# Movies/Shows with glaring errors. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 11, 2012, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422 "2012-10-11T15:17:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2012, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/141 "2012-10-19T00:37:27Z")
> [@oft\_wears\_hats](#): > > Well, it didn’t work. 😃 But the bag of sand was _ **too heavy** _! ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2012, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/142 "2012-10-19T04:14:51Z")
“You know, when you, like, you grab a gold statue and it’s, and you feel it and it feels like a bag of sand?” ---
**Author:** ![Nonsuch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nonsuch/32/2922_2.png) [@Nonsuch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nonsuch)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2012, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/143 "2012-10-19T04:26:35Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > These threads always make me think of that movie where somebody is trying to save the outmoded cavalry horses by driving them up to Canada or something instead of them being put to death. Anyway, he has to shoot a bunch of them, so he pulls out what is clearly a 1911A1 (45 auto), jacks a round into the chamber and BAM! shoots the first horse. Then he jacks the slide _again_ and shoots the next horse, and so on down the line until all seven are dead. Problem is, the gun would have been empty by horse number four and he’d have had several live cartridges lying on the ground. In _The Survivors_, Jerry Reed racks his .45 at least five or six times while threatening Robin Williams. Needless to say, he never ejects a round. Any time a movie shows movies being made, there are loads of errors, but one that particularly bothered me was in _Chaplin_. In every scene showing Chaplin performing a scene, the actors silently mug and leer at each other. Silent movies actually had written dialogue, and the actors spoke to each other while performing. Another one that really pissed me off: _Mrs. Doubtfire_. In the first scene, Robin Williams is post-syncing dialogue on an animated cartoon. In animation, the voices are recorded first and the animation drawn to match. (The movie got no better from that point.) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tooth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c67d28/32.png) [@The\_Tooth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tooth)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2012, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/144 "2012-10-19T04:27:55Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > We see it was a quarry. Or an open strip mine for a vein of some rare handwavium isotope that the Federation needed two hundred years from now. I can accept that there might be any number of unexplained changes made between now and then. It’s the trench the Xindi cut through the US in _Enterprise_. Makes more sense than building the USS Enterprise on the ground, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2012, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/145 "2012-10-19T04:47:22Z")
Bullit. Classic car chase around downtown San Francisco, and suddenly they are across town near the ocean. Because I’ve traveled these areas a hundred times or more, it is very jarring on an otherwise great movie. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2012, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/146 "2012-10-19T16:25:55Z")
[QUOTE=Ibn Warraq] I remember one of the glaring ones from Die Hard II. It takes placed at Dulles airport in Washington DC, but when he’s on one of the pay phones you can see they’re clearly marked Pacific Bell. [/QUOTE] I’m always spotting phone goofs. Probably the most common goof is phones with modular plugs in stories set years before Bell Labs invented them in [1975](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_connector#History). ---
**Author:** ![BrassyPhrase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ea666f/32.png) [@BrassyPhrase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrassyPhrase)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2012, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/147 "2012-10-19T17:13:05Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > “You know, when you, like, you grab a gold statue and it’s, and you feel it and it feels like a bag of sand?” I saw what you did there. Nice. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2012, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/148 "2012-10-19T17:26:11Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > Bullit. Classic car chase around downtown San Francisco, and suddenly they are across town near the ocean. Because I’ve traveled these areas a hundred times or more, it is very jarring on an otherwise great movie. I’m too lazy to look one up, but there are maps online detailing where the cars actually were throughout the chase. All over the map. Easy to see why a local would find it jarring. ---
**Author:** ![Ephemera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8baadc/32.png) [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2012, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/149 "2012-10-19T17:26:23Z")
> [@The\_Tooth](#): > > It’s the trench the Xindi cut through the US in _Enterprise_. > > Makes more sense than building the USS Enterprise on the ground, anyway. Iowa’s in Florida now? Things really change a lot in the next couple hundred years. ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2012, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/150 "2012-10-19T17:32:33Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > Bullit. Classic car chase around downtown San Francisco, and suddenly they are across town near the ocean. Because I’ve traveled these areas a hundred times or more, it is very jarring on an otherwise great movie. Yeah, that’s up there with Dustin Hoffman driving towards Berkeley on the upper span of the Bay Bridge in **The Graduate**. My mind boggles at that one - they really shut down traffic to film that?! ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2012, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/151 "2012-10-19T17:38:49Z")
> [@rsat3acr](#): > > Also in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indie is holding a bag of sand to replace the gold statue. The bag is smaller to start with than the statue and he still dumps some sand out. > [@Lumpy](#): > > But the bag of sand was _ **too heavy** _! It could be the statue was hollow. Which would explain how he handled it so easily. Or that’s another error. ---
