Hollow Man

Hollow Man (2000)

31 corrected entries

(4 votes)

Corrected entry: Apparently the serum used to make Sebastian invisible also makes him incredibly strong. When he kills Carter, he is able to lift him up into the air with one arm, he has to weigh at least 200 pounds.

pross79

Correction: It has been proven time and again through medical science that an increase in adrenaline can also give people an incredible amount of strength. This usually happens in moments of extreme anger or fear.

Corrected entry: Gorillas are almost exclusively herbivores. They have been observed eating small insects and grubs but nothing larger. So why does Isabelle eat a rat at the beginning of the film? The serum may have turned her into a crazed killer, as it does with Sebastian, but it hasn't changed the structure of her teeth and palate, biochemistry of her digestive system and so on, all of which would be required. She might kill or torture the rat, but she'd never eat it.

Correction: This entry is wrong. Gorillas can, and do eat meat, so the actions of the gorilla are believable. From feedingnature.com: "Gorillas will sometimes eat meat. They can catch small animals such as mice, rats, or birds and will eat these animals if they lack protein in their diet. The silverback gorilla has been known to eat meat and might even attack and eat other primates." Even if you dispute this fact, most people would believe that a gorilla is certainly capable of eating a rat.

Correction: Gorillas do sometimes eat meat, especially small animals. Also, Isabelle may not be getting fed the right foods resorting to her eating a rat. Humans will resort to drinking their own urine without access to water for a period of time, it's not far fetched that a gorilla will eat something that will be harmful to its body in a similar circumstance.

Gorillas do NOT eat rats. Inventing Deus Ex Machina explanations for a factual error (Isabelle was underfed so she was desperate for food!) does not invalidate the error. The posting needs a little more detail but is absolutely correct.

Wild gorillas have been documented (on camera) feeding on freshly-killed monkeys. Like chimpanzees and humans, gorillas are omnivores and are perfectly capable of eating and digesting raw meat.

Charles Austin Miller

I think speculation about her eating it because she's not fed a proper diet isn't valid. But it's plausible the serum made her vicious where she ate the rat. To say her teeth and digestive system are the reason why she wouldn't/couldn't eat the rat isn't valid either. My dog once ate my sock despite not having the teeth or digestive system required to eat socks.

Bishop73

To add, it was noted that the gorilla's mind has been affected by being invisible for so long causing her to be more aggressive. Especially when she bit Matt's hand.

But she didn't eat it regardless so everyone is making the same mistake (she bit it, perhaps from the rage side effect?).

Nonsense. She picks up the rat, bites it in half, and swallows it. If she spat it out, we'd see it. As we see later in the film, anything ingested by an invisible creature instantly becomes invisible, so why don't we see a bloodied half rat splatter on the cage floor? Because Isabelle chewed it up and swallowed it.

Corrected entry: The serum is supposed to "quantum shift" the body of the subject out of range for visible light. However, Bacon is seen working in front of his computer modelling molecules. Clearly, a "quantum shift" would have nothing to do with molecular bio-chemistry, but rather, say, high energy physics. (Something closer to old films in which scientist would try to "beam" someone into invisibility).

Correction: The film makers probably wanted to give the original story a modern twist. The original story is about a scientist making himself invisible through a chemical process, then going mad and ended up killed.

Corrected entry: Throughout the film, Kevin Bacon's character is seen with sticky sensor wires stuck to the top of his head and around his face. But we never see him get his hair cut off, even though we even see he has no hair when they first attempt to make him visible. Also, just a short time later, we see Kevin swimming in a pool, with a full head of hair, and later it is gone again.

Correction: He has hair the entire time, even when they try to reverse the quantum shift. It appears last in the process, but it is briefly visible. The sensors stuck to his head are pretty small, and it would be no problem attaching them to his scalp under his hair (or cut a tiny portion of hair away to attach sensors). The only time his head is completely bald, is at the very end, after he has been set afire and his hair has burned off.

Twotall

Corrected entry: There is a scene where the invisible Sebastian rolls over on his 'bed' and pulls the sheet over. The next shot is from the opposite direction where you can see the monitor showing the thermo image of Sebastian - in the monitor we see Sebastian rolling over and pulling the sheet again. Real time would not afford enough time to be doing this twice.

