A recent thread entitled “Movie Cliches” got me to thinking that I’ve not seen a thread about blatant editing or scripting errors.
What I want to know is if other people notice horrible editing as much as I do.
*) Dirty Dancing. Late in the movie “Baby” and Johnny are snuggled up in his bed making small talk after what we are lead to believe is an intimate encounter. They change cameras and show us Jennifer Grey’s naked back and the elastic band on the top of her panties. GET REAL. She just got laid, is snuggling up to her man, and is wearing underwear?
*) Mission to Mars. As the craft hurls through gravity devoid space, one of the crew members uses candy to suspend a spinning DNA model in front of him. HUH? Suspending the DNA molecule is tough enogh – but it CAN’T spin without coming apart. (Lame movie – probably not fair picking on it.)
Ok, now. Vent. (Negative comments regarding JarJar Binks are probably accurate, but not what I’m looking for in this thread.)
SouthernStyle
I cringe every time I see a science fiction movie that has huge noisy explosions and rocket sounds in space. Don’t these people know? Sound can’t travel in a vaccuum. Even Alien, the movie that used the byline of how your screaming can’t be heard in space, manged to trip over itself in this respect.
The Die Hard with Samuel Jackson had the fake bomb put in to the school that Mr. Jackson’s character’s neice and nephew attended.
When did they plant this fake bomb? Samuel’s character just happened to save Bruce’s life in the beginning of the movie. Just coincidence? You be the judge.
I hate the action movie cliche fight scenes where the hero gets into fights, takes several blows to the face, but never shows any bruising or swelling or spitting of blood. And he’s ready for love afterward.
Revealing mistakes: You can see Jennifer Grey’s body stocking during the first sex scene.
Continuity: Johnny gets his pants dirty by sliding across the floor, yet they are clean in the next shot.
Continuity: Johnny puts his records back twice after talking to Max.
Crew or equipment visible: Sound operator holding a boom microphone, when Johnny teaches Baby about balance by dancing on a log.
Continuity: Johnny takes his jacket off twice just before the last dance of the season.
Continuity: During the first sex scene, Johnny takes off Baby’s shirt and throws it behind him. In the next shot he is holding it in his hand again and it is tucked back into her jeans. He then throws it away again.
Movie Mistakes.com has a million of 'em. I just love spotting mistakes in films. Spotted two in Striking Distance practically before the credits had finished rolling.
If you want a high-profile one, from Blade Runner: when Deckard is buying his bottle of booze just after shooting Zhora, his face is already battered and bleeding from his fight with Leon, which hasn’t happened yet. Reason: originally, there was another replicant, Mary, in the film, but she was cut out. The original sequence was: Deckard shoots Zhora, then spots Rachel and chases her down the alley, gets beat up by Leon, Rachel kills Leon, then Deckard buys the bottle. When they cut her out, the sequence was shifted a bit so that he buys the bottle right after shooting Zhora, then spots Rachel, goes down the alley, gets pummelled, etc.
The shifting was done to reposition a line of dialogue, a statement by that there are four replicants left (originally Roy, Mary, Rachel, and Pris; now, Roy, Leon, Rachel, and Pris). Without Mary, the line only makes sense before Leon is killed.
And, what the heck, another one from A Few Good Men: when Tom Cruise goes to the front door to let his guests/coworkers out, thanks to an edit, he opens the door twice.
In one of the episodes of “UFO” (“Timelash?”), the story is about how the aliens are dinking around with time.
Vladek Sheybal says “They were able to ‘expend’ a moment in time, and thru that ‘extension’. . . .” I think the first word was supposed to be “extend.”
In one episode of “Space 1999,” Cdr Koenig’s (Martin Landau’s character) name is spelled on a label “Keonig.”
BTW, I don’t have a problem with bad science so far as “BOOMS” in space are concerned. It’s something that the mind “wants” to year. As one person pointed out concerning WWII footage of battleships blasting away, that sound is often dubbed so that it coincides with the firing of the guns–not when it would have arrived at the camera doing the recording.
“Space 1999,” though, had some egregious science. Here’s the deal: On September 12 (or 13?), 1999, so much nuclear waste builds up on the moon that it knocks it out of orbit.
OK, it’s blows up strong enough to blast the moon out of the earth’s gravity well–but leaves it intact.
Something that always bugs me is, in old movies or even new period-movies when a cannon is shot, there is ALWAYS an explosion when the cannon ball hits. Why? A cannonball is just a big hunk of lead. The only way there would be an explosion is if it landed on something explosive. What are the odds that every cannonball just happens to land on the munition storage?
City Slickers - In one scene, Jack Palance is smoking a cigarette. It’s almost down to the filter in one shot, cut away to Billy Crystal and back in less than 3 seconds, and Palance has a full cigarette.
