Corrected entry: When Bond and the girl are trapped in the sunken ship, they take a big breath from their tanks and swim up the tunnel- why couldn't they put the tanks up the tunnel and then swim up below them?
Corrected entry: When Bond goes for the missile in the final showdown, a guard comes down from a catwalk, and Bond shoots him using his silenced Walther. However, despite the silencer, the gunshots can be heard , and it is not that the silencer seems to have been worn down, which would have made the gunshots audible.
Correction: Silencers (more correctly, 'suppressors') are semi-mythical. They do not produce the faint 'sput.' of film legend, but a sound pretty much like the one you hear in the film. One mistake cancelling out another, perhaps, but the film is accurate in its depiction nonetheless.
Corrected entry: This isn't really a mistake, but why does Bond take a silencer equipped pistol if he is going to clobber the first guard he meets, steal his machine gun and start a fire fight with it? Isn't half the point of espionage to get out without the bad guys knowing you were there?
Correction: Bond did not expect to be challenged: It is no mistake.
Corrected entry: Villain Elliot Carver risks World War 3 by trying to incite war between China and the UK, all so he can obtain exclusive broadcasting rights in China? Seems awfully short-sighted.
Correction: He's crazy, he believes those rights give him a lot of power, make him untouchable. He doesn't care about world war 3. Of course it's short-sighted, that's why he is crazy. Crazy is not always stupid.
Corrected entry: In the opening scene it is discussed whether the soviet nuclear torpedoes will explode when hit by the cruise missile. One of the officers says it might. But nuclear bombs can't go off unless the actual trigger mechanism is activated. They do not contain powder or dynamite or anything which can explode when heated.
Correction: Incorrect. Nukes have a core of fissionable materiel surrounded by high explosives. While there is no chance that there would be a nuclear detonation, the cruise missile could cause the explosives to detonate contaminating the area with highly radioactive debris and flinging more of it into the atmosphere to be spread.
Corrected entry: Bond is shown meeting his American colleague at a US Air Force base in the 'South China Sea.' In actual fact, the base you see in the background is RAF Lakenheath, in Suffolk, England, as shown by the 'LN' tailcodes on the F-15s.
Correction: Unless you can identify the physical buildings as being at RAF Lakenheath, the tail codes don't mean much. F-16s from Alaska (Tailcode AK) can be seen in photographs taken in the Middle East.
Corrected entry: In the beginning of the movie, when the cruise missile is fired against the "terrorist marketplace," that missile cannot be ordered to self-destruct (by the famous "red button") because it is out of range. However, the on-board camera of the missile seems to be still within range, because it continues to transmit "live coverage" from its flight, which can be received and displayed in acceptable quality at the command post.
Corrected entry: Bond and Wai Lin should have had one hell of a bend or an embolism when they popped up out of the water after diving on the Devonshire. Not only did they unnecessarily ditch their diving gear (they could have just pushed the tanks in front of them to get up that pipe) but they had an uncontrolled ascent from well over 30 metres depth. Yet they show no signs of any decompression illnesses and carry on as normal when they reach the surface. Impossible.
Correction: If they have not been under for very long, then they might not get decompression sickness (the "bends"). And it is possible to exhale the entire way up to avoid a pneumothorax or emboli.
Corrected entry: When preparing for the HALO jump, Bond is told that there is a danger of him getting tangled in his parachute and drowning when he hits the water. This is extremely unlikely since he is already breathing from the cylinders on his back via regulator which is firmly attached to his face. There's no way the parachute or any of the cords would be able to constrict the HP air hoses on the diving gear.
Corrected entry: Right at the end of the film M is told that "Carver went down with the ship" and that Bond got out alive, M dictates a short statement to Moneypenny. After this, in the next scene, the British fleet is looking for Bond and Wei Lin.
Correction: Not nessarily a mistake. They know he is alive, they just don't know where he is. And as he doesn't answer when they call him, it is obviously a common thing for Bond to disappear.
