Top Ten Movie Mistakes: C.C.C Issue #51

Top Ten Movie Mistakes I Can’t Un-See

Sometimes, instead of being engrossed in a movie, the trance is broken by some sort of mistake or error or faux pas that the filmmakers didn’t intend for you to see. It might be a tiny little detail, or a more substantial one that hurts your brain the more you think about it. You might be able to get over it, or it might stick with you and ruin the rest of the movie-going experience.

These ten movie mistakes are things I personally noticed, and there are a lot on here that have become “infamous”, but that’s not the point. Maybe you caught a mistake in a movie that others missed, or you missed one and saw it on a repeat viewing. There are too many to count, but these ten didn’t get past me (which really says something because I don’t pay that much attention most of the time)

10. Scary Movie 2: underwear change

Honestly, I was stretching to find ten that I genuinely noticed at one point and have noticed ever since, but this is one of the first times I recall actually noticing an error in a movie. My friends and I marathoned all four (at that time) movies in the Scary Movie franchise, and in the second entry, Kathleen Robertson’s character is, very clearly, wearing a blue thong (trust me, you can’t miss it) but then in a scene meant to parody Charlie’s Angels (which came out a year earlier) she runs down some stairs and pulls her clothes off, along with two other women, obviously meant to indicate a costume change, but they end up in just their bras and panties at the bottom. The fail? Robertson’s character is wearing a completely different type and colour of undies. It’s evidently just meant as a gag and has no bearing on anything within the context of the movie, but it’s still the first error I recall noticing in a movie. For whatever reason.

9. The Shining: helicopter shadow

Stanley Kubrick was well known for being a perfectionist and doing endless numbers of takes to get his movies just the way he wanted them, and really who could blame him? Okay, maybe there are more than a few actors who could, but I’d say all that extra work and attention to detail helped, since he’s considered one of the greatest directors ever. But imagine his disappointment when people pointed out a tiny moment in his adaptation of Stephen King’s novel The Shining where his perfectionism faltered. In the opening shots of the mountainous landscape—the footage for which clearly having been captured via helicopter—you can see the shadow of the helicopter on the ground. Is it a big deal? Not really, but it does shatter the illusion for just a quick second. In a film with so many tiny details (many of which are pointed out as being extremely purposeful, according to the documentary Room 237), it’s surprising this faux pas made it to final cut, but it’s probably because Kubrick couldn’t afford to have the chopper do another fly-by for more footage, or he just didn’t have the time to worry about it.

8. Teen Wolf: Why is that extra’s fly open?

This one’s pretty famous, thanks in no small part to the second Family Guy Star Wars spoof. As described in that episode, there’s an extra in the background of the final basketball game in Teen Wolf who stands up and appears to have his genitals exposed. Confused? So was I when I watched the movie and noticed this detail, but I didn’t know what I was looking at exactly until I saw the Family Guy episode. But now new information seems to indicate it isn’t a guy, but rather a girl, and it isn’t a dick hanging out, but her fly is still open. I’m not sure which one to believe, but either way, it’s very obviously someone with their fly open. So, what’s going on there? Why did he or she have his or her fly open while watching this basketball game? We may never know, but this isn’t the only Michael J. Fox movie on this list.

7. Predator: Schwarzenegger on a sled. Bonus: dog tag turned around.

This one’s very minor, and I only notice it because 1) I’ve seen this movie a million times, and 2) I’ve seen the outtakes, which reveal how the shot was done. After Schwarzenegger’s team has been killed by the intergalactic hunter and he’s trying to escape, he falls/slides down a hill toward a cliff where he falls off into a river below. As he slides down the hill, he says “Oh shit!” (A line he apparently ad-libbed, as it’s absent from all other takes of this shot) and you can see he’s sitting on some kind of sled, which in turn is sitting on a track. Honestly, it’s such a quick moment it’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kind of mistake, and it’s not the only one. When Billy throws the dog tag to Arnold, he catches it, then when it cuts to a close-up, he’s holding it in a completely different way than when he caught it. But tiny errors like this definitely don’t detract from the overall movie, they’re more like fun Easter eggs for hard-core fans.

6. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope: Stormtrooper bangs head on doorway

Speaking of Easter eggs, here’s a famous one that not only fans have embraced, but so has the creator, George Lucas. Star Wars is far from a perfect movie, and with all the production troubles Lucas experienced, it’s amazing it turned out as great as it did, but one little blooper that made it into the movie caught the attention of more than a few fans. Apparently Stormtrooper helmets are hard to see out of, as evidenced by one who hits his head on a low doorway. I actually half-noticed this when I re-watched Star Wars as a kid, before I had internet. I said, “Did that guy just hit his head on something?” But never bothered to back it up and check. Of course nowadays it’s made even more obvious by a clunking sound effect added in after the many special editions and re-releases, but that could be why I noticed it, because that was and still is the only version available to watch.

5. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: sunglasses on, sunglasses off

The only foreign movie to make this list, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a dark mystery film with multiple brutal scenes and gritty realism throughout, except for one scene at the end, where a simple continuity mistake completely took me out of the movie. The main character, Mikael, arrives in Australia to talk with someone, and it switches between over the shoulder shots of their conversation, a pretty conventional method we’ve seen a million times. One tiny problem: in the shot looking at him, he has his sunglasses on. In the shot looking over his shoulder, he very clearly has his sunglasses up on his head. I’m not sure why I caught on to this little error, but it drives me nuts because, as this list is titled, I can’t un-see it, and the worst part is it’s not even one of the biggest mistakes in the movie, but for whatever reason, it’s the one I caught.

4. Back to the Future Part III: What is Doc’s kid doing?

This is another one I noticed before internet videos and blogs made movie mistakes so well known. Not that I’m bragging, just sayin’. At the end of Back to the Future Part III, after the time machine has been destroyed and all seems calm, Doc Brown arrives in 1985 with a brand-new time machine built out of a locomotive, along with his wife, Clara, and two new sons, Jules and Verne. While Marty and Doc exchange their last on-screen dialogue in a short but impactful scene, little Verne is doing something strange with his hands in the background. I re-watched it, trying to figure out what was going on there, and it looks like he’s signalling toward his crotch. Fans have theorized he was indicating to someone off-camera he needed to use the washroom (By pointing at his dick? Subtle) but I kind of doubt it. Maybe the child actor was doing some improvisation to indicate he wanted Marty to come with them on the time machine? But then again, maybe it was weirder than that? I don’t know, all I know is it’s just a bit distracting when at the conclusion of one of the best trilogies ever, your attention is drawn to a kid pointing at his flux capacitor in the background. It’s just wrong.

3. Terminator 2: Judgement Day: obvious stuntman on bike, clearly not Schwarzenegger. Bonus: multiple self-repairing windshields

It seems every time I re-watch T2 I notice some new little quirky thing about it, but hey, that’s usually what happens when you see the same movie so many times over. T2 has no shortage of bloopers, and in such a complex action movie as this, it’s no surprise. Multiple windshields are broken or torn away, only to be fixed or intact in the next shot, but most of these are so quick you don’t really notice them in the overall flow of action. The one that lingers just a few milliseconds too long is when Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 picks up young John Conner off his dirt bike and places him onto the Harley he’s riding. It’s so very obviously NOT Schwarzenegger, it’s some stuntman. But you know what’s worse than that? Once you notice this moment, you notice MULTIPLE moments throughout the scene where it’s obviously not Arnold, or Edward Furlong as John for that matter! It’s a minor quibble, but it’s things like this that actually make me miss the lack of clarity with VHS and even DVD, where we couldn’t tell that guy in the background was a stuntman and not the real actor.

Just kidding, I love me some high def!

2. Jaws: hydraulic arm helping shark jump onto boat? Bonuses: rubber shark teeth, Schizophrenic Ocean

In all honesty, I saw Jaws probably twenty times before I noticed this mistake, and that’s not counting all the times I saw the famous clip in other media. I’m talking about the shot when the shark leaps out of the water and lands on the Orca (the not big enough boat), near the end of the film. In fact, it’s the mistake that led me to make this list, because I’ve discovered I can no longer see that scene and not see the error, and that is, you can see the mechanical arm lifting the shark out of the water! Now, I know what you’re thinking, so what? The shark looks fake anyway, right? Wrong! Well, sort of. Yeah, the shark doesn’t look super realistic, but when it’s on-screen, you still buy it, because you don’t see the cables running out of its body or the puppeteers or anything, except this one moment! But wait, no… After reviewing the footage carefully, I discovered I was mistaken. It’s actually the rope holding the barrels to the shark that’s visible, so it’s not an error!

But here are a couple other tiny details that are bound to become apparent after a number of viewings: when the shark eats Quint, you can see for a brief second the teeth bent over instead of embedded in Quint’s flesh, because the teeth were made of foam, and there are multiple moments where the water is choppy in one shot and calm the next. Does it change the fact that Jaws is one of the best movies ever made? Hell no.

