Goofs
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Audio/visual unsynchronised (1) |
Character error (1) |
Continuity (27) |
Crew or equipment visible (2) |
Errors in geography (6) |
Factual errors (12) |
Incorrectly regarded as goofs (1) |
Plot holes (2) |
Revealing mistakes (7) |
Spoilers (5)
Audio/visual unsynchronised
When they strike oil on the oil rig, Harry scolds AJ and we hear, "Number 2 relief valve is wide open," but Harry finishes speaking before the end of the sentence.
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Character error
Harry sarcastically asks Colonel Sharp if he has any more bullets left in the gun so he can shoot Rock Hound. But the gun was never fired.
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Continuity
Shots in the shuttle launch sequence alternate between close-ups of the X-71 (metallic, with boosters over the wings) and panoramic shots of a regular shuttle (white, with no boosters over the wings).
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When preparing for launch, the two shuttle crews board from the same gantry tower, but later shots it is obvious that there are two separate gantries.
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The Russian space station simulates gravity when it is rotated. The direction that this force applies to people and objects within the station and the two attached shuttles is inconsistent with the geometry of the station. in reality, when the station is spinning in that manner, gravity can be simulated however the two shuttles would experience the gravity a different way, one crew would be able to walk on the floors of the station, where the other shuttle (being on the opposite side) the other folks would end up walking on the celing, appearing upside down to their friends from the first shuttle.
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Falling objects near the surface of the asteroid fall as if affected by gravity as strong as the Earth's.
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The asteroid is supposedly rotating in all three dimensions, yet the view of the Earth from the asteroid remains the same.
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Two shuttles are launched separately, some minutes apart. But they are shown flying very close when they are leaving Earth atmosphere.
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Early in the movie, Harry and crew "accidentally" strike oil. Immediately following, when the feds arrive, we see a distinct spot of oil on Harry's nose. In the next few shots it disappears and reappears.
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Harry knocks on A.J.'s wall with a golf club, knocking everything off the shelf except a few playing cards. Once he's inside the room, some cans and other things fall off the shelf a second time.
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A dog is seen chewing on a miniature Godzilla toy. In the next shot, he is chewing on a much bigger, balloon type Godzilla. But throughout, a guy has been trying to remove the toy from the dog's mouth.
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AJ's hat disappears when he is in the fuel pod, then reappears when he is climbing the ladder.
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When Oscar is riding his horse in the beginning he is riding with a sunset as the backdrop. In a close-up of his face, the background is a bright blue sky.
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A.J. goes down the hole to cut a piece of pipe away. We cut to Harry and the Col. William Sharp yelling at him to come out. Meanwhile, A.J. is just starting to cut the same pipe again.
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During the Armadillo jump a yellow ear plug appears and disappears in A.J.'s right ear between shots.
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When the countdown timer is at "5 Hours", there is a sequence of communication between Harry and Dan Truman. Between scenes, the timer goes from "5 Hours" to "6 Hours" and then back down to "5 Hours".
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When A.J is singing "Leaving on a Jet Plane", Grace hugs him. She switches sides between shots.
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The movie starts on a Friday and they say that the asteroid will hit in 18 days, which would bring us to a Tuesday. The shuttle is launched on a Tuesday evening at 6:30pm. It takes about an hour (67min) to get to MIR, 60 hours to get to the moon, 12 min slingshot, 8 hours on the asteroid and about 4 hours (3:57) to earth after zero barrier. This timeline projects the asteroid hitting earth Friday evening around 8pm. No where near Tuesday evening.
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When the two ships are docking, the radar shows that both are docking at the same time, but the shot from space shows one docking after another.
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When the crew has landed on the asteroid, Harry says something to the effect of, "Come down here to the flat area, and take readings," twice.
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When Harry shoots at A.J, the wound appears on one leg. However, in the next shot, when A.J is hopping, it is clear that the wound has changed legs
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When Harry is threatening AJ in AJ's room, he holds the golf club to AJ's neck facing the right. In the next shot it is facing to the left.
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Chick Capple's ex-wife is holding the telephone receiver in her right hand, but when she drops the receiver, it falls from her left hand.
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When the space station is on fire, the first shuttle to close up and go (Sharp's, and Harry's) is about to close the door. The fuel hoses are still clearly visible running through the top of the hatch. A second later, the hatch closes and locks - presumably airtight, because it never reopens.
