The Recruit (2003)
Continuity mistake: When Layla is hooked up to the lie detector that tracks the movement of her eye, she is looking around the room and blinking repeatedly, but the eye on the screen (which is supposed to be hers) never moves or blinks, even though the camera is still on her.
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Other mistake: On the back cover of Scream 3 in the Scream trilogy on DVD, the town of the original killings is referred to as Greensboro twice. The correct name of the town is Woodsboro, of course.
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Character mistake: The last time Doc tries the defibrillator on Norris, he uses it on the abdomen instead of on the chest.
MaZtR HaXoR
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Factual error: When Ryan enters the space station and removes her spacesuit, she is shown wearing only a tank top and boy shorts. In reality, according to NASA's official webpage, astronauts wear a liquid cooling and ventilation garment and an absorption garment (space diapers) under their suit. (00:38:45)
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Factual error: This movie states that it is during the year 1973, yet in the beginning of the movie when they are driving in the van they are listening to "Sweet Home Alabama" by Lynyrd Skynyrd. This song was not released publicly until 1974. (00:03:10)
juiicyyxo
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Character mistake: When Charlie is calling out the brick count to Napster from the subway, he describes it as being "13 across, 4 high, 4 deep". The bricks appear to be 2 deep in the safe (13x4x2), so he could just be lumping two shelves together, which works (13x4x4 = 13x4x2x2). The problem is that when the camera pans down there are 3 shelves in the safe. This means that there are more than the 208 bricks that Napster announces. (01:33:40)
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Evil Under the Sun (1982)
Plot hole: Patrick Redfern needs someone to be in the boat with him to corroborate his and his wife's deception and be his alibi. That is whole point of his wife lying on beach - he gets this when taking Myra for a ride - but it was portrayed as a random ride she got, he did not intend or plan giving her a ride, he did not see her loitering near the boat, or even in view of him untying the boat. Even if that was intention in the story for him to be seen ready to cast off, the movie viewers did not see her viewing him, only her appearing just before he was set to cast off. Without someone with him the whole deception would not work, he would have no alibi, he could have killed Arlena unseen.
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Clue (1985)
Visible crew/equipment: When Mrs. Peacock turns on the cellar lights, a piece of lighting equipment is visible to the left of the screen. (00:47:45)
Casual Person
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Don't Breathe (2016)
Continuity mistake: He cuts a hole in her pants for insemination. When in the car moments before fighting the dog there is no hole.
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Darkman (1990)
Other mistake: At the carnival, you can see an African-American man staring at the camera for a while. I am unsure if he is a crew-member watching over the scene, or if he is just an extra trying to get onscreen.
Suggested correction: He isn't staring at the camera. He's glancing over at Peyton and Julie as they are joyously dancing upon exiting the ferris wheel.
Phaneron
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Halloween (1978)
Continuity mistake: When Annie and Laurie leave the hardware store to go to their babysitting jobs it is broad daylight. When they reach the houses apparently just a few blocks away, it is already dark.
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Factual error: A force of Russian Tu-22 Backfire bombers attacks the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74) by sneaking in under the ship's radar. This is all well and good except that carriers usually don't use their own radar, they have Airborne Early Warning aircraft (E-2 Hawkeye's) that can see much further and not give away the carrier's position (let alone the F-14s which would be patrolling too) not to mention the fleet of destroyers other ships guarding the carrier. The whole point is, the US Navy practiced and planned for such a "carrier versus Backfire" battle for years. I guess in the interest of furthering the plot Hollywood has to ignore the immense measures the USN takes to protect those multi-billion dollar assets, not to mention the 5000+ sailors that man them.
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The Ring (2002)
Revealing mistake: In the scene when the main character is in the library on the internet, she goes to a couple of websites. When the shot shows the URL up top, it is C:\windows98\mydocuments\etc.html. Instead of actually searching on the web they used a premade html page and accessed it from their computer.
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The Beach (2000)
Continuity mistake: When Richard and Francoise are making love on the beach. They begin kissing deep under the water and continue all the way to the top. When they reach the surface they can stand up in the water which appears to be waist-level.
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National Treasure (2004)
Factual error: As Ben is clinging to the staircase while it is falling apart, there is a close-up of a nail being pulled out of the wood. This nail is round-headed, rather than square as it would have been over 200 years ago. It's also shiny instead of rusty, which indicates that it's galvanized. Galvanization as an industrial, metal-preservation process was not patented until 1837, and was not used in building materials until well into the late-1800s. Since the film states the staircase was made by "the Founding Fathers, " and there was no galvanization of iron nails in any industrialized nation in 1780s-1830's, this is a huge anachronism.
