Corrected entry: Icarus is shown in low earth orbit, and would pass from horizon to horizon in under 15 minutes - yet the beam is always vertical as if fixed overhead. In low earth orbit, the chances of Icarus being right overhead Korea or Iceland at any given moment are quite slim. On the other hand, if it were in a geostationary orbit, it would be over the equator, and the beam would be at least 50 degrees from the vertical over Iceland. However, from that position it couldn't also target Korea. If there is a geostationary orbit visible from both Iceland and Korea, it would be very low on the horizon and thus useless for hitting a target.
Corrected entry: You can't electrocute someone with a medical defibrillator, even if you do hit them with both pads. They come equipped with a very sensitive device which stops the current flow if a heartbeat is detected.
Correction: I am a paramedic and that is not always true. You can still do some serious damage with a defibrillator. They don't always stop the current flow.
Corrected entry: When Zao is having DNA alteration he still has the diamonds embedded in his face - what's the point in getting a face change? If they can be removed why hasn't he done this first? If they can't be removed he'll have a different face with a whole mess of diamonds embedded in it, which would be quite a major giveaway. (00:42:30)
Correction: In the scene previous to the one where Bond confronts Zao, you can see the progress of his face change. All the stage one photos have his diamonds still intact and in situ. Therefore it is part of the treatment that the diamonds are still in place when Bond finds him.
Corrected entry: When Bond is about to sneak into the restricted area of the ice palace, he takes out two guards by opening a valve and causing steam to explode over them. He opens the valve by turning a wheel, which appears to be metal, using bare hands in sub-zero temperatures. Under those conditions his hands would have stuck to the metal and Bond would have left a good few layers of his skin on the wheel. (01:14:55)
Correction: Only if the metal or his hands had liquid water on them. (That's why your tongue sticks to freezing metal - it's wet). There's no water on the wheel, and I doubt if Bond has sweaty palms in that temperature.
Corrected entry: When Bond and Jinx are trying to escape in the helicopter, they open the door and start the conveyor. The red car drops. Quite a few seconds later, the yellow car is dropped. Yet, later, we see the cars nose down in the mud about 20 feet apart. How did this happen when the plane was moving at such speed? (01:59:30)
Correction: This assumes the two cars falls perfectly vertically, and they won't. Their center of gravity, air resistance, shape, and so on will all make a difference. They could land miles apart or practically on top of each other, as happens here.
Corrected entry: During the virtual training scene,just after James meets Charles-he ejects his clip from his gun and reaches behind his back to get a full one,the slide is forward when he inserts the clip...meaning he would have had to manually chamber a round,but there isn't a sound to say that he did, meaning his chamber would have been empty.
Correction: He still had one in the chamber otherwise the chamber would be in a locked back position. He reloaded while he had one shot left. Something I was trained to do as well. Count your shots, don't give it a chance to be completely empty.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Bond steals Graves's rocket-powered ice vehicle, there is an overhead shot looking down at the vehicle (just after Graves says "bring me the generals". At the top of the frame, you can see a white cable pulling the ice vehicle along. (01:27:35)
Correction: It's not a cable. It's a deep rut in the ice made by Graves' previous record breaking attempts in the rocket sled. You can see this in the overhead wide shots of Bond escaping in the sled.
Corrected entry: When Bond is driving in the Chevy in Havana, look at the speedometer. It's clearly at zero. (00:33:10)
Correction: The speedo could conceivably be broken. They do that. Chevrolet parts are not available in Cuba due to the US import blockade.
Corrected entry: During the fencing scene between 007 and Graves, there is a shot when Graves is removing his fencing coat. There is a line that is used to trigger the fake blood from his hand going up the inside of the jacket arm. (00:56:15)
Correction: Sorry, that is the wire that registers a hit. Every fencer has one to ring the alarm when your opponent gets a point. Immediately after this scene, Bond takes off his jacket and there is the same wire in the same spot. As a consolation to you however, the blood is falsified using a wire. You can see it hanging from Graves' sleeve when he sucks on the wound and yells: "Yes, I bloody well want to continue.".
Corrected entry: The Aston and the Jaguar do not have space in the engine bay to install the hardware they were holding in the movie. Even for the prop cars they replaced the engines with Ford V8s, so how could the real deal have had enough space - it couldn't. Apart from that, why would anybody buy an Aston, then throw away the engine and put in a pushrod V8? Might as well start with another car altogether. Practicality does come into play here.
Correction: Q Branch obviously have the technology available to put the hardware in place. C'mon, this is a Bond film, for heaven's sake - a little suspension of disbelief is called for.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Bond is in the rocket sled being chased by the huge beam of light, Graves uses the laser to cut a huge section of ice out of the cliff, it cuts about 100 meters without problems. But when the laser is used on the ice palace, it just slowly melts instead of being completely annihilated. (01:35:55)
Correction: Icarus has different settings, ranging from the illumination shown during the demonstration, to the full power used on Bond. Graves, being an unpleasant sort, wants Jinx to drown rather than be vaporised by the Icarus beam, hence his choice to use a lower setting to melt the palace rather than destroy it immediately.
