Corrected entry: When Chekov reports to the crew their "mission" to go to Vulcan, he states that they have observed a lightning storm in space which triggers Kirk to recognize the attack on the fleet and Vulcan. Problem: The "lightning storm" in space was caused by a black hole, the black whole was not formed until they dropped the red matter into Vulcan's core, therefore the Vulcans could not have reported on such an event as it had not occurred in their system yet.
Tailkinker
29th May 2009
Star Trek (2009)
30th May 2009
Angels & Demons (2009)
Corrected entry: The "bomb" comprises anti-matter suspended in an electromagnetic field; while anti-particles have charge and can be suspended like this, anti-matter doesn't and can't. Even in the event of it being called anti-matter as a character mistake, the amount of energy required to keep such a large amount suspended would far exceed the energy that could be produced by a battery, therefore the whole concept of a "bomb" that could be carried around is false.
Correction: Use of a fictional technology in a fictional film is not a movie mistake.
29th May 2009
Angels & Demons (2009)
Corrected entry: It would take 2 billion years to make just 1 gram of anti-matter in a best-case scenario. According to CERN, if they annihilated all the anti-matter they have ever created, there would only be enough energy to light a light bulb for a few minutes, so an anti-matter bomb is fanciful to say the least.
Correction: Fanciful, yes, but being fanciful is not a mistake. This is a fictional universe, not the real one. In the version of our world portrayed in the film, they have the capability to make anti-matter in the quantities required.
29th May 2009
National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007)
Corrected entry: Ben's mother recognises the symbols on the wooden plank as being Olmec and proceeds to translate their meaning. Only problem is that, to date, only one example of Olmec inscription has been found and it has never been deciphered.
Correction: This is called "fiction". If the film-makers wish to portray a character as capable of deciphering Olmec, then it's irrelevant whether such experts exist in the real world, in exactly the same way as, say, a superhero or a scientist working on a fictional technology can be portrayed without them actually existing in reality.
22nd May 2009
Wall-E (2008)
Corrected entry: When the captain of the Axiom activates the holo-detector, everyone on board gets some sort of helmet. When the ship tips to the side, the helmets disappear back into the hoverchairs. Once the plant is put into the holo-detector, the Axiom goes back to Earth. If nothing happened to the passengers, except for falling down, what was the use of the helmets on the way back to Earth?
Correction: This is a question, not a mistake, please learn the difference. The helmets were presumably some sort of protective measure built into the chairs to defend against some sort of problem with the flight. As the flight back to Earth went smoothly, the lack of helmets became a moot point, particularly as none of the Axiom residents were in their chairs anyway, but that doesn't mean that their presence is any sort of mistake.
21st May 2009
Wall-E (2008)
Corrected entry: When EVE blows up the ship, WALL-E comes up. We see him kind of slowly slide over towards EVE, however WALL-E's treads are not built to move like that. How did he move?
Correction: WALL-E is repeatedly shown to move his treads laterally - for one thing, they have to have that capability in order to be retracted and stored within his torso. It is clear that his propulsion system is far more complex than just a simple track mechanism, allowing him a great deal of freedom of movement.
21st May 2009
Wall-E (2008)
Corrected entry: How do the Axiom and the robots run? Surely not solar power since they are in the Kuiper Belt with almost no sunlight. Not wind power. Nuclear power would require lots of water and getting rid of radioactive waste, with the possibility of a meltdown. How do they run?
Correction: Just because something isn't directly explained in the film, it doesn't make it a mistake, merely an unanswered question; try to learn the difference and submit in that section next time. There are all sorts of possibilities - controlled fusion reactions, Star Trek-style matter/anti-matter annihilation. We're talking technology a hundred years more advanced than our own, who knows what they might have come up with.
17th May 2009
Star Trek (2009)
Corrected entry: The singularity that consumed Planet Vulcan simply closed on itself, yet the singularities that consumed the Romulus sun and Nero's Narada ship, each with different amounts of red matter used, either stay open to pull the Narada and Jellyfish in, or tries to pull in the Enterprise.
Correction: Different cases. The circumstances are different each time, different amounts of red matter, one opens within a planetary core, one within a ship, the third within a supernova shockwave. Given that the whole thing is made-up science anyway, it's impossible to say how the red matter singularities should react in any given situation.
13th May 2009
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
Corrected entry: After Victor Creed 'kills' Silverfox it shows Wolverine bury and mourn her before joining the Weapon X program. This would be fatal to her if she was just faking her death.
Correction: Pretty safe bet that they would have thought of that - this has, after all, been carefully planned out. For Logan's enhanced senses to be fooled, her metabolism has to have been slowed dramatically, almost to the point of stopping, effectively putting her in hibernation, which would allow her to survive a brief period of burial. As long as Stryker's team got to her fairly swiftly after Logan departed, she would survive the ordeal with no lasting effect.
9th May 2009
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
Corrected entry: In the scene when Wolverine and Sabretooth are fighting outside the bar by a digger and a pile of logs, Sabretooth stands on Wolverine's 'bone claws' and snaps off the end of one of them. However, when Wolverine's bones have been covered in adamantium and he brings them out, they are full and have had no discernible damage to them.
Correction: His bones healed, regrowing his claws.