1. Jurassic Park: where is the T-Rex standing? Bonuses: Dilophosaurus’ frill has strings attached, live video has progress bar, hand holding Raptor up  

It should be no mystery that Jurassic Park is probably my favourite movie of these ten movies (though Jaws, Back to the Future, T2, and Predator are up there, as well) and is the movie that I have seen more than any other movie—seriously, we’re talking 50 plus times, from beginning to end. So it’s no surprise that I’ve picked up on many errors and bloopers, but actually, there aren’t as many as you might think. There isn’t even a particular one that stands out to me, and none of them ruin my enjoyment of the movie, but here are the big ones that I will never forget about. Perhaps the biggest is the realization that, when the T-rex steps out of its enclosure for the first time, after you’re done being blown away by how huge and scary and realistic it looks, you realize it was just standing in mid-air. As a kid who had no awareness of setting, I thought the T-rex pushed the car off the edge on the other side of the road, but no, when you see the car go over the edge after the T-rex breaks out, that’s the same edge the T-rex just came from, so he was standing in a tree? Or floating? It’s a total break in logic, but it doesn’t even matter, because it’s still one of the best scenes in cinematic history.

And then there are a bunch of little things, like the strings that pull open the Dilophosaurus’ frill being visible, or the “live” video Nedry’s watching of the docks having a progress bar, or a hand reaching out to steady the Velociraptor before it enters the kitchen, but if there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s this: no movie is without some kind of error, because that’s the nature of filmmaking. It’s fun to notice some of these anomalies in our favourite movies, but they shouldn’t detract from the overall enjoyment. If they do, the movie probably isn’t that great to begin with, anyway.

Top Twenty Directors Part 2: C.C.C. Issue #50

Top 20 Film Directors (Part 2)

With 20 to 11 covered, it’s time to look at my top ten favourite film directors of all-time, and just like that, I’ve reached fifty C.C.C lists!

Honourable mention: Robert Rodriguez

I know I had an honourable mention on the last list, so how does Rodriguez fit into all this? Favourite director 10.5? I just wanted to give him a shout-out for directing the first Sin City, plus one of my favourite horror movies ever, Planet Terror (the first half of Grindhouse, his collaboration with Quentin Tarantino) and even the movie that was spawned by the fake trailer that played right before it, Machete.  He’s not quite a cut above these other ten/twenty for me, but he’s still made a lot of awesome stuff.

10. Ridley Scott

Much like that box of chocolates Forrest Gump refers to, you never really know what you’re going to get from a Ridley Scott movie. Sure, he’s had his fair share of misses over his long and varied career, but he hit prominence with the original Alien in 1979, which practically turned sci-fi-horror into its own subgenre, made Sigourney Weaver a huge star, and started a long-running series that Scott eventually returned to in 2012 with the semi-prequel Prometheus (which I liked, though it divided fans, but it’s definitely not on par with Alien, which is one of my favourite movies of all-time). Prometheus marked his first return to sci-fi since Bladerunner (one of his best films) in 1982. And that’s something to note about Scott: he’s tackled many genres, such as the swords-and-sandals epics with Gladiator, one of his most popular films, war films, like Black Hawk Down, and even road films, like Thelma and Louise. Though he hasn’t found success in every genre, and he had a long dry spell from Gladiator onwards it seemed, his movies always impress in terms of stunning visuals, and he made a huge comeback with last year’s The Martian, which saw him once again return to the genre of sci-fi. I’m eagerly awaiting Alien: Covenant, his follow-up to Prometheus, and anything else he directs after that.

9. Christopher Nolan

For some reason, it seems like fans of Christopher Nolan are targeted in the movie-going community and labelled as such: “Oh, you’re just a Chris Nolan fan boy”, like it’s a bad thing. I don’t see what’s bad about enjoying his films, because he hasn’t made a truly bad movie yet, and I haven’t disliked anything I’ve seen from him. This is the guy who re-imagined Batman after the franchise-destroying stink bomb Batman and Robin, and not only did he bring the caped crusader back in a dark, gritty, realistic reboot, he made two more successful sequels that rounded out his Dark Knight trilogy. Sure, there are some of his movies that I found a little underwhelming, like Interstellar or The Dark Knight Rises, but his two arguably biggest hits, Inception and The Dark Knight, are not only two of my favourite films, but two of the best films from the 21^st century. The “Inception” concept has been referenced endlessly in the past six years, so you know it’s left an impact. His early films are also very well crafted, and I’ll see anything he’s directing (okay, it’s almost a given that I’ll watch every other director’s work on this list, so I’ll quit saying it).  

