Corrected entry: When the face sucker jumps at Kane, he only jumps onto Kane's helmet. This is best seen when in slo-mo on the DVD. Having it jump through his helmet, as we are led to believe, would have resulted in some glass breaking and facial lacerations to Kane and injury to the face sucker alien. (00:34:20)
lionhead
5th Apr 2005
Alien (1979)
13th Jan 2004
Enemy of the State (1998)
Corrected entry: In the early scene where Will Smith is confronting the "Mafia Boss" with the video of him consorting with union representatives, the Boss is shown mugging for the camera. Obviously, he knows he is being taped. Immediately thereafter, he starts to threaten Smith, demanding to know who made the tape, as if it had been made surreptitiously.
Correction: He wanted to know how Smith got the tape and more importantly, who made the copy so he could make sure no more were produced.
That's not made clear in the film. Yes he later asks how he got it, but before and even after he keeps saying, "who made the tape?" And eventually he says, "I wanna know who made the tape, and I wanna know in a week." Which giving him a week is another valid question altogether, but unrelated. But this seems to be a mistake as it seems odd that Pintero wouldn't know who's responsible despite mugging for the camera. Without any other explanation or dialogue, this is a plot error.
He wants to know who gave this tape to Smith, who made a version of it that got in the hands of a lawyer. That's what he wants to know. He may or may not know who was actually filming, but he wants to know who it was that got it out of private hands and into the hands of Smith.
Pintero's question "Who made the tape?" refers to the copy that Dean has, not the original which, as already pointed out, he was well aware of.
2nd Aug 2021
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
Question: Why would Dumbledore hire Lockhart to be a professor at Hogwarts? Dumbledore knows how incompetent Lockhart is and that the DADA is cursed.
Answer: This is better explained in the book. Dumbledore, and also the other Hogwarts' staff, always doubted the narcissistic Lockhart's credentials and abilities, but no-one else would accept the job, knowing it was cursed and no instructor lasted more than a year. At the time, Dumbledore was pressed to hire a new teacher before the school year started, and Lockhart was the only option and better than nothing.
Answer: On paper, Lockheart is far from incompetent. Look at all his books. It appears he has exceptional experience of the Dark Arts and creatures such as Hag's Banshee's etc. So as far as Dumbledore knows he's the best position of the job. With regards to the job being cursed, it's been cursed for 13 years with no teacher lasting more than a year. He still needs a teacher. And all the teachers get more and more qualified as time goes on. Consider the fact that he hires ex-auror, Moody.
In the novels, Lockheart has admitted to Harry and Ron that he's a fraud. His backstory goes that all of his "accomplishments" were told to him by other wizards that actually achieved them and after he learned the whole story, he used Obliviate on them to make them forget what they did and claimed them as his own. Even the spell that he claims would work on pixies failed.
In the movie he tells them too. Nobody knew that though, not even Dumbledore when he hired him. Although some do start getting suspicious, like Snape.
Dumbledore was aware of Lockhart being a fraud as two of the wizards that had their memories erased were friends of his and was able to correctly guess that Lockhart was responsible.
I wouldn't consider Dolores Umbridge, who succeeded (the fake) Mad Eye Moody, as an improvement. She was mediocre in addition to being corrupt. The real Mad Eye, never taught, so it's unknown how well he would have done. Barty Crouch, Jr. (the fake Moody) was a dark wizard, making him an effective instructor. Lupin was an excellent teacher, as was Snape, though he didn't last a full year.
Question: Do we ever see the wraiths in their true forms?
Answer: Technically what you see is their true form after being corrupted by the rings and turned into wraiths. Before that they were simply men, you can see what is left of that when Frodo puts on the ring at Weather Top.
I thought those white ugly faces you see, when Frodo puts the ring on at weather top, were their true forms.
Yes, that's exactly right. The rings turned them into wraiths, meaning their spirits moved on to the shadow realm and their real bodies pretty much destroyed. All that's left of them under the cloaks is invisible (in the books) and only seen in the shadow realm, where Frodo enters when he puts on the ring. The danger is too that Frodo would pass into the shadow realm too if he puts on the ring too often, becoming like them.