7th May 2009
Dollhouse (2009)
Corrected entry: When Mellie is being attacked, Dewitt calls and (via Agent Ballard's answer machine) "activates" her, then "de-activates" her, which is fine until Mellie or Agent Ballard decide to listen to his messages. (00:43:20)
Correction: Given that Dollhouse staff have broken into Ballard's apartment in the past, placing surveillance cameras and so forth, it seems highly likely that they would have made sure that such messages could be deleted if necessary. Given that modern answering machines can generally be remotely controlled down the phoneline, all they'd need to do would be to take a note of his PIN number.
7th May 2009
Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)
Corrected entry: When the unbelted Jar Jar gets tangled up with the copilot as the ship is hit, the pilot addresses him as "Jar Jar" instead of "senator Binks". Rather disrespectful, considering Jar Jar's current status and the fact that they both are not that intimate.
Correction: When under attack, showing appropriate diplomatic courtesy is hardly a major concern. The pilot needs to get through to Jar Jar fast, so uses his name for emphasis. And a character choosing to show disrespect is simply a choice, anyway, not a mistake.
4th May 2009
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
Corrected entry: The opening shot establishes the location as 1845 Northwest Territories, Canada. Canada did not become a country until 1867. Even then, the NWT was owned by the Hudson Bay company.
Correction: The name Canada was used for the area as far back as the middle of the 16th Century, long before the country of that name was founded. The usage is historically accurate.
7th May 2009
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
Corrected entry: While Scott Summers is blinded in the "new" Wolverine movie, there is no mention of Scott's having anything to do with Weapon X in X-Men 1 and 2. In fact if all those students go to the Xavier Institute then Emma Frost, Quicksilver, and several other mutants would have appeared in X1 and X2, but no mention of there being other mutants besides Jean and Scott being at the school. (01:28:10)
Correction: The stuff that happened to Scott was twenty years previously - why would they mention it? And the other mutants rescued by Xavier in this film could easily have chosen to leave the school in the intervening time, while Cyclops stayed on as a teacher and X-Man.
25th Apr 2009
300 (2006)
Corrected entry: In the scene where the Spartans are watching the Persian ships being destroyed during the rain storm, the camera pans in towards Leonidas while the Spartans cheer in the background. There's a man three rows back holding both hands in the air with mouth wide open wearing modern day clothes and headphones around his neck.
Correction: The clothing he's wearing is entirely in line with what you can see some of the Arcadians wearing when the two forces meet up. There are no headphones around his neck - he's simply wearing a high-necked tunic with belts diagonally across his torso.
10th Apr 2009
Torchwood (2006)
Corrected entry: The British army abandoned firing squads in 1917, a year before Tomy gets shot.
Correction: Firing squads were still in use as late as 1941, when German spy Josef Jakobs was executed in the Tower of London using that method.
10th Apr 2009
Hot Fuzz (2007)
Corrected entry: When the farmer sees Angel in the car with his sunglasses, he says "Danny?" rather then Angel or Nicholas.
Correction: Of course he does. Angel is driving Danny's car, so, as he can't see the driver clearly, he initially assumes that it must be Danny driving it, hence saying the name. It's only after that that he realises that it's actually Angel in the car, at which point he runs to his car to radio for help.
5th Apr 2009
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
Corrected entry: In the very beginning, Harry is performing the Lumos spell in his bedroom. He's underage, therefore he should be well aware that he's breaking the secrecy rule and should have been alerted to the Ministry, yet they only take notice of him when he 'blows up' his aunt.
Correction: They only intervene when he blows up his aunt, but that doesn't mean that they didn't notice when he used the Lumos spell. Regardless, the Ministry is shown to have discretion in these matters. Harry gets into trouble for blowing up his aunt because there are Muggles present, thus violating the Statute of Secrecy. The same applies in Order of the Phoenix, when he uses the Patronus charm with Dudley present. A student using a low-level spell with no Muggles present, thus not breaking the secrecy regulations, in a manner that clearly indicates that they're practicing, is not going to worry the Ministry.
I would add that it's probably a homework assignment that he is allowed to do.
4th Apr 2009
Independence Day (1996)
Corrected entry: The whole premise of the ending was based around giving the mothership a virus to take out the shields. However, given that the "electrics" had only very recently come on in the Area 51 spacecraft, there would have been no time for anybody to have reverse engineered the computer system and alien programming language, let alone for David to come in at the last minute, manage to guess off the top of his head what part of the mothership's system controlled all the shields, find a vulnerability in their code that could be exploited to switch them off, and then create the virus to do so.
Correction: This is based entirely on an opinion, which are not valid grounds for a mistake. David is portrayed in the film as an off-the-scale genius, who's already deciphered the alien countdown code using nothing more than his own laptop and the interference in the satellite system. Area 51 is populated by the top scientific minds available, all of whom would be focused completely on the systems in question. It is simply your opinion that this would be impossible and that doesn't count.
4th Apr 2009
The Dark Knight (2008)
Corrected entry: In the scene where the Joker tries to kill Batman after his racing is off, and someone interrupts him, he says, "Could you please, just give me a minute?" Then James Gordon appears and you can see that his glasses are broken. The next shot, his glasses are not broken anymore. (01:19:20)
Correction: He's wearing completely different glasses in the second shot. He goes from wearing glasses that were more compatible with the SWAT disguise he was wearing (which aren't broken, by the way) back to wearing his regular glasses.
Join the mailing list
Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.
Correction: Incorrect. The lightning storm in space was caused by Spock's arrival through the wormhole, just as the original was caused by Nero's ship coming through.
Tailkinker ★