Welcome to Top10Archive!
Don’t you just love sitting down and watching some of your favorite movies?
Wouldn’t it be a shame if someone came along and, say, kind of ruined the experience by
pointing out glaring, inexcusable errors?
Enter this installment for the 10 most obvious movie mistakes!
We promise, after this Archive, you won’t be able to overlook these noticeable goofs.
10.
Gotham Times Can’t Spell (The Dark Knight Rises)
Gotham City is notorious for its slew of villains and The Dark Knight Rises seemed to birth
one more.
Of course, we’re talking about The MissSpeller-er-er!
At least, we hope that’s who was being introduced when Christopher Nolan and his team of crackpot
editors gave us this gem – a misspelled headline of The Gotham Times.
Maybe it was a call to the complete incompetence of everyone that’s not Batman in Gotham
City, but chances are it was a Grade-A, noticeable goof.
9.
Nixon’s Resignation (The Rocky Horror Picture Show)
It’s a wonder when movies go out of their way to set a time period, either by mentioning
the year directly or including a memorable event from that time or, heck, some movies
go so far as to include both.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show is one such movie, and while it’s definitely not one
that’s meant to be taken too seriously, it’s hard to overlook Nixon’s August 8th,
1974 resignation speech, which plays on the radio while Brad and Janet are driving along.
How can this be considered a mistake, you ask?
Just moments before, the scene is set by the criminologist as a late November evening.
Could it just be a rebroadcast of Nixon’s speech?
Chances are incredibly slim, especially since it’s so predominantly heard throughout much
of the scene.
8.
Transplanted Palms (Halloween) John Carpenter’s seasonal classic Halloween
is memorable for many reasons.
From the William Shatner mask that became a horror icon to Jamie Lee Curtis’ induction
into scream queen fame, the 1978 film was a revered gem – but that doesn’t mean
it was perfect.
In fact, if you pay close attention, you’ll notice some irregularities.
For instance, dendrologists and those familiar with American geography will likely raise
an eyebrow to the palm trees visible in the fictional city of Haddonfield, Illinois.
For those unfamiliar with the natural features of the United States, Illinois isn’t really
known for its palm trees.
That would be more like Hollywood, California, where much of the movie was actually filmed.
7.
Dorothy’s House Slippers (The Wizard of Oz)
Dorothy’s story revolves quite a bit around the magical, sparkly ruby slippers, so it
would be strange for the movie to show her off in anything but… right?
The wonders of movie making beg to differ, as it’s unlikely that dame Judy Garland
filmed every scene in those stiff-looking slippers, but for anything else to make an
appearance is an unfortunate slip of the editing team.
During the Scarecrow’s attempt to snag some apples, a brief scene shows Dorothy moving
around in more comfortable black slippers.
You’ll never make it home in those, dear Dorothy.
6.
Lake Wissota (Titanic) Chances are unless you’re from Wisconsin,
you have no idea what Lake Wissota is, and normally that’s okay.
It’s nothing incredibly special, just a man-made lake near Chippewa Falls that was
filled in 1918.
Apparently, Titanic protagonist Jack used to fish in these manufactured waters, which
may prove peculiar to Titanic experts as the unsinkable vessel set sail 6 years prior to
Wissota’s creation.
Is Jack a traveler from the near future or did the writer’s overlook or lazily ignore
this minor detail of Wisconsin’s history?
Our vote is for time-traveler.
5.
A Time Traveling Guitar (Back to the Future) It’s always painful going through a classic
movie and picking out glaring mistakes, but somebody has to do it.
Though we enjoyed our time with Doc Brown and Marty McFly, we couldn’t help but notice
a weird mistake thrown into the mix during the Fish Under the Sea Dance.
Yes, we know it’s “Enchantment Under the Sea,” but… oh, nevermind.
Back to the Mistake!
The fateful dance took place in 1955, meaning it would be impossible for Marty to be belting
out “Johnny B. Goode” on the Gibson ES345, a guitar that wasn’t released for another
3 years.
Mistakes happen, but if you’re going to travel back in time, fact checking is pretty
vital.
4.
Gas-Powered Chariots (Gladiator) Maybe Ancient Romans were a bit more advanced
than we initially assumed!
How else would one explain the gas cylinder visible underneath one of the chariots in
Ridley Scott’s Gladiator?
Alright, so maybe it was more of a movie goof than a hidden secret of Roman technology.
During the “Battle of Carthage” recreation in the Colosseum, a chariot flips over, revealing
what was likely a forgotten rig by the practical effects team and an oversight of the film’s
editors.
3.
Impossible Currency (Django Unchained) Quentin Tarantino’s 2012 western Django
Unchained garnered plenty of praise from critics and moviegoers, but of course, there were
some glaring mistakes that we cynics are bound to point out.
Mistakes like the twelve $1,000 bills presented by Dr. Schutlz.
It would be unlikely that the gentle doctor would have 1, let alone 12 of the bills, mostly
because the currency he was paying with wasn’t put into production until 1861, 2 years after
the movie takes place.
2.
Where’d the Ground Go?
(Jurassic Park) The escape of the Tyrannosaurus Rex in Stephen
Spielberg’s Jurassic Park remains one of Hollywood’s finest moments, which is what
makes it so painful that it’s followed up by one massive goof.
The error here lies in continuity of the Rex paddock layout as it seems to go from being
level with the road to having a massive drop that the Rex is able to push the Jeep down.
As viewers, we try to ignore it, but there’s no denying that, once the Rex escaped its
enclosure, all ground that it had stood on magically vanished and gave way to a rather
sizeable drop to a moat below.
1.
Low-Bridge Stormtrooper (Star Wars) It’s one of cinema’s most iconic movie
mistakes and there’s no way we were going to forget about it.
It’s not easy being a Stormtrooper.
One would have to assume visibility is not the best in those clunky helmets, which would
justify this clumsy trooper smacking his head against the door as he enters a control room
in A New Hope.
Strangely enough, in one of the 400 different versions of the DVD release, rather than edit
the scene out, a thumping noise was added.
If this oddly accepted goof teaches us anything, it’s that doors are apparently the only
things Stormtroopers are able to hit throughout the entirety of the Star Wars saga.