Corrected entry: Towards the end of the film they resolve they must destroy the submarine and hence all of Prague to save the world - Why oh why does Samuel L. Jackson, and all the other executives, drive to the middle of the soon to be destroyed city? It seems a waste that such important people would be willing to die for no good reason, especially considering they had 30 minutes to get away and weren't even aware at first that Xander was actually on the sub. (01:49:45)
Sammo
21st Sep 2002
XXX (2002)
17th Jan 2011
2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)
Factual error: During the scenes where the drivers are all racing to the impound lot, Verone and Fuentes are doing background checks on the drivers. When they show the shot of Roman Pearce's California driver's license information, it shows his DOB as Apr 12, 1973, A License issue date of 03/24/90, and Expires Date of 03/24/01. Driver's licenses don't expire on the anniversary of the issue date, they expire on the driver's month and day of birth. So his driver's license should show an expiration date of something like 04/12/01 instead. (00:31:45)
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Suggested correction: Not all state's driver's licenses expire on their birthday, or at least not anymore. Example: my current driver's license expires on the anniversary of when I got it Aug 16th, but my birthday is in June.
I've never heard of a State license doing this. Which State is this? Although the mistake is valid.
According to google, "Every California license expires on your birthday five years after it's issued" (I can't seem to access the CA DMV website at the moment) but it does seem as though the mistake is, as you say, valid.
My reply was to the corrector who claims his/her State's driver's license expires on the issue date, which is something I've never heard of. So I was asking which State his/her license was from, not the movie's license.
Sorry, my mistake. On my page it was formatted as though you were replying to Sammo. Looking online, Delaware is one state where the licence expires 8 years after issue and not on your birthday (at least from what I can see).
Delaware driver licenses, while issued for 8 years, still expire on the driver's birthday.
27th Feb 2020
Joker (2019)
Factual error: It is established that Penny Fleck adopted Arthur and that he's been abused. In her file, when Arthur reads it, you can see that she was admitted the first time to the psychiatric hospital at 15 years of age, had multiple episodes with drug abuse, and the file mentions she is 25 and single on the date of the report, 11-2-1952. A single parent already had rather slim chances to adopt in the 50s, but a known mental patient and drug abuser, not a chance. (01:13:40)
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Suggested correction: She could have bribed her way into adopting a child. Someone who is desperate for attention could find ways to get what they want.
Suggested correction: It is not firmly established that Penny actually adopted Arthur - in fact, it's strongly hinted at that Thomas Wayne forced her into signing adoption papers in order to cover up Arthur's true parentage.
The established, as in recognized, backed up by documents, 'official' version the main character finds out and acts by, is the one contained in the report, newspaper clippings and flashback; son abused by the boyfriend of an adopted mother. Such story is impossible the way it is presented the moment we see details in a document that overblows it painting this 'adoptive' mother as single and with a history of drug abuse since 15 years old. Penny is not eligible to be an adoptive parent, and yet nobody seemed to have raised an eyebrow about that. If you want to assume that rather than being a mistake with overzealous details in a prop (check out of the original script of the movie, which has none of this ambiguity) whoever arranged the fake adoption documents kinda forgot to also make quietly disappear the mental and medical record invalidating their own fabrication, sure, do that! It's not exactly a small oversight - and really one would wonder why Wayne kept his bastard son with her at all.
Arthur is not Thomas Wayne's son. That was all in Penny's head.
27th Sep 2004
Collateral (2004)
Trivia: The film was almost entirely shot in high definition. Director Michael Mann states he did this to capture the night scenes more vividly.
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Suggested correction: The number of movies shot in less-than-HD could be counted on one hand.
I believe it refers to the fact that Collateral is considered to be the first major movie to use a digital camera, not the traditional film support.
10th May 2019
The Great Wall (2016)
Continuity mistake: When they are in the big hall he goes to demonstrate that he can shoot. He shoots 5 arrows. When you see the arrows hit the bowl only three hit. (00:32:00)
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Sometimes he shoots 2 at a time. He does shoot 3 times, but he shoots five arrows.