Correction: Not all films are shown in real time. The monitor shot was just reshowing the previous scene but through the thermal imaging monitor, both happening at the same moment, but shown independantly of each other.

Mad Ade

Corrected entry: Kevin Bacon gets blood thrown on him and it disappears within seconds. Ever try washing your hands after a nosebleed? It isn't that easy.

Correction: I have never had problems washing away blood from me (and I get frequent nosebleeds), especially when it is still relatively fresh. And in Sebastian's case, we don't know for sure what he does after he kills Sarah, as the action switches to Linda and Matt at this point. But it is not unlikely that this high-tech research facility that deals with among other things radiation would have a radiation burn shower readily available. Such a shower would have sprayed Sebastian's entire body within seconds, removing the blood in a short time, making him ready to go back and lock Linda and Matt in the freezer.

Twotall

Corrected entry: The way Sue is wrapping the wires around the door handle in order to make a magnet, would cause the current to go from left to right and return from right to left. This would create two equally powerful magnetic fields in opposite directions so the final sum would be zero magnetic field. The door handle shouldn't get magnetized.

Correction: In actual fact, all electromagnets are wound from one end to the other, and back again. The only way to cancel the induced magnetism would be to wind it in the opposite direction (i.e. clockwise round the core, then anti-clockwise, the same number of turns).

airhead

Corrected entry: The pressurized tanks of flammable liquid that Linda uses to make a flamethrower are sitting unsecured in the lab. OSHA regulations require pressurized cylinders to be secured to prevent them from tipping over. The danger is that the top will get knocked off, and the tank will shoot around like a rocket. Any lab would have their tanks secured for this reason.

Correction: People do break laws and people do break OSHA regulations. It is not a mistake, but real life.

Rlvlk

Corrected entry: Why didn't the scientists grab all the infrared goggles up and turn off the lights? That way Kevin Bacon wouldn't see them but they could see him.

Correction: If we are allowed to second guess the plot this way and say what characters *should* have done then it's equally valid to suggest that Kevin Bacon could have anticipated this and hidden or disabled all the IR goggles.

Corrected entry: When Sebastian comes in at the beginning there is a guard outside who waves at him. When he tells the guy watching him from heaven he is leaving there is a guard out there again. Yet when Sebastian cuts the lines and changes the elevator codes and is killing everyone and all the explosions, screams, shouting, and noise going on he didn't hear anything or call anyone. He should have at least heard a faint explosion or shout.

Correction: It is shown at the end of the movie when Elizabeth Shue and Josh Brolin are climbing up the ladder in the elevator shaft, that the shaft is AT LEAST 200 feet high and the sounds of screams and explosions can very well be muffled by that height. (Screams especially becuase there were no major screams and very few minor ones when Sebastian begins his killing spree.)

Corrected entry: When the guy is lying in the corridor bleeding and Sarah (the veterinarian) says he needs blood, she goes back to the lab and starts pulling out bags and bags of whole blood. Problem: They're not authorized to work on humans, so the blood she's planning on pumping into this poor soul (without checking his blood type), is from either a gorilla or a dog.

Correction: They're not authorized to work on humans, no, but, bearing in mind that they're going ahead with a human trial anyway, they would undoubtedly have surreptitiously obtained some human blood supplies in case of problems.

Tailkinker

Corrected entry: In spite of having all kinds of sophisticated scientific and video equipment in the lab, Sebastian shows the Generals the gorilla experiment using an old fashioned movie projector...

Correction: They're not in his lab - they're in an office in a Defense Department building. They aren't as well equipped as the lab - and that's not a film mistake.

Corrected entry: When Kevin Bacon makes Nitro Glycerine he shakes it up yet it only explodes when he throws it. Nitro Glycerine is incredibly unstable - moving the liquid hard will make it explode.

Correction: He doesn't shake it up. He puts the two liquids in the vial, puts the stopper in it, looks at it, and then throws it.

Corrected entry: Kevin Bacon is supposed to be completely invisible, however we see him eating food while he is invisible. The food he is eating is something that can be seen. So once the food went down into his stomach wouldn't the other characters of the movie see digested food floating in mid air every time he walked by?

