Give a film where you have noticed a blatant flaw!

Posted by: Consciousmess on 05 February 2012

Hi all,

 

I watched Shawshank Redemption last night and must firstly say that it was entertaining but nothing more.  Not on par with how others have rated it, but that is totally incidental to this thread!

 

Anyway, I noticed something neither the director nor the film crew nor the acting posse saw....

 

When that guy escaped out of the prison after having dug a tunnel through the wall, how did he stick the poster up behind him once he was in the tunnel?  The tunnel wasn't big enough to turn around so it was just a "one way tunnel" (unless you crawled in reverse), so how could he have put that poster up on the inside of his cell from being inside the tunnel.

 

Terrible stuff.

 

So can anyone comment in agreement, and do you have any blatant flaws you've seen in films??!!

 

Regards

 

Jon

Posted on: 05 February 2012 by winkyincanada

Whilst I'm happy to suspend disbelief to a point, I hate implausible co-incidences in plots. Take "The Fifth Element". The Bruce Willis character gets involved in the plot by way of a contact from his old job, as well as by having Milla J. fall through the roof of his air cab. I've never been able to accept that.

 

And for god's sake, put on a shirt.

Posted on: 05 February 2012 by Redmires

This is more of a production flaw than a plot flaw.

 

A recent version of D.H Lawrence's The Rainbow/Women in Love on BBC4.  I was enjoying the film (set in Nottingham/London but not filmed in the UK) when a railway scene showed a South African steam train crossing a level crossing. Completely broke the spell.

Posted on: 05 February 2012 by Chief Chirpa
Originally Posted by Consciousmess:
Terrible stuff.

Jon, Not sure how many of the film's other 30+ mistakes you spotted, but it seems the thing with the poster was an intentional 'cheat': http://www.moviemistakes.com/film1146

 

 

 

 

 

(Re you other recent movie thread, thought you might like to know that The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo has since received several Oscar nominations, including a couple for the sound.)

Posted on: 08 February 2012 by EJS

Winky, by questioning The Fifth Element, don't you just open up any ridiculous action movie from the past thirty years or so? The way Hulk jumps on an F22 that merely dips for a second, Indiana Jones jumping out of an airplane in a rubber boat, gliding all the way down from Nepal to the jungle in India, Hellboy ramming on the hood of a 4x4 that then tumbles over his head etc... all completely impossible...

 

EJ

Posted on: 08 February 2012 by Mr Underhill

Winky,

 

I think that 'coincidence' is interesting culturally. Like you I hate it, but the Victorians appear to be more than OK with it - Jane Eyre for instance.

 

In fact it is remarkable how many coincidences have popped up in my life, and that is just the ones I have noticed.

 

My personal issue is that it just feels like lazy plotting, the author should work harder!

 

M

Posted on: 20 February 2012 by JamieL_v2

There is a phrase 'Suspension of disbelief', it applies to all films. Yes there are mistakes, some can spoil a film, some are deliberate as it makes the film flow more, and some just don't matter at all.

 

Perhaps one of the most famous film mistakes is in 'Those Magnificent men in their Flying Machines' where in the sequence in which a plane lands on top of a train, a huge power station is clearly visible on the horizon. If you are watching the action, you probably would not notice the cooling towers, even though they are quite clearly in shot.

 

Personally I can't stand modern action movies. The trailer for the fist of the current 'Mission Impossible' series where Tom Cruse was blown off an exploding helicopter and grabbed onto the back of a moving train, guaranteed to me that there was no point in my watching a film that had no concept of what is possible and obviously had a hero that could do anything, and so had no jeopardy.

 

That said there are lots of mistakes that have become part of film language. Binoculars are double circles, the idea you can grab onto the railings of a the next floor down if you fall from a window  (a stunt man assures me that after you have fallen three feet, your momentum is greater than the strength of your hands to grab, although you could brace your arm across a rail, and stop yourself, and break the arm in the process). We accept people changing the language they speak in films, without batting an eyelid.

 

Personally I would say the biggest mistake in films is to let certain directors near a camera, but that is more taste than bad set dressing.

