Corrected entry: When Chief Brody fires the shot that hits the air tank and blows up the shark, one second before the explosion the shark is not moving.
Corrected entry: Quint repeatedly calls the shark Orca, but an Orca is a killer whale, not a shark, something a shark expert should know.
Correction: That is correct. "Porkers Mr. Hooper. Are you talking Porkers?" Porkers is apparently slang for Great White Sharks. Use of the slang adds to Quint being an experienced old salt of the sea.
Corrected entry: At the beginning, Sheriff Brody walks onto the "boat" that takes people and, at most, two cars across the water to the mainland. A car joins Brody with 3 men, the medical examiner, the major and the newspaper man. Brody has been told, by the medical examiner, that it was a shark attack that killed the young woman who swam at night (the first death in the film) but now he is being coerced into saying it was a boating accident. Meanwhile, the man who handles the "boat" has already put it in reverse, heading back where they have come from Nonetheless, the mayor says, "You can take us back now." Turning around, he would have seen the folly in his words.
Correction: Rewatch this scene. Brody, Vaughn, et al., board Amity ferry scow (in reality the On Time scow). Brody tells Charlie to take him to the kids swimming off shore across the water (Chappaquiddick Island). They cast off from Dock St ferry landing, and just as the lighthouse is in the background, the Captain turns the scow to dock at the 2nd ferry landing ramp properly. Distance between the 2 ferry landings is approx 520 ft. When Vaughn says, "Take us back now," we see the 1st landing behind them.
Corrected entry: After Hooper cuts open the Tiger shark, he tells Brody that it isn't the shark. He adds "you still got a hell of a fish out there, with a mouth about this big." He indicates size of the bite by holding his hands about 2 feet apart. This estimate is based on the bite marks on the first victim. Of course, later we see the shark's bite radius is much larger, around 3 to 4 feet. Hooper is a shark expert and should be able to more accurately determine bite radius. (00:44:30)
Correction: Clearly nobody involved, including Hooper, believed a shark as large as the one later seen could exist. His estimate was based on what he concluded could be the largest shark out there.
Hooper is a shark expert. His bite radius estimate should be based on the available facts, like the actual bite marks in the victim, and not what he thought would be the biggest shark. It's pretty difficult the get the bite radius wrong by a foot or more when you have clear bite marks in the victim.
Unless a bite radius can be estimated by the distance between puncture marks, Hooper had no way of knowing how large the shark actually is. As the previous correction states, he's using his own knowledge and experience to guess the size.
Correction: All that was left of the one and only victim that he examined, Chrissy Watkins, were pieces so effectively you could argue there were no bite marks, and he was making an assessment of best judgment and experience. Either way, 2 feet is still a big mouth.
Factual error: When Hooper sees the hole in the hull of Ben Gardner's boat, he uses his knife to pry out the shark tooth. The tooth is located at the bottom of the hole, with its flat root side stuck deep in the wood and its pointy side facing up. It is completely impossible for the shark's tooth to become wedged in the wood this way, while he takes a nice bite out of the wood hull. (00:49:15)
Suggested correction: When Hooper uses the knife to pry to tooth out, it took very little effort, suggesting that the tooth wasn't wedged into that spot, but merely just resting in that spot.
The shark tooth was inserted into the wood by the prop crew with its flat root side down, which would have been impossible to have occurred during the attack on the hull. As to the statement that the tooth was "merely just resting in that spot" then Hooper would not have needed to use the blade to remove it from the wood, plus the fact that since it was underwater it would have floated away during the hours after the attack. But it did not float away, so it must have been at the very least snugly fit into the wood hull. Still impossible.
Plot hole: When Hooper and Chief Brody are trying to get the Mayor to re-close the beach after finding Ben Gardner's boat, they fail to mention they also found Ben Gardner's severed head. The Mayor would be forced to re-close the beach if yet another confirmed shark fatality had been mentioned, but Hooper and Brody never bring that important detail up. [This is still a mistake, but the explanation for this is that the scene where they find Ben Gardner's head was not in the original script. Originally, they just found his boat. Spielberg felt the scene needed a little more shock value so they shot the part with the head in a swimming pool long after the main filming had been completed.] (00:50:20)
Suggested correction: First off, it wasn't a severed head as you can still see the body attached to it, and second, what difference would that make? Two people and a dog already died, with the death of the Kitner boy being witnessed by several people, and the beaches still stayed open because the mayor was too stupid to close them. Not only that, but during the scene you mentioned, I believe it was Hooper who said that THREE incidents had occurred BEFORE the third killing takes place on-screen.
And not only that, but the mayor witnessed Hooper saying that the shark they caught was not the same one, or at least it was possible that it wasn't. Either way, shark attacks were happening, but the mayor did nothing about it.
Correction: Impossible to notice without resorting to slow motion, and mistakes which require slow motion to notice do not belong on this website.
Jukka Nurmi
Agreed. Slow motion invalidates mistakes.
Ssiscool ★