# Movie screw ups that made you chuckle **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 19, 2015, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-screw-ups-that-made-you-chuckle/710245 "2015-01-19T02:11:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-screw-ups-that-made-you-chuckle/710245/41 "2015-01-20T19:21:32Z")
> [@cormac262](#): > > In “Mission Impossible 4”, Tom Cruise and Simon Pegg (disguised as russian officers) walk across Red Square to enter the Kremlin, and upon entering…cross the grounds in Prague castle (Czech Republic) ! > (I’m guessing Tom remembered those grounds from being there during MI 1). Slightly off topic: I was in Prague one day in the early '90s, just strolling around the Old Town. I turned a corner and stopped dead in my tracks: right down the street was Gestapo HQ, with swastika flags flying and a black Mercedes-Benz sedan parked outside! Obviously, someone was filming a movie that day (Czechoslovakia was a wonderful place to do this; it was much like Germany before the war, and very cheap), but damned if I didn’t feel like I’d been caught in a time-warp! :eek: ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-screw-ups-that-made-you-chuckle/710245/42 "2015-01-20T19:34:58Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > OK it wasn’t a movie but I was watching an old episode of Columbo and they showed the LA Airport and then a plane with it’s wheels extending. That was one of those with Robert Culp as the murderer. I remember seeing it for the first time in years a few months ago and noticed the same thing. **“WTF?!?”** :eek: 😕 :dubious: :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Kimballkid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b5a626/32.png) [@Kimballkid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimballkid)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-screw-ups-that-made-you-chuckle/710245/43 "2015-01-20T20:21:20Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > TV shows are particularly susceptible to this, due to their budget saving over use of stock or reused footage. The true crime shows don’t even try to make anything look authentic to the time period anymore. In a recent one, the action was supposedly taking place in the 1980’s, the era of square cop cars, and they were using Crown Vics and Caprices from the 1990’s and 2000’s. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-screw-ups-that-made-you-chuckle/710245/44 "2015-01-20T20:42:56Z")
I’m not sure that any of these “filmed in another city” examples should really count. Nearly all movies are, and they’re hardly ever noticeable to anyone who’s not from the cities in question, and easy to overlook even then. I mean, it doesn’t exactly take me out of a movie to see Red Ryder BB guns being sold at the Stuttgart art museum, and I grew up here. ---
**Author:** ![phreesh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9fc29f/32.png) [@phreesh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phreesh)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-screw-ups-that-made-you-chuckle/710245/45 "2015-01-20T20:53:11Z")
You know it’s the Straight Dope when TWO people have a real issue with improper landing gear on a two second shot. ---
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-screw-ups-that-made-you-chuckle/710245/46 "2015-01-20T21:03:48Z")
> [@Mr\_Downtown](#): > > In _Titanic,_ Jack and some other steerage passengers scuffle with a crew member for the keys to unlock a gate trapping them below deck. As the waters rise, they drop the keys. Feeling around in the water, they hear _the keys jingling._ > > Which must be why _Titanic_ won the 1998 Oscar® for Best Sound. Without having the exact scene to refer to I’d say two things: [ol] [li]If they had their ears underwater they could hear them, as sounds are much louder traveling thru water than air.[/li][li]Assuming they didn’t have their heads below the surface I’m guessing there was just a shot of the keys underwater and the film’s soundtrack included the noise of them jingling. This is just the audience being an _omnipotent observer_, it doesn’t necessarily imply the characters heard the sound too.[/li][/ol] James Cameron is my favorite director and a technical perfectionist. Such a mistake would not get past him. ---
**Author:** ![Soylent\_Juicy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@Soylent\_Juicy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Soylent_Juicy)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-screw-ups-that-made-you-chuckle/710245/47 "2015-01-20T21:50:08Z")
There’s a recent movie - I forget which one - where at the beginning the airplane takes off with one engine on each wing then crashes with two engines on each wing. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-screw-ups-that-made-you-chuckle/710245/48 "2015-01-20T21:54:09Z")
