Little mistakes that take you out of the movie

[Unintentionally Blank]

Part XXXIV I'm sure, and an easy thread as long as doctors watch medical dramas, Forensic Investigators watch the CSI network and Lawyers watch law stuff.

I'm watching Iron Man and one is specific to the movie, but another is pretty much de rigeur where action meets cars:

-Tony Stark is working on his flat-head ford, the computer mentions low compression on cylinder 3...which is on the OTHER bank of cylinders from what he's taking apart.

-You have folks driving around in VERY expensive cars, and the SECOND an auto insurance claim is created, all the cars involved are 8-12 years old. (From Audi A8 to 96 Dodge Intrepid in three frames flat)

[appleciders]

In Robin Hood: Men In Tights, there's a continuity error in the final sword fight scene between Robin and the Sherriff. Robin, sword in his right hand, pins the Sherriff's sword against a pillar. The camera cuts and Robin quickly transfers his sword from his left hand back to his right. At no point did the sword ever move from right to left. Bugs me every time.

[Taenia spp.]

For me it's all the little technical errors and misrepresentations that add up to a whole lot of bullshit:

- In Jurassic Park, they little girl "hacker" sees these fancy graphics on the computer screen and exclaims "I know this! This is UNIX!". Similarly, I could not imagine a more un-hackerish movie than Hackers.

-Because I have an academic background in biology and biotechnology, complete bullshit leaks out of the collective anuses of The Andromeda Strain and Hollywood in general.

[Zeldar]

I already bitched about this in another current thread, but for me it's chess sets and boards. Having them at all is supposed to convey that whoever has one lying about is way more than just smart, they're strategy experts and geeky and may know more than anybody else in the cast.

But when the board is set up with a dark square on the bottom right, or when the King and Queen are on the wrong colors or when the pieces are set up in some impossible arrangement, the exact opposite effect is achieved: these dipshits don't know chess from cheesecake.

It's an order of magnitude worse when chess terminology is tossed in gratuitously with bogus opening names, fictitious champions and even master players, and all the other trappings that even club players know to be bogus. I mean, if they can't fool the basic chess amateur, how do they expect to fool anybody who really knows what's going on? That leaves people who haven't the foggiest about chess, and I guess they deserve to think chess players are really all that much smarter then the average domino player.

[Unintentionally Blank]

Originally Posted by Taenia spp.

-Because I have an academic background in biology and biotechnology, complete bullshit leaks out of the collective anuses of The Andromeda Strain and Hollywood in general.

How can you say that? It was written and researched by Michael Crichton! Oh...I see...based on reading his 'I.T.' based stuff...I can see where you're coming from.

[Zsofia]

It's not a movie, but are there NO NURSES at Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital? No techs? Frankly, are there no doctors who aren't in the opening credits? Say what you want about Scrubs, at least they have nurses at Sacred Heart. I'd crap my pants in terror if the Head of Oncology came at me with a needle to draw blood for tests.

[Unintentionally Blank]

Actually, I'm wondering if we shouldn't just state up front that computer interactions are off limits...That's one of those things that hollywood rarely gets right.

Just after I run this cellphone picture through the computer...I wanna see that girl's blood type.

[Terminus Est]

Originally Posted by Taenia spp.

In Jurassic Park, they little girl "hacker" sees these fancy graphics on the computer screen and exclaims "I know this! This is UNIX!".

You mean that scene where they showed a real Unix application running on a real Unix machine displaying a real Unix directory tree?

[Skald the Rhymer]

Originally Posted by Zsofia

It's not a movie, but are there NO NURSES at Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital? No techs? Frankly, are there no doctors who aren't in the opening credits? Say what you want about Scrubs, at least they have nurses at Sacred Heart. I'd crap my pants in terror if the Head of Oncology came at me with a needle to draw blood for tests.

I haven't seen Wilson drawing blood. That said, it wouldn't surprise me that, when the nursing staff at Princeton Plainsboro ended their strike, one of the conditions is that none of them have to associate with House or his staff except in emergencies.

[Creaky]

The only thing that comes to mind worth mentioning is actually from a TV show.

