The Phantom of the Opera (2004)

◄ The Phantom of the Opera (2004)

Anachronisms

In a 1919 scene, a shop shows the Swarovski swan logo. At the time, Swarovski's logo was an edelweiss flower. The swan logo was adopted in 1988.
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The Phantom writes a song about the "Point of No Return." This phrase originated in the 20th century to describe the logistics of air travel.
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The story purports to takes place in 1870, when the Garnier Opera house was not yet complete due to the Franco-Prussian War.
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Audio/visual unsynchronised

During the beginning of the "Masquerade" scene the singers lips are not matched to the music.
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At the end of "Music of the Night" as the Phantom is laying Christine into her bed, his mouth and the audio are unsynchronized.
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During "Prima Donna" Carlotta's lips do not match the words being sung.
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In the semi-beginning of 'Music of the Night' the Phantom's mouth comes in too late for the words when he saying "Live as you've never lived before."
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When the phantom takes Christine down to his lair and places the veil on her head, saying "an eternity of this before your eyes" his mouth does not match the words.
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When Raoul runs to Christine and says "Are you alright", we hear her say "Raoul we're not safe here" but her mouth does not move.
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During the singing of "Don Juan", La Carlotta is heard singing an ending note but you see her smiling and pointing and shoving, not singing at all.
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During "Notes", Firmin and Andre both spend a lot of time not matching their audio.
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Throughout many songs in the movie, the actors' mouths are not matched up with the music.
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Character error

During "Music of the Night", when the Phantom is carrying the fainted Christine towards the bed, Christine's head accidentally hits the large tassel on a nearby curtain.
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Continuity

When Christine faints there is a candle behind her that is not lit, but before she fainted it was lit.
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Christine takes off the wedding veil that the Phantom gave her and drops it. When the Phantom is leaving, the veil is back on the mannequin, and then is gone when Meg walks past.
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When Meg steps out of the underground river and into the Phantom's lair, her brown pants are clearly soaked with water; a few moments later, when she finds the Phantom's mask in the bedchamber, her pants are perfectly dry.
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Christine's hair is wild while running up the staris in "Why have you brought me here..." and then on the roof her hair is pulled back.
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When Christine lights a candle for her father in the chapel after "Think of Me", she lights her match from another candle. However, when the shot switches to over her shoulder, the candle she lit is the only one burning.
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At the beginning practice, when the phantom drops the background on Carlotta, he drops a letter down. When it falls down, it is a pure white envelope with the red emblem. When Madam Giry picks it up, the lines on the envelope are outlined in black with the red emblem.
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When Christine is in the boat and being shown around the Phantom's lair for the first time, the lock of hair over her left shoulder changes from being very curly to wavy in between shots.
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During the "Point of No Return" reprise, the Phantom places the veil on Christine's head. When the camera pans from her face to his, we can clearly see the back of her head, and there is no veil, but when the camera pans back to her it is there again.
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During the Masquerade scene, when the phantom comes downstairs, he has not got the bag with the Don Juan Notes in his hand, but when he arrives at the bottom of the stairs, he throws the bag with the notes on the floor.
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When the Phantom is on the rooftop after Christine and Raoul leave, you can see the Phantom's footsteps in the snow, but not Christine's and Raoul's.
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During the Point of No Return scene, when the Phantom grasps Christine's wrists, the gold bracelet become unclasped. Yet when the camera view switches, the bracelet is secured and in place.
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In the "Masquerade", Christine and Raoul are dancing and they have their masks in their hands. However, when the camera changes its angle, the masks disappear, and then again reappear.
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When Christine and Raoul kiss on the rooftop, he picks her up and spins around. During this, her hand is on the back of his head, but when the camera goes in for a closer shot, her hand is around his neck.
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When Meg goes to look for Christine after she sings 'Think of Me', she walks backstage and passes Monsieur Firmin and Monsieur Andre and stops at the hallway. Then when the camera switches over to the new managers, Meg walks past them again, even though she just went down a hallway.
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During the "Point of No Return" scene, the Phantom is clean-shaven. In the following scene in the Phantom's lair, he clearly has a five o'clock shadow, even though the progression of the story is merely minutes.
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While Meg is congratulating Christine after her "Think of Me" performance, she puts her hand on Christine's shoulder and then takes if off. When the camera cuts to face Meg, she is taking her hand off Christine's shoulder again.
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When Raoul is falling through the stairs to save Christine, the gate is under the water, but when he comes up to the surface, the gate is lowering from above.
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Before Meg leads the crowd to the lair, her hair is curled at the bottom. When she gets there it is completely straight.
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At the end of "Prima Donna", right before the opera starts, on La Carlotta's left shoulder there are 4 random shapes, but after the Phantom makes his dramatic entrance only 3 shapes are shown - and they are larger than the original 4.
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After Christine faints and is placed in the bed, the Phantom strokes her chin and begins to take his hand away. In the next shot, he strokes her chin again.
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After "All I Ask of You", the Phantom picks up the rose that Christine dropped and slowly tears the petals off in his hand. We see the petals falling as they are torn, but it is easy to see that after the stem of the rose falls, there are less then half of the petals that are on a rose on the ground around the stem.
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In the "Point of no Return" scene, when Christine sings "...No dreams within her heart but dreams of love." She has one hand on the basket of flowers. When the camera goes for a wide shot, both hands are holding on to the basket.
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In "Point of No Return", the Phantom takes off his cape when first on the bridge. When the camera zooms out, he is clearly wearing his cape.
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When Christine is about to leave the Theatre she is in a White Dress and grabs a Black coat. When she arrives at the Cemetery she is in a Black dress.
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When Phantom kills Joseph Buquet Meg jumps between the wings and the stage between shots.
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Crew or equipment visible