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During the lunar orbit sequence the shuttles are rotating, however the horizontal indicator shown on the dash is stable - showing the shuttle in level flight.
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While the NASA team is attempting to override the bomb timer, there is a quick cut to Grace, standing in the observation room looking through the window. We can see the crew down below (through the reflection in the glass). The same exact scene is used after the bomb is detonated. The crew can be seen giving high fives and hugging one another, while they are trying to 'kill the up link'.
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In the opening sequence when mission control is talking to the shuttle, the camera swaps between the two whilst Dan Truman talks continuously. On each shot of mission control showing a digital clock in the background, the clock jumps forward 2 seconds the first time and then 6 seconds the second above normal time progression.
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During the entire mission, Truman and Grace are at the Johnson Space Center in Houston TX. When the shuttle returns, Sharp says "Kennedy we see you and you never looked so good", meaning the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. When the crew exit the shuttle, Truman and Grace are there to meet them.
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When the asteroid passes the Moon, the scientists discuss the new problem of it rotating in all three axes. The plan was built around the idea of splitting the meteor at 800 feet along a line roughly parallel with the course of the asteroid, so that the two pieces would miss the Earth. The zero barrier was made meaningless because the real possibility existed that the explosion would hurl at least one half of the asteroid directly at the Earth, instead of both pieces away.
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Crew or equipment visible
On asteroid, a puff of smoke reveals/reflects shadow of a camera on crane.
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In the scene of the helicopters chasing Oscar on his horse, a Wescam camera pod can be seen on the lead chopper (only visible in widescreen versions of the movie).
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Errors in geography
Johnson Space Center in Houston is labeled as the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
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The two crews are shown splitting up to walk to and board their respective shuttles. Launch pads 39A and 39B are three miles apart.
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People in numerous locations all over the globe are shown reacting to various events simultaneously - all in daylight.
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Grass is clearly visible at the edge of the cliff when the Armadillo comes to a rest after jumping the canyon.
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During the New York asteroid shower, you see an aerial view of Manhattan with the Chrysler Building. An asteroid shoots from left to right toward the Chrysler Building, but in the shot where the asteroid blasts through the Chrysler Building and the other skyscraper and hits Grand Central Station, the asteroid comes from the right.
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It is not Turkish dialect but Azerbaijani Turkish dialect that is heard in all scenes which are from Istanbul, Turkey. Azerbaijani dialect is dominant in Azerbaijan, not Turkey. Azerbaijani dialect is not used in Turkish broadcasts.
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Factual errors
There are numerous errors in Shuttle procedure and in the depiction of space flight. See trivia.
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There are numerous errors in the depiction of the physics of space and microgravity and of asteroids (their characteristics, their behavior and their effects). See trivia.
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The Russian space station is an absurdity in itself: initiating a rotation to accommodate artificial gravity would in reality threaten the structural integrity of such a pronged modular craft, and spinning the station before docking would be unpractical, as it renders a normally tricky docking to be nearly impossible since the docking ports are on the external rotating pods. Furthermore, a rotating station would need its docking area along the axis of rotation, plus the docking vessel would have to match that rotation, and match its center of gravity along the docking point approaching along the station's axis of rotation.
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Fire cannot exist in the vacuum of space. Once the oxygen is either burned up or dissipated the fire would die, this would only take a few seconds.
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The Commander, Pacific Air Forces is a 4-star General, not a 2-star.
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In a real space shuttle launch, the Solid Rocket Boosters and External Tank are not released at the same time. The SRBs are released first, followed by the external tank later.
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After the space shuttle Independence crashes onto the asteroid and AJ is looking for survivors, you see fire burning all around the rubble. There is no oxygen in space, therefore fire cannot burn.
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Simulating gravity is possible, but the gravity would be felt only away from the axis of rotation. The way the space station and space shuttles are attached, it would be impossible for gravity to be felt on all normal walking surfaces. And it would not be felt at all at the center. It would be greatest at the walls of the space shuttles farthest from the axis of rotation. NASA has modeled this using 10-30 meter diameter cylinders (like 2001: A Space Odyssey), and with large systems of a capsule, a 2km tether, and a counter weight. But the smaller the system, the more chances you'd get dizzy if you bent over because the gravity at your feet and head would differ.
