The Core

Plot hole: When the crew's vessel gets stuck in the giant geode and the crystal jams the 'impeller', the magma begins to fill the chamber. They see it melting the crystals, yet they frantically continue working to free the crystal from the impeller and lose a crewman...and yet when they get back in the vessel, the magma indeed melts out the crystal that jammed the impeller. With 2 geologists onboard you would think they'd know that.

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Suggested correction: At no point do you see any of the crystals melting.

Revealing mistake: In the Trafalgar Square scene when the double decker bus flips onto its side there is a shot of it from the front, and it has no engine or radiator. (00:08:10)

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Suggested correction: Some buses in the Uk have their engines and radiators in the back of the bus.

Not that one. Sorry to expose my inner geek but that is a 1961 AEC/Leyland Routemaster bus and the engine and radiator were mounted in the front.

Factual error: When they realize they need to make the last nuclear explosion 30% bigger, they simply pull the fuel rods from the reactor and set them next to the bomb. This is ludicrous, a nuclear bomb is a carefully engineered piece of equipment, with carefully shaped charges imploding the radioactive material. Setting some fuel rods next to the bomb will accomplish nothing.

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Suggested correction: By adding the fuel rods, what they did was not alter the initial reaction to the charges. What it does is amplify the reaction after the charges have gone off. Adding more reactive material increases the size of the blast.

This would have merely added more neutrons in the vicinity of the bomb's core, causing it to go prompt critical before the implosion charges could compress it. The result would be a fizzle.

Factual error: When Becca is waiting to be called before the flight review board and while standing in front of the board she is wearing earrings that hang below the bottom of her ear lobes. Military regulations only allow small spherical conservative earrings centered in the middle of the ear lobe.

Brian Cote

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Suggested correction: NASA Air Force actually are given special exemptions that are required by traditional military personnel.

Factual error: In the very first shot of the movie David's watch shows an invalid time. If it were 10:30, the hour hand would be between 10 and 11. The hour hand is exactly at the 10:00 mark even though the minute hand is at 30 minutes.

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Suggested correction: There are actually watches where they design it so that the hour hand jumps from hour to hour as the minute hand travels. This is to aid some people in reading watch dials that have trouble otherwise.

Factual error: In a few shots through the movie the gauges or screens displaying information, they use "PPI" for pounds per sq. inch instead of PSI. PPI is wrong it's always PSI. The first time you see it is in the scene when they just launch the ship right before they pierce the crust with Braz and Serge for sure.

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Suggested correction: They are measuring pounds per linear inch which is PPI.

Pounds per Linear Inch is PLI, not PPI.

Bishop73

Pressure is defined as force over area. Any force (i.e, pounds) over any area (length × width, i.e. inches squared or meters squared or...squared) as defined in 1961 if not earlier.

Noman

Factual error: While in the giant geode, the inflowing magma is referred to as lava. It is only lava when it is erupted onto the surface of the earth. In any case the mantle is nowhere near as liquid as is shown, it is almost completely solid. (01:05:30)

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Suggested correction: They were melting everything in front of them, and it would have stayed liquid for at least a bit after they passed. If they were near any magma flows near the geode, then it is possible that it would have flowed into the void.

Continuity mistake: When Zimsky comes up with the plan, he's seen exhaling smoke from his cigarette. The camera angle changes and he exhales smoke again but he never took another drag from the cigarette. (01:35:33)

MCKD

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Suggested correction: If you don't fully exhale right away, there will be subsequent smoke if you breathe out again.

Character mistake: When Zimsky talks about using DESTINI again, he says something like "a shock can stop a heart, and it can also restart it." That is a fundamentally false assumption that TV and movies get wrong all the time. Once a heart has actually stopped you can never shock it back. You can only shock a heart that is out of normal rhythm.

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Suggested correction: The premise is the core, like a heart, is still beating. A shock destabilizes the rhythm of the heart, and without further help, the heart will stop beating. Destini did this to the core by sending a shock and destabilizing the core and without help, the core would stop spinning. A shock to a destabilized heart can shock and restart the heart back to normal rhythm. That is the theory of Destini restarting the core. At no point has the core or the heart fully stopped or flatlined.

Revealing mistake: The underground crystal chamber is completely encased in a cobalt shell, yet a light source has to come from somewhere to allow all the crystals to reflect in the dark. The light from the ship wouldn't have been enough to make them all reflect and the magma had not yet breached the ceiling.

jbrbbt

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Suggested correction: The lights are bright enough. Standard headlights and flashlights easily light a couple hundred meters. The ship had numerous lights so this is easily feasible. Once the magma breached, then you could see even more.

Suggested correction: They have handheld flashlights that can easily hit between 1000 to 2000 meters. The lights from the ship would have been more than powerful enough to cause the crystals to reflect light.

Factual error: When they land the space shuttle in the river canal, they are approaching too low, so the commander commands to retract the gear. That would be impossible, as the landing gear of a space shuttle is controlled only by gravity. The gear can't be raised again after being deployed.

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Suggested correction: The landing gears can be hydraulically retracted, per NASA.

Citation needed. NASA's website says "The nose and main landing gear can be retracted only during ground operations".

They're literally on the ground, hence ground operations.

Other mistake: At the end of the film when the carrier battle group is searching for the deep earth team the carrier captain is wearing a baseball cap which reads "CVN-72 USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN". In the credits he is described as "USS CONSTELLATION CAPTAIN" but in the acknowledgments it thanks the captain and crew of USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN. (01:55:45 - 02:03:45)

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Suggested correction: It seems this mistake has more to it. Because there are no external shots showing exactly what carrier it is by the hull number, there is no way to tell on screen what ship it is, besides the radar dishes on top suggest it is a Kitty Hawk class carrier (so it's the Constellation). The end credits list both ships, but on screen they say it was the Lincoln, so the credits should say the USS Abraham Lincoln Captain. I don't know why they would credit the Lincoln crew if they only used the name on their ball caps.

Revealing mistake: When the ship breaks the wall outside the geode chamber we see the rock reform and harden as soon as the ship is through, so how could the magma leak into the geode if that rock had already hardened?

jbrbbt

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Suggested correction: Because the ship had weakened that spot of the outer shell enough that the magma pressure eventually punched through.

Continuity mistake: On the ship, Dr. Zimsky reveals that project DESTINI is an acronym and that the last letter is "I" and not "Y." (INI standing for INItiative). When Rat is at his computer, he goes to the website for Project Destiny, with a "Y" and not an "I." This same thing happens when the Project Destiny subtitle flashes across the screen.

More mistakes in The Core

Dr. Josh Keyes: So what's this about then?
FBI Agent: We don't know. You have higher security clearance than us.
Dr. Josh Keyes: I have security clearance?
FBI Agent: Yes sir, we're just here to take you to your jet.
Dr. Josh Keyes: I have a jet?!

More quotes from The Core

Trivia: If you look closely with time-frame advance during the pigeon scene you will see a fish "flying" into a window instead of a pigeon. (00:08:35)

More trivia for The Core

Question: Why in this film should NASA and the military handle the operation? It is neither related to space nor related to war. Some institute related to geo sciences should handle it.

Answer: To put it simply: NASA's got all the technology and the people trained to use it, and the military is involved in every government project, not just acts of war. Also, the military has a vast and efficient logistics system making it possible to bring the major pieces of equipment together in the short amount of time available.

Phixius

Answer: They could just hire a bunch of oil rig drillers instead if you want. All they have to do is drill after all.

More questions & answers from The Core

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