At some point during the "Music of the Night" scene, the shadow of a giant camera can be seen on the wall.
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During the "Music of the Night" scene, right as the Phantom says, "Open up your mind, let your fantasies unwind," the shadow of a camera/camera rig can bee seen on Christine's face.
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Incorrectly regarded as goofs

When the Phantom takes Christine down to the catacombs for the first time, her hair and makeup slowly change from being simple and understated, to more sophisticated and womanly. The director has stated that this was deliberate and that the change in Christine's appearance during this scene was intended as a metaphor to representing her sexual awakening.
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When The Phantom brings Christine to the lair, she is wearing stockings. However once she faints and the scene shifts to the Joseph Buquet scene and then back to the lair, they are mysteriously missing. One explanation for this, however, is that the phantom simply took the liberty of removing Christine's stockings while she was unconscious.
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In the beginning, where Raoul is riding his carriage to the Opera House, it looks as if there is a bag of bright blue Ruffles chips in the seat. However, if you look closely it is his family's coat of arms.
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Plot holes

When Raoul is on his way down the stairs to the Phantom's lair, he falls through a hole, down into a pit of water. Iron bars then lower from above, but since Raoul fell straight down into the water, it would be impossible for the bars to be there.
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Revealing mistakes

When Christine is visiting the cemetery, we see her pass the same set of tombstones (most notably a small stone with an iron fence and a much larger one shaped vaguely like a bed) from three or four different directions before she finally reaches her father's tomb.
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After Raoul swims up to take his breath while trapped under the grate, the iron grid is show dropping into the water. However, the bubbles travel downwards, showing that the shot was reversed.
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The rope that the Phantom cuts and causes the chandelier to crash is hanging limp when it is tied to the rail on the stage, which means that when it was cut it would only probably hang there. If it really was the rope keeping the chandelier suspended then it would be taut because of the weight.
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During the chandelier scene, the crowd is running and you can see the knee pads on the women when their dresses come up.
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When the Phantom is on the rooftop after Christine and Raoul leave, You see the Phantom's cape blowing in the wind. If you look closely, you can actually see that there are two capes blowing in the wind, one under the other. This is due to the fact that the film editors added a digitally created cape to blow in the background, but for whatever reason, did not match its movements with the real cape the Phantom was wearing.
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When Christine is walking through the cemetery, you can't see her breath even though it is cold enough to be snowing.
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During Christine's first performance, once the audience appears, if you slow the video down, you can clearly see that the actors in the very back left of the theater are legless mannequins with cloth thrown over the tops.
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In the scene of "Don Juan" it shows a birds eye pan over of the audience in the ground level (orchestra seating). The people in the back few rows are not people but figurines of head and torso, they do not have legs.
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In the graveyard scene, as Christine is singing "Dreaming of you won't help me to do..." a snowflake falls on her lips and stays there for some time without melting.
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The last letter that is read in the "Letters" scene does not match the letter that the Phantom is seen to be putting in the envelope. In addition, the text on the letter is obviously too short to match the words that are read by Firmin and spoken by the Phantom.
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Spoilers

The goofs below may give away important plot points.

Continuity

In the final scenes when Christine sings "This haunted face holds no horror for me now..." she uncovers only one of the two mirrors standing next to each other, but by the time that the Phantom is smashing them, a second is uncovered for his smashing pleasure.
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Continuity

When Meg comes out of the underground tunnel into the Phantom's cave, she has a cross hanging loosely around her neck. But when she finds the Phantom's mask in his bedroom, the necklace is higher on her neck, almost like a choker.
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Crew or equipment visible

At the end of the movie, when the Phantom smashes the second mirror you can see the cable that is holding it to the wall.
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Factual errors

In the first scene of the film at the auction, Old Raoul is referred to as the "Vicomte de Chagny", implying that he has not yet inherited the title of "Comte" from his father (or his older brother as in the book), which would be extremely unlikely given his advanced age. However, even if Raoul was still the Vicomte, Christine would have died as the Vicomtess de Chagny, but her gravestone describes her as the Countess. Either Raoul is the Comte and Christine was the Comtesse (Countess) or Raoul is the Vicomte and Christine was the Vicomtess - you cannot mix and match the titles.
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Revealing mistakes

The Phantom's mask covers the upper right side of his face from his cheek to his hairline. While performing in the opera, he wears a black mask covering his face from above his eyebrows to his cheek. With these masks, there is no part of his deformity that is visible. When the Phantom's face is revealed, his deformities extend from above the hairline to his jawline and he is missing a significant amount of hair on the right side of his face. Neither mask would be able to sufficiently cover his deformities.
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