Has there ever been a glaring continuity error in a favorite movie, television program, novel, comic series, etc. that nagged the hell out of you, but you felt absolutely MUST be explained (by hook, crook, or extreme delusion) because the quality of the aforementioned was otherwise commendable, and, as such, the logistical gaff just ATE AWAY AT YOUR VERY SOUL? If so, present the confounded situations one at a time and see if your fellow Doper can explain it away. The only rules are that it must be a valid explanation within the realm of possibility (no “a wizard did it” responses) and the flubs can’t be anachronisms and the like (“In ‘Gladiator,’ if you looked in the background, you could see Tullius Amicus checking his e-mail.” None of that.) Maybe this will get some creative juices flowing.
I’ll start off.
In “Jurassic Park II: The Lost World,” which was a completely respectable sequel save for the following incident and its unbelievable repercussions, a cargo ship carrying a full-grown T-Rex crashes, unmanned (for soon to be obvious reasons), into a San Diego pier. As the InGen employees and police officials and security guards scour the boat for any explanation, they come upon disembodied limbs scattered throughout the vicinity, most memorably a lone, lifeless hand still clutching to a steering wheel. Eventually, of course, those still unfortunate enough to be on deck come to realize the big, bad therapod is far from sedated, she escapes, rampages, etc. All well and good (or at least not impossible), but what ate the people whose extremities were inside cramped control rooms and such? The ship was completely undamaged! In other words, the T-Rex couldn’t have been responsible, because her gigantic head would never have been able to fit through the doorways without leaving a swath of destruction. In fact, it’s the post-crash blunder of a policeman (pressing the button to open the cargo deck) that allows for the dinosaur’s escape. Presumably, she was still trapped until then. Those who saw the movie may know what I’m talking about.
I have to give credit to my sis for this one, but now I notice it every time I see it.
In the Matrix, when Neo meets Morpheus for the first time. Morheus and Neo are standing facing each other; Morpheus first has his hand at his side, then the camera shows him from the back, and his hand is behind his back. Then it shows his front again and it is back at his side…all in a matter of seconds.
InRepair, quotes screw up the subject line. No one knows why. Email a mod - if they’re feeling nice and they’ve got time, they can fix the thread title for you.
Um - can’t really contribute much to the thread itself, though, since although I do sometimes notice continuity errors I don’t usually remember them. Or anything else.
Oh, wait, here’s an old one: in Demolition Man, the character Simon Phoenix has one blue eye and one brown eye. There’s a scene early in the movie during which the blue contact is on the wrong side.
When Kane says “Rosebud” and dies, he drops the winter ball thingie (never can remember the name of those trinkets), and in close-up it shows his nurse entering the room.
It is possible, however barely and however farfetched, that she had most incredibly good hearing of any human being, or that the room was constructed in such a way that his dying whisper echoed and echoed out to her room or station or wherever she was. We never heard the echo, but oh well.
To clarify for those who have not seen “Citizen Kane.” The close-up of the glass ball thingie shows a reflection of the front side of the room, thus the reflection shows the nurse entering the room.
1.) with the parasailers… what ate the boaters? INGEN never engineered aquatic animals- they didn’t want anything that could escape the island. and dinos couldn’t swim… so what happened?
2.)isn’t it great that nine (count em!) anti-tank HE AP rounds couldn’t even wound the Spinosaurus (or whatever it was) when they first encountered it? wow! how logical!
3.) speaking of the Spinosaurus, isn’t it great that INGEN could clone an animal that noone knew even existed when the site B facility was in operation?
In The Jackal, Richard Gere pursues Bruce Willis into the entrance of Capitol Heights metro station. They run down into the station, which promply changes into… Radisson metro in east end Montreal! Sure, it’s disguised as Capitol Heights, but any Washingtonian or Montrealer can recognize that something’s amiss. Then they jump down into the tunnel and run towards the next station on the line. Not only does the station claim to be Metro Center, which is several stops away from Capitol Heights, but it actually is Lionel-Groulx metro, which is 18 stops away from Radisson!
Obviously, the conspiracy runs extremely deep, and is connected with the previous passport fraud and escape by sailboat in Montreal.
Spiniosaurus was shown in the River, why not in the ocean? (imperfect, but remember what this thread is)
I didn’t see the Spino get hit with big guns. a couple of little ones… maybe I just wasn’t paying attention.
Easy… they never knew what they were recreating until they had created it the first time…after all, they were working with blood from mosquitos. Who knew what kind of blood it was? No one could until the clone was actually done and they got a look at it, so “knowledge” of various species via fossils was beside the point.
MY question about J3 was how in hell Ms. Dern managed to not only mobilize half the US miliarty, but how she managed to do so in mere hours…based on nothing more than noise? Who the hell did she know?
In the movie Gremlins, it is agreed that the Futtermans are killed. Yet, in Gremlins 2: The New Batch they are back, ready to greet Billy and Kate at the Peltzer’s new apartment in New York City. Or did they have a reason for their survival? I haven’t seen this movie in, probably, five years.
Not that there’s actually a lot of plot to spoil here. But for what it’s worth, the plot of this movie is that cats and dogs are intelligent species; cats are trying to take over the world and dogs are fighting them. Without going into details, the cat leader gets a formula that makes all humans allergic to dogs and tests it by exposing a young boy to it. The formula works and the boy is now allergic to dogs. Before the cat can spread the formula worldwide, his plans are thwarted and the boy is rescued by his pet dog. Boy and dog are reunited and the boy is shown hugging his dog.
As we were leaving the theatre, my six year old niece (you didn’t think going to this turkey was my idea, did you?) turned to me and asked “How come the boy didn’t sneeze when he picked up his dog?” I made up some answer to satisfy her, which was more than the filmmakers managed. I figure when you’ve got a continuity problem so big a first grader spots it, you should definitely consider a rewrite.
and, i suppose point one may be difficult to prove- the middle of the jurrasic bay might just be very shallow. even though they had freighters moving up it. it could be shallow. maybe they used some low-profile ships.
however, here is my proof of point two- the two merecenary guys were, at the beginning, playing around with a really big gun. from it’s effects on that painted plane, i assumed it to be an A-T HEAP (Anti-Tank High Explosive Armor Piercing) rifle, though it could just be a HE (High Explosive) rifle. when they first land, all three guys have one as their only armament. they run off into the bushes ‘to set a perimeter’ and start shooting when they apperently encounter the Spinosaurus. you hear a number of shots ring out, nine as i counted them, and then they rush back to the plane, while one of the mercenaries runs out ahead and is eaten by the spinosaurus. since two of those guys were trained mercenaries, i find it very unlikley that they would miss with nine total combined shots against such a large target; those shots should have at least left some damage.
How about this? In his last day of life he was repeating and repeating the word, to the mystification of all the staff. The camera just shows the last repetition.
Plausible.
That hand on the steering wheel in Jurassic 11 is a very good point. Could a baby monster have crept out to kill and crept back to sleep with mommy? Hmm, guess not.
One of the crew members was a serial killer who hacked all the other crew members to death. He jumped off the ship shortly before it runs into San Diego harbor, figuring the carnage he left behind will be blamed on the dinosaur. (Sure it’s far-fetched. But can you prove it didn’t happen?)