I was watching an episode of "Cold Case" and one of the cops was talking to a Holocaust survivor. The person showed a tattoo on their wrist. The number "one" in the series of numbers was done like an American number one;, that is, a straight line. I have seen pictures of real camp tattoos like that and the number "ones" were done like European "ones"; that is, the ones looked like upside-down "Vs".

That made me nuts to the point where I remember it.

[Taenia spp.]

Originally Posted by Terminus Est

You mean that scene where they showed a real Unix application running on a real Unix machine displaying a real Unix directory tree?

Consider my ignorance cured, Terminus Est.

[alphaboi867]

Originally Posted by Skald the Rhymer

I haven't seen Wilson drawing blood. That said, it wouldn't surprise me that, when the nursing staff at Princeton Plainsboro ended their strike, one of the conditions is that none of them have to associate with House or his staff except in emergencies.

I've seen House ordering around nurses a couple of times.

[Skald the Rhymer]

Originally Posted by alphaboi867

I've seen House ordering around nurses a couple of times.

Don't bother me with facts. Anyway, if you check the deleted scenes on the DVDs, you'll find this is always followed by the nurses plotting his death, and then Cuddy having to give them raises or extra time off or access to her swimming pool to get them to put down the knife.

[RealityChuck]

In House, nurses are in the background of various scenes in places like the clinic, and always are called for when someone is having a seizure (but don't get there until they break for commercial).

But this is a story about House and the other doctors.. The nurses rarely have anything to do with the plot, so there's no dramatic reason to show them. Drama always trumps "realism."

[Zsofia]

Originally Posted by RealityChuck

In House, nurses are in the background of various scenes in places like the clinic, and always are called for when someone is having a seizure (but don't get there until they break for commercial).

But this is a story about House and the other doctors.. The nurses rarely have anything to do with the plot, so there's no dramatic reason to show them. Drama always trumps "realism."

Yeah, but it doesn't drive you nuts when the doctors go around drawing blood and running tests? That's necessary for the plot? Anybody who's ever, say, had blood drawn knows damned well your doctor never does it.

[JohnT]

Originally Posted by Unintentionally Blank

Actually, I'm wondering if we shouldn't just state up front that computer interactions are off limits...That's one of those things that hollywood rarely gets right.

Just after I run this cellphone picture through the computer...I wanna see that girl's blood type.

If you blow up the picture 700% and renormalize the pixels, you'll be able to read the three words showing on her suicide note... and notice that it's not her handwriting.

[hajario]

I've watched the last few episodes of Nip/tuck. My god, what a terrible show. I'm watching because an acquaintance of mine is a co-star in an upcoming episode and I want to see her but I don't know which episode it's going to be. I can't wait until she shows up so I can banish the show from my DVR forever.

Anyway, there is usually a surgery scene or two in each episode and the doctors never wear masks. I realize that it's because they want their face on camera but it is annoying to me.

[Martin Hyde]

Any scene where a corpse is seen to be breathing. I know nothing about movie making. I'm sure back in the good old days your best bet for showing a dead person on screen was to have an actor remain perfectly still and apply the appropriate makeup. You would think something a tad more precise exists today, but maybe it doesn't.

Anyway, two instances that really stand out:

Mystic River - When Sean Penn is at the morgue you can see his daughter's chest rise and fall as he identifies the body.

Fargo - When Marge is investigating the murders in Brainerd, the murdered Minnesota State Trooper's face visually changes its expression, that really throws you when you see it for the first time.

[The Superhero]

Originally Posted by Zeldar

It's an order of magnitude worse when chess terminology is tossed in gratuitously with bogus opening names, fictitious champions and even master players, and all the other trappings that even club players know to be bogus. I mean, if they can't fool the basic chess amateur, how do they expect to fool anybody who really knows what's going on? That leaves people who haven't the foggiest about chess, and I guess they deserve to think chess players are really all that much smarter then the average domino player.

My favorite is when they have their supposedly-brilliant chess players saying "Queen to Queen's Bishop Six" and the like. Yeah, descriptive notation sounds better as dialogue, I suppose, but nobody's really used it in thirty years.

[11811]

There's a scene of him making espresso with one of those aluminum stovetop dealies. And the sound of a kettle whistle.

