This is topic goof-ups in major films that should of been fixed! in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


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Posted by Steve Matz (Member # 1890) on 12-03-2013, 12:39 PM:
 
I always like to spot goof-ups in major motion pictures and wonder why they weren't caught in dailys,post production editing,etc. One that comes to mind and I even caught it the 1st time I saw it at a Theater;was Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 Classic "THE BIRDS"...

At Cathy's birthday party, when Mitch and Melanie climb the small hilltop to chat;you can see the Brenner Dock without any water around it and dry ground a good 100yds or more away from the dock. How in one day could that much water disappear when the day before Melanie brings the rented rowboat right up to the dock to deliver Cathy's love birds and the water level is close to the height of the Dock.

Unless a major sink hole opened up during the night and swallowed probably mega tons of water its highly unlikely you would have that much water disappear.I'm surprised that a perfectionist like Hitchcock wouldn't of caught that and did some background reshooting...Still a great movie though!

Would be interested to hear from others on the Forum of a major goof-up they spotted that should have been caught/fixed before release to the Movie Houses.
 

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Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 12-03-2013, 12:52 PM:
 
Would this be more appropriate in "Film-Yak" ?
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 12-03-2013, 01:59 PM:
 
It would, but I can't help posting my three favorites anyway.

Jagged Edge - the climatic courtroom scene. Glenn Close interrogating witness. MCU of her, wearing a white blouse. Cut to witness squirming on the stand. Cut back to her, looking very pleased with herself ... and wearing a red blouse! No wonder the witness was wrong-footed if she suddenly took her blouse off while waiting for him to answer.

There was an Arnie shootemup from the '80s - wish I could remember which one - which includes a car chase scene. The car flips over onto its side and negotiates a tight bend on a mountain road in this condition, before falling back over onto its four wheels again. When we see the side of the car that has been scraping along the ground at 50mph plus, the paint job is immaculate - not so much as a scratch or a ding on it.

The Merchant-Ivory Howard's End - Helena Bonham-Carter running through a rainy street in Edwardian London - reflection of a VW Beetle clearly visible in the window of a house in the background of the long tracking shot. The character is supposed to be a bit of a hippie type, but she was about 50 years ahead of her time if she had one of those.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-03-2013, 02:27 PM:
 
THere are goofs like that in literally any movie, even cartoons. Look up the movie of your choice on imdb.com, click on "Goofs" and be amazed at how many mistakes there are.

What amazes me is that people can spot this stuff. I've seen "The Birds" several times and have never seen the error mentioned. I'm always too caught-up in the story to keep track of what's going on in the background, I guess.

I did spot the famous "Pacific Bell" phone used by Bruce Willis in Die Hard 2 (when he was supposed to be in D.C.).
 

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Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 12-03-2013, 03:47 PM:
 
I usually don't notice goofs unless they are very obvious. I guess I'm more wrapped up in the story than the elements of the picture. Still, the most obvious one that comes to mind is the reflection of the helicopter in the side of the truck in Twister.

There's also the shadow of the helicopter in the opening scene of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, but I think that is only visible when the movie is out of frame or on full frame video.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-03-2013, 05:03 PM:
 
I tend to notice a lot of geographical goofs in movies, like if a car chase is taking place in the middle of Washington, D.C. near the monuments, Smithsonian Institution, etc. and then it winds up in a fictitious toll tunnel that doesn't exist and that toll tunnel is really Lower Grand Avenue in downtown fucking Los Angeles.


That kind of crap happens all the time in the movies. The "filmmakers" and producers pretend none of us notice any of that shit. But guess what? We do. And the tools at the fingertips of today's movie-goer are incredible. You can spot all kinds of recycled movie locations using the Street View feature in Google Earth. Using that and skimming a scene in a Blu-ray frame by frame will get a lot of movies plain busted.

By the way, here's an image of Lower Grand Avenue:



Look familiar? The location has only been used in about 138,839 movies. That's kind of a rounded, conservative estimate. It could be closer to 150,000 movies. A chase scene in The Terminator or Jamie Foxx playing a street musician in The Soloist are two examples where the location was plausible.

