Really obvious mistakes in Movies and TV

Cafe Society
121

[QUOTE=simster]
Probably already been mentioned… but… just watched “Superman Returns” last nite…

So, his suit…that can withstand bullets, extreme heat, etc… cannot apparently withstand being stabbed with a shiv, a puncture from a crystal… and even a doctor can just “rip it right off”…

oh well…
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Depending on who is writing Superman at the time, Supes emits an aura which also protects his clothing and items/persons he is carrying. Subjected to green K, Superman’s aura would no longer protect his clothes and they’d be cut just like regular cloth.

Then again, it’s been said that his costume was made out of the blankets that little Kal-El was found with in his escape rocket, and they were only able to be cut/trimmed with Superman’s heat vision. In that case, yeah, you’d have a point.

122

To continue the smallpox hijack, I was born in 1969 (in California) and have the scar. My brother, born sixteen months later in 1970, does not.

123

The actual topic: When I read the OP, a technical mistake (as opposed to content) was the first thing that popped into my head – in the first season of 24, there is a random guy, I assume part of the crew, rather visible in a very intense confrontation between Jack Bauer and the Bad Guy. One of those things where Mr. Del and I were watching on DVD, and turned to each other and said “Wait, who’s that completely random guy?” That could probably be a whole thread of its own – random guys from the crew who are briefly on screen.

To the tangent about smallpox vaccines: I have one, and I’m just a few years younger than Brad Pitt. I am not proud of this, BUT I became a little obsessed with smallpox after 9/11 and the anthrax scares and did a lot of (obsessive, compulsive) reading, and one thing I learned is that vaccines that left smaller, less visible scars were developed in the 1960s, so depending on where you lived (in the US) and what type and batch of vaccine was used and how prone you are to scarring, those of us in the last years of the vaccine might have the big honking scar, or very faint scars (mine) or no visible scar. My little brother, born in 1971, didn’t get the vaccine at all.

124

Speaking of misplaced mountains:

Judging from the dialogue and place names, True Grit is set in Arkansas and Oklahoma. But the scenery is pure Rocky Mountains.

125

[QUOTE=lisacurl]
It was starting to bug me, so I looked it up… the CDC says that routine immunization of children against smallpox ended in 1971. I’m trying to find a cite on how old a child had to be to receive the vaccine, because if memory serves, it used to be given to teenagers during my mom’s era, but then was refined and began to be given to older children, but never to very young kids.
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Oh, no? I have had my scar for longer than I can remember. I am pretty sure that I was an infant when I got it. Same goes for my “little” brother, soon to be 40 years old.

Anyway, my contribution is also highway related.

On the show “The Brotherhood”, one of the characters was depicted travelling from Providence to New Jersey on I-95 with all kinds of private homes lining it. I’ve been this part of 95 a ton and I’m here to tell you, nobody ever pulled right into their driveway from it. In another episode they refer to it as “The 95” and “the freeway”. Now, it’s a long highway and there may be places that do call it that, I don’t know, but not in Providence. They just call it “95” or maybe “the highway” here and it’s often used as a local road. The funny thing is, that show is shot entirely on location, interiors and all. The character who spoke those words has a GREAT accent, even though he’s British, but they got this thing very wrong.

126

[QUOTE=Caricci]
Oh, no? I have had my scar for longer than I can remember. I am pretty sure that I was an infant when I got it. Same goes for my “little” brother, soon to be 40 years old.
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It’s fairly obvious from the responses in the thread that practices varied widely within the U.S. and presumably over time, both in when routine vaccination of children ended, and when the vaccination series began. I won’t continue the hijack further.

127

[QUOTE=Max Carnage]
Depending on who is writing Superman at the time, Supes emits an aura which also protects his clothing and items/persons he is carrying. Subjected to green K, Superman’s aura would no longer protect his clothes and they’d be cut just like regular cloth.

Then again, it’s been said that his costume was made out of the blankets that little Kal-El was found with in his escape rocket, and they were only able to be cut/trimmed with Superman’s heat vision. In that case, yeah, you’d have a point.
[/QUOTE]

Well, sure… but in the movie in question… after having been exposed and “weakened” enough to be beat unmercifully by three skinny thugs, his suit was still in pristine shape… in the later scene… he is completely week and apparently the suit has been damaged (by the little puncture of kryptonite)… but the suit still survives re-entry and landing… supes is no weaker/stronger later when the doctors ‘rip it off’…

so, in this case, it is incredibly sloppy writing…

128

[QUOTE=simster]
Well, sure… but in the movie in question… after having been exposed and “weakened” enough to be beat unmercifully by three skinny thugs, his suit was still in pristine shape… in the later scene… he is completely week and apparently the suit has been damaged (by the little puncture of kryptonite)… but the suit still survives re-entry and landing… supes is no weaker/stronger later when the doctors ‘rip it off’…

so, in this case, it is incredibly sloppy writing…
[/QUOTE]

Maybe it’s like the force fields in Dune, where a very fast bullet won’t penetrate, but a slow slice with a scalpel will get through?

