Corrected entry: When the lightning storm begins, it is made very clear that an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) has disabled all electronic equipment, including Tom Cruise's watch. However, when the aliens begin disintegrating people, one man is seen holding up a video camera recording the events before being disintegrated himself. An EMP effectively destroys electronic equipment, causing circuit breakers in the device to overload, making such an "instantaneous" repair impossible. In fact the effects of the EMP are never even referred to again throughout the rest of the movie, with people using lights, televisions, phones, cameras and radios as if nothing happened to them. Can't be due to things being turned off - every car we see (except Tom's) is broken, and they can't all have been running during the storm.
Joshua Skains
1st Jul 2005
War of the Worlds (2005)
14th Jul 2005
War of the Worlds (2005)
Corrected entry: When Tom and Dakota are sleeping in Tim Robbins' ruin, an eye-alien watches them. Rachel wakes and gets out from under the stairs screaming. Ray destroys the eye and straight away he goes out to search for Rachel. Where is the destroyed eye? We suppose we should see a huge tripod with a hundred eyes and one destroyed.
Correction: Why are we supposed to see this? Other than the basement scene, we do not see these things elsewhere. We have no clue how it attaches, how many of them a tripod has, or if it is even part of a tripod (rather than some independent probe).
13th Jul 2005
War of the Worlds (2005)
Corrected entry: In the scene where they look at Tom Cruise's watch after the EMP, it has stopped. However, his watch (an Omega Speedmaster) is a wholly mechanical watch, and would not have been affected by the electronic storm.
Correction: Some models are battery powered.
13th Jul 2005
War of the Worlds (2005)
Corrected entry: The 'aliens' buried their vast army of complex machines thousands of years ago in many different locations throughout the planet. With all the mining and tunnelling we've done, and all the seismic and geological activity that has gone on, and all the scientific investigation of the Earth's crust by oil and mining companies (amongst others), not one was ever found? Exploration for oil reserves is carried out by bouncing extremely low frequency shock waves off the mantle which can be 3,000 kilometers deep, and that is just one industry carrying out one type of research - and not one of the Martian machines was ever detected? Given the size of their craft and the sheer numbers involved, that is utterly impossible.
Correction: How deep were these things? What were they actually made of? And where WERE they buried? Certainly in some cases they could have moved to the right position before the aliens transported themselves in. Maybe they were all buried under the ocean and they burrowed themselves into position when they received a signal from the aliens when they arrived.
Nonsense. Exploration for oil reserves is carried out by bouncing extremely low frequency shock waves off the mantle which can be 3,000 kilometers deep, and that is just one industry carrying out one type of research - and not one of the Martian machines was ever detected? Given the size of their craft and the sheer numbers involved, that is utterly impossible.
The correction simply ignores the facts. Oil companies routinely scan deep beneath the ocean for potential drilling sites, and mining companies do the same on land. They scan huge areas every day of the year. The chance of every single one of the Martians' huge vehicles and other machinery escaping undetected is absolutely zero.
Unless the aliens added special technology that helps avoid detection. Also the average thickness of the earth's crust is about 15 KM. Way too deep to be detected by those surveys.
1st Jul 2005
War of the Worlds (2005)
Corrected entry: Near the beginning, it's revealed that all electronic equipment within about a mile of the lightning storms stop working. Yet a camera crew was able to film lightning striking the ground multiple times during such a storm.
Correction: The recording merely caught a portion of the lightning storm, which they rewound and repeated multiple times. We don't know how stable this EMP is, if it is intentional or just a byproduct of their transportation system. If it isn't a weapon, and just a byproduct, perhaps it doesn't project evenly. Many news crews must have tried. Perhaps this is the one that lucked out and their equipment survived at least SOME of the recording time.
25th Dec 2004
Flight of the Phoenix (2004)
Corrected entry: When discussing building a new plane, Frank Towns observes that the remaining engine puts out "2000 pounds of thrust." A piston aircraft engine's power is measured in horsepower; "pounds of thrust" would be used to measure the power of a jet engine.
Correction: If you do a search in google on "prop" "pounds" and "thrust" you can find many websites discussing propeller engines and the pounds of thrust they produce. Horsepower means nothing when you need to understand how much thrust will be produced and its effect on the new aircraft that is much smaller than the engine was built for.
12th Nov 2003
The Haunting (1999)
Corrected entry: When Eleanore sees the ghost in the window, she chucks a large metal box. It breaks the window and the ghost spits all the razor sharp shards of glass back at her. She is hit, but later on she is not bleeding or complaining about pain.
Correction: How do we know this isn't a ghostly illusion? Seems all that glass was gone when everyone else gets to the room.
25th Nov 2003
Shallow Hal (2001)
Corrected entry: What Tony Robbins does to Hal is not supposed to be magic, but more like a form of hypnotism. Therefore, how does Hal know, at first sight, if new people he meets are beautiful or ugly 'on the inside'? Surely he should not be able to tell until he gets to know them better?
Correction: Actually, this is very specifically addressed. In the dialog, the claim is that you DIDN'T need to get to know them, rather their "inner beauty" was easy to see if you looked for it. While it might have some logic problems, there is a very whimsical attempt to address it by Robbins.
31st Aug 2004
The Village (2004)
Corrected entry: There are too many things in the village that the villagers couldn't make themselves. It's true that they could have brought things like oil lamps with them, but it seems odd that they would have also brought a huge stock of fancy clothing (bowler and top hats, decorated shirts and waistcoats) that would require a highly-skilled and very well-equipped craftsman or a factory to make. The ones they brought thirty years ago would have worn out, and they couldn't know how many children they'd have or what sizes they'd be.
Correction: "Fancy" clothes like the ones they were wearing were certainly not made in factories during the era they were copying, so how is it so difficult to believe they didn't have a tailor? They had cows and goats and things for the material.
Factories existed in the 1870s.
8th Aug 2004
The Village (2004)
Corrected entry: The Elders have no reason to lie about the year, other than to further the plot and make the ending more of a surprise. Lying to the children by saying its 1897 makes no more a difference than saying its 2004, if that is the only life they ever knew.
Correction: The elders were trying to live in a time period where they felt more "hope". They were hiding from the violence of the modern world. The lie was not for just the children, but also for themselves. Remeber that Walker was a historian.
10th Mar 2004
House on Haunted Hill (1999)
Corrected entry: In the scene at the beginning when Steven shreds Evelyn's party list he then goes to his desk and types a new list in an email, sends the email and leaves his desk. No problem there. However, the next shot is from behind the desk looking at the computer and there is a shadow of someone moving in the sunlight being cast on the computer and the desk. Steven is already out of the shot so it must be a crew member.
Correction: Or the ghost who re-types the list...
Correction: Later in the movie, its revealed that the house made the guest list. Relatives of the people who died in the fire.
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Correction: The EMP seems to be caused by their transportation systems. It is likely this is a byproduct of their system, not an intentional weapon. This puts to question how constant it is. Does it really burst evenly out? Or does it fire off in different waves in some unstable pattern. It is likely that some equipment sitting in the right place at the right time could be spared. This would explain the news crews who were able to photograph at least some of the events (most likely using long range zoom).
Joshua Skains