11th Nov 2007
Twelve Monkeys (1995)
Corrected entry: Katherine's phone message that is responsible for the hypothesis about the Army of the 12 Monkeys is left as a direct result of her experience with Cole, and at the same time what leads to him being sent back in the first place. Well, if that message is there all along, then why isn't the one Cole left at the airport contradicting it also present from the beginning? It should have created a paradox, as it would have stopped the investigation into the Army before it started, hence the first message would never have been left.
Correction: Both messages are there all the time but one (Coles) was more degraded than the other (Katherines), and the scientists needed more time to work on it.
30th May 2020
Twelve Monkeys (1995)
Plot hole: At the end the police shoot Cole while he was chasing Dr Peters but the police do not stop Dr Peters and question him as to why a man was chasing him at the airport with a gun, instead he is unchallenged and allowed to continue his journey.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: There is no connection between Cole and Dr. Peters, nobody knows he is specifically chasing him. Dr. Peters is beyond the gates and on his way into the plane so unless they want to stop the entire flight, which is unlikely, he is left alone. Perfectly reasonable.
Cole is chasing a man and Dr. Peters is running away (and knocking people over in the process). Further, they were screaming "there he is...stop him he's got a deadly virus" and pointing at Dr. Peters. Highly unlikely they would have let the plane depart.
Coke was considered mentally unstable. They're unlikely to take him seriously.
There was a dude with a gun, a lot of people were running, panicking. Perfectly reasonable reaction from Peters. The police were after Cole anyway, so the attention was on him, not on Peters. And as I said, Peters was already past the inspection, so he was where he was supposed to be and there was no reason to stop him.
Not to mention that Dr. Railly can also corroborate the reason Dr. Peters is being chased.
The shrink was still alive and seemed to give up quickly on her mission to stop a virus from killing billions. Like she just let them take her while she remained silent instead of continuing to scream that he had a virus so Cole died in vain. And they would know why he was chasing them because all they would need to do was ask him.
Her concern was with Cole, she tries to protect him throughout the movie. After Cole is shot she knows there is no way they let her continue the chase, all she cares about is Cole. Cole is being chased by the cops, no reason for them to believe what he is yelling, no reason to believe her either, since she is as an accomplice.
Dr. Railly can corroborate the reason Cole is chasing Dr. Peters. When she points out that he is even on the front page of USA Today with a Nobel Prize winner, I think they'd definitely investigate.
30th Oct 2017
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Question: Why doesn't Gandalf want Pippin to touch the crystal ball, whatever it's called? Does it give Sauron the ability to read minds?
Answer: In a word, yes. The palantÃr (as it is called) forms a mental link between itself and others like it, and a strong mind (such as Sauron) can manipulate weaker ones (as he did with Saruman and Denethor).
15th Jul 2021
Alien (1979)
Question: How did the company know about the Alien in the first place? Presumably no-one had been there before and the signal they picked up didn't indicate the presence of an Alien lifeform.
Answer: It was never fully explained. "The Company" had a standing directive that any signal detected which indicated alien life was to be investigated and specimens collected and returned. Failure to comply would result in the crew forfeiting their profit shares. The company apparently had previously detected the crashed alien astronaut's warning signal from LV-46 and wanted to search for alien lifeforms without specifically knowing what would be found.
Actually in the movie it is indicated that the company definitely knew about the xenomorphs, given Ash's directive. It is not explained how in this movie but it is in the movies "Prometheus" and "Alien: covenant." The standing directive about investigating signals was just an excuse to use an expendable crew to procure a specimen.
13th Oct 2003
Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)
Character mistake: In the showdown scene between the Vietnamese officer and Rambo, the Vietnamese officer empties an entire magazine at Rambo from only about 20 metres away but only manages to hit the ground around Rambo's feet. What was he doing, aiming at his feet? He deserved to get blown up to bits for that effort.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
3rd May 2003
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Corrected entry: John Connor in the future should have sent back a terminator that didn't resemble the first one. Since he did, it tipped off the police and nearly made an enemy of Sarah Connor, when it should have been unrecognizable and earned her trust faster.
Correction: It's probably not very easy to capture a Terminator, especially with (apparently) absolutely zero damage to it. John got what he could and sent it back. Even if he did know that it was the same model that Skynet sent back to kill Sarah (which he may not have), it's still better than nothing, and there's no evidence to suggest that he could have gotten his hands on a different Terminator.
Correction: It should be noted, the T-800's all looked alike (at least the 101 models). Plus, adult John Connor remembers being saved by this particular model and therefore sends it back, regardless if there were other models with a different look.