**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:** [October 19, 2012, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/152 "2012-10-19T18:08:23Z")
Actually, that whole bit with the statue has always bothered me, for lots of reasons. Even ignoring the issue of Ancient Technology in the Jungle that Still Works Without Tending, or the Mayan Photo-Cells, or the Mayan Automatic Dart Guns, that booby-trapped idol base makes zero sense. Indy feels – Og knows why he would know this – that the idol base is sensitive to the weight on it, so he carefully matches the sandbag weight to the idol. He puts the back on and the plunger goes _down_ – evidently he guessed wrong and it’s too heavy. What if he hadn’t put a bag on at all, but simply snatched the idol? THAT is the way any designer making a booby trap would fix things – you want the alarm to go off\* if the weight suddenly _disappears_. I’d expect him to underestimate the weight – especially after taking sand out, so the plunger should go UP! Making the plunger go down suggests a ridiculous amount of planning and sophistication. (“See, Xolotl, I figure that some tghief might try to put a weight in place of the idol, so I have it rigged to go off if the weight is too MUCH, too!” “That’s a great idea! Have it set off the Temple Self-Destruct.”) \*or whatever. Having the temple destroy itself always seemed the worst sort of overkill to me ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2012, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/153 "2012-10-19T18:25:12Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > (“See, Xolotl, I figure that some tghief might try to put a weight in place of the idol, so I have it rigged to go off if the weight is too MUCH, too!” “That’s a great idea! Have it set off the Temple Self-Destruct.”) Bonus points for the Chachapoyan / Aztec Nahuatl God-name-dropping 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![GargoyleWB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gargoylewb/32/199_2.png) [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2012, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/154 "2012-10-19T18:55:44Z")
> [@runner pat](#): > > It could be the statue was hollow. Which would explain how he handled it so easily. Or that’s another error. That’s what I figured. It was a hollow, clay statue plated in gold. Indy, as a super-archeologist, knows this and tries to approximate with the sand. He also hunts items for their archeological value and significance, not for simple raw material content, so a solid gold idol is just an audience assumption. ---
**Author:** ![Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/intergalactic_gladiator/32/112_2.png) [@Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Intergalactic_Gladiator)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2012, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/155 "2012-10-19T19:15:31Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Actually, that whole bit with the statue has always bothered me, for lots of reasons. Even ignoring the issue of Ancient Technology in the Jungle that Still Works Without Tending, or the Mayan Photo-Cells, or the Mayan Automatic Dart Guns, that booby-trapped idol base makes zero sense. Indy feels – Og knows why he would know this – that the idol base is sensitive to the weight on it, so he carefully matches the sandbag weight to the idol. He puts the back on and the plunger goes _down_ – evidently he guessed wrong and it’s too heavy. What if he hadn’t put a bag on at all, but simply snatched the idol? THAT is the way any designer making a booby trap would fix things – you want the alarm to go off\* if the weight suddenly _disappears_. I’d expect him to underestimate the weight – especially after taking sand out, so the plunger should go UP! Making the plunger go down suggests a ridiculous amount of planning and sophistication. (“See, Xolotl, I figure that some tghief might try to put a weight in place of the idol, so I have it rigged to go off if the weight is too MUCH, too!” “That’s a great idea! Have it set off the Temple Self-Destruct.”) > > \*or whatever. Having the temple destroy itself always seemed the worst sort of overkill to me I figured that the plunger going down is what sets off the traps. The weight’s off so the plunger drops to set off the ancient Mayan hydrological interloper killer. It does seem like an awful lot for just a little gold statue though, don’t it? ---
**Author:** ![Unpronounceable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/9de0a6/32.png) [@Unpronounceable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unpronounceable)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2012, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/156 "2012-10-19T19:23:50Z")
I always thought the only things the “plunger” was supposed to do was set off the closing doors & release the temple-sealing boulder. Everything else was just the however-old temple getting shaken to pieces as an unintentional side-effect. ---
**Author:** ![FrigidLizard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3bc359/32.png) [@FrigidLizard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FrigidLizard)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2012, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/157 "2012-10-19T20:44:45Z")
> [@Nonsuch](#): > > Another one that really pissed me off: _Mrs. Doubtfire_. In the first scene, Robin Williams is post-syncing dialogue on an animated cartoon. In animation, the voices are recorded first and the animation drawn to match. (The movie got no better from that point.) He may have been doing an English dub over a foreign-language cartoon, or replacing a previously-hired actor’s voice. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2012, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/158 "2012-10-19T23:00:11Z")
> [@Nonsuch](#): > > Another one that really pissed me off: _Mrs. Doubtfire_. In the first scene, Robin Williams is post-syncing dialogue on an animated cartoon. In animation, the voices are recorded first and the animation drawn to match. (The movie got no better from that point.) Didn’t cheap (television?) animation used to do the pictures first? No, wait, [this](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_animation#Voice_recording) says Fleischer did that in the 1930’s, but I guess not so much since. ---
**Author:** ![panamajack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/47e85d/32.png) [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2012, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/159 "2012-10-20T17:47:57Z")
_Sunshine_ is so filled with stupid/silly science that it’s hard to pick one, but I think the most glaring one is that despite requiring a planet to slingshot you into the right trajectory, you can just park your ship into orbit around the sun [at a distance well inside the orbit of Mercury] and leave it there for seven years. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2012, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/160 "2012-11-30T19:28:27Z")
> [@panamajack](#): > > _Sunshine_ is so filled with stupid/silly science that it’s hard to pick one, but I think the most glaring one is that despite requiring a planet to slingshot you into the right trajectory, you can just park your ship into orbit around the sun [at a distance well inside the orbit of Mercury] and leave it there for seven years. That was more glaring than Cillian Murphy touching the surface of the Sun? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422.md?page=9)