Posted on: 21 February 2012 by Derek Wright

In one of the great Shakespearean films made in the 40s (1940s) it is said that you can briefly see an airplane in the sky during one of the set piece battle scenes.

 

The film "The Wild and Willing" was filmed in Lincoln in about 1962 (my home town) and it is most confusing to see the geography of the town re arranged in the film to help the flow of the film go better. An extension to the castle tower was added (quite an improvement) and a room was built in the middle of the street so that the view from the window was of a half timbered building.

 

It is all part of business of film making where the viewer is supposed to suspend disbelief and enjoy the story as presented.

Posted on: 21 February 2012 by Mike-B

Agricultural "tram lines"  (crop spraying wheel tracks) in cereal fields in WW-I & WW-II aerial shots

Most prominant in "Aces High" & "Battle of Britain"

Crop spraying from wide reach spray rigged tractors using the tram line method was not introduced until late 1950's & was not anything like becoming common practice until 1960's

Posted on: 21 February 2012 by Timbo

Battle Los Angeles - blatant US recruitment advert!!

Posted on: 21 February 2012 by Steeve

Continuity errors are irrelevant if the film is emotionally engaging. If you start noticing them, it is a flawed film. Unless it's a Jean-Luc Goddard film where they are added deliberately!  

Posted on: 21 February 2012 by winkyincanada
Originally Posted by EJS:

Winky, by questioning The Fifth Element, don't you just open up any ridiculous action movie from the past thirty years or so? The way Hulk jumps on an F22 that merely dips for a second, Indiana Jones jumping out of an airplane in a rubber boat, gliding all the way down from Nepal to the jungle in India, Hellboy ramming on the hood of a 4x4 that then tumbles over his head etc... all completely impossible...

 

EJ

Not the physics I'm questioning, it is the co-incidence. Why HIS particular flying cab? He is already linked to the plot. At the stage where it occurs, he is one of only about three people in the whole city that has anything to do with the story. Implausible that she falls into that particular cab. They could have made it less unlikely by having him driving to the building where she was housed, thus making the event plausible. But they didn't. He was just randomly driving under the right window when she jumped. "Of all the gin joints in all towns in the world...."

 

There is sometimes an argument that it is the co-incidence that makes a particular person's story interesting and therefore that is in fact why the film is about them, rather than about one of the other people touched by the chain of events making up the story. Not in this case, though.

 

Another stupid co-incidence is in Independence Day where a group of people, already part of the story by another connection (can't recall the details), happen to stumble across the crashed helicopter in which the president's wife was travelling. What are the odds of that, when travelling by foot through the ruins of LA? Space aliens and alien computers that are susceptible to Microsoft-style viruses I can swallow. Even Will Smith figuring out how to fly an alien spaceship. But the coincidence where the president's wife is found is just ridiculous. Lazy, too. They could have written in a homing beacon device that guided rescuers to her. The link with the other protagonists could then have been structured.

Posted on: 22 February 2012 by EJS
Originally Posted by winkyincanada:
Originally Posted by EJS:

Winky, by questioning The Fifth Element, don't you just open up any ridiculous action movie from the past thirty years or so? The way Hulk jumps on an F22 that merely dips for a second, Indiana Jones jumping out of an airplane in a rubber boat, gliding all the way down from Nepal to the jungle in India, Hellboy ramming on the hood of a 4x4 that then tumbles over his head etc... all completely impossible...

 

EJ

Not the physics I'm questioning, it is the co-incidence. Why HIS particular flying cab? He is already linked to the plot. At the stage where it occurs, he is one of only about three people in the whole city that has anything to do with the story. Implausible that she falls into that particular cab. They could have made it less unlikely by having him driving to the building where she was housed, thus making the event plausible. But they didn't. He was just randomly driving under the right window when she jumped. "Of all the gin joints in all towns in the world...."

 

There is sometimes an argument that it is the co-incidence that makes a particular person's story interesting and therefore that is in fact why the film is about them, rather than about one of the other people touched by the chain of events making up the story. Not in this case, though.