The correction is valid. He never shoots 2 arrows at once. You may need to watch in slow motion if you can't see what happened. He grabs 3 arrows with his right hand and keeps them in his hand as he shoots 1 arrow at a time. This is probably most obvious on the 2nd shot where you see the 2 arrows in the bow, but when he releases his hand, you see one arrow still in his right hand and 1 arrow leaving the bow.
He starts holding all 3 arrows, shoots 1, reloads holding 2, shoots 1, then reloads and shoots the last arrow.
7th May 2007
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)
Corrected entry: In nearly all the race scenes as well as the Tokyo chase scene, you can see the skid marks on the road from previous takes.
Correction: This movie is about street racers. Those turns have been taken many, many, times before by many many many other racers. I'm pretty sure that these cars weren't the first ones to ever race the streets of Tokyo, the skid marks were left by previous racers that were not seen in the movie.
Correction: We're talking about skidmarks indicating extreme racing - including zigzag patterns in the middle of straight roads - who reproduce or rather 'anticipate' the stunts the cars perform in the movie. That's some really long odds of that happening because a city is supposedly full of drifters (which as a poster intelligently pointed out for another "corrected" entry, does not -typically - happen in the city center). Sure you can't theoretically rule out that some crazy dude at one point decided to drift in Shibuya and left some skidmarks, but it wouldn't result in the asphalt looking like that for lengthy scenes.
23rd Nov 2015
Spotlight (2015)
Factual error: When a priest is speaking from a pulpit in church there is a sign board behind him indicating the hymns to be sung on Pentecost Sunday. The priest is wearing a green chasuble. On Pentecost Sunday he would be wearing a red chasuble.
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9th Apr 2018
Magnum, P.I. (1980)
Continuity mistake: Leaving the hospital magnum has a black eye on his right side. When he gets home it's on his left eye.
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8th Apr 2020
Common mistakes
Factual error: In almost every movie from the introduction of sound on to present day, lightning and thunder happen simultaneously, while in reality there's always a delay between the former and the latter.
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Suggested correction: Hardly always, if the lightning hits right in front of you you hear the thunder immediately. I'd say from about 100 meters you perceive it as instantly, as it's only 0.3 seconds between flash and thunder.
This is a mistake about in almost all movies, not in all thunderstorms. The common mistake in the movies is when lightning isn't hitting 100m away from the character, but the sound is still instantaneous.
I assume it's about thunderstorms in movies. Name an example.
Instant thunder (even at a considerable distance of miles from the lightning or explosion source) is, indeed, a common and probably deliberate error in most films. The reasoning for it is simple: a prolonged and realistic delay between lightning and thunder could change a 1-second shot into a 6-second shot, for example, compromising the director's intended pace and mood for the scene. Steven Spielberg films have utilized both instant and delayed thunder. In "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," for example, when the UFOs zoom out into the distant background (certainly miles away) in a wide landscape shot, they produce a lightning effect in the clouds that is simultaneously heard as thunder. But in "Poltergeist" (a Spielberg film directed by Tobe Hooper), there is a very deliberate scene of characters realistically counting the seconds between distant lightning and resulting thunder. Choosing to obey physics or not is a matter of the director's artistic license.
I posted this while I was watching Death in Paradise, episode 7 of the third season, but really, you have never seen in pretty much any horror or cheap slasher movie whenever there's a storm, the flash of a lightning coming at the *same* time as a thunder jumpscare sound? It's vastly spoofed, even, when some ugly/creepy/terrifying character makes its appearance. One example randomly picked? Dracula by Coppola, in the first 10 minutes, carriage, lightning in the distance, not even a split second after, rumble. In RL it would reach you a couple seconds later. But really, it's such a movie archetype, I am sure you can find it in any Dracula movie.
The Dracula example doesn't really show how far away the lightning is, it could right above them. It's fake as hell, I agree with that, but the fact there is lightning and thunder at the same time without actually seeing the distance is not a mistake to me. It's also highly unnatural lightning as it only happens twice and then nothing, it's not even raining. It's obviously meant to be caused by the evil surrounding the place. The idea is there is constant lightning right on top of them.