But I guess it was kind of cool to see that location double as Osaka, Japan in Black Rain where it set the stage for Andy Garcia to get decapitated by sword wielding bikers.
 

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Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 12-03-2013, 05:15 PM:
 

quote: Leo Enticknap

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There was an Arnie shootemup from the '80s - wish I could remember which one - which includes a car chase scene. The car flips over onto its side and negotiates a tight bend on a mountain road in this condition, before falling back over onto its four wheels again. When we see the side of the car that has been scraping along the ground at 50mph plus, the paint job is immaculate - not so much as a scratch or a ding on it.

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quote: Bobby Henderson

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The "filmmakers" and producers pretend none of us notice any of that shit. But guess what? We do.

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If by "we" you mean super-anal micro-detail-oriented people who watch movies over and over and over and over, you may be right, but I think most likely 99.9% of people wouldn't have a clue unless they happen to live in the location being shown, OR the one supposedly being depicted.

That picture you posted? I may have seen it in 138,000+ movies like you said but I still don't recognize it.
 

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Posted by Steve Matz (Member # 1890) on 12-03-2013, 07:52 PM:
 
one invention that has brought out more attention to goofs is the DVD Player. Unless you had an analyst projector where you could jog a frame or two at a time.When film is being projected at 24 or even 30 fps the human eye unless your Superman won't detect certain things in the one second it takes for those frames to go by.

Case in point;in the movie "FARGO" there is a scene where the native indian "Shep Proudfoot" confronts the Steve Buchemi character in bed with a Prostitute.He literally picks up Bushemi out of the bed and tosses him across the room. When you shuttle jog that scene on your DVD player you will come upon a couple frames that show its a Stuntman that doesn't resemble Bushemi facially in the least.

It's a good thing Features are never shown in super slo-mo at Movie theaters because you would probably see a lot of things that the normal eye will never catch.The Director and Film Editors are probably aware of this but what you don't see as intended won't have them trying to explain why they didn't try and correct the mistake down the line.
 

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 12-04-2013, 01:23 AM:
 

 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-04-2013, 11:37 AM:
 

quote: Mike Blakesley

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If by "we" you mean super-anal micro-detail-oriented people who watch movies over and over and over and over, you may be right, but I think most likely 99.9% of people wouldn't have a clue unless they happen to live in the location being shown, OR the one supposedly being depicted.

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quote: Steve Matz

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When you shuttle jog that scene on your DVD player you will come upon a couple frames that show its a Stuntman that doesn't resemble Bushemi facially in the least.

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quote: Bobby Henderson

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There's no shortage of movies featuring geographically illogical car chases in Manhattan.

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Right, but there are probably a hundred reasons why an action scene is shot where it is shot. In a lot of cases it's probable they would have LIKED to use a certain area but couldn't get permission -- or the street in question won't work for practical reasons, such as not enough room to fit equipment in place, or lighting issues, weather issues, or the buildings look "wrong" for the theme or time-frame of the movie... all manner of possibilities.

The bottom line is that it would make no sense for a production to spend millions of extra dollars to make sure all the scenes are geographically logical when only a fraction of moviegoers will ever notice the "error," and of those people most of them won't care one way or the other.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-04-2013, 02:40 PM:
 
It all comes down to maintaining suspension of disbelief.

I understand production limitations, but some of what I'm seeing is just downright stupid. I suppose I could be a little more sympathetic to older movie productions, but the big budget projects of today don't have much excuse. They have so many "digital backlot" tools that can solve some of the problems I'm noticing.

Other problems just come down to dumb-ass screenwriting and forced choices by the director. Like the toll tunnel and bridge scenes in Live Free or Die Hard. They might as well put the Empire State Building and Gateway Arch in downtown L.A. for the next Die Hard installment. While they're at it, make Mount Rushmore visible in Florida and a 10,000' tall jagged mountain range visible in Arkansas (oh wait, Thelma & Louise actually did that last one).


It turns out there are websites dedicated to showing the real life locations of movie locations. One is I Am Not A Stalker and another is Movie Locations.com.