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Drillers would never use steel cutters on pipe in a hole with known gas pocket/gas residue. Instead, in a situation with known gas pocket/gas residue, brass cutters are used because they don't spark and therefore wouldn't run the risk of igniting the residual gas from gas pocket.
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Due to the space observation technology that the Americans have. The "Meteor Shower" that peppered the Earth would be noticed long before they even reach 1,000 miles of Earth.
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The two shuttles separate their solid rocket boosters and external fuel tanks very close to each other, one just behind and to the side of the other. This would be recklessly dangerous as they could easily impact the other shuttle destroying it.
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At the end the movie Cosmonaut Andropov is shown walking fine after exiting the shuttle. It was stated earlier in the movie, he had been in the Space Station for over a year. If this was true; he would not be able to walk due, to he would have been suffering from Space adaptation syndrome. In which his body would have been used to being weightless and due to such a long period of time without gravity, his body becomes accustom to no gravity and once his body is introduced to gravity once again, he wouldn't be able to walk, let alone stand.
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Incorrectly regarded as goofs
As Eddie Griffin was riding into New York, he passes by a few people who are reading the newspaper that is titled "Shuttle Explodes". Sudden headline news that happened after the latest edition of the newspaper is published would be in the next day's newspaper, not the same day. However the newscaster states that the shuttle exploded at approximately 3:34 a.m. EST; as it is clearly midday there is plenty of time to print a newspaper with the info about the explosion on that same day.
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Plot holes
If the X-71 is supposed to have a Titanium Impenetrable skin to help it fly through asteroids, how is that A.J. after crash landing on the asteroid is able to use the machine gun on the armadillo and penetrate and crash through the Impenetrable skin?
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It is presumable that the munitions specialists to supervise the nuclear ordnance would know the full workings of the weapons to include the timers and how to stop the timer through wire cutting. Yet, the Freedom weapons specialist asks Col. Sharp, a pilot, which wire to cut seconds before the timer runs out.
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Revealing mistakes
As the shuttles pull to a stop to dock with the space station, the engines still appear to be at full throttle.
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In the psychological examination, Rockhound's solved Rubik's Cube at one point shows a green side adjacent to the blue side. In traditional Rubik's Cubes, the blue and green sides are opposite of each other.
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When the up link is disconnected, the computer flashes OVERRRIDE - adding an extra R to the word "Override".
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When deactivating the bomb on the asteroid and the timer reaches 30 seconds. The next shot of the timer has been flipped so that it seems read 45 seconds with a reversed 4 (i.e. it actually said 24 seconds).
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As the two shuttles are approaching the Russian space station, the pilot of one of the shuttles says he is firing the retro-rockets. This would be done so that the shuttles didn't slam into the station. But as the camera cuts to a view of the shuttles nearing the station, both shuttles are still firing their main rear rockets.
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When the shuttles launch and again when the nuclear warhead explodes, the flame of the boosters and the bright flash of the warhead are seen through the front windows on the flight deck, when they would have been behind the shuttle(s).
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After the asteroid fragment hits Paris, we see a long shot showing the crater and totally devastated city. Yet the traffic is still flowing normally along the Arc de Triomphe.
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Spoilers
Continuity
When AJ enters the shuttle after Harry decides to blow the nuke, he is covered in dirt and blood. As he is being strapped in a few seconds later, he is totally clean.Share this
Continuity
When the asteroid has been destroyed, the footage of a relieved crew at Mission Control is used twice, most notably with a soldier with his hands to his face, wiping his brow and adjusting his beret.Share this
Continuity
After the asteroid is destroyed, Bear is looking over his shoulder at the other crew members. He says, "Yo Harry. You the man." and is facing forward without sufficient time to turn.Share this
Plot holes
Killing the uplink to the nuclear weapon would not stop the timer. Once the timer has been started on the nuclear weapon, the timer on it would be independent. It would take an override code via an active uplink, not a killed uplink, to stop it. Thus, Truman's ploy to "buy them maybe two minutes" on the comet would have been useless. What he should have done was use the uplink to stop the timer, not kill the uplink itself.Share this
Revealing mistakes
When AJ's shuttle crashes and he finds Oscar, Oscar's eyes twitch in reaction to the bright sparks and flashes.Share this