[Lightnin']

I saw the latest Friday the 13th movie this last weekend. It's supposed to be set in New Jersey- that's what all the license plates and the cop cars say.

However, I could tell in the first scene that it was filmed near Austin. I didn't even need any landmarks- all I could see were the live oak and mesquite trees. It bugged me so much during the entire movie that I had to stay for the credits to see where it was filmed- sure enough, Bastrop and Austin.

All I could think during the movie was, "Does New Jersey look just like central Texas?"

Oh, and it also bugged me when some of the character were arguing over who had to pump the gas as the gas station. In New Jersey and Oregon, you can't pump your own gas.

[Man With a Cat]

I spent 14 years in high-rise office building management. I've been in and on active construction, tenant build-outs, in and out of mechanical spaces and elevator shafts, and I have yet to see my first one of either that's bright enough to see your hand in front of your face without a worklight.

Oh, and if you crawl inside ductwork, it's not lit up, everyone under you will hear the tin crackling from bending under your weight and the sharp edges on the inside of the ducts will slice you to ribbons. Also, they're dusty as hell, but no one ever comes out dirty.

And when fire sprinklers go off and people stand there looking bemused? Nope. That water's been sitting in those pipes a while and the very first thing you notice when a sprinkler head goes is that the water smells like ass dragged through rancid meat. If the sprinkler goes, you run, because it makes you want to puke.

My wife refuses to watch Die Hard with me anymore.

[Spiny Norman]

Originally Posted by Lightnin'

However, I could tell in the first scene that it was filmed near Austin. I didn't even need any landmarks- all I could see were the live oak and mesquite trees. It bugged me so much during the entire movie that I had to stay for the credits to see where it was filmed- sure enough, Bastrop and Austin.

You should try living in LA. I've long ago placed locations-I-know on the same shelf as computers-can't-do-that - you gotta shrug it off and move on. (Nip/Tuck and Monk are shot where I work, which doesn't make it easier.)


Other stuff:

Explosions tend to be way too big. Grenades, lethal as they are, don't make giant fireballs. They make mean-looking grey smoke-and-dust puffs.

Rockets or recoilless weapons are fired with no thought for backblast.

Foreign languages. For instance, making the point that the bad guys are German by having them speak a bit of German among themselves is decent moviemaking technique. However, having them speak first-year student German spoils it. Germans do have other words than "Los, Los!" or "Mach schnell!" - it is a rich language, and German speakers are known to finish entire sentences from time to time.

[Waenara]

Well, this didn't take me out of the movie, but it took my father out and he mentioned it to me. He is an architectural technologist and he always notices errors in movies that are about building designs (like Mr Bus Guy mentioning air vents earlier).

In Casino Royale:

SPOILER:

At the airport when the bad guy sets of the "master sprinkler control" by using a key: 1)this isn't possible because sprinkler systems don't have central control like that, 2) because fire sprinklers are individually activated by part of the sprinkler head being melted by heat - you can't set off sprinklers remotely; and 3) even if you could set off all the sprinklers at once there wouldn't be sufficient water pressure to all go off fully at the same time for a long length of time.

_{I don't think this really needed a spoiler box, but I just learned about this kind of box and I wanted to try it out.}

[BJMoose]

Originally Posted by appleciders

In Robin Hood: Men In Tights, there's a continuity error in the final sword fight scene between Robin and the Sherriff. Robin, sword in his right hand, pins the Sherriff's sword against a pillar. The camera cuts and Robin quickly transfers his sword from his left hand back to his right. At no point did the sword ever move from right to left. Bugs me every time.

Since that was a Mel Brooks film, I wonder if the "continuity error" was, in fact, a mistake. Remember the scene in Young Frankenstein where Dr. Frankenstein comments to Igor, "Didn't your hump use to be on the other side?" While I don't recall the detail you describe, from your description of it I suspect the "error" was intentional.

To the OP: for me continuity errors are usually just a brief (and usually amusing) distraction. What will cause my eyes to roll over to the back of my head are errors of fact - dialog or action that I know to be flat wrong. So, sometimes, will errors of logic.