 

Another stupid co-incidence is in Independence Day where a group of people, already part of the story by another connection (can't recall the details), happen to stumble across the crashed helicopter in which the president's wife was travelling. What are the odds of that, when travelling by foot through the ruins of LA? Space aliens and alien computers that are susceptible to Microsoft-style viruses I can swallow. Even Will Smith figuring out how to fly an alien spaceship. But the coincidence where the president's wife is found is just ridiculous. Lazy, too. They could have written in a homing beacon device that guided rescuers to her. The link with the other protagonists could then have been structured.

Sorry, I indeed misread your post. I can't say I disagree with you. In the case of The 5th Element I found the situation amusing but then nobody is taking themselves very serious anyway - but your example of Independence Day is spot on. Have you seen War of the Worlds, the remake with Cruise? It's a particularly bad offender.

 

EJ

Posted on: 22 February 2012 by winkyincanada
Originally Posted by EJS:
 Have you seen War of the Worlds, the remake with Cruise? It's a particularly bad offender.

 

EJ

I have seen it, and agree. And let's not talk about the stupid, saccharine, hollywood ending. NO REASON why his son needs to re-appear. His son should be dead.

 

Same in Avatar. A much better ending would have had the planet being nuked from orbit. It would have made the ending feel bleak and futile. There are rarely any happy endings when "first nations" people get in the way of resource development. I know, because I'm in the resource game.

Posted on: 24 February 2012 by JamieL_v2

The "War of the Worlds" ending looked very much like an addition after audience tests, it could easily have been shot on one of the sets of the damaged cities, but just looked like any old Boston street that was available a few months after filming.

 

Why did the aliens bury the machines in the first place, that killed any plot that made sense ten minutes into the film, especially considering how solid the original plot is in the book.

 

In "Independence Day" the logging in of the computer to an aliens operating system was fatuous, especially if you have tried to install some new piece of hardware made the same manufacturer, using the same operating system, speaking the same language from the same manufacturing plant on a PC ever.

 

Picking holes in big dumb Hollywood blockbusters is a bit pointless though, what plot there is just links the next chase, explosion or effects sequence to the last one, and has no other relevance. I might suggest that if you are watching films like that for plot, you have made as big a mistake as any of those credited at the end of them.

 

As for more intelligent films, the thread is quite relevant, but it does largely come down to if the story draws you in or not.

Posted on: 24 February 2012 by winkyincanada
Originally Posted by JamieL_v2:

......Picking holes in big dumb Hollywood blockbusters is a bit pointless though....

You make an excellent point.

Posted on: 24 February 2012 by JamieL_v2

I can't say that I am without blame on the subject, I do have a credit on one of the dumbest films of the 90's 'Lost in Space', which has a line something like "If we we can't go up away from the planet, then lets go down through it.", when they are trying to take off from the collapsing planet in a spaceship. Thankfully my credit has nothing to do with script, just CGI effects.

 

Actually I have never seen all the film, just flicked through a couple of bits where I had worked on the shots, or seen them filmed. I did try to watch it, but found it so bad that I gave up, very quickly.

Posted on: 24 February 2012 by winkyincanada
Originally Posted by JamieL_v2:

.....one of the dumbest films of the 90's 'Lost in Space'....

I enjoyed it!

Posted on: 24 February 2012 by JamieL_v2

I can only say that I am glad someone did.

 

I did get a great showreel shot out of it, as did so many CGI artists in the UK (all the CGI effects were done here, and the film was shot at Shepperton, which was a great boost to the UK film industry), and I did get to sit in some of the spaceship seats looking out at a green screen 'space', so perhaps it wasn't all bad.

Posted on: 05 March 2012 by Sniper

I would imagine the poster was attached at the top corners only - Our Andy merely lifted the poster from the bottom and crawled into the hole. It would be possible (but not necessary) to secure the bottom corners once in the hole with a little manual dexterity. 

Posted on: 05 March 2012 by Sniper

The Lord of the Rings films - nothing like the book