There's a scene in Judge Dredd where every few seconds, there is a flash of lightning instantly accompanied by the sound of thunder. It happens frequently in Sleepy Hollow as well.
I know the scenes you are referring to. In both those instances you have no idea about the distance of this lightning. It could be (and probably is) right on top of them. You can hear that from the typical high sharpness of the sound, only heard when the flash is very close. Thunderclouds are never very high in the air so even the rumbling within the cloud itself can be heard, sometimes you don't even see lightning when it rumbles (yet there is). It's a bit far fetched but you could hear a rumbling or the thunder from a previous flash and mistake it for the flash you see at the same time. Can happen when there are continuous flashes.
27th Feb 2020
Joker (2019)
Plot hole: Arthur's appearance on the talk show makes hardly any sense. The show is a close port of Johnny Carson's Tonight show, for a huge audience, and yet he receives no screening at all, they put him (someone NOBODY in the staff knows the first thing about) on the air literally without a clue of what he is gonna do or say, and wearing a highly controversial costume. And, when he murders Murray, it is implied that everyone was able to see him doing that right away and he is cut 'off the air' at some point, as if the show were really live, which is preposterous for this sort of program outside of specific events (similar to how in contemporary TV "Jimmy Kimmel Live!", is not live). Even earlier when Arthur opened the letter his mom addressed to Wayne, you could hear the end credits of "Live with Murray Franklin" with the announcer saying the show is "Taped live in front of a studio audience." (00:48:00)
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Suggested correction: I don't see this is a problem due to the fact that we can't be sure what really happens as apposed to what only happens in Arthur's mind. So if the whole TV show appearance is just another fantasy, he would have skipped the who screening process.
You are free to treat the whole movie as something where things don't make sense because in the fan theory of your liking it's all meant to have subtle hints that the movie is all a fantasy, but the movie does not present that particular talk show scene as a dream sequence. It'd be silly to nitpick the logic in the scene when he is picked from the audience by Murray at the beginning because it's obviously presented as nothing more than his fantasy, but his appearance on the show is what the movie built up to up to that point and is not treated as a parenthesis where logic should be suspended, nor disproven like the scenes with his girlfriend standing in.
13th Apr 2020
Death in Paradise (2011)
Corrected entry: In the close captions (Prime Video) Goodman on the boat in the dark says "So much that Nancyand I are going to do together", missing a space. (00:21:50)
Correction: While subtitles on an official DVD normally count as a mistake, on streaming services I'd be more tolerant, because that's more Amazon's responsibility, and they're often corrected once alerted to the problem.
Will remember that in the future! Thanks. I understand the part about the fact that it's easy for them to fix and therefore the mistake could be corrected very easily (although I could take a screenshot, which is hardly worth the hassle for very minor mistakes of this nature) and is in fact corrected if reported (that's a bit like bugs submissions for games tho?), not sure about the responsibilities, since DVD subtitles too are normally done by external companies as well.
True, I guess my attitude has generally been that by the time it's crystallised onto a DVD it's been signed off by the distributor/filmmakers, and the whole thing is sort of a package, whereas if Amazon/Netflix get the subtitles wrong or make a strange edit, etc. that's more a one-off, plus can be fixed after the fact. Grey area though!
14th Mar 2019
Captain Marvel (2019)
Corrected entry: In the scenes set in June of 1995, "Vers" uses a Windows 95 computer to search the internet via dial-up. Windows 95 wasn't released until August 24, 1995, two months after those scenes were set.
Correction: A beta version of Windows 95 (probably build 347) was released before June, when this takes place. They could be using that. It included MSN, for internet access.
Good guess. That preview version was available for $19.95 in the U.S.
I think that's a reach - especially back then beta versions were much harder to come by - you couldn't just download it, you'd have to apply and receive a CD or floppies. She's in an internet cafe if memory serves, and why would they go to the hassle of installing a beta OS which most people would never have used before, and which would run the risk of having bugs, etc.?