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Speed (1994)
Character mistake: There is no way on earth that a police officer would shoot a hostage in the thigh to 'take them out of the equation'. Anyone who suggested such a thing would likely be taken out and shot themselves. Bullet wounds to the thigh are often fatal, as an injury to the femoral artery causes massive and frequently unstoppable blood loss. Breaking the femur often leads to fat embolisms as bone marrow gets into the bloodstream and then to the lungs. In fact a broken femur is a life threatening injury in itself, and a shattered femur - a typical bullet injury - would almost always result in a total amputation. You cannot aim carefully enough to avoid the bone or artery as their position in the body varies, (as will the bullet trajectory upon impact). Jack is an experienced cop and would know the potentially disastrous consequences of shooting someone in the thigh. He'd shoot him in the foot.
Suggested correction: Jack is a cop and as such he would have extensive training in first aid, including treating bullet wounds. He would know perfectly well that shooting someone in the thigh was almost certain to cause a life threatening injury. He would shoot him in the foot.
Jack and Harry aren't just "cops," they're elite members of S.W.A.T., meaning they employ "special weapons and tactics." The hostage shooting is extreme, in any case; but the film wanted to quickly portray Jack as unorthodox and a bit of a loose cannon.
Charles Austin Miller
And as an "an elite member of S.W.A.T." Jack would be even more aware of the fact that a bullet wound to the thigh would probably kill or permanently disable his partner. I am not questioning the plot line of showing Jack to be a renegade by having him shoot a hostage, I am simply stating the obvious. He absolutely would not shoot him in the thigh.
And, yet, obviously, he did.
No, he didn't. An actor fired a blank round at another actor and a special effects technician detonated a blood squib that had been installed under the second actor's costume, thus creating a fictional representation of logically absurd situation. It's a plot hole.
Then the entire movie is a plot hole. Speaking factually, you could just as easily say that a random passenger could never drive a commercial bus at highway speeds and make 175-foot ramp jumps with it. And, yet, there it is, and that's the story the producers wanted to tell. Call it a factual error, certainly, but the films are doing precisely what the screenwriters and director intended.
Except for blatant continuity errors, your comment negates every posting on this site. It's a mistake, plain and simple, lazy screenwriting, sloppy plotting, factually inaccurate. The original posting is valid, this is not a chatroom and I have nothing else to say on the matter.
Precisely. That's what makes it a character mistake, per the rules of this site.
Tailkinker and CA Miller are correct. This is a character mistake in an over the top action thriller. In real life cops don't shoot hostages in the thigh but buses don't fly over gaps in bridges either. If you can't watch Speed with a willing suspension of disbelief then it's not the movie for you. Enjoying fantasy action with its flaws does not validate mistakes in other movies and claiming it is lazy writing etc just makes a mistake picker seem uptight.
Suggested correction: It's made abundantly clear that shooting hostages is NOT something that they're trained to do - Jack merely suggests it during one of their 'pop quiz' exchanges; Harry's incredulous reaction should be more than enough to indicate that this is not standard operating procedure.
Tailkinker
Show 1 more suggested correction
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The Bourne Identity (2002)
Continuity mistake: When Jason is cutting Marie's hair in the hotel room, his watch is on his left wrist. When he and Marie begin to kiss, in this flipped shot Jason's watch is on his right wrist, his moles have changed sides, and the hand-held showerhead behind them is backwards as well. Next shot his watch is back on his left wrist. The flipped shot has nothing to do with the small bathroom mirror. (01:00:56)
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Flight of the Phoenix (2004)
Plot hole: This film is set in 2004. The thought that no search and rescue operations would be put in place after an aircraft disappeared from radar during a routine flight is absurd. The Chinese are paranoid about intrusion on their territory and the downed aircraft would have been located by a simple satellite search within hours of it crashing. Chinese military satellites crisscross the Gobi and they are equipped with optical cameras, microwave and infrared detectors and radar, so spotting a metal aircraft on the ground would be simple even if it was hundreds of kilometres off course. The crew would have been visited by Chinese military helicopters (and probably arrested!) as soon as the storm had died down.
PEDAUNT
Suggested correction: The Chinese government, for whatever reason, may have denied there was any crash at all if it suited their purposes, and the oil company that owned the plane would have little recourse. The Chinese have done this before. For the purpose of the plot, the survivors decided that they had to save themselves rather than wait for rescue and that was completely plausible.
Suggested correction: It's now 2021, and we still can't find Malaysian Airlines MH370. So this suggestion of planes always being found is laughable.
stiiggy
MH370 crashed into the ocean, and in fact some wreckage has been found. The Chinese military does not have the south Indian Ocean under satellite surveillance 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, unlike the Gobi desert where a crashed plane would be spotted within hours of it going missing.
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Continuity mistake: When Frost has the head pure-blood vampire on the beach, after he pulls out his first vampire tooth you see blood all over his mouth, but when it shows the close up of him pulling out the other tooth, there is no blood. (01:04:22)
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Visible crew/equipment: During the scene where Neo is talking to Agent Smith in the park area where Neo was talking to the Oracle, there is a close-up on Agent Smith's face. In his sunglasses you can see a bright white screen to reflect the light onto the faces of the actors. This isn't visible in any non-reflected angles. You can also see the cameraman on the other side. (00:51:15)
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