[Earthworm Jim]

Originally Posted by Terminus Est

You mean that scene where they showed a real Unix application running on a real Unix machine displaying a real Unix directory tree?

Yeah, but who would be insane enough to run a super-duper security system on IRIX ??

The less believable part of that, IMHO, is that an 11 year old girl knew anything "unix" existed in 1993.

[muldoonthief]

Iron Man - the scene where Rhodes is on the phone with Tony, asking him if he knows what's flying around Afghanistan blowing things up - he's got his Brass Rat on the wrong hand. No one ever wears their ring on the left hand - as a friend of mine who had to stop wearing his for a while because of an injury said - "You can't put it on your left hand - it would mean you're married to the 'Tute."

[Mitijea]

I'm always bugged by incorrect pronunciation of place names by supposed locals. How hard is it to call up some town and ask how they pronounce it?

One I always hear wrong is Lompoc. If your character has supposedly done time in the Lompoc Penitentiary, then he's definitely going to know it is lomPOKE not lomPOCK.

Also, Jack Bauer's mispronunciation of Visalia on 24 threw me out of the moment - especially when other characters around him were pronouncing it correctly.

[Jenaroph]

All the silliness in the movie Speed, and the one that took me out was toward the end where the officer on the ground is talking to the news crew guy with the stack of VCRs behind him about capturing the video feed they've pirated from the bus camera:

Officer: Can you record 30 seconds of that, and then run it so it plays over and over in a continuous loop?

News crew guy: Sure.

Me: ...Not with that equipment you can't. Not in the two minutes it takes them to actually do it in the movie anyway.

[Zeldar]

Originally Posted by Jenaroph

All the silliness in the movie Speed, and the one that took me out was toward the end where the officer on the ground is talking to the news crew guy with the stack of VCRs behind him about capturing the video feed they've pirated from the bus camera:

Officer: Can you record 30 seconds of that, and then run it so it plays over and over in a continuous loop?

News crew guy: Sure.

Me: ...Not with that equipment you can't. Not in the two minutes it takes them to actually do it in the movie anyway.

Oh, yeah. And not just in Speed either. Almost every show I watch has these time-impossible actions all the time. If you haven't gotten into Fringe or Flash Point or Eleventh Hour or especially 24 then you need to watch an episode of any one of them and odds are better than 75% that you'll be treated to the marvelous techies performing in a matter of seconds what a real person in a similar situation would take minutes or hours to do -- with similar equipment. Almost every series relies on this willing suspension of disbelief and I, for one, am not always so willing.

BTW, go to IMDB and do a title search on "flash point" (I wanted to check if it's one word or two) and see if you get sent to Dou fo sin (2007) and if you do, help me figure out why!

[Sigmagirl]

Originally Posted by alphaboi867

I've seen House ordering around nurses a couple of times.

Evil Nurse Brenda was a minor character in early seasons. She's gone now, and much missed.

[brewha]

So I just watched "Journey to the Center of the Earth" last night. The new one. I really wanted to enjoy the movie. I tried to shut off all my physics knowledge and did my best to suspend disbelief.

I couldn't do it. I could accept the plot - there's holes that go to a pocket 1000s of mile below the Earth's surface that has grass and stuff growing. Sure, I'll buy it - it was good enough for Jules Verne.

But the physics of it - I couldn't take it.

You are not going to be able to fall 1000's of miles down a hole that's about 20' in diameter without hitting the sides and getting ripped to shreds. Maybe if you were an experienced skydiver and were completely by yourself - but not likely.

If a grown man, a woman, and a 13 yo kid were to fall into this hole and magically avoid the walls, they will all have different cross sectional areas - which means different wind resistance, which means different terminal velocitys, which means that they would not may the 1000 mile trip in EXACTLY the same amount of time. Nor would they be able to talk about it on the way down due to the 200ish MPH wind rushing by.

That part killed it for me. There was much more to follow, but that's what took me out of the movie.

[Zeldar]

Originally Posted by Zeldar

BTW, go to IMDB and do a title search on "flash point" (I wanted to check if it's one word or two) and see if you get sent to Dou fo sin (2007) and if you do, help me figure out why!

