Movies are never perfect and all of us know about that.
But who can think of the biggest error( s ) that big buget movies have made in the past?
i'd start the topic off but I can't really think of too many right now :p
What kinds of errors?
Here's some examples for Best Pic nominees or movies that will certainly become nominated this year:
Editing errors: The opening shot of Road To Perdition shows a kid on a beach with waves lapping at the shore and the sound of the waves... but they're mis-timed. For every wave we hear, we see three hitting the shore.
Historical errors: It is pretty safe to say that William "Braveheart" Wallace never bedded the Queen of England. Also, Longshanks lived a full two years after Wallace's death and was not striken dead by his the freedom loving death wail. Also, just about everything else you saw in that movie.
Character logic errors: The guy put a diamond the size of a HOCKY PUCK around that girl's neck in Titanic, but was satisfied that it (and she) was lost after making a cursory scowling glance around the deck of a rescue ship where almost everyone had their face turned away from him.
More character logic errors: In Dances With Wolves, when cavalryman Kevin Costner finds a wounded woman in indian garb, does he use his sash as a tourniquet and bandage? Does he use his belt, or a piece of his horse blanket or jacket? Does he use one of the pieces of cloth called BANDAGES that soldiers have carried from the dawn of time? No. He rips up the American flag to bind her wounds with. SYMBOLISM!!
Continuity errors: The bullet holes were already in the wall before the kid came out and shot at Jules and Vince in Pulp Fiction.
Camera errors: When Russel Crowe flips over the chariot in Gladiator, you can see a high pressure gas tank inside it.
Casting errors: Cate Blanchett as Galadrial - Ack!
The editing errors, Continuity errors, and editing errors were more on par to what I was thinking. you had some good ones in there.
I can't count the times i've seen boom mics bob down into scenes sometimes. but the only big budget one I can think of is Nuse betty, where a boom mic was clearly seen haning above a characters head in one scene
In Terminator the police car has two different sayings on it as soon as the camera angle changes (or someting like that)
In Diggstown james Woods wears the suit he wore at night for two or three scenes during one of the daytime fights (In other words he changes suits during the fight)
In Sleepaway Camp the killer has an axe in one upon being discovered and it becomes a knife aftera quick cutaway and then turns into an axe again (or maybe it was the other way around)
Also in Sleepaway Camp in one scene you can see exactly what the killer is wearing and tell who it is (not sure if that was on purpose or not though).
In Se7en Sommerset changes shirts in the cab when he goes to the library (its explained in the dvd commentary)
And in Battlefield Earth..........nevermind
>In Terminator the police car has two different sayings on it as soon as the
>camera angle changes (or someting like that)
Also, in the scene near the end where Reese is bashing the terminator's head back and forth with a pipe, the last shot from behind the terminator shows a piston or tube rip free from the left side of its neck, but there's no damage when shown from the front.
In Lethal Weapon, when Riggs jumps off the roof handcuffed to the guy, you can clearly see the handcuffs pull apart.
There are plenty (you can easily find full pages devoted to this speciality), but my favourite mistakes in mainstream films are:
1) Bad Boys: When Tea Leoni is spotted by the bad guys, it is because the sun is setting and she casts a shadow. But seconds later, when she is pursued by the henchmen outdoors, it is pitch black.
2) Pearl Harbour: You'll think Michael Bay had learned something, but no, here when Ben Affleck's plane is shot down and crashes into the sea is daylight, but later in a flashback we see him reaching surface at night, whoa, big lungs.
3) We were soldiers: During one of the battle scenes, a screen text says 6.00 AM, but the light is real intense, and apart from that you can tell from the shadows that is 12.00 PM.
4) The empire strikes back: When Han Solo is cuffed and about to be frozen in carbonite, he salutes his friends for the last time. In medium shots he wears his white shirt, and in close cuts he also wears his waistcoat. Can't believe this wasn't corrected in the new edition.
One of my favourites has always been the shot in the original Star Wars, when the stormtroopers come charging in and one of them whacks his head on the door. That, and the part when Luke jumps out of his fighter and calls Princess Leia "Carrie."
In "The Empire Strikes Back" when Han Solo is about to be frozen in carbonite, he is only wearing a white shirt. However in one close up shot (when he says "I know" after Leia says "I Love You"), he is wearing his black jacket
I haven't seen Green Berets (the john Wayne flick) ut apparently at the end of the Viet Nam war movie, they show the sun setting on the beach. Only the problem is, if the director had bothered to look at a globe, is that Vietnam has only east coast beaches.
at the end of risky business when the pimp has stolen all of tom cruise's furniture, there is a shot of a moving van full of stuff. they cut away and then back to the van driving away completely empty
Not that " Bad Girls " is a great movie...
but it has a GREAT ending shot as the credits come up.....
the movie ends.. and they girls ride off into the sunset
in the foregroud there is the shadow of a man and a horse
i assume when they edited this... they were paying attention to the sunset...
cause RIGHT THERE in the foreground this horse is taking a MASSIVE CRAP!!
ahahahahhahaah
POOP!
