2012

Factual error: American officials, including the president himself, continually refer to the other G8 leaders as "heads of state." They are, in fact, heads of government. The United States is the only G8 country which combines the head of state and head of government into a single position. The others have a separate prime minister (or chancellor in Germany) and president (or sovereign in the UK, Canada and Japan). No American official is likely to make this mistake in reality. The head of government of Italy is appointed as "Prime Minister" also in the Italian version; actually the correct wording should be "President of the Council of Ministers"

Continuity mistake: Nima says that Tenzin will meet them at the West Gate of Cho Ming valley, but a sign at the gate says it is the East Gate.

Jedd Jong

Other mistake: When the monk arrives with Jackson and the others at the gate leading into the secret entrance of the ships, the countdown to impact timer reads about 28 minutes. It is highly implausible that the group, which contains elderly and small children, are able to get to the top of what looks to be a 100 story staircase in less than 15 minutes without breaking a sweat. Once they are inside the hatch, the countdown to impact timer reads about 13 minutes.

2012 mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Jackson and the kids are at the dried up lake in Yellowstone park, they walk past the carcass of an elk. We change to the long shot, and when the army arrives, the carcass has gone. (00:21:35 - 00:22:05)

Factual error: Schwarzenegger's term expires on Jan. 2011. This would be the end of his second term and the state constitution prevents him from serving a third. And yet he is apparently still governor in 2012.

Plot hole: After leaving the Santa Monica Airport the pilot decides for no apparent reason to fly into Downtown and fly between the buildings. Anyone from LA would know that in order to actually fly into downtown from the airport one would have to actually aim for it. It's not like you take off from the airport and then you are stuck having to fly in amongst tall skyscrapers.

Factual error: In the Yellowstone sequence, Jackson drives the RV looking for Charlie. They drive past a sign saying "Mount Big Horn". There is no Mount Big Horn in Yellowstone. There is, however, a Big Horn Peak outside the park to the north east.

Bruce Trestrail

Factual error: Little over an hour into the movie, Yellowstone blows up into a huge volcano. The pyroclastic flow that follows the camper is going at such a speed (the speed of the flow can be seen when the plane is in the air) that it would have overtaken the camper well before it has reached the plane. Even if the cloud would have been slowed down by hills, it would have, after the camper reached the plane, overtaken the plane long before it could take off.

lionhead

Continuity mistake: When Jackson comes to pick his kids up to go camping, he is shown passing by the back side of his limo and the trunk is fully opened, but in the next shot the trunk is still opening. (00:14:20)

Ivan-sama

Continuity mistake: When the RV camper van lands after its jump on the runway, you can see the steering gear and passenger front wheel has collapsed. In the next shot when Jackson enters the camper to retrieve the map, you can see the wheel is fine, and then its damaged again in the next long shot.

GalahadFairlight

Continuity mistake: While Carl is reading the note, a waitress passes behind Adrian. Half a second later she's 3 meters behind repeating the movement.

Sacha

Factual error: The coat of arms behind the German chancellor in the briefing scene is wrong. First of all the actual German coat of arms is not oval and secondly this is not the coat of arms used by the German chancellor. The one used by the German chancellor is hexagonal and could also be found on the old German currency.

Tanngrisnir

Revealing mistake: A wire is visible when the car flips over in Paris. The shadow is easier to see.

Factual error: While supposedly in the Antonov aircraft, the characters are down in the cargo area. The Antonov does not have a pressurized cargo area, only the topmost area around the cockpit is pressurized.

Continuity mistake: When Jackson picks up his kids to go camping, we see nothing on the sidewalk grass field in front of their house. But when he returns home to drop the kids off, we now see that there is actually a pedestal displaying the address of the house, we can also see this pedestal when the earthquake hits.

Continuity mistake: Right before the scene where the earthquake happens at the supermarket, we see the crack moving through the parking lot. The cars are parked parallel to the store. We see car after car shake, etc, until it gets close to the front door of the store. After the earthquake, when the news is on the TV, it shows the store after the crack has gone all the way through. The parking spaces and cars are facing a completely different direction.

aquafina

Factual error: Right when the plane takes off from the airport in Las Vegas, the plane barely misses the Wynn Venetian and hits the Eiffel tower at the Paris. This is impossible as the airport is at the far south end of Las Vegas Blvd. and these hotels are at the far north. They would have had to fly over four miles of other casinos before ever reaching them.

Factual error: In the film, the world is falling apart because the earth's neutrino particles have mutated and are heating up the earth's core intensely. The top surface of the world would have been utterly destroyed under the pressure of such power before the core could have come close to beginning to boil.

Plot hole: Sacha states that they will be attempting to refuel the plane in Hawaii. After discovering Hawaii is a volcanic disaster, Gordon states that they lost their landing gear back in Las Vegas. How was Sacha planning to land the plane in Hawaii to refuel?

Factual error: Several scenes in the movie show the tidal waves and tsunamis sweeping people and objects away, which is utter fantasy. The air pressure wave that is in front of the tidal waves and tsunamis would blow people and objects away long before the water did.

GalahadFairlight

Adrian Helmsley: The moment we stop fighting for each other, that's the moment we lose our humanity.

More quotes from 2012

Trivia: It's not an accident that Wisconsin was chosen as the new South Pole in the movie, its position being 44N/90W, 44 being a number that Roland Emmerich tries to sneak into every movie he makes since his 'Moon 44' days. (01:37:25)

GalahadFairlight

More trivia for 2012

Question: At the end of the movie, it is stated that the Drakensberg mountain range in South Africa now has the highest altitude in the world, since the "entire plate of Africa has lifted". Isn't this highly unlikely, seeing as the Drakensberg is incredibly far away from any tectonic plate lines? Wouldn't it rather be Mount Kilimanjaro, which is not only already the highest point in Africa (the continental plate of which is implied to have been raised as a whole), but is also a volcano (thereby being more likely to be raised should there be lifting within the plate itself)? I am South African myself, and though I am incredibly proud of our mention, I wonder if it really is plausible.

Answer: It's really impossible to say, given all of the massive land shifting seen in the film. We see the entire coast of California fall into the ocean. It's reasonable (in the film) to assume some cataclysm struck Kilimanjaro to lower or destroy it, or that the continent has been tilted.

In the movie, it was implied that the continent of Africa as a whole remained unflooded. So it stands to reason that the millions of inhabitants of the various countries may have survived intact. And so, the animals and plant life as well. So the question of saving the human species may be mute in this scenario. It's ironic, since most of the scientific community believes that modern humans evolved there first anyway.

More questions & answers from 2012

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