You are mistaken. The future John Connor that send that terminator back does not remember the events of the movie. The future changes whenever something or someone is sent back without affecting that particular timeline. So the future John Connor that send that T-800 back is from the timeline after the first movie, not this one.
That statement I made regarding John remembering the T-800 comes directly from James Cameron himself, not something I made up or fan theory.
It might have been true when T-2 was the last movie, but later movies change that. I get it if people want to hang on to the original Cameron deal, but the continuity of the franchise disregards the old rules and comes up with new ones. The events of T-2 created the events of T-3 and thus it is a different John Connor.
Many consider T3 a soft reboot and not direct sequel meaning what's established in the film doesn't specifically alter what is established in Terminator 1 and 2.
24th May 2021
Army of the Dead (2021)
Factual error: There is no way in hell they can carry $200,000,000 in cash (over 4,000lbs), let alone load it on the helicopter.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: They never did and it was never the idea. They simply didn't figure out it's not physically possible. They took as much as they could from the vault in the much more limited time they had, and never got any of it to the helicopter (except for 1 small stack) anyway.
It's true that the team was not meant to recover all the money, but they didn't know that going in. How did Ward and Peters, who seem reasonably smart, not consider the weight when planning the heist? The deal Ward believed was "get paid $50 million to recover $200 million" not "grab what you can and good luck"
I suppose it could be counted as a stupidity, but I'm not sure anyone is really aware of the weight of 200 million in cash, even reasonably smart people. Never seen it, never weighed it.
8th May 2019
Game of Thrones (2011)
The Last Of The Starks - S8-E4
Continuity mistake: In this episode, Kings Landing is shown as sitting on flat, plain-like terrain. In previous seasons, it was shown surrounded by water and mountains covered lush greenery.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: That is correct, however there is actually a reason for this, it was just never adapted from the books. Stains burned the woods during battle of the black water as an offering to the lord of light.
That doesn't remove the hills though.
28th Oct 2003
Jurassic Park (1993)
Corrected entry: Right before the scientists see the dinosaurs for the first time, Ellie is looking at this plant leaf and saying, "This has been extinct since the ____ period." If it's an extinct plant, how could they duplicate it? Mosquitoes don't drink chlorophyll - there's no way it could have been preserved if everything worked the way they said. No organic material from an extinct plant from either the Jurassic or Cretaceous period has ever been found, and given that plant material decays very quickly, it never will be. The engineers did not use some magical "other method" to clone plants because there aren't any.
Correction: As has been pointed out on this site before, inventing deux ex machina explanations for plot holes and factual errors does not invalidate them. No organic material from an extinct plant from either the Jurassic or Cretaceous period has ever been found, and given that plant material decays very quickly, it never will be. The engineers did not use some magical "other method" to clone plants because there aren't any.
Correction: The video they watch (with Mr. DNA) only explains how they recreated the dinosaurs, which were the main attraction of the park. The engineers used other methods to make the right environment for the animals, but as it's not half as exciting, the viewer never finds out exactly how.
Correction: The simplest and most likely explanation, once you accept the logic of this movie in the first place, is that the engineers are removing Plant DNA directly from the amber.
Amber is fossilized tree sap, anything fossilized doesn't hold any DNA. However, it is possible amber holds trapped plant parts (called 'inclusion'), from which DNA can be extracted. Theoretically.
Question: When Smeagol first sees the ring, its power drives him insane almost instantly, leading him to kill his own friend and not feel any guilt afterwards. Later it changes him physically as well, turning him into the shrivelled up creature Gollum. When Bilbo Baggins however acquires the ring it doesn't cause him to go insane or commit murder, even after he's had it for some 60 years. Frodo Baggins also holds onto the ring for a good amount of time without ever losing his mind to it. Why the difference?
Answer: The Ring's power affects everyone, but not the same way or at the same pace. We really don't know much about Smeagol or what he was like before he found the Ring, so his personality/character may have been more immediately susceptible to its influence. We do know Bilbo and Frodo are, in general, kindhearted and innocent, so they "hold out" longer before succumbing to the Ring...they both DO lose their minds to it at certain points, albeit briefly (Bilbo transforms into a monster in front of Frodo, and Frodo, spoiler alert, later claims the Ring as his own in Mt. Doom).
