# Good movie ruined by film flubs? (spoiler potential) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 16, 2001, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movie-ruined-by-film-flubs-spoiler-potential/62169 "2001-04-16T16:12:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![bernse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@bernse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bernse)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2001, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movie-ruined-by-film-flubs-spoiler-potential/62169/21 "2001-04-18T13:30:20Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Superdude \* > > …I’m no Trekker by any stretch of the imagination, but I have a question concerning “Generations.” Since the Enterprise crashed, and Picard went into the ribbon to team up with Captain Kirk, and the ribbon basically created a reality of each person’s choosing (I’m oversimplifying a little), doesn’t that mean that the Enterprise really crashed, and that the bad guy really won (I’m counting on the diehards to know exactly what the hell I’m talking about. It’s difficult to explain)? Yes, the bad guy won at first but then Picard went into the Nexus and decided to “come out” back in time before the Nexus hit _in the first place_. The Chubby Kirk then saved the day in usual fasion. I still found _ **Kirks** _ last words just a tad anti-climactic… Anyhow, my **Generations** question is this. How did those damn little Rockets travel to the stars so quickly? It took something like 5 seconds. I am not a die-hard trekkie, so maybe they had warp or someting?? ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2001, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movie-ruined-by-film-flubs-spoiler-potential/62169/22 "2001-04-18T14:16:04Z")
Speaking of Generations… The bad guy wants to go into the ribbon because he was briefly in there once and wants to go back. Now the first time he went in he was on a ship that just got run-over by the ribbon. So why in the hell does he need to go through all the troulble of blowing up stars and making the ribbon come to him on a planet. Why not just pilot a ship into it? Oh and if you want a better ending for Kirk and Picard try this. Picard "Can I get you anything’ Kirk “All I need is a tall ship…”(dies) Picard “and a star to stear her by.” Kirk mentions this poem in TOS and Picard mentions this poem in the beginnning of Gennerations (if I’m not mistaken) It would have been a much better ending and passing of the torch so to speak. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2001, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movie-ruined-by-film-flubs-spoiler-potential/62169/23 "2001-04-18T14:59:27Z")
There are plenty of books on technical flubs in films, but two that I caught (and distracted me from the movie) were 1.) the boom mike that you can see so very clearly bobbing over Mickey Rourke’s head in **Body Heat**. It’s impossible to miss, so I have to wonder how they left it in. When I’ve seen the film on TV I notice that it’s not there anymore, so I assume they re-framed the shot during the transfer to tape. 2.) The shadows of the camera and camera crew in **Puppet on a Chain**. An eminently forgettable movie, but I can’t forget that flub. 3.) At the beginning of **The Guns of Navarone** (one of my all-time faves)you see a (model) plane coming in for a landing, spewing smoke. The model work is pretty well done, but you se another plane inh the background. It’s another model, and it’s very obviously a model, because \* it’s just hanging there in midair!!\*. this goes by so quick that the first time you see it you miss it, but on repeated viewings it becomes annoying. Damn it, what’s that plane _doing_ there? It doesn’t serve any purpose, and all it does is draw your attention to the fact that this is a model shot. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2001, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movie-ruined-by-film-flubs-spoiler-potential/62169/24 "2001-04-18T17:39:56Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ThisYearsGirl \* > \*\*In both _The Green Mile_ and _High Fidelity_, boom mikes are visible several at the top of the screen in several scenes. > \*\* Was this in the theater, or on video? If the former, it was because the picture was not framed up properly. This is a projectionist error, not a flub on the part of the filmmaker. ---
**Author:** ![Gozu\_Tashoya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7993a0/32.png) [@Gozu\_Tashoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gozu_Tashoya)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2001, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movie-ruined-by-film-flubs-spoiler-potential/62169/25 "2001-04-18T18:03:36Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Arden Ranger \* > \*\*It was just in the book. He lived in the movie, escaping the jaws of the T-Rex but getting his leg badly wounded. \*\* Thanks. All I knew was that, in some continuity or other, he was supposed to be dead. That’s all I needed. Same with _Starship Troopers_. All I could think of was “where’s the power armor?!” But I’ll save that for the book-to-film thread. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Athena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@Athena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Athena)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2001, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movie-ruined-by-film-flubs-spoiler-potential/62169/26 "2001-04-18T19:01:57Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ThisYearsGirl \* > **And in _Fargo_, Marge calls through the radio that she has found the perpetrators’ car, but it’s not the same car, really. Steve Buscemi stole license plates from that car at the airport and put it on the other one, so it shouldn’t have the same description as what Marge is looking for.