correction: Also, key word is look. Some men have light colored facial hair that doesn't reveal itself to the eye. But can to the touch.
Corrected entry: Whenever the antagonist tells the protagonist to kill him/her, the protagonist doesn't do it but simply lets the antagonist live and walks away. Big mistake because the antagonist will definitely come back for revenge. If the protagonist just killed the antagonist when he/she asks to die, that would give the protagonist a quicker victory.
Correction: In most films I see this in, the protagonist is better than the antagonist and isn't a cold-blooded murderer. The protagonist is content with letting the judicial system take care of punishment. It's when the antagonist escapes police custody or is found not guilty he or she comes back for revenge. There are many movies where the protagonist then kills the antagonist, but only in self defense of life.
Corrected entry: Whenever a character comes home at night to their house or apartment, every single light has been left on.
Correction: I wouldn't really call this a mistake. Especially depending on the area they live. Often times people leave their lights on when they are away to make it appear that people are still home so it's less likely they get broken into and robbed.
Agreed. My family frequently left lights and/or the TV on when we were away when I was growing up.
Yes, leaving lights on in your home when you're away is normal, but it seems that every single light in every room is a common occurrence in movies and TV shows.
Could you give some examples? I don't remember ever seeing this happen. It certainly doesn't happen every time.
Corrected entry: Whenever someone comes home with some groceries, a baguette is frequently seen sticking out of the bag.
Corrected entry: People getting into their car and adjusting their rear view mirror, despite it being their car that they were the last one to drive, so what needs changing? Of course it's normally just to give a reason for them to see something or someone behind them they otherwise would have missed.
Correction: Also, you don't always sit in the exact same position when getting in the vehicle. I adjust my mirrors sometimes simply cause I slouch when I drive, then later I'll sit up straight, then later I'd lean back while driving. Each time changing my point of view through the mirrors.
Corrected entry: Whenever the plot of a film or TV show revolves around a judged competition, whether for plot convenience or dramatic effect, the protagonist(s) often will perform or be judged last, even though this so frequently happening would be very unusual in real life.
Correction: This would be a valid observation if all movies that have a judged competition and the protagonists being the last to go were somehow connected to each other. But as each movie stands on its own, it's not really a plot hole or any other kind of mistake that the main characters are the last to go, because the improbability of that happening is relative to the given film itself and doesn't factor into other films dealing with the same subject.
Corrected entry: Any modern movie that is a period piece depicting the 1920s or 1930s shows old dilapidated houses with paint peeling off. Other things are obviously aged and weathered. Things like screen doors are rusty, or a gas station pump is weathered and obviously old. In reality, these things were relatively new back then. The paint on the house should look normal, and nothing should be rusty or weathered since they had not yet had the chance to age.
Correction: Just because a house or building from the 20's or 30's would be old now doesn't mean they didn't also have old house back then too. Plus, the rusted, paint peeling, etc is indicating poverty and the hardship times of that era. People didn't worry about small repairs and cosmetics when they didn't have food.
Corrected entry: A more recent goof in the action and spy thriller genres, a group of henchmen setting out on a mission in black SUVs will be tailgating each other. If any car other than the one in the rear were to slam on their brakes, it could potentially cause a pileup.
Correction: Some police and military teams practise driving fast and close to prevent other vehicles coming between the ones in the convoy. Since the bad guys in current movies are often shown to be ex-military, this may be the reason they drive like that. That's speculation but it is no more or less credible than them being licensed to carry automatic weapons or explosives. Depends on the quality of the movie and the willing suspension of disbelief of the audience.
The difference being that police and military teams will be sanctioned to drive like that. In addition to being a dangerous driving habit, tailgating is also illegal. So henchmen and mercenaries driving like that in civilian vehicles could also draw the attention of law enforcement who could pull them over and put a monkey wrench in their mission plans, especially if they discover illegal weapons.
Factual error: Characters, typically the hero, can crash through windows without so much as getting a cut on them.
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Suggested correction: Depending on the age of the window, that's the whole point. Safety glass is designed to break in a way to stop people getting hurt.
Not every window is made from safety glass. When was the last time you saw a movie where a main character crashed through a store window, office building window, house window, plate glass window, etc. and ended up getting shredded to ribbons?
You don't often see blood but items of clothing do get ripped. One example I can think of off the top of my head is The Last Stand where Arnie gets chucked through a glass door. His jacket gets rips on it.