I followed up on this oddity at IMDB and it's Flashpoint (one word) for the TV series and since I hadn't known that "Dou fo sin" means "flash point" IMDB was trying to educate me in a subtle way. Oddly enough, when I keyed in "flashpoint" but without the quotes I got one of those "did you mean?" lists that has Dou fo sin at the top and then all the actual flashpoint and flash point entries below that.

At least I know that IMDB ain't broke, just funky.

[Unintentionally Blank]

Originally Posted by Jenaroph

All the silliness in the movie Speed, and the one that took me out was toward the end where the officer on the ground is talking to the news crew guy with the stack of VCRs behind him about capturing the video feed they've pirated from the bus camera:

Officer: Can you record 30 seconds of that, and then run it so it plays over and over in a continuous loop?

News crew guy: Sure.

Me: ...Not with that equipment you can't. Not in the two minutes it takes them to actually do it in the movie anyway.

Plus, nobody ever encounters the true effect of working with computers, everything always 'just works', when reality is more like:
http://xkcd.com/349/

[Icerigger]

Originally Posted by Taenia spp.

-Because I have an academic background in biology and biotechnology, complete bullshit leaks out of the collective anuses of The Andromeda Strain and Hollywood in general.

Could you please elaborate on that comment. Usually the film Andromeda Strain rates high praise on it's scientific merits. The team uses electron microscopes, mass spectrometers, isolation protocols, growth cultures under various conditions and many more. What in your view are it's glaring errors, given the movie's premise.

[davekhps]

My pet peeve, having worked with the U.S. military my entire career, involves any scene in a movie where officers are shown wearing Class A/service dress uniforms (i.e., the uniform with the jacket, the ribbon salad, the funny hats) in environments where they are not worn, i.e. 99% of the working day.

Testifying to Congress, briefing the President, sure-- but your average day at the Pentagon or on a base, it's shirt sleeves, BDUs, or flight "bags".

Still, movie after movie (and TV show after TV show) uses the jacket as shorthand for "look, this guy/gal is in the military, they're important."

Ditto wearing cover (hats) indoors, which isn't done. Ditto saluting indoors, which is rarely done (never done at the Pentagon, but maybe at certain bases/deployed areas, I can't speak for all of them-- but I will say it's the exception, not the rule).

[Robot Arm]

Originally Posted by Terminus Est

You mean that scene where they showed a real Unix application running on a real Unix machine displaying a real Unix directory tree?

I saw Jurassic Park on opening night with a friend who is a major computer geek. When that scene came up, he took one look at the screen and said "that's Unix" a few seconds before the girl on screen said it.

I've heard other people complain that no one could recognize it like that, so I asked my friend how he did it. He said it was the "/bin" and "/home", etc., that gave it away.

So, Taenia spp., it's definitely possible.

[E-Sabbath]

Originally Posted by Earthworm Jim

Yeah, but who would be insane enough to run a super-duper security system on IRIX ??

The less believable part of that, IMHO, is that an 11 year old girl knew anything "unix" existed in 1993.

Okay, I was a little older, but... no, at that age, I did. Pre-Win95, after all. You knew computers, you knew computers. And, you have to admit, /usr/bin is identifiable anywhere.

[xizor]

In The Chronicles of Riddick, one of the mercenaries makes a remark something like "Look at you now, all 'back of the bus'".
In present day Earth that makes perfect sense. In a futuristic world of lasers and spaceships I doubt they even know what a bus is, let alone know why the back of the bus is an insult.

[Zeldar]

Originally Posted by xizor

In The Chronicles of Riddick, one of the mercenaries makes a remark something like "Look at you now, all 'back of the bus'".
In present day Earth that makes perfect sense. In a futuristic world of lasers and spaceships I doubt they even know what a bus is, let alone know why the back of the bus is an insult.

I suppose a reasonable analogy, just for the skeptics, you know, would be to go around telling Roman galley slave jokes to folks at work, using as many Roman catch phrases and slang expressions as possible.

[BlinkingDuck]

Originally Posted by BJMoose

Since that was a Mel Brooks film, I wonder if the "continuity error" was, in fact, a mistake. Remember the scene in Young Frankenstein where Dr. Frankenstein comments to Igor, "Didn't your hump use to be on the other side?" While I don't recall the detail you describe, from your description of it I suspect the "error" was intentional.