OK, I got nothin’.

129

[QUOTE=Sapo]
<snip>
Oh and, of course, in every movie out there, the characters see friends and foes killed in gruesome manners and escape death by the skin of their teeth one time after the other and, in the end, a hug and a “it will be alright” is all it takes to fend off Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.
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I hate that! A kid witnesses his family being slaughtered and is OK at the end when he gets a hug from the hero. Or how come a person is able to kill off the bad guys but doesn’t wind up getting put on trial or sued by the thugs’ relatives?

The glaring movie mistake I hate is every space film with the whooshing rockets and laser sounds. At least 2001 had it right.

The problems in Armageddon and Independence Day could take up whole threads alone. They are on an asteroid with little gravity yet they drop things and they fall at normal Earth g. The asteroid is 700 miles across (remember, they said it is the size of Texas) but they only have to drill down a few hundred feet to plant a nuke that will split it across a “fault line” making the two pieces miss Earth by 400 miles. Even if there was such an incredibly obvious fault line, the asteroid is shown spinning. One of the chunks should have still hit us. And, of course, fires burning in the crashed shuttle, a “titanium hull” spacecraft that they have to use a Gatling gun (!) to shoot their way out of, regular gravity when they are inside the shuttle craft, etc.

Independence Day has giant space ships being picked up by radar but no amateur astronomer noticed these monstrosities blocking stars as they flew into our solar system. Wouldn’t some Boy Scout working on his Astronomy merit badge say, “Hmm, I could have sworn Sirius was there just the other day? Where did it go to?”

Or a massive fire ball blasts through LA but some palm trees still have leaves. Or when the woman hides from the fireball in the utility closet but isn’t a) roasted like a baked potato or b) asphyxiated when the fire consumes all the oxygen. Or the computer virus that we can transmit to an alien computer without difficulty. I have problems with wireless connections and have to jump through hoops converting files from Mac to PC but that doesn’t stop Jeff Goldblum with his super laptop!

I can suspend my disbelief on some levels when I watch a movie but there are times when you need a total lobotomy to accept these plot holes.

130

Hey, I got a good one! In Every Movie Ever Made, which was set in Any Real Life City, they got the geography completely wrong! Have the film makers ever been in Any Real Life City? It’s almost like the people who made Every Movie Ever Made didn’t even care!

131

[QUOTE=Caricci]
On the show “The Brotherhood”, one of the characters was depicted travelling from Providence to New Jersey on I-95 with all kinds of private homes lining it. I’ve been this part of 95 a ton and I’m here to tell you, nobody ever pulled right into their driveway from it. In another episode they refer to it as “The 95” and “the freeway”.
[/QUOTE]
Oh hells, no. I’ve never heard it called the New England Thruway as it’s labelled in the Bronx either. Just 95 or “the highway”.

132

I recently saw a rerun of House that bugs me* – in the episode “Babies & Bathwater” there is a pregnant woman who, for various reasons, needs to be made not-pregnant ASAP. She’s 27 weeks along, at the beginning, and the doctors are trying to convince her to deliver the baby so she can get treatment. She refuses, because it’s too early. This bit about it being too early is a major plot point – they go on about what the chances for survival are, how his lungs won’t be developed, etc.

In the end,

[spoiler] they deliver the baby at 28 weeks under tragic circumstances. Here’s where it gets me, though: there’s no neo-natal team in the room, only handsome Dr. Chase, who rubs the baby and says encouraging things like, “C’mon, little guy!” And after a few tense seconds, the baby cries and is fine.

Um, there is NO WAY that a 28-weeks-gestation infant is fine with that little intervention. They made that abundantly clear earlier in the episode; now it looks like the mother was worried for nothing. :rolleyes: [/spoiler]

It would be annoying generally, but it just takes it to a whole 'nother level when they have made a major plot point out of it and should therefore know better.

*I’m not in the medical field – I’m sure there are all sorts of mistakes/unrealities this show makes that drive doctors, nurses, labworkers, etc. crazy, but they’re not obvious to me.

133

In real chess, if I have (say) a bishop on A3 and you have a piece on D6, and I want to use my bishop to capture your piece, my bishop will end up on D6, the space previously occupied by your piece. And according to the books, Wizard chess has exactly the same rules as Muggle chess, with the only difference being that the pieces are animate. But in the scene in the movie, the capturing piece was stopping one space short of the piece it captured, so my bishop that started on A3 would end up on C5, not D6.