Windows 95 had one of the most expensive advertisements and launch programs to this date. (Second to Windows 8's.) Microsoft had special personnel known as Evangelists who went to potential customers encouraging them to test Windows 95 and give feedback. They didn't send the 3.5" diskettes with post; the Evangelists delivered them personally. Microsoft didn't become a software giant by sitting on its behind, waiting for customers.
Correction: The month is never specified in the film.
True Lies was released on home video on July 15th - any cardboard standee in a Blockbuster would be for an upcoming or very recent release. By late August something else would have replaced it.
When they're looking at the black box recording, there's a calendar on the wall that reads June.
Correction: The recycle bin icon on the desktop is an oval shape which was first introduced in Windows ME, which wasn't released until 14th September 2000.
The corrected entry mentions a scene searching the internet via dial-up; the computer in that scene has indeed Windows 95 with a square-shaped bin. Since then this entry has kinda been more about the plausibility of Windows 95 in a public internet cafe in June than anything else. There's a separate entry about the scene when they use a totally different computer, the one at her friend's house, which has the bin you mention and is a ME edition.
It's not, it's the rectangular bin.
6th Mar 2020
Parasite (2019)
Corrected entry: The landscape bonsai is a very heavy rock. When the apartment floods the rock floats to the surface. (01:37:25)
Correction: You missed the point of the scene. The rock floating implies it's a fake reproduction. It was never real. It's kind of a microcosm of the whole story. It's supposed to bring good luck and wealth, but it's hollow and fake. Just as the Kim family's attempts to move upward and find wealth via the Park family ends up backfiring and meaning nothing in the end because it all goes to hell. (SPOILERS: The fact it's a fake also helps explain why it doesn't kill Ki-Woo when he's beaten over the head with it).
Oh. OK. But then why when it is originally found it is at the bottom of the water and not floating? At least that is what I remember. I could be wrong.
Simple answer: It's much more cinematic for it to be underwater and then rise to the top, revealing it in a dramatic way. It gives the reveal of it being a fake more impact. If he just randomly saw it floating, the moment wouldn't work as well. (But I'm sure you could also make an argument that it's being pushed around by all the debris floating around, the current in the water, etc. and it got pulled under for a few seconds).
I agree with you, but up to a point. I was referring to the fact that when he first got the rock he got it from the water and he got it from the bottom. Or am I remembering it wrong?
The mistake is 'deliberate' by account, because, quoting a page that is based on what the actor playing the son says; "In the script, the rock didn't originally float," Choi recalls. "But when we were shooting, director Bong was like, 'You know, I think it would be better if the stone floats up through the water.' I remember thinking, 'Whoa. What?' ", On the other hand, I wouldn't really extend this alleged bit of symbolism in one shot, to infer properties of the rock on other than that single scene; the rock has always been presented and described as heavy, and not the foam prop that it is, and if it were hollow the characters would have noticed and made it apparent earlier. Not even the director and commentators of this particular bit support this. As you say later in the discussion, it's just "more cinematic" to do so but it I don't believe there is reason to paint it as a reveal. Therefore I'd say this should not be corrected but rather changed as 'Deliberate mistake".
I'll agree with this. Thanks, Sammo.
24th Mar 2020
Knives Out (2019)
Corrected entry: When Ransom interviews Marta at the diner, he has no clue that she actually gave Harlan the correct dose, yet the final reveal suggests he knew she was innocent at this time. It's only at the very end that we learn that she gave Harlan the correct dose because she can tell the difference based on the viscosity of the two liquids and only then that Ransom would have known that she was innocent. At the time of the interview at the diner this incorrect conclusion takes the audience down a fork in the plot that is totally incorrect based on this fatal mistake.