8. Peter Jackson

Peter Jackson started his career by making odd, gory horror-comedies (similar to the start Sam Raimi had) in his native New Zealand, and his most famous film from early in his career, Braindead (known as Dead Alive in America), is one of the goriest and most-fun horror comedies I’ve ever seen, but of course Jackson will go down in history as the man who helped bring Lord of the Rings to the big screen. I was just a kid when it came out, and I wasn’t at all into fantasy, but these were the movies that eventually brought me around to appreciating and even enjoying fantasy movies, with its compelling characters, epic special effects scenes, and thrilling sense of adventure. But it was actually thanks to his follow-up to Lord of the Rings that I went back to watch them in the first place, and that was his King Kong remake, which I don’t think is better than the original, but is still one of the best remakes ever made, and is something I’ll never forget seeing in theaters back in 2005. Of course he directed The Hobbit trilogy most recently, to much less fanfare than his other Tolkein adaptations, but regardless of how those movies turned out, Peter Jackson is still an incredibly talented director, and I hope he either continues with big blockbusters or returns to his lower budget horror-comedy roots as soon as possible.

7. Robert Zemeckis

The answer to which movie Robert Zemeckis will be most remembered for is obvious, so before I get into that one, let me recap some of his other huge accomplishments. This is the guy who directed Tom Hanks in Castaway, one of the greatest survival movies ever, and often seen as a testament to Hanks’ acting ability, as he holds the screen for its entire runtime, but let’s not forget Zemeckis helped get that performance out of him. Zemeckis was also a pioneer of cgi playing a huge part in filmmaking, with films like The Polar Express and Beowulf among the first to be fully rendered in computer animation, and his earlier work on Who Framed Roger Rabbit proved live-action human actors could be blended flawlessly with animated cartoon characters, and to this day, no other movie has done so as successfully as that one. But of course, Zemeckis directed what is for a huge number of people (including me), one of the greatest movies ever made, and that is Back to the Future (plus both sequels, which he shot back to back). I don’t even need to say anything more, the movie speaks for itself, as does Zemeckis’ entire body of work.

6. Quentin Tarantino

Perhaps the best compliment I can give to Quentin Tarantino is that he has one of the most consistent and entertaining filmographies of any filmmaker. This guy has been making great movies for almost 30 years, and in all that time, he’s only made 8 movies, but each one is significant, and there’s something to love from all of them. I would have to say his least good (not worst, note the distinction made) film would be the weaker half of Grindhouse, Death Proof, but even that movie has a car chase so incredible, it’s worth seeing the whole movie just to see that. His movies are always memorable, always original, and definitely unique, even though he pulls inspiration from all across classic cinema. His movies aren’t for everyone (especially if ultraviolence and swearing are a turn off for you) but if you’re a true fan of cinema, I would find it hard to believe you wouldn’t enjoy his instant classics. There’s Reservoir Dogs, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, and last year’s The Hateful Eight. Oh, and of course what is perhaps his greatest work of all, the much revered Pulp Fiction.

5. Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock is fondly remembered for many incredible movies, but a phrase that’s remained attached to his legacy even to this day, is “Master of Suspense”, and for good reason; there have been very few directors to rival Hitchcock’s uncanny ability to do this. It’s part of the reason so many of his movies are considered classics and continue to be relevant (The Birds, Rope, North by Northwest, to name a few), but there are a few of his movies in particular that make him one of my all-time favourites. For starters, two of the most suspenseful films I’ve ever seen are Vertigo, widely considered one of the best movies ever made, and Rear Window, which I might actually like even more than Vertigo, if just for its simplicity and equal effectiveness in ratcheting up tension. But the movie I almost always think of when I hear the name Alfred Hitchcock is one he made in the early 60’s that no one believed in and thought would surely end up being a pile of crap, but instead became what is often cited as one of the greatest and first-ever slasher movies: of course I’m talking about Psycho. It’s not only a great example of the suspense Hitchcock was so well known for, but also an example of how he was constantly pushing boundaries (fun fact: this was the first-ever movie to feature a flushing toilet on-screen).

