A nameless member

11th Oct 2023

Die Another Day (2002)

Factual error: After the window of the plane is shot out, the aircraft dips into a major dive which Jinx struggles to rectify. There's no reason this would happen simply due to decompression - that would be uncomfortable for the passengers but not affect the plane's flight characteristics.

3rd Oct 2023

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

Factual error: The scene in Piccadilly Circus shows the Shaftesbury Memorial Statue, but this film is set in 1890 and that statue was only unveiled in 1893.

31st Jul 2023

Oppenheimer (2023)

Factual error: When Oppenheimer delivers his lecture in "Dutch" he's actually speaking German. Although in the German dubbed version, the language heard is Dutch.

Factual error: Gabriel kills the engineer and sets the train to full speed, then locks the control room. Without the engine being resupplied with coal it would lose power and stop before too long, never getting as far as the bridge.

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Suggested correction: It is known for firemen to fill the loco up to allow it to run for 15-20 minutes without new coal. However, it could not run that long at that speed without the boiler being refilled with water, so the boiler would have exploded well before the fire reduced.

22nd Jul 2023

Oppenheimer (2023)

Oppenheimer mistake picture

Factual error: After the successful Trinity test in 1945, people in a crowd are holding small US flags with 50 stars on them (offset rows). At the time there were only 48 states and the flag had 48 stars in even rows. The 50 star flag didn't exist until 1960, after Alaska and Hawaii were made states in 1959.

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Suggested correction: While this is correct, an argument can be made that since the colour scenes are meant to be subjective and the black and white scenes are meant to be objective, Oppenheimer could have been unintentionally mapping the modern US flag onto this scene.

THGhost

That's a ridiculous stretch with zero evidence, not least as 48 star flags are seen in colour in other scenes. Sometimes a mistake is simply a mistake.

There is evidence, though. Nolan said so himself. Look it up. As for the mistake itself, I'm merely repeating what I've read on Twitter, and this correction was merely a suggestion. Seeing the 48 star flags in other colour scenes still doesn't disprove this theory. It is just a theory though, so no need to shoot it down so hard.

THGhost

He's said subjective in terms of the colour scenes being "first person", and maybe not strictly factual in terms of creating moments between characters and conveying emotion, but nowhere does that stretch to "one random scene happens to feature 50 star flags because Oppenheimer is mapping the modern flag onto it, when nothing like that happens anywhere else in the film."

Meh, take it up with Twitter. I just thought it was interesting, so I posted it here for a different point of view/perspective for others to read. It is most likely bull**** though.

THGhost

The fact that a director realized they had made a mistake and retroactively made up a deus ex machina explanation for it in no way invalidates the mistake. Nice try, Mr. Nolan but this posting is absolutely valid.

While Christopher Nolan's talked about the subjective/objective colour/black and white thing, which is entirely fair and no doubt exactly his intention, I don't think he's actually tried to "excuse" this by using that explanation, that's just other people trying to connect the two things. I'm not sure Nolan has commented on the flag issue in interviews at all.

Precisely, and I was in no way trying to invalidate the original mistake. I just found the whole theory interesting and posted it here. It is rather hilarious that a director with such attention to detail like Nolan would have missed something like this. We shall see if he gets it fixed for the streaming/physical release.

THGhost

It's not fixed in the home video version. However, the behind-the-scenes materials provide a reason for the mistake, in that putting a crowd in the scene was apparently a spur-of-the-moment decision. It's like that in their haste to bring in the crowd, the set decorators bought some modern miniature flags and put them into the scene without anyone realizing the 48/50 discrepancy.

Vader47000

Factual error: Kris is playing the original Gameboy and says he can't beat Bowser. No Mario game released before 1994 for the original Gameboy featured Bowser as a boss.

Factual error: The F14 could never have got airborne with such a short clear run unassisted. It needs about 800m, about half a mile.

26th Feb 2021

WandaVision (2021)

Factual error: Considering Sigrit and Lars are similar ages in the opening flashback to 1974, 41 year old Rachel McAdams should be a similar age to the 52 year old Will Ferrell, which she clearly isn't. Alternatively, if she's meant to be in her 50s, there's no way they'd have been able to have a baby together.

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Suggested correction: Women *can* get pregnant, and have healthy babies, in their early 50s. There are more health risks, but it happens.

Suggested correction: Actors play older/younger characters all the time. The fact that you know their real age says nothing about the character's age. In real life, people often look older or younger (when I was in my mid - to late-30's, a lot of people wouldn't believe I was older than 25).

Bishop73

Considering that Sigrit is 4 or 5 years old in the 1974 flashback, she is 50 or 51 in her role in the main part of the movie. Not only is McAdams too young for the role, but also is Sigrits dream of founding a family and getting a baby quite unrealistic.

She's not too young for the role, which is the point of the correction. When I looked to see her age, I saw her pictures and guessed she was about 47 or 48, so she looks older than she really is. And there's a lot of 50+ year olds that look like they're in their 40's. Plus, the original mistake has nothing to do with a 50+ year old woman having a child.

Bishop73

Factual error: A central point of the plot is Iceland not being able to host due to financial constraints. But the winning country is allowed to nominate another country to take on the hosting role if wanted.

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Suggested correction: Italy has been absent from the Eurovision Song Contest for over a decade; the reason from multiple sources is reported to be the same stated here, even if not officially. Organizing the event is costly, very risky if production values are not up to standards and the return can be limited or negative - so you could say it happened in the past. It's a matter of internal politics, consider that executives may look at their own gain more than the big picture, and 'handing it over' to someone else makes someone in the business of organizing events (rather than winning them) lose face more than simply being one of the many who don't end up victorious.

Sammo

Factual error: The Eurovision venue supposedly in Edinburgh is the SSE Hydro, in Glasgow.

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