Correction: Other than the problem of invisible retinas, this is certainly the most confusing issue with a chemical invisibiity. Would food become invisible inside an invisible man? Well, the movie uses a bit of science-ficton to make the invisibility work anyway, and since there is no real science to a chemical invisibility, we can just say that this particular invisibility technique works the way they say it does.

Correction: Under conditions of extreme stress, people are capable of incredible feats of strength and can overcome appalling pain. An andrenalin rush is, indeed, a powerful thing.

Corrected entry: Why is it that when Elizabeth Shue activates her little homemade electromagnet in the freezer, all the little nuts and bolts instantly stick to it, yet she doesn't seem to have any trouble picking it up off of the ALL METAL cabinet when the magnet is still turned on?

Correction: Because the cabinet, like most lab furniture, is made of stainless steel, which is non-magnetic.

Rooster of Doom

Corrected entry: In the beginning of the film, when the invisible gorilla has escaped, as Dr. Caine is getting the tranquilliser guns from the cabinet, he bets Matt that he can get the gorilla first. He does shoot the gorilla first, with the aid of infrared goggles. The problem is, we blatantly see him close the goggle/tranquilliser gun cabinet before he ever gets a pair of goggles... In fact, as he runs down the hall we see both of his hands and all he is carrying is a tranquilliser gun.

Correction: Kevin Bacon definitely reaches for the goggles and then the gun whilst talking. The next shot shows that a pair has been taken from the cabinet.

Jez

Corrected entry: They don't even need to inject anything to return Kevin Bacon to normal, all they need is to shock the hell out of him. If you notice the gorilla when they use the paddles on her she becomes visible. Also at the end of the movie Kevin Bacon is made partially visible after he was electrocuted. A few more shocks and he would have been fine.

Correction: Yes, but a few more shocks would probally have killed him too.

Piemanmoo

Corrected entry: The doctors never cut nostril holes in the mask for Kevin Bacon to breathe. Later on when he puts the mask back on, it DOES have nostril holes.

Correction: There are several scenes between these mistakes. It's entirely possible he did it himself. Wouldn't you?

David Mercier

Corrected entry: When Elizabeth and her boyfriend notice the nitro in the mixer machine and she wanted to take the top off but her boyfriend said, "No, we gotta go", why didn't they just unplug the machine?

Correction: Abruptly stopping the machine might jar the nitroglycerin hard enough to explode it.

Factual error: The serum is transported by blood. Hair has no blood traveling to it, only the root. So, unless Bacon shaved his body clean, his hair wouldn't have become invisible, likewise all of the fur on the gorilla.

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: The serum could have been absorbed by the roots and made its way to the tip of the hair strands (similar to colored water going up a piece of celery, changing the color of the celery).

Mammal hair is not porous and is not subject to capillary action.

More mistakes in Hollow Man

Sebastian: I can't take much more testing.
Matt: I know how hard it is.
Sebastian: Bullshit. You don't know anything.
Matt: This isn't easy for any of us.
Sebastian: Fuck you, Matt! It is easy for you. I was to be in phase-shift for three days. It's been ten fucking days, all right? Ten days of tissue tests, radiation tests and your fucking needles! I can't fucking take it anymore.
Matt: What I meant was.
Sebastian: Fuck what you meant! And don't ever... Don't ever tell me how hard you have it.

More quotes from Hollow Man

Trivia: Whenever Sebastian is invisible and interacting with the other characters, Kevin Bacon's voice would be broadcast throughout several speakers randomly hidden throughout the set. This was done to make the reaction more genuine, since the actors would honestly not know where his voice was going to come from next, just as the characters would not know where Sebastian was.

More trivia for Hollow Man

Question: What is the song playing when Kevin Bacon is driving his car? It wasn't "Power Struggle" by Sunna.

Answer: Do you mean the scene where he is invisible, wearing his mask? If so, the song is called Charlie Big Potato by Skunk Anansie.

Answer: I checked the movie's credits (original concept, I know) then I listened to the song in the film and found the lyrics at http://www.letssingit.com/sunna-power-struggle-1bdk7zz.html and http://84210992.home.icq.com/lyrics.html and I can assure you that it was, in fact, "Power Struggle" by Sunna.

Answer: It's actually Skunk Anansie. I know this song from memory and can attest as a fan of the movie and the scene.

More questions & answers from Hollow Man

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