Movie Mistakes web site lists lots of errors from many movies.
 

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Posted by Robert Koch (Member # 3728) on 12-04-2013, 03:52 PM:
 
Baseball movies really never get the facts. i.e. Eight Men Out has Dickie Kerr throwing from the wrong side; he was a lefty. The Winning Team has our hero Ronald Reagan portraying Pete Alaxander, one of the great early pitchers, and strikes the last man out in the 1926 series, no way; Babe Ruth made the last out trying to steal second base and was out from here to there when Hornsby tagged him out.
 

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Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 12-04-2013, 07:01 PM:
 

quote: Bobby Henderson

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They might as well put the Empire State Building and Gateway Arch in downtown L.A. for the next Die Hard installment.

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In Independence Day, the Empire State Building was sitting in the middle of an avenue, a bit like the GCT/MetLife/Helmsley Building complex...

I do not really mind if movies re-purpose some locations for something else, some artistic license should be permitted, as we should remember that this movie is probably just telling a fictitious story in a fictitious world. This world doesn't need to be a 1-on-1 copy of our own world.

What I do mind though, is some consistency and that's something not even generally respected filmmakers like Christopher Nolan seem to get right. For example, compare the representations of Gotham in the last three Batman movies. There are so many obvious differences and flaws, that I don't even dare to start.

There are other things I do care about, like:

- Obvious plot holes, especially those that could short circuit the whole plot in a minute or so.
- Dei ex machina, in the broadest sense. Technically not really a goof, but still quite unforgivable. Also, the main reason why I generally dislike stuff like Harry Potter or stuff revolving around Middle Earth. Those stories are generally full of this shit, there is never any real suspense. Every time when all is lost, you're waiting for some magic wizard, with a perfect sense of timing, to appear, casting just about the right spell in the last minute.
- Extreme coincidences that serve as ad-hoc story glue. Since some of those coincidences are just so out-of-this-universe, I would rather consider them a genuine plot hole.
- Bad representation of science. Well, I can forgive you if you're making some kind of cartoon, comedy or super-hero movie, but a decent thriller for example, shouldn't need Kryptonite.
- Bad representation of technology, especially anything involving computers. I don't know how many versions of MovieOS are out there... And yeah, hacking a computer system is generally a very boring business to look at, but is it really SO hard to make it look at least half way realistic?
- Bad effects or CGI in recent productions, especially those big-budget productions. Anno 2013 (or almost 2014), you either make it look like the real thing or just don't do it at all. Almost nobody is really wowed anymore by the latest CGI gizmos anyway.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-04-2013, 07:20 PM:
 
Agreed on many of those points. With growing up a Marine Corps brat, living in several different states, I might notice things like landmarks, highway routes, etc. more than most people. Some things are obvious enough for anyone to notice.

It was indeed kind of strange how this latest Batman trilogy used different locations for Gotham City in the three movies. The first one had a lot of CG buildings. The second one mostly used Chicago, with a few pickup shots in other cities (the upper level of Grand Ave. in downtown L.A. makes an appearance). The third one divided its time between New York City, Pittsburgh and L.A.

Maybe they got the idea for that shuffling geography from Robocop. In the first one the Dallas skyline served as "Old Detroit." Houston was the setting in the 2nd one. I didn't bother watching the 3rd one. Did they shoot that in San Antonio?

 

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Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 12-04-2013, 09:10 PM:
 
And Oklahoma! was shot in Arizona.
Worse yet, My Cousin Vinny was shot in Georgia.

The magic of movies, guys.
 

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Posted by Jock Blakley (Member # 6552) on 12-04-2013, 11:28 PM:
 
Setting THE MATRIX in Generic City USA and shooting it in Sydney was a good one. They tried to shoot around or paint out the really obvious stuff but there were still a lot of Australian companies with large office buildings in the background

That and some of the signs and labels and the like that crept in showed some very un-American use of the letter "U"
 

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Posted by Steve Matz (Member # 1890) on 12-04-2013, 11:57 PM:
 
What really annoys me in even high budget films where multi millions of dollars are spent is they can't get something as simple as the right sound/audio for a motorcycle.I've seen countless movies where they have British Bikes like the old T120 Triumph Bonnevilles or BSA A65 Twins sounding like a Harley or even worse yet, some 2 stroke single or twin.