Obviously the weight of the extra engines was too much for the plane. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-screw-ups-that-made-you-chuckle/710245/49 "2015-01-20T21:58:24Z")
> [@phreesh](#): > > You know it’s the Straight Dope when TWO people have a real issue with improper landing gear on a two second shot. Three. I saw it as a B-52 right away as well. In one movie, can’t remember for sure which, the camera follows people getting in an elevator in a NYC high rise, and they get out in the second class pool of the Queen Mary (in Long Beach)! Turbolifts! To be fair, it’s a very photogenic pool. Very art deco. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-screw-ups-that-made-you-chuckle/710245/50 "2015-01-20T22:34:20Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > In _ **The Saint** _, Val Kilmer runs from Moscow’s Hotel Ukraina to Red Square in about three seconds. Not possible, unless he’s really The Flash. Stuff like this happens all the time with movies filmed in and around L.A. Like _Lethal Weapon_, where Mel Gibson starts running after a car in the San Fernando Valley, turns a corner and is suddenly on Sunset in the middle of Hollywood. Very glaring to people in Southern California, totally missed by everybody else. We made jokes about Mel’s speed for the rest of the movie, the first time we saw it. ---
**Author:** ![chacoguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/50afbb/32.png) [@chacoguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chacoguy)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-screw-ups-that-made-you-chuckle/710245/51 "2015-01-20T22:51:24Z")
Fifty replies and no one has mentioned the [Stormtrooper Bonking his head](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja4v-qiFvBg)? ---
**Author:** ![yanceylebeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yanceylebeef/32/12290_2.png) [@yanceylebeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yanceylebeef)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-screw-ups-that-made-you-chuckle/710245/52 "2015-01-20T23:03:18Z")
Speaking of American Sniper, the idea that soldiers would take or make personal phone calls during a mission is ludicrous, and took me completely out of the movie. ---
**Author:** ![ruh-roh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ruh-roh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruh-roh)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-screw-ups-that-made-you-chuckle/710245/53 "2015-01-20T23:06:25Z")
I Think that Panther hitting the end of the carrier flight deck has been in just about any movie with a plane crash on an aircraft carrier. Whenever it is obvious that someone is going to crash trying to land on an aircraft carrier my first thought is “here comes that Panther footage again”. Kind of like the when the History channel ran a show I think just called “Wings”. Each week a documentary focus on a different plane. And no matter which WWII fighter they were detailing, it always had the same gun camera footage strafing and exploding the steam locomotive. That poor engineer must have gotten really tired of being shot at. ---
**Author:** ![Frazzled](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frazzled/32/3368_2.png) [@Frazzled](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frazzled)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-screw-ups-that-made-you-chuckle/710245/54 "2015-01-20T23:08:43Z")
One I saw and now can’t unsee is in Jurassic Park. When Alan Grant and Ellie (sp?) see the Brachiosaurus\* for the first time pay attention to Jeff Goldblum. He’s sitting next to Alan but disappears completely when the shot focuses on Alan standing up and taking off his glasses. But funnier to me is that he’s replaced with a dummy when the shot focuses on Laura Dern taking her attention from the plant to the dinosaur. I love the mouth slightly agape look they gave the dummy. I saw the movie 100 times before I noticed fake Goldblum, but now I can’t unsee him and now it’s the only thing I focus on in that scene. The last time I saw Back to the Future I realized why they stopped making Deloreans. 0 to 88 takes about 2 minutes when Marty is driving to the clock tower at the end. Contrast that with Doc getting to 88 in about 3 seconds a short time later when he drops Marty off at his house and then heads off to the future. I guess I could reason that maybe Marty just sucks at driving a stick shift and Doc is a pro. - Spell checker is telling me Brachiosaurus is misspelled, and that the correct spelling is Brontosaurus. Talk about extinct! ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-screw-ups-that-made-you-chuckle/710245/55 "2015-01-20T23:41:04Z")