Correction: Interesting, but I am not sure I can pinpoint which part of the final reveal suggests he knew she was innocent 'all this time'? The day after the murder, he expected to see her accused of the homicide and therefore invalidate the part when she'd inherit. Instead, he hears that it's been ruled as suicide, and hires Blanc to uncover 'the truth', because suicide would be terrible for him, she'd get all the money. So he thought Blanc would reveal that he was killed by Marta, not that she was innocent. And when he got the vials back (which he needed to do anyway), he was seen by Fran, making necessary for him to kill her and implicate Marta either way. If you mean that during their conversation he figured out that she was innocent, Marta -does- say in her story and it is repeated at the end, that she thought she mixed the two vials up when they fell. So when they speak, he takes that as a fact and realises that if she really did accidentally give him the 'wrong' vial, she gave him the right one.
Correction: Actually Ransom does know that Marta gave Harlan the correct dose of the meds, at the time of the interview at the diner itself. Because Marta was forced to tell the truth to Ransom about how she mixed up the meds. Now, Ransom knows that he switched the contents of the vials. So when Marta says that she switched the vials themselves, Ransom figures out that because he switched the contents of the vials, the effect of his action of trying to poison his grandfather was nullified. The fact that Ransom knew about the innocence of Marta, is not dependent on her ability to tell the meds apart by their viscosity and tincture, but on the fact that Ransom figured out of the nullification of his act of mixing up the contents of vials.
19th Mar 2020
Star Trek: Picard (2020)
Character mistake: Dr. Agnes Jurati, one of the Federation leading scientists, is bored during the hyperspace travel, and so she chats a bit with the captain. While she gives her quirky speech, she casually mentions that "there are over 3 billion stars in our galaxy." She's not wrong, technically, but the number of stars in our galaxy is estimated between 100 and 400 billion. She is way off. (00:08:40)
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Suggested correction: Two things. You state that she's not wrong, which she isn't. The fact that she chose an odd turn of phrase doesn't make it a mistake. Plus, you reference the number of 'galaxies' in our galaxy but I am guessing this is just a typo.
21st Mar 2020
Star Trek: Picard (2020)
Remembrance - S1-E1
Stupidity: In this episode wily old battle genius Jean-Luc Picard and amazingly smart human-android Dahj act exactly by the definition of stupidity of this website ("something daft, like running upstairs with a killer behind them, instead of out of the front door"), and even surpass it, because the killers are not even chasing them yet. And why not? Because they are in a public area with a ton of people in the middle of what is basically the capital of the world; no band of kidnappers would attack at that point, or at least, it's way more unlikely. But from there, our nearly centenarian hero (steps away from official government buildings and in a world with communicators, teleports etc.) goes up a ramp of stairs leading to a desert rooftop with no exit and no witnesses, exactly where a group of evildoers would attack - and are even able to cover their tracks up exactly because of this choice. (00:31:50)
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Suggested correction: Picard is being led by the extremely combat-effective android. She has previously fought off these attackers with ease, and had succeeded again. It was only the exploding rifle that stopped her escaping. Picard and Dahj would rather lure attackers away from a populated area in order to protect bystanders, since the attackers were coming either way.
The slowly-exploding rifle somehow unavoidable for the super-fast android that dies from the barf that a middle-aged caretaker shrugs off would deserve a stupidity entry of its own, but back to the point: if the attackers came their way, they would have never been able to erase their traces by deleting footage, and therefore they would have been the 'stupid' ones. This is pure movie logic and plot convenience, just like the designated victim in a slasher running upstairs rather than screaming bloody murder in the street where they can be helped or dissuade the killer from getting into unfavourable situations.
21st Mar 2020
Star Trek: Picard (2020)
Corrected entry: Investigating the communications logs from Dahj's apartment, Picard reacts with extreme surprise at the notion that the message from her sister does not come from Earth. But Earth is the center of the Federation, made of hundreds of planets, with thousands of space stations, ships, where travel between planets at least in the solar system and certainly in nearby systems is a matter of mere hours if not minutes. Most messages Picard ever received in his life have been off-world messages, and he's talking with an alien in that very moment! Where does that surprised reaction come from? It could have easily been a message from a ship or a research station somewhere. It's routine. (00:14:00)
Correction: Picard wasn't shocked that Dahj's sister was not on Earth. He simply wanted to make sure Laris was certain that the messages originated from off-world before begging a Starfleet admiral to give him a ship.
