This is a weird post that makes the geeky list thing even geekier, and it might be one to get through as movie mistakes can be dull and picky. But I’ve been on sets, I’ve seen how it all works and the very fact that these mistakes happen make me wonder… with all the money they’re spending, why does no one notice the little things?

Sometimes they do and hope you won’t, sometimes re-shoots aren’t worth the money, and sometimes… just sometimes, hours in the editing suite makes you blind to a few things.

I’ve heard a director (a bloody good one at that) say “Ack, we’ll just magic it out.” as an excuse to ignore what was right in front of us all. Something that bugged me, but what bugs me more… is seeing things like these fall into the big budget and iconic movies.

Seven.
Starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, Seven is the tale of a young naive detective new to the big city and his new found partner who’s grown tired and damaged from the mindless crime. They find themselves chasing a serial killer with a purpose, to show the world their sin. The film takes you through a intriguing journey and is one of my favourite films.

It’s also one of the inspirations for the Sinner’s, Conscience’s faction in SWA for the fan types following. Anyway, one major flaw in the film always sticks out to me. There are a few of them, one scene in particular was moved from the beginning of the film to somewhere in the middle so the costuming is a bit off, but it’s right at the end we see something that just bugs the crap out of me.

We have a fantastic ending to this film. Two sins left to reveal and they’re in the wilderness with the killer waiting for his plan to come to an end. Filmed in Mexico, we have ground shots with freshly cut surroundings. The overhead shots from the helicopter however were filmed later. Much later. And as a result we have about a foot of grass.

It’s an unfortunate, and unchangeable mistake. But for such a good film, it’s too obvious to ignore.

Independence Day.
Another of my favourite films. This film is one of the best American cheesefests that also falls into the sci fi category. It’s about an alien invasion wiping out civilisation with some tremendous casting with Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum taking the lead roles and the supporting cast are just as good. It’s also a lot of fun.

There’s a lot of mistakes in this film, the most notable being the film crew standing around or trying to hide out of shot. There are also some factual errors such as buildings being made out of the wrong material and Smith’s plane using equipment it shouldn’t have.

But the big one for me is when we see Smith’s wife in the movie. There’s a scene where she’s stuck in a traffic jam in a tunnel. As the invasion occurs, the world is blown to pieces with flame and debris shooting through the tunnel. She breaks through a door and jumps into safety out the way.

Decent enough for the dramatics. Sure. But surely she’d be fried in the heatwave. From there, she’d never find the first lady, Smith wouldn’t find her, we’d lose those happy endings and half the plot.

American Pie.
This is a small, minor detail but I’m adding it as this film has been an iconic one for people of my age range. It’s the simple story of three guys trying to get laid and in their immature quest, they grow up a little and one of them has sexy time with another ones mother. It also introduced the world to the word MILF. Oddly enough, the MILF guy is now cast as Sulu in the latest era of the Trek franchise.

Anyway… very early on in the film we have the tainted cup scene. One guy ejaculatd into a cup of beer, Stiffler tried to get a girl drunk t sex her up and drinks the beer himself.

All very LOLsome for the audience. So LOLsome that a lot of people missed what I saw. The cup changes from blue to transparent.

It’s something that happens in a lot of movies. It happens in X Men 2 at the end. The Presidents folder starts and ends as a blue folder thats closed and turns into a white open folder during Xavier’s speech.

Spider Man.
Everyone knows who Spider Man is. My three year old daughter even knows who Spider Man is. Yesterday in Forbidden Planet she pointed every piece of Spider Man merchandise to me she could find. This film was the start of a series of movies about Peter Parker and his Spidey senses and like many other superhero movies, it is filled with mistakes.

The most irritating being when he saves Mary Jane during a mugging by throwing two guys through windows. He then beats up their mates, then suddenly we see Mary Jane again and the windows have magically glued themselves back together.

Thats just sloppy.

It also happened in the Iconic Terminator 2: Judgment Day. During the big scene at Cyberdyne the T-100 takes posession of a helicopter by smashing the window and taking the controls. Incredibly, the window fixes itself a moment later.

Apocolypse Now.
This movie is so iconic that it tops the list. It also tops the list for having almost 400 mistakes. The Vietnam war epic focuses on two officers, one of whom is sent to kill the other and antic ensue.

This wins out for having more mistakes than I can mention in one blog. It’s all the little things like the big helicopter scene with Ride of the Valkyries is playing. It’s just a shame you can see that really, it’s not. There’s also Miss May’s moment on the stage of being surrounded, and not quite surrounded which seemed to be ignored in editing.

There’s Willard dissapearing, re-appearing beard, the old classic cigarette mistakes, objects moving around with no explanation, musicians stopping with their music still playing… this film is a continuity teams nightmare.

Though despite this film having the most mistakes of any I’ve seen, it also gets let off the hook a bit. The movie suffered a lot of problems such as extreme weather conditions destroying the sets and Martin Sheen’s heart attack. Coppolla delayed the release trying to figure out how to patch it all together which no doubt added to the mistakes and inability to reshoot anything that pissed him off about it.

But still… it’s an iconic film, a brilliant film and one that will be remembered for a long time to come.

I’d make a man very upset if I didn’t give a mention to the Storm Trooper who didn’t mind his head, and for those of you that I bored with this particular geeky list thing… I’ll leave you with a recent find from Back to the Future 3.

Now, Doc Brown is a few gunmen short of a posse on his best day. But his youngest son… well… he’s going to the future to stock up on rohypnol.

Got more to add? That’s what the comments are for!

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Tags: fives, geek, movies, sci fi