For “Midway” they re-used footage from earlier movies and tons and tons of stock footage. Stock footage used to be a thing used in movies. You’d show a closeup of the hero riding a horse, stock footage of the buffalo stampede, a closeup of the girl looking worried, stock footage of the buffalo stampede again, a closeup of the hero again, a stuntman lassoing one tame buffalo on a backlot, then a closeup of the hero and the girl embracing. Nowadays they’d just use crappy stock CGI. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2015, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-screw-ups-that-made-you-chuckle/710245/56 "2015-01-21T00:02:08Z")
These are ones I noticed and chuckled at while watching them on the big screen… **Pearl Harbor**. Ben Affleck is going to join the RAF, which is based in England (for the two of us who don’t know that). He is in NYC. He and Kate Berkensale have their teary-eyed goodbye as Mr. Affleck is boarding… a train. In **Spider Man 2** , Spidey and Doc Ock are fighting on the train. DO picks up Spider Man, throws him _forward_, only to have SM tackle him from _behind_. I’ll forgive a lot in a movie about a kid who gains superpowers because he was bitten by a radioactive spider, but I won’t forgive egregious violations of Newtonian physics. 😛 In one of the **Transformer** movies (I think the first one), the following happens: 1. Shia Labouf and Meghan Fox (I think) enter the Smithsonian where they talk to a Transformer that, when it’s doing the Clark Kent thing, disguises itself as a SR-72 jet. Then stuff starts blowing up real good, causing Shia & Co. to run out… into the desert, in an airplane graveyard. What happened to DC? 2. There’s a chase scene with Shia driving. He’s in the mountains. Then he’s in flat fields. Then he’s next to the water. Then he’s back in the mountains. Etc. 3. Final, climactic battle takes place around the Pyramids of Giza. However, [Cairo apparently was wiped off the planet](http://wespenre.com/graphics-level-2/Giza-pyramids050612.JPG), given that it was nowhere to be found. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2015, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-screw-ups-that-made-you-chuckle/710245/57 "2015-01-21T00:11:52Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > **Pearl Harbor**. Ben Affleck is going to join the RAF, which is based in England (for the two of us who don’t know that). He is in NYC. He and Kate Berkensale have their teary-eyed goodbye as Mr. Affleck is boarding… a train. Someone mentioned this in another thread several months ago. He was likely headed to Canada, where he could have either enlisted directly (the RAF/RCAF would have been glad to have him) or booked passage to Great Britain (though I’m pretty sure ships continued to sail between NYC and Britain even after the war began). ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2015, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-screw-ups-that-made-you-chuckle/710245/58 "2015-01-21T00:17:47Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > The oddest use of reused footage was also a McMillian. There were two episodes that involved a car chase. In the first, Mac was following the bad guy, in the second, Mac was being followed. The show used the SAME chase footage for both! Just the closeups were new. Watching _ **The Rockford Files** _, did you ever notice that when Jim was talking to a passenger in his Pontiac, the windows kept going up and down as the POV changed? I’m sure it happened in other shows too, but it was particularly obvious in _ **Rockford** _. Again, we probably weren’t supposed to notice. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2015, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-screw-ups-that-made-you-chuckle/710245/59 "2015-01-21T00:19:11Z")
> [@Frazzled](#): > > One I saw and now can’t unsee is in Jurassic Park. When Alan Grant and Ellie (sp?) see the Brachiosaurus\* for the first time pay attention to Jeff Goldblum. He’s sitting next to Alan but disappears completely when the shot focuses on Alan standing up and taking off his glasses. But funnier to me is that he’s replaced with a dummy when the shot focuses on Laura Dern taking her attention from the plant to the dinosaur. I love the mouth slightly agape look they gave the dummy. … I wonder if they gave Goldblum the dummy at the end of filming? It would certainly be a conversation piece. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2015, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-screw-ups-that-made-you-chuckle/710245/60 "2015-01-21T00:21:15Z")
> [@ruh-roh](#): > > I Think that Panther hitting the end of the carrier flight deck has been in just about any movie with a plane crash on an aircraft carrier. Whenever it is obvious that someone is going to crash trying to land on an aircraft carrier my first thought is “here comes that Panther footage again”. I’ve always liked the clip where the Hellcat crashes and breaks in two. (Of course, it’s not a jet, but still…! :o ) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-screw-ups-that-made-you-chuckle/710245.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-screw-ups-that-made-you-chuckle/710245.md?page=4)