They seem to have deep pockets for every thing else in the Film but hey don't spend a couple extra hundred bucks for a correct audio sound wave that goes with that particular motorcycle.

I've even seen it done with cars. The 1963 film "Palm Springs Weekend" has Robert Conrad's character driving a new Ford Thunderbird that sounded like an old 4cylinder TR3/4 Triumph sports car. That T-Bird probably had a 390cu in FE engine.Even as a 14yr old back then seeing the movie in 63;I thought that sound coming from the T-Bird was laughable...
 

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Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 12-05-2013, 03:30 PM:
 
On the "filming in an obviously wrong location"...

The studio that got the rights to Superman to make the fourth installment spent nearly all the money they got on other movies and therefore couldn't afford to film in NYC and filmed in London. The UN headquarters became some random building with a few US fire hydrants, a hotdog stand, and someone wearing a shirt that said that they love New York. Yeah, no one outside NYC would know what the real building looks like, since it's not regularly shown on the news throughout the world or anything...

Not to mention the stupidity of the story in general: Supes goes to the UN to ask them all to kindly get rid of their nukes when he doesn't need to, because... HE'S SUPERMAN. He can do it himself.
 

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Posted by Steve Matz (Member # 1890) on 12-06-2013, 02:25 PM:
 

quote: Chris Slycord

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Not to mention the stupidity of the story in general: Supes goes to the UN to ask them all to kindly get rid of their nukes when he doesn't need to, because... HE'S SUPERMAN. He can do it himself.

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Your statement is correct but even at Superman's supersonic speed
it would take too long for him to detonate Just the Nuclear Arsenal
of the US and Russia.This would leave minimal time for him to rescue
Lois Lane from all her dalemias that she seems to get into...LoL!

Does anybody actually believe our Government's truthful numbers of
what minimal stockpile of Nuclear weapons we still possess.Do you feel
safer at night knowing that there are only enough weapons to blow the
earth up 10 times over the previous 20times before nuclear disarmament!
 

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Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 12-06-2013, 03:29 PM:
 
One of my favorites come from "Independence Day" (1996). Jeff Goldblum with his trusty Mac uploads a virus into the alien computer system and saves the world.

Right!

What protocol would the aliens be using? Certainly TCP/IP even though they are eons advanced beyond our technology. And what about the wireless Physical Layer? You know they're are certainly using something like IEEE 802.11. And even in the unlikely event a link could be established, you just know the alien coding is right on par with the 20th century.

I couldn't believe they filmed such
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-06-2013, 03:52 PM:
 
That, and the point where Will Smith just punches the alien out. Pure idiocy there.

That movie was awesome for the first 2/3 and then stupid for the last third.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-06-2013, 09:48 PM:
 
Honest Trailers: Independence Day
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 12-07-2013, 05:55 AM:
 

quote: Marcel Birgelen

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Bad representation of science. Well, I can forgive you if you're making some kind of cartoon, comedy or super-hero movie, but a decent thriller for example, shouldn't need Kryptonite.

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quote: Leo Enticknap

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but I can't see how it would be possible in predict-the-future type stories such as Metropolis or Star Wars.

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Well, since this thread is about nitpicking little things in movies (most often nothing more than simple continuity errors), I really should point out that Star Wars happpened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 12-07-2013, 04:59 PM:
 
Duly acknowledged, hands in the air, that's a gotcha!

How about retroactively substituting Things to Come as my other "invent a world" example?
 

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Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 12-07-2013, 05:32 PM:
 

quote:

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Your statement is correct but even at Superman's supersonic speed
it would take too long for him to detonate Just the Nuclear Arsenal
of the US and Russia.This would leave minimal time for him to rescue
Lois Lane from all her dalemias that she seems to get into...LoL!

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quote: Wayne Keyser

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In BONES, Dr. Brennan can't take a drive with agent Booth while remaining in this dimension.

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