Corrected entry: The officer who says "Sound the general alarm" right at the beginning of the film on HMS Devonshire is wearing a badge of the rank Lieutenant Commander when he is announcing that the MIGs are flying over. A second later when he says "officer of the watch, maximum speed" his rank has changed to Commander. (00:12:10)
Correction: No, the man who says, "Sound the general alarm" is the XO (number 2 in command), and the man who says, "Officer of the watch, maximum speed" is the Commanding Officer (Captain). He just comes onto the bridge when he says so. He was probably off duty and in his cabin. The voices aren't the same.
Corrected entry: Carver gives off the impression that he is a very intelligent man, (as most megalomaniacs do), yes he is not smart enough to run out of the way when a huge drill is coming towards him. Bond punches him and leaves him to die, yet theres nothing stopping him from taking 2 steps to the right and avoiding the drill, which is several feet in front of him when Bond leaves. He just stands there and screams like a child, letting it kill him.
Correction: He was probably in shock, and froze.
Corrected entry: In the beginning of the movie, when the cruise missile is fired against the "terrorist marketplace," that missile cannot be ordered to self-destruct because it is out of range. But as a tomahawk cruise missile can only fly 880 km/h it can't at that time be more than 30 km away. That can not possibly be out of range.
Correction: Says you. It's very clear from the film that the missile is in the mountains, and is using a terrain-following flight profile, staying low to avoid detection. Under those circumstances, it's entirely plausible that the signal would be blocked by the mountainous terrain.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Carver dies, why would the designer of the stealth boat make it possible for the drill to come all the way into the control room?
Correction: In all the chaos, the mechanics of the drill could have been damaged, enabling it to come into the control room.
Corrected entry: When the helicopter crashes into the building it destroys a wall, which bends inwards suspiciously like card or plywood before smashing to show daylight behind it. (01:20:30)
Correction: They're in a very poor area of the city, it's not unlikely that the buildings would be constructed of cheap materials.
Corrected entry: Why are Stamper's people filming the murders of the surviving sailors? If that footage is released, it would be strange, because the Chinese would of course never film killing British sailors. Furthermore the Chinese were only present in planes, and Carver is trying to make it look like it was the planes that sank the ship and killed the crew. How would the Chinese film the killing from planes?
Correction: As to why Stamper takes photos - these photos are for Carver's paper 'Tomorrow's News'. They wouldn't be released by the Chinese government - M says to Bond in the car that the Vietnamese authorities recovered the bodies. Presumably Carver's paper will claim the photos come from the Vietnamese authorities. Additionally (although less likely and relevant), in a deleted scene and in the book adaptation it is mentioned that Stamper makes snuff films - this footage potentially will go into one.
Corrected entry: In the engine room Wai Lin shows that she has only one bullet left. She shoots once, jumps behind another computer (with no bullet left - there's no sound of her picking up a gun) then shoots again, which is the second shot from a gun with one bullet.
Correction: If you look carefully you can see a second bullet in the clip, due to the clip's configuration it is below and mostly covered by the first bullet. If nothing else there's probably still one in the chamber too.
Corrected entry: Stamper's men do their best to do damage to Bond's BMW in the parking garage using hammers and gunfire, but nothing happens. Later, in the car chase, the windows are smashed by bullets. So why change the windows from bulletproof to destructible? It can't have to do something with Bond's security system since it would be illogical that the car is indestructible with engines off but the driver can be shot sitting in the car.
Correction: The BMW's windows aren't smashed by bullets. The front window is destroyed when Carver's men realize that their assault rifles aren't penetrating the bulletproof glass and visibly switch to firing the underslung 40mm grenade launchers; the back window isn't seen, but appears to be smashed by another grenade launcher shot from the rear. It's definitely not bullets, though.
Corrected entry: Wai-Lin passes Bond the 'detonators' for the mines they planted on the stealth ship to destroy it; but the mines they planted were timed mines, not remote mines, and Carver had already sent his men to have them removed anyway.
Corrected entry: When Bond comes back to the surface after diving down to the Devonshire we see some islands very close behind in the background. First, these would definitely have shown up on Devonshire's radar, and second, those islands are not 11 miles away.
Correction: Character decisions are not movie mistakes. The tanks would obscure their view at the very least.
tw_stuart