For whatever it's worth, the one time in my life I had to break through a window in an emergency situation, it was definitely not safety glass and I got some fairly deep cuts even though I thought I'd cleared away the pieces. Also in spite of everything I made sure to smash it with an object because I knew there was no way I was just going to be able to leap through a solid pane of glass, and I suspect even if I did I'd just end up impaling myself on a huge shard.
Corrected entry: It's very common for shows, games, or movies that take place after the end of the world to still show people using fossil fuels like gasoline and diesel in vehicles. However, with the production of gas having ended, this could not last very long. Even when properly stored, civilian gas supplies would go bad and be unusable after about a year, diesel a little longer but not by much. Private stashes of gas, like in cans, would only last about 5 months. And the military supplies of gas would, at best, last for 5 years.
Correction: Stored gasoline is typically treated with fuel stabilizer (about 2 ounces of stabilizer will treat 5 gallons of gasoline and prolong its shelf-life by years). All of my stored gasoline is treated with stabilizer, and I've used cans that are 5 years old and older. Even untreated gasoline can have a remarkably long shelf-life: Some years ago, I sold an old Volvo that had been sitting in my garage with a dead battery for 11 years; the buyer brought a fresh battery and installed it just to test the starter, to see if the engine was frozen. To everyone's amazement, the old car immediately started, revved and purred like a kitten, burning the gasoline in its tank from over a decade earlier.
Correction: This all highly depends on the quality of the gasoline and the amount of ethanol and its exposure to oxygen. I've heard about jerrycans of gasoline 25 years old still usable. It's also possible to purify the gasoline again so it's usable by filtering it. Don't need a huge refinery for small amounts.
Factual error: When the police are on the phone with a suspect who is using a landline and they try to keep them on the line long enough to trace the number and location. If the film takes place after the advent of Caller ID, then this information would be available instantly.
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Other mistake: Characters in movies and TV shows always type things out on the screen without any typos or their flow of thoughts read like a professional writer, not a regular person.
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Suggested correction: Perhaps not everyone is as good a writer as the ones you see in the films, but films are meant to bend reality anyway. Good writing is a virtue and wanting to make one's own film character a good writer is not a mistake.
Character mistake: People who carry a loaded pistol, or keep a loaded pistol next to them, that never have a round in the chamber, just so the character can cock it right before a shootout. Or when a round is suppose to be in the chamber and the person cocks the gun anyways and no round is ejected.
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Suggested correction: On the first point, this is not a mistake. Proper gun handing would dictate that you don't have a round in the chamber until you are going to use the gun. On your second point, you are assuming too much that there is a round in the chamber.
Proper gun handling would be to use the safety. It's ridiculous for a character to keep an unchambered gun that they're planning on using, or think they might use. On the second point, I'm not assuming anything. I'm saying when it's suppose to be chambered because we saw it chambered, or it was fired and a round was chambered, etc. I didn't say when it's assumed to be chambered.
You are right that it would be ridiculous for a character to keep an unchambered gun they are planning on using, but that is not my point. My point is that proper gun safety would be to not normally keep a round in the chamber unless you were going to use it. Cocking the gun shows the audience he intends on using it. Before that, you didn't know his intent. On the second point, OK, you provided additional clarification.
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Correction: Blood relatives do not always resemble each other.
BaconIsMyBFF
No, but they frequently do, and movies rarely reflect that.
Phaneron ★
That's not really a "common mistake", though since it's never a mistake to have blood relatives that do not resemble each other.
BaconIsMyBFF
Yes, you are right about that.
Phaneron ★
I mostly agree. Family members often look too different to be biologically related. Even if an effort is made, for example, to have a son look like his father, some things don't sync - like a different face shape/bone structure or skin tone (not due to tanning). One example of father/son dissimilarities are in The War of the Worlds - the boy playing Tom Cruise's son has a completely different facial shape/structure. Regarding skin tone, in Boyhood the sister of Mason has a different skin tone than the rest of the family - and it stands out.
KeyZOid
I'm probably a bit sensitive to this since my family members don't all have a strong resemblance to each other, but it's absolutely possible, especially if your family tree is diverse in genetics/ appearance. It happens more often than not in movies, but it's not a mistake. (And who's to say that in many of these cases people weren't adopted?).
TonyPH