4. J.J. Abrams

Before I get into the film-directing part of Mr. Abrams’ career, I want to touch on his work in the world of TV, because he co-created LOST, which started out great, and regardless of what you thought of later seasons (after Abrams was less involved), it’s one of the most successful TV series ever, and he co-created Fringe, one of my all-time favourite shows. But back to films, Abrams got his big directing break with 2006’s Mission: Impossible 3, which was a huge improvement over the second installment, and proved he could handle an action-packed film, so he was pegged to direct the Star Trek movie reboot. I was never a Star Trek fan, and consciously avoided the 2009 movie, despite all the praise it got, but eventually I relented. Abrams not only made me love Star Trek once, but twice, with the not-quite-as-good-but-still-entertaining Star Trek Into Darkness, and then, in a completely unexpected twist that seemed to break the laws of nerdom, Abrams was hired to direct Star Wars Episode VII, and of course we now all know how that went (extremely well and Star Wars is fully revived, huge thanks to him for that!) I also loved Super 8, even though many people thought it tried too hard to be sentimental and Spielberg-ee, but I hope Abrams does more original projects in the near future, because as great of a franchise-reviver as he is, he did freakin’ Star Wars. You can’t really go up from there.

3. Stanley Kubrick

Where do I even start with this legend? If you don’t know who Stanley Kubrick is, here’s what you’re missing: a director whose career spanned fifty years and saw no boundaries, someone who worked tirelessly to achieve an uncompromised vision for his films, the director of films that were almost always ground-breaking, ahead of their time, and destined to be classics. Comedy? Dr. Strangelove. Science fiction? 2001: A Space Odyssey. Horror? The Shining. Period piece? Barry Lyndon. War? Full Metal Jacket. Sword and Sandals? Spartacus. One of the most controversial movies ever is A Clockwork Orange, yet it is still considered a classic. When a Stanley Kubrick film came out, it was an event, a mark left on the history of cinema. Every one of his movies is a unique experience, and that’s the key here, his movies aren’t simply pieces of entertainment, they are experiences, and true art. His movies were personal, often difficult to interpret, and dealt with heavy concepts and themes, and that is ultimately the reason he doesn’t rank as my first or second favourite director; his movies are too incredible not to appreciate and be fascinated by, but they sometimes lack the emotion I need, personally, for a movie to really resonate with me. Regardless, Stanley Kubrick is someone who will forever be remembered as one of the best directors of all-time.

2. James Cameron

Coming in at a pretty close second is someone who has directed some of the coolest movies ever, and that is the Canadian-born truck driver who was so blown away by the special effects in 1977’s Star Wars that he went on work in special effects and eventually direct his own projects, and that is James Cameron. I’ll put it simply: The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and Avatar are some of my favourite movies, for various reasons, but they have many elements in common. They are all exciting, The Terminator and Aliens are scary, plus have great action, Terminator 2 is one of the greatest action movies ever made, plus it pushed the boundaries of computer effects with the liquid metal T-1000. Oh but wait, the movie he made before that, The Abyss, did the same thing—in fact, it had the first 3D cgi character ever to appear in a movie. And then he pushed vfx even further with Titanic by recreating the sinking of the ship, and then again by bringing to life the alien world of Pandora in Avatar. Sure, you could argue that at this point in his career James Cameron is more concerned with technology than storytelling, as evidenced by Avatar, but the fact that he plans on making endless sequels to Avatar must mean he has some good stories in there somewhere, and with the technology in place after the first one, things seem poised for Avatar 2 and 3 and 4 and etc. to be better than the original. Oh yeah, did I mention Cameron has only made two sequels? T2 is a bit better, I think, than Terminator, and Aliens is also a bit better than Alien, and he didn’t even make the first Alien! So yeah, needless to say, I’m a huge James Cameron fan. Except for Piranha II. 

1. Steven Spielberg

Ultimately, this list of great directors is all about a balance between two factors: amount of quality work, and the actual quality of the work. Steven Spielberg might not be a unique choice for favourite director, but what it comes down to is, he has directed the greatest number of my favourite films of all-time, and they rank higher among my favourite films than any others. Jurassic Park, Jaws, E.T., and three out of the four Indiana Jones movies are incredible, plus he’s made lots of other fun movies like Catch Me If You Can and Minority Report, and more serious dramas like Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List. Another one of my faves is Duel, a made-for-TV movie (maybe the best made-for-TV movie ever) about a guy chasing another guy in a semi-truck; a simple premise with perfect execution. Just like so many of the other directors on this list, he’s worked in just about every genre, and found success in more than a few of them. His ability to capture what I can only describe as “magic” on film is unparalleled to this day. I could go on and on about Spielberg, but instead, I leave you with the recommendation that you check out his filmography and watch as many of his movies as you can. If you’ve seen some of his classics like Jaws or Jurassic Park before, consider re-watching them, they hold up extremely well.