Glaringly obvious in “Commando” w/ Ah-nuld, but also seen in a lot of movies - Car chase scene. The protagonist gets their car beat all to hell, flipped over, window shot out, whatever. A couple of cuts later, the car is brand-monkey-spankin’ new, no scratches whatsoever. That extra undercoating option that costs so much must really work, huh? I realize that car chase scenes are shot non-sequentially, and so editing is a nightmare, but you’d think the continuity people would do their friggin’ job.
Also seen in many movies - Someone enters/exits a house without closing the door. Next cut, the door’s closed. WTF? And I’m not talking about horror mivies, I see it all the time. Person comes in, leaves the door wide open, camera cuts away and back, door’s closed.
Or, someone jumps in their car and starts it up in a split second. What, do they leave the keys in the ignition and the car unlocked? In the middle of NYC? You never see them with their keys in hand, or taking their keys out of their pocket. The only time you ever see someone fumble for their keys is when the psycopathic killer is after them, then when they do get their keys, the car never starts after the first try.
In the vein of explosions in space, the thing that most often irritates me in movies is squealing tires on dirt roads. Also, briskly clip-clopping horse hooves on grass or dirt. I read once that moviemakers say it sounds odd if horses’ hooves don’t make any sound, even if they wouldn’t in reality, so the foley artists put them in later.
Not to quibble, but I always thought the Alien catchphrase “In space no one can hear you scream” referred to the fact that space is awfully darn empty. So even if you were to scream (and it could be heard) no one would be around to listen. But: I could be wrong.
Another gaffe: I was told that at the end of the original Star Wars movie (when the victorious fighters are returning to home base), Mark Hamill yells, “Carrie!” at Carrie Fisher. I later listened for this, but wasn’t sure of what I heard. Is this covered at IMDb? (though I might just mosey on over there now to take a peek). I love that site. That’s where I found out Ed Wood and I have the same birthday!
When I first saw the William Hurt/Kathleen Turner film noire “Body Heat” I can SWEAR that you could plainly see the microphone bobbing over Mickey Rourke’s head. Ever since that first time, though, it’s not there. I think they re-framed to get rid of it.
In the Alistair MacLean thriller “Puppet on a Chain” you can see the camera and crew clearly in reflections in windows and in the shadows.
In “For Your Eyes Only” Bond is running up a flight of stairs chasing after the bad guy. When he enters the stairway, it is pitch black, dead of night. When he gets to the top and comes out, it is daylight with shadows and everything.
And he didn’t break a sweat or nuthin’ That guy is the Coolest!!
I also can’t stand the tire squeals on dirt roads.
What about the dead silence while the main actors are talking - even though they are standing in a carnival, ballgame (feel free to insert your own loud, noisy public place here) etc.
Ok, I know it’s not a movie… but I just love all those “amazing car chase” shows on cops, where they’re taping from the cop-chopper. You NEVER hear the sound of the chopper, and you hear tires squeal every time the cars make a turn, you hear horns honk every time someone gets cut off, etc. All this from what appears to be between 300-500 feet in the air. That annoys me.
side note- I love how the cops follow closely behind the other car, waiting until they go under an overpass (where the chopper’s camera can’t see them) to pull some bonehead maneuver like forcing the other car to crash into innocent civillians on the highway. Granted, I’ve only seen this on two different videos, but if you watch it with any regularity, you’ll see the same peice of tape used in 5 or 6 different shows… so watch it sometime and see what I mean.
There’s a couple of books that nitpick the little production problems, plot holes, and continuity gaffes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. (The second one’s an update of the first.)
I happened to have most of the first five seasons taped, so I bought the book and started watching. There are some really funny things to watch for. Like:
[ul]
[li]Picard exiting to his ready room, and making a weird face just before he gets off-screen.[/li][li]Picard & Riker leaving a cargo bay staffed by Yar, heading straight for the Bridge, and Yar is there waiting for them.[/li][li]Various film crew members being seen in reflections of the panels throughout the set.[/li][li]Actors dropping props, then having them in their hands the very next moment after a view change.[/li][li]Actors jumping positions between view changes.[/li][/ul]
Why does every collision or concussion in Hollywood movies result in a HUGE fireball?
Why do grenade explosions result in big fireballs in the movies? There’s no fireball with real grenades, is there? (Unless they’re stuffing them with napalm these days…)
Since I started really paying attention to it, it really gets comical watching Hollywood action movies and counting the ridiculous fireball explosions.
Seems like I’ve seen this tendency parodied somewhere, but I can’t remember any specifics. Anyone?
Also, related to the “explosions in space” beef, in Armageddon, there is supposed to be little gravity on the asteroid, yet when rocks were falling on people, they seemed to be falling with full Earth-gravity force.
In Gremlins, there’s a scene where one of the Gremlins comes out of a Christmas tree, and you can see the puppet master behind the tree.
In ‘Family Guy’ (a cartoon on fox) Peter (I think that’s his name) was teaching his daughter Meg to drive when she ran an amish guy off the road. When he finally landed at the bottom of the cliff, the cart exploded… the mule sat there looking at the cart for a second before it exploded. It was kinda funny No, really, it was. I guess you had to be there.
No, really, it was. I guess you had to be there.