Revealing mistake: When Alex and Dante are heading for the bow thrusters, there is one shot of the Seabourne Legend cutting through the water. In one shot you can see the wake from the filming boat before where the Seabourne Legend has been. (01:27:00)
Revealing mistake: When Seaborn Legend hits the Eindhoven Lion, some of the sparks come from places that are not making contact. (01:30:00)
Revealing mistake: When we see Annie looking back at Seaborn Legend just after it hit the Heindhoven Lion, the Seaborn Legend looks like it is superimposed onto the water. (01:30:30)
Revealing mistake: The boxes that fall out of the truck are the same three boxes over and over again.
Revealing mistake: In the scene where the motorboat hits the ramp and lands in a store, you can see while it's in the air that the propeller isn't turning.
Revealing mistake: In the very beginning of the film, when Alex rides his motorcycle to catch the bad guy, when he flies through the air you can his stunt double who has blonde curly hair. And when the camera goes to a close-up to Alex, you can see his hair is black.
Answer: There is no logical reason for it and it is purely for cinematic theatrics. It's a movie myth that cars, boats, etc. immediately explode upon impact. In real life, explosions rarely happen that way.
raywest ★