To the OP: for me continuity errors are usually just a brief (and usually amusing) distraction. What will cause my eyes to roll over to the back of my head are errors of fact - dialog or action that I know to be flat wrong. So, sometimes, will errors of logic.

What hump?

[smiling bandit]

Originally Posted by xizor

In The Chronicles of Riddick, one of the mercenaries makes a remark something like "Look at you now, all 'back of the bus'".
In present day Earth that makes perfect sense. In a futuristic world of lasers and spaceships I doubt they even know what a bus is, let alone know why the back of the bus is an insult.

Not neccessarily. Whether it's a flying super-bus or a robot self-piloted bus or just drives on the ground, a bus is a bus.

[Skald the Rhymer]

Originally Posted by xizor

In The Chronicles of Riddick, one of the mercenaries makes a remark something like "Look at you now, all 'back of the bus'".
In present day Earth that makes perfect sense. In a futuristic world of lasers and spaceships I doubt they even know what a bus is, let alone know why the back of the bus is an insult.

Oh, I don't know. It's been hundreds of years since Shakespeare wrote the line "It's greek to me," but people still use it. If I were to show up a family dinner after they hadn't seen me for years, someone would surely sure "Well, the prodigal returns." Et cetera.

[Lightnin']

Originally Posted by Zeldar

I suppose a reasonable analogy, just for the skeptics, you know, would be to go around telling Roman galley slave jokes to folks at work, using as many Roman catch phrases and slang expressions as possible.

Eureka!

[kaylasdad99]

Originally Posted by Skald the Rhymer

Oh, I don't know. It's been hundreds of years since Shakespeare wrote the line "It's greek to me," but people still use it. If I were to show up a family dinner after they hadn't seen me for years, someone would surely sure "Well, the prodigal returns." Et cetera.

Why would they say that? Did you blow through all your money real fast?

[Moirai]

Originally Posted by muldoonthief

Iron Man - the scene where Rhodes is on the phone with Tony, asking him if he knows what's flying around Afghanistan blowing things up - he's got his Brass Rat on the wrong hand. No one ever wears their ring on the left hand - as a friend of mine who had to stop wearing his for a while because of an injury said - "You can't put it on your left hand - it would mean you're married to the 'Tute."

Wait- is Rhodes wearing the MIT class ring, or is Tony?

Thanks for making me look up "Brass Rat"... at least it was easy!


ETA- never mind, in the film they are both supposed to be MIT grads... at least Tony's wearing the ring on his right hand...

[Westrogothia]

Originally Posted by Zsofia

Yeah, but it doesn't drive you nuts when the doctors go around drawing blood and running tests? That's necessary for the plot? Anybody who's ever, say, had blood drawn knows damned well your doctor never does it.

[handwaving]
I kinda thought that was part of Houses process. Having the overqualified docs doing the basic stuff added a level of security/control/accountability on cases that other doctors already had failed diagnosing.
Basically when one of his staff did a blood test House KNEW it was done right.
At least thats the theory.
[/handwaving]

[Skald the Rhymer]

Originally Posted by kaylasdad99

Why would they say that? Did you blow through all your money real fast?

[Inability to recognize ironic nitpicking]
Because, although the word prodigal means "foolish with money," in the context of their statement it is clearly an allusion to the parable of the Prodigal Son. Admittedly I might have made that clearer by capitalizing it.
[/Inability to recognize ironic nitpicking]

[rackensack]

Originally Posted by Spiny Norman

Germans do have other words than "Los, Los!" or "Mach schnell!" - it is a rich language, and German speakers are known to finish entire sentences from time to time.

Yes, but in a two-hour movie there's not always time for them to get to the verb .

[Dewey Finn]

Originally Posted by Terminus Est

You mean that scene where they showed a real Unix application running on a real Unix machine displaying a real Unix directory tree?

As I remember that movie, SGI provided real computers, but one scene required a notebook computer, which SGI or the production company had to fake, because no such thng existed in reality. (I don't have a cite, but I think I remember an article about the movie in the SGI in-house magazine at the time.)