Answer: Smeagol was greedy for the fish that Daegol his cousin caught which had the ring in its belly. The Ring influenced him to kill Daegol and run from his home into the caves. He was the guardian of the ring for almost 600 years, so he is quite crazy when Bilbo meets him, with even the Ring warning Gollum not to touch it. Bilbo on the other hand was wholly ignorant of the Ring's influence and kept it in his pocket and only using it to hide from his relatives. Bilbo, being a bit wealthy and a Hobbit didn't have greed in him so the Ring had very little to work with. Frodo, being raised by Bilbo was the same, being more interested in smoking, food and other Hobbit activities. He was chosen by Elrond to bear the ring because it had no real effect on him or his people, given their innocence and lack of desire for power. The Ring kept Bilbo alive for over 130 years with no issues. Frodo is only overcome at the forge in Mt Doom, as Sauron's power is literally everywhere in that place.
Most of this is completely made up.
10th May 2003
Space Jam (1996)
Corrected entry: Can someone explain how the hell the bulldog gets into the cupboard in the scene where Bugs and Daffy are searching for Michael's shorts? It was in the kennel when Daffy burrowed into it, the front door was closed so it couldn't have got in that way, and if it followed them up the tunnel, how exactly did it get into the cupboard (which was also closed) without them seeing it?
Correction: The same way Michael Jordon's arm streched across the court. Things like that happen in cartoons, even if the people are not cartoons themselves.
The scene in question takes place in Michael Jordan's house in the real world, not the cartoon world.
But it does involve Daffy and Bugs. And Daffy already had an encounter with the dog and somehow escaped from it. Basically, the dog got the role of a cartoon character by being involved with cartoon characters. It's also their movie, so their rules.
11th Aug 2004
Gladiator (2000)
Corrected entry: In the battle with the Germanians, we see a Roman soldier killing a fallen opponent with the tip of his spear. This would not happen in reality. The spear is a javelin, or 'pilum', used for throwing. If the soldier still had his pilum, he would have used the reverse end of it, the 'shoe', for finishing off his foe. The shoe was a sharp metal point used to stick the spear into the ground. (00:09:35)
Correction: Another of those entries that is really just an "I would have acted differently" submission. Faced with a German barbarian, nothing a Roman soldier does with a weapon that stops him, is a mistake.
Except that the Romans were a highly organised killing machine on the battlefield. Not really much room for improvisation and a personal style in hand-to-hand combat.
All medieval fights are messy, all medieval fights required combatants to improvise to survive it. Doesn't matter how organized an army is (and the Roman armies were a lot less organized than they are portrayed in movies), once the fighting starts it's pretty much chaos till one side wins.
Eh... No it's not. I'm sorry but if you write "medieval Roman warfare", that sort of gives away that you're not an expert. ANCIENT Roman warfare on the other hand has been extensively studied by military history anoraks. (Anyway, are you following me around now, or what? This isn't supposed to be a personal thing).
I didn't write "medieval roman warfare" I wrote "medieval fights." If medieval fights were messy, imagine fights 300 years earlier. Extensive studies show that the way the Roman Empire legions fought in the border wars was in fact a lot of improvisation and they had some major defeats against Germanic tribes caused by overextension. These soldiers were far less trained and thus improvised. Not attacking you personally, but defending the correction. If you got a problem take it to the discord.
Romans were in fact ahead of the inhabitants of the Middle Ages in almost everything. This is common knowledge. It's sort of useful to know what you're talking about when making confident statements. (I have no interest in discord, I only reply here in the hope that people won't fall for misinformation).
22nd May 2008
Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (1989)
Corrected entry: There is a problem with the following scene: The Nazi plane crashes into the tunnel, slides past Harrison Ford and Sean Connery and explodes when exiting the tunnel. The problem is that the plane shouldn't explode since its wings (filled with gas) were torn off. It couldn't have been a bomb attached to the plane either, since, as it is seen only seconds afterwards, a bomb would leave a big crater in the street and make it impossible for the car to go on. Yet, Harrison Ford has no problems at all driving through what's left of the plane.
Correction: The engine and hosing that delivers the gas to it is attached to the fuselage.
Could someone elaborate on the proposed correction please?
The engine can still explode and there could hypothetically still be fuel in the hosing connected to the engine.
But there's not a LOT of fuel left there, when the tanks fell off half a minute earlier. It's not a terribly entertaining mistake, granted, because some movies really do need explosions. But it might be technically valid in a boring way.