Talk about symbolism!
ahahha
Kyla
APOLLO 13 is chuck full of them, but the most glaring is when they show the full moon out one window and the full Earth out the other window. Impossible unless the sun is BETWEEN the Earth and the moon.
Panic Room has a couple HUGE errors:
1. At the beginning they show how the door will not close on anybody (as it's like an elevator door). Then later, Dwight Yokum gets his hand caught in the door - how'd that happen!?
2. Also, for the first hour the panic room has a PA system for one-way communication. They specifically say it's not an intercom so they cannot speak to whoever is in the panic room. Then later, when Dwight and Forrest are in the panic room, Jody Foster remarkably can speak to them through an intercom system!!
>1. At the beginning they show how the door will not close on anybody (as it's like an elevator door). Then later, Dwight Yokum gets his hand caught in the door - how'd that happen!?
for that one there was only lasers at the top, middle, and bottom to stop it. His hand was inbetween two of the lasers. Or at least thats how I saw it.
>2. Also, for the first hour the panic room has a PA system for one-way communication. They specifically say it's not an intercom so they cannot speak to whoever is in the panic room. Then later, when Dwight and Forrest are in the panic room, Jody Foster remarkably can speak to them through an intercom system!!
Yeah the P.A was only so people in the room can talk out, and so the villans write things on cardboard. But I don't remember too much else :P.
Oh I remember in THE GATE (not a big buget movie but oh well) in the beginning the kid comes home, and the sun is very bright, so he walks into the house and no one is there and then he goes to the back yard and all of a sudden its pitch black. I didn't know the sun can set in under a min.
Hudson Hawk When the building is about to blow up it is night but when it actually does blow its day time.
I think in Panic Room the cameras only had speakers attached. For whatever reason.
The Panel from where the alarm system is programmed (which is outside the panic room ???) has an intercom. Again, for whatever reason.
I think Panic Room mostly had one lousy script that had pretty much everybody do the stupidest think imaginable.
Like not trying to grap the cell phone when the bad guys are on a different floor, but waiting until they're right next door. Or immediately dropping the cell phone idea when it's not working in the panic room.
The errors I remember most :
Flammable gas that is heavier than air rising up an air duct and staying on the ceiling. And Jodie Foster having her phase right in the flaming gas and remarkably showing no blisters and even keeping her eyebrows.
Someone spent a gazillion dollars for a having a panic room installed, but the hatch to the roof can be practically sneezed open. Some better locks could have saved a lot of money there.
This is an old one, but I haven't heard it brought up before. In "The Giant Gila Monster" there is a scene where a man is driving down the road and looks to the side at the title creature. I don't know how noticable it is, but you can see the director's reflection in the windsheild pointing at where the actor should look. Good model work on that film. Also, in spider man the lamp that gets webbed off the shelf and smashed is back where it was intact in the next scene.
-----ooo-'U'-ooo-------Kilroy was here.
Sometimes its a projecting problem, the frame is playing to low and we see a boom, that happened during a screening of the Steve Miner movie House.
There is a wonderful bobbing boom mike (looks like and Ewoks leg) that bounces into the frame in a couple of shots in Octopus 2: River of Fear.
In Basket Case 2, Dwayne walks into a kitchen wearing a cream colored shirt, in the kitchen he is wearing a powder blue colored shirt, when he exits he is again wearing a creme color shirt.
During the burning of Houston in Irwin Allen's Production of The Swarm, General Slater (Richard Widmark) is watching the inferno through a bee coated window. Interior shots, with Slater and Crane in the foreground, have the window clear and coated with bees. Exterior shots of Slater watching the spectacle through the window have the General peering through the slits of venetian blinds, to give him that trapped look, I guess.
During the Houston in Flames sequence, a crashing Ambulance zips from night to day back to night while crashing and exploding.
Speak of booms, there's a fairly obvious boom shot in "Batlle Beyond The Stars" during Robert Vaughn's speech in his hideout
I'm no marine biologist, but is there something wrong with that title? Something to do with the octopus and its habitat?
Two famous "historical" errors :
In Ben Hur a trumpeter rises his trumpet for a salute, giving us a good view of....his watch.
In Cleopatra an Egyptian bath was already equipped with plastic bathing accessories.
And in both movies, planes pass in the background.