** No, this one works. If you recall, in the scene where Marge and Lou (the other cop) are investigating the triple murder, Lou has the dead trooper’s ticket book. The dead trooper had written a physical description of the car, and the letters “DLR” in the space for the license plate number. The other cop has already put out a call for any car matching that description and having plates that start with DLR, but Marge says “I’m not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work, there, Lou.” and explains that she thinks that DLR stands for “dealer” plates, not the first three letters of an actual license plate. So later on, when Marge says she found the perpetrator’s car, she’s going on the physical description of the car (a Tan Sierra, IIRC), not the plate number. (In case you were wondering, yes, I’ve seen this movie waaaaay too many times.) ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2001, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movie-ruined-by-film-flubs-spoiler-potential/62169/27 "2001-04-18T22:20:14Z")
> [@](#): > > _CalMeacham says:_ the boom mike that you can see so very clearly bobbing over Mickey Rourke’s head in Body Heat. It’s impossible to miss, so I have to wonder how they left it in. When I’ve seen the film on TV I notice that it’s not there anymore, so I assume they re-framed the shot during the transfer to tape. As **Lamia** noted in her response to a similar “flub” from **ThisYearsGirl** , this was not a technical error by the filmmaker, but rather a mistake made by the movie theater projectionist. Cecil briefly addressed this when discussing film aspect ratios: [http://www.straightdope.com/columns/981120.html](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/981120.html) > [@](#): > > _KneadtoKnow says_: I am not ragging on directors who are doing all they can with what they have…just the ones who ruin an otherwise good movie with bad effects when they should have seen right off that they couldn’t make it look right. You’re contradicting yourself here, since you are ragging on a film which, by today’s standards, may have an effect that doesn’t look “right”, but which was seen as state-of-the-art at the time. The model work (mentioned by you and others) may not be as good as you’d like, but people at the time bought it, so it hardly constitutes a “flub.” ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2001, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movie-ruined-by-film-flubs-spoiler-potential/62169/28 "2001-04-18T22:49:38Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Zebra \* > **Also early in the film when they first arrive on the island the lawyer is talking to Hammond. The lawyer is there representing the investors and he wants to see why the park is taking so long ect… He says to Hammond “If they’re (the investors) are not convinced, I’m not convinced. I’ll shut you down.” What he should have said is “If _I_ am not convinced, they’re not convinced.” The line is flat out wrong.** Hm, I always interpreted the “they” in that line as referring to Doctors Malcolm and Grant, as in, “If the experts aren’t convinced, I’m not convinced, and then I’ll go tattle to the investors.” Then again, maybe that’s just me. Oh, guess I’d better contribute. Well, while we’re on **Jurassic Park** , I did get irritated that, while Nedry was talking to his ride on the “video phone”, you could clearly see a QuickTime progress meter at the bottom of the window, showing that it was just a movie file playing and not live video. That’s just careless. ---
**Author:** ![Jenericho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d26b3c/32.png) [@Jenericho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jenericho)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2001, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movie-ruined-by-film-flubs-spoiler-potential/62169/29 "2001-04-18T22:53:47Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by bernse \* > … > Anyhow, my **Generations** question is this. How did those damn little Rockets travel to the stars so quickly? It took something like 5 seconds. I am not a die-hard trekkie, so maybe they had warp or someting?? \*\* This was discussed in a great book called “the Physics of Star Trek”… it pointed out (I think, from my scraggy memory) that even if the rockets travelled to the sun instantaneously, since we see the whole thing from the surface of the planet, (rockets leave, five seconds pass, rockets hit sun) the planet couldn’t be any further than five light-seconds away… a bit close for comfort. (We’re roughly a hundred times that distance away from our sun, and we’re just cosy (more or less) here. ---
**Author:** ![Jenericho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d26b3c/32.png) [@Jenericho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jenericho)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2001, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movie-ruined-by-film-flubs-spoiler-potential/62169/30 "2001-04-18T22:56:51Z")
And, speaking of Star Trek, that bloody pilot episode of Voyager where they escape through a crack in a black hole’s event horizon. ---
**Author:** ![TV\_time](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f17d59/32.png) [@TV\_time](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TV_time)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2001, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movie-ruined-by-film-flubs-spoiler-potential/62169/31 "2001-04-18T23:03:23Z")
The one that most frustrated me was in “48 Hours”, with Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte. When they are driving into town after Murphy has been released from prison, there is a beautiful old (rather dirty) bathtub porsche just a handful of cars ahead of the car the two heros are in (the porsche seems almost to be the focus of the camera). No big thing but a few scenes later Murphy goes to get his car out of storage (it supposedly has been in storage ever since he first entered prison). Guess what? You got it. It is the very same porsche that was dead center in the scene not that long before. From that point on I lost interest in the film. I tried to get into it, but I couldn’t. Yes, I know it was trivial, but it did irritate me and did throw me off the film. TV ---
**Author:** ![hapaXL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/94ad74/32.png) [@hapaXL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hapaXL)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2001, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movie-ruined-by-film-flubs-spoiler-potential/62169/32 "2001-04-18T23:38:53Z")
I have to say that it was hard for me to lose myself in **American Beauty** as Kevin Spacey continually set off my gay-dar. The bad marriage thing could still work, but the crush on the teenage girl just no longer seemed plausible to me. Not really a technical problem, just a casting decision that crumbled the fourth wall and took away from the movie (for me, at least). ---