Like I said, he reacts with extreme surprise, and the director cues a hilariously bit of dramatic music to it. It is a scene played as if the mere notion that a person being 'off-world' and 'nowhere on Earth' were something extremely uncommon, as if space travel wasn't the norm and Earth wouldn't be just a part of thousands of installations in space and parts of the Federation. The small-scale thinking that this show practices all the time starting with the way it treats a huge Empire that can't muster resources to evacuate its home world and somehow ceases to exist as such.
19th Mar 2020
Taxi Driver (1976)
Factual error: Travis begins the movie at 26 years old, and reports leaving the army with honorable discharge in May 1973. His first diary entry just after being hired is "May 10th." In the newspapers at the end he is still 26, and it says that he has been a taxi driver for 6 months. The movie obviously does not take place in winter, and the only months referenced (plus the timeline of a presidential nomination) are June and July. Besides, 1973 would not be the right year for a story set just before a presidential election, unlike 1976 when the movie came out.
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Suggested correction: This error is based on the assumption that he had just been discharged. I don't remember anything in the movie to indicate that as opposed to being discharged three years earlier.
The articles at the end of the movie say "Travis Bickle, 26, has been a taxi driver for six months since he came to New York upon leaving the Service where he fought in a special forces unit in Viet Nam" (sic). I think it's fairly obvious from the context too that he hasn't had much experience with 'real life' after 'Nam, surely not 3 years. The original script didn't have this discrepancy, by the way, because the date of his discharge was May 1971, which would account for just about enough months of difficult civilian life to get involved in the 1972 Presidential race.
7th Oct 2019
Death in Paradise (2011)
Episode #2.5 - S2-E5
Continuity mistake: In the beginning the man who takes care of food and drinks hurt his fingers. Only in the last scene we see that he has bandages around the hurt fingers for the first time.
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Suggested correction: I thought the same but actually he wears the correct bandage in the scenes after the murder, all the time. The tape is hard to spot because of the color and is not in frame a lot, but in the scene when he is back on the boat "for the knives" you can spot the tape at minute 21, when he says "Except for the cocktails she was drinking", and in the crab scene he is also sporting the bandage.
15th Mar 2020
Death in Paradise (2011)
Episode #1.3 - S1-E3
Other mistake: Investigating the crime scene, Richard, facing away from Camille, asks what was the victim drinking. Camille is already going for the glass of rum before he asks the question. (00:03:00)
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I hope that watching the scene it can be clear. Camille was busy taking some notes, and he is facing away from her. All of a sudden, he says "So, what was she drinking?" and while he is at "So" Camille is literally lunging to her side to go look at the glass. Neither had any possible way to get that kind of timing, and it's not played as a "Hey, we were both thinking the same thing! Jinx!" kind of gag.
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Correction: The weapon is supposed to be more powerful than a nuclear weapon. Thirty minutes to get out of the area wouldn't be enough to be safely out of the area. They are militarily trained and go to downtown in hopes of discovering some way to neutralize or destroy the sub. It's a pretty cowardly military person who would save their own skin before doing everything they can to protect civilians.
rswarrior
I don't agree with the correction. Thirty minutes would be plenty, with the kind of resources Gibbons has, since he has plenty of planes at his disposal, but more than that; the bad guys earlier detonate one of those rockets inside their own basement and cackle madly at death being unleashed through a security glass door. All it takes for Gibbons, or anyone really, to be 'safe' from that is lock yourself up somewhere, probably even your car with air recycling on and get the hell out of there. It seems awfully uncharacteristic of Gibbons and the other top brass to just stand there on the bridge (with no hazmat suits or anything, and they knew well in advance the nature of the weapon) and be cheerleaders. The entry should be at least a Stupidity (although then #320720 becomes a Duplicate entry).
Sammo ★