134

[QUOTE=stargazer]
I recently saw a rerun of House that bugs me* – in the episode “Babies & Bathwater” there is a pregnant woman who, for various reasons, needs to be made not-pregnant ASAP. She’s 27 weeks along, at the beginning, and the doctors are trying to convince her to deliver the baby so she can get treatment. She refuses, because it’s too early. This bit about it being too early is a major plot point – they go on about what the chances for survival are, how his lungs won’t be developed, etc.

In the end,

[spoiler] they deliver the baby at 28 weeks under tragic circumstances. Here’s where it gets me, though: there’s no neo-natal team in the room, only handsome Dr. Chase, who rubs the baby and says encouraging things like, “C’mon, little guy!” And after a few tense seconds, the baby cries and is fine.

Um, there is NO WAY that a 28-weeks-gestation infant is fine with that little intervention. They made that abundantly clear earlier in the episode; now it looks like the mother was worried for nothing. :rolleyes: [/spoiler]
[/QUOTE]

Where the hell is his hospital, a third world country?! (No offense to third world countries…)

Meet my 23 weeker. OK, so she’s on the very earliest end of possible to save, but still - 27 weeks is pretty near ready for graduation and a job! :smiley: Of course, I didn’t see the episode, so I have no idea what other problems the mother and/or baby might have had, but I don’t think focusing on the gestational age was all that wise.

A 28 weeker *might *just possibly not need much intervention, but there’s no way they wouldn’t have a NICU team in place, just for protocol’s sake. Most 28 weekers still need some oxygen, and a high percentage of those who can breathe okay at the start go on a vent later. But he’d certainly get his own nurse, at the very least - even full term newborns get that nowadays!

135

I once saw this show where these people were stranded on an island (not Lost, but like it)

Anyway, this smart guy builds a radio out of coconut and bamboo. I rolled my eyes in disgust.

(Ducks and runs)

136

the Relic - an abysmal monster movie from ten years ago (so I won’t use spoilers): An archeologist is tricked by a witch doctor into drinking a magical elixir that turns him into a gigantic komodo-dragon-like monster. Said archeologist is onboard a ship bound for NYC when he turns into a monster, and when the ship crashes into the NYC harbor, the monster manages to slip into subterranean tunnels that lead from the harbor directly into the Museum of Natural History.

Later on, after the monster has been stalking around the museum killing people, the film’s heroine manages to obtain a skin-cell sample from the creature, runs it through her handy-dandy DNA analyzer, that identifies the DNA of the monster as being identical to the DNA of the (missing) archeologist. Big OMG moment in the film - * the monster is actually the missing archeologist!*

All righty:

  1. To my knowledge, there are no tunnels leading from the (mostly unused and converted into recreation parks) Manhattan piers to the Museum of Natural History.

  2. The museum depicted does not in any way look like the actual Museum of Natural History in Manhattan (This I’d be willing to overlook in a better movie.)

  3. This is apparently one miraculous DNA analyzer, because not only does it determine the monster’s DNA to human (in a matter of minutes no less), but it isolates the exact person the DNA came from. As we had already learned back in the OJ Simpson trial, this isn’t possible.

  4. Just when exactly did this analyzer machine get a sample of the missing archeologist’s DNA (to match against the monster’s) in the first place? That we never learn.

137

My most recent one from House too. It’s not a terribly obvious mistake to someone unfamiliar with medical words, but glaringly obvious to those of us who proofread medical documents for a living.

In this episode, the patient had intracranial bleeding, only “intercranial” is what was written on the board. “Intra” means inside, but “inter” means between. So, much like an interstate travels between two or more states (excepting Hawaii), intercranial bleeding would mean someone is bleeding from their cranium into one or more other craniums.

In the next shot of the white board they had fixed it. They should have left it, then I could have assumed House can’t tell apart his prefixes, much like many real life doctors. :slight_smile:

138

On the Brady Bunch, Carol’s married name is Martin. Oliver’s last name is Martin. That would mean they took in her ex-husband’s child? I guess it’s possible if he died and that the family was good terms, and the Brady’s are very nice people and all, but still odd. I don’t see Mike standing for it.

139

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Meet my 23 weeker.
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I was going to cite your story, actually, but when I found the thread I saw that she was born 5 weeks earlier than the baby in the show. I know enough to know that 5 weeks makes a HUGE difference, and I didn’t want to get nitpicked for it, so I didn’t use Caileigh’s story.

But I’m not surprised to see you here. :wink:

140

[QUOTE=The New and Improved Superman]
the Relic - an abysmal monster movie from ten years ago
[/QUOTE]

That film was beautifully skewered by this reviewer..