**Author:** ![SPOOFE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2001, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movie-ruined-by-film-flubs-spoiler-potential/62169/33 "2001-04-19T00:09:41Z")
> [@](#): > > even if the rockets travelled to the sun instantaneously, since we see the whole thing from the surface of the planet, (rockets leave, five seconds pass, rockets hit sun) the planet couldn’t be any further than five light-seconds away Not only that, but if I remember the movie correctly, it took only about a minute (definitely not more than two minutes) for the shockwave from the sun to reach the planet. Well, let’s see… I don’t know if a shockwave can travel the speed of light, but even if it did, that would mean that the planet was only two light-minutes away from its sun. That’s, what, a quarter of the distance 'tween Earth and our sun? ::shrug:: Maybe they had a small star in that movie… ---
**Author:** ![SPOOFE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2001, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movie-ruined-by-film-flubs-spoiler-potential/62169/34 "2001-04-19T00:12:24Z")
> [@](#): > > don’t know if a shockwave can travel the speed of light You know, now that I think about it, that shockwave DIDN’T travel faster than light… it took about a whole second to completely engulf the planet (about 4000 kilometers wide, maybe? 5000? No more than 6000…). 6000 kilometers a second… less than 5% lightspeed. Bah… stupid Star Trek writers… I say, for the purposes of this thread, we leave out all the Trek flubs just because there’re so damn many (in fact, Trek flubs can be a thread all their own). ---
**Author:** ![mischievous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c2a13f/32.png) [@mischievous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mischievous)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2001, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movie-ruined-by-film-flubs-spoiler-potential/62169/35 "2001-04-19T05:59:38Z")
SPOOFE, Starship Troopers was a spoof. No “E”. I think they couldn’t advertise it as such, because Mrs. Heinlien (sp?) would have a fit, but if you actually watch the movie it is quite obvious. And extremely funny. I enjoyed it immensely. \ Re: the 90210 crowd, there’s a great scene where hot chick #2 is in a group shower scene, and you’re thinking, “oh, it’s the obligatory shower scene where we get to see all the girls nude”, then it never shows a damn thing. Until two scenes later, of course. ---
**Author:** ![SPOOFE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2001, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movie-ruined-by-film-flubs-spoiler-potential/62169/36 "2001-04-19T06:54:40Z")
> [@](#): > > SPOOFE, Starship Troopers was a spoof. No “E”. I think they couldn’t advertise it as such, because Mrs. Heinlien (sp?) would have a fit, but if you actually watch the movie it is quite obvious. And extremely funny. I enjoyed it immensely. _Spaceballs_ was a spoof. _Starship Troopers_ was a hack of crap. ---
**Author:** ![andygirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a9adbd/32.png) [@andygirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andygirl)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2001, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movie-ruined-by-film-flubs-spoiler-potential/62169/37 "2001-04-19T07:06:53Z")
In the movie Relic, there’s a scene where a character is being led through a place where there are acid baths that are de-boning various things. Said character later hides in one for an extended period of time and undergoes no harm. I guess acid doesn’t work on humans. ---
**Author:** ![mischievous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c2a13f/32.png) [@mischievous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mischievous)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2001, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movie-ruined-by-film-flubs-spoiler-potential/62169/38 "2001-04-19T10:38:22Z")
posted by SPOOFE Bo Diddly: > [@](#): > > Spaceballs was a spoof. Starship Troopers was a hack of crap. > [@](#): > > That flub (and the whole hour of “Beverly Hills 90210” going on at the beginning of the movie) keep me from ever bothering to see this pile of crap You’re entitled to your opinion, of course. I thought it was a spoof, and I thought it was quite funny. But if you didn’t see it, I don’t know where you’re getting your information from. ---
**Author:** ![SPOOFE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2001, 11:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movie-ruined-by-film-flubs-spoiler-potential/62169/39 "2001-04-19T11:02:28Z")
If you’re referring to the first hour (the whole bit about High School and test scores), I did see that as a “spoof”. The news bits, as well (especially the piece about the Mormon colony Joe Smith… that had me laughing in the aisles). The problem is this… after that first hour, the rest of the movie is action/drama. Noting “spoof”-ish about it. The first half is COMPLETELY out of place relative to the second half (or vice-versa). This is another aspect of the film which just makes it obnoxious. In either case… are we in agreement about the flubbing of the planetary crust thickness? I mean, they made it look like the mountain was made out of cardboard. ---
**Author:** ![mischievous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c2a13f/32.png) [@mischievous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mischievous)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2001, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movie-ruined-by-film-flubs-spoiler-potential/62169/40 "2001-04-19T14:18:49Z")
SPOOFE, I just took it as more of a bad-special-effects joke. But I can see why you got annoyed with the second half of the movie if you weren’t finding it funny anymore. Stupidity is annoying, I think we can agree on that. mischeivous [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movie-ruined-by-film-flubs-spoiler-potential/62169.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-movie-ruined-by-film-flubs-spoiler-potential/62169.md?page=3)