Corrected entry: Bond enters the first hotel with long hair and a scruffy beard. By the time the 'massage' lady came to his room, how did he give himself such a neat haircut? It couldn't have been done by a hairdresser at the hotel, because surely they would have also given him an equally neat shave too - and he would have no need for the electric razor he was using.
Correction: I wouldn't say that is a "movie mistake" though. We as the audience are obviously supposed to surmise that there is some sort of time lapse between the time we see him with the electric razor, and the time he is at the front desk in the previous scene, and we as the audience of course don't know exactly how long that time lapse is. Could have been hours for all we know. Bond could have had plenty of time to give himself the shave and haircut.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Bond is using the rocket sledge, he ends up using its brake-chute to paraglide and kite-surf. Brake-chutes are round (see dragsters, jet fighters,... ), an aerofoil turns speed into lift.
Correction: It doesn't present a cross section to the airflow so it won't produce lift. It opens up vertically into the airstream and produces drag and hence a braking effect, just like it is supposed to do.
Corrected entry: When Bond revives Jinx in the hot spring, she sputters a bit and starts talking. Previously, she had been unconscious and underwater. She should have lungs full of water to spit out before she could speak. (01:40:15)
Correction: She passed out because of oxygen deprivation and extreme cold and was revived in a warm bath. This is perfectly feasible.
Corrected entry: Towards the end of the film when Jinx tries to level out the plane, she stabilizes it at just over 5,000 feet and then starts the fight with Miranda. Yet when Jinx and Bond are in the helicopter when it is falling out of the sky the altitude they fall from is shown on the helicopter's altimeter as over 7,000 feet, and that's after dropping for a while. (01:58:50)
Correction: This is entirely possible because unless either of them, or anyone before, had reset the altimeter when the plane was on the ground it is very likely that there would be a disparity. Altimeters need to be constantly altered during flights to remain accurate, and pilots are normally given readings by Air Traffic Control. Bond and Jinx didn't get this either.
Corrected entry: When the suitcase of diamonds explodes, surely the diamonds that caught the face of Zao, and other soldiers, would cut right through him/them, as diamonds are the hardest material on Earth. Instead they seem to have been implanted into his skin. (00:08:20)
Correction: Being the hardest material on Earth doesn't mean that you can ignore the rules of friction. Once you've slowed the punching object down, it's embedded. The diamonds that were lodged in Zao's face may have bounced off other objects. He was lucky, though.
Corrected entry: When Bond is at the Ice Palace the car is invisible when he's sneaking around, but when he opens the door you can plainly see the wing mirror through the car window, if the car is invisible you wouldn't be able to see any of the car's exterior. (01:13:40)
Correction: As the wing mirror is rather handy while driving, Q would undoubtedly have made sure that the adaptive camouflage was designed in such a way that the wing mirrors could still be used while invisible - probably something cunning involving the glass in the windows.
Corrected entry: Why do the U.S. give up after sending one rocket against the Icarus satellite? Why don't they just send 50 or 100 rockets up at the same time, all coming from different directions? There would be no way the Icarus satellite could shoot them all down. That would have stopped the bad guy's master plan much sooner. (01:43:10)
Correction: Due to concerns about possible violations of space weaponry treaties, the anti-satellite missile programme was shut down in the late eighties. While the US would presumably have a few still lying around - and use one here - there were only a few ever constructed. It seems unlikely that they'd have more than a couple available to them, and Icarus would easily be able to deal with that.
Corrected entry: During the Iceland scenes, Bond cuts a hole in the surface of the ice and then swims through the water. As the surface is frozen, the water itself would have been close to freezing. How does Bond manage to swim in it with no protection against the cold? He doesn't even display any discomfort at swimming with his eyes open. (01:20:00)
Correction: It is quite possible to swim in water that's close to freezing - there are groups in Russia and probably many other cold countries who do this for fun, wearing only normal swimwear. Bond is not in the water for long enough for any problems to set in.
Corrected entry: After Graves and Bond's fencing battle they shake with their right hands. By tradition all fencers shake with their left. Something going back hundreds of years about never releasing your weapon. (00:56:35)
Correction: Both Bond and Graves have a certain disdain for tradition and each seems to recognise that in the other. Using the wrong hand is an acknowledgement of that.
Correction: The beam is not always vertical: when it's shot in Korea, it is about 30 degrees from the vertical. The satellite is not geostationary and the bad guy had already planned where and when to fire, so he could have prepared Icarus for that.