6th May 2021
X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
Question: How did Quicksilver manage to get the arcade game, the table tennis and what looks like a sound system in the basement? They are very heavy and even with his speed would be impossible to move.
Answer: There could be a basement door, so he wouldn't need the stairs, and with a hand truck, even the heavier objects would be easy to move.
He's able to move several people out of the Mansion when it is destroyed, so perhaps his powers allow him to move things that big quickly. He can also push a cart or trolley at speed, remember.
Answer: He doesn't have to steal the actual heavy items, he can steal money and buy the heavy items and have them delivered. His mother is a single parent so it wouldn't be very difficult for him to arrange delivery of items while she is working. Mom also appears to be completely aware of Peter's crimes and doesn't really seem all that concerned.
And his mother wouldn't have found that suspicious? Or the movers? He's a teenager.
His mother seemingly already knows that he steals stuff. It's her house after all. She thinks the heroes are the police when they first show up to talk to him, and she visits him in the basement in the next film, and would have seen all the stuff he has down there. As for the movers, I used to work for a moving company, and not once did we ever ask a customer where they acquired something we were moving. They would be there to do a job.
That totally doesn't make any sense. The idea is that he stole these items. Would he call a moving company to steal an arcade game out of an arcade hall? How does he get the arcade game in the first place? Does he leave it on the curb of the arcade hall (or shop) so they can pick it up and drop it off at his house?
He most likely stole money and legit bought all those things. He likely helps his mother with the bills and stuff, so she doesn't ask him how he does it. Pietro is not known to be some master criminal with bad character, so he likely doesn't steal from ordinary people. The way he broke Magneto out of the prison, it seems he knows his way around a vault.
How he gets the arcade game is another question entirely. Maybe he stole it from a gas station or a restaurant that was near an apartment complex, but was still far from his home, and arranged to have it picked up at the apartment complex, so it would look like he lived there and was moving it to a new place. Alternatively, he could have had friends help him load it onto a truck.
22nd Jul 2010
Iron Man 2 (2010)
Question: Can someone please tell me why Stark brought strawberries when he visits Pepper in her office? He knows that she is allergic to them and we know that he likes/loves her, but it was a spiteful and mean thing to do. Not to mention insensitive. If he did that just to get the model, couldn't he had done it differently? The whole idea just doesn't make sense to me.
Answer: He wanted to do something nice for her, but since he is a pretty self-absorbed, shallow multi-billionaire, he forgot about her allergy. He remembered that there was SOMETHING about her and strawberries, but misremembered and thought it meant she really liked them. He makes a simple human mistake, not out of meanness or spite, but because he honestly does not remember.
Answer: I've only watched this movie once but I think he got the strawberries from the man on the side of the road, and he just didn't want them. The man did just place them on the seat of Tony's car.
He stopped on the side of the road to get the strawberries. The man didn't throw them into his car as he drove by.
19th Nov 2017
Justice League (2017)
Character mistake: At the start Wonder Woman stops a terrorist attack in London, and one of the terrorists tells her the bomb will flatten 4 blocks. This must be true as she is using her lasso of truth. But she just throws the bomb through the roof window and it explodes without damaging anything. A bomb with that blast radius would still damage nearby buildings, whether it detonated in the air or on the ground.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: You are compelled to YOUR truth. He didn't build the bomb. He could have been wrong based on what he knew. Otherwise, why did the terrorists have to go through all that trouble to plant a bomb there if they could level 4 blocks just by planting it outside in the car.
Which is why it is labeled a character mistake, yes. You are right in your observation, but at the same time, the only truth the movie feeds us by exposition is that the bomb is supposed to have a certain power, and that is not true. Movies tend also to use this trope/trick a lot; the moment you throw a bomb at 'the last second', the explosion that was supposed to be uber-powerful is relatively harmless, even when the distance was not all that significant.
Depends on how high she threw the bomb. She can throw that thing high enough that it won't cause damage. Certainly if it's not as powerfull as the terrorist thought.
Correction: The face-hugger emits a quantity of acid and burns its way through the helmet visor. The visor is visibly affected - the sides of the hole appear melted, not broken.
Tailkinker ★
Then wouldn't Kane's face be melted?
It secretes enough acid to just melt the helmet and not damage the host.
lionhead