Goofs for
The Core (2003) More at IMDbPro »

• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Since almost all of the "science" in the movie is entirely erroneous, we are prepared to accept that the movie's universe *must* have entirely different rules - it's the only possible explanation. It's just for fun.
  
  
• Continuity: We see a man quickly pull his hand into his car after it gets burnt. In the meantime, shots of other things getting fried are visible, followed shortly by the man looking terrified in the car, while outside, someone walks calmly past.
  
  
• Errors in geography: When the crew approaches the launch site where they will descend to the Earth's core, a caption reads, "Marianas Trench - South Pacific". The Marianas Trench is in the North Pacific, east of the Philippines.
  
  

• Errors in geography: At the end, computer graphics display a map of the world and show a document being sent to eight news organizations and the United Nations. As the locations are listed, the city, country, latitude and longitude are included. The first three (CNN, ABC, and CBS) display the correct cities (Atlanta and New York) but use the same latitude/longitude of 38 N / 97 W which is near Wichita, Kansas. All nine of the organizations listed show significantly inaccurate lat/long values except for the United Nations (which, for some reason, is in Belize City, Belize). In addition to this one of the news organizations he contacts is "Der Spiegel" from Germany. On screen it says "Der Spiegel - Berlin,Germany". Both the publisher and the editorial staff are located in Hamburg, Germany.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Rat offers to help Josh stop Project Destiny, he tells Josh "here is the information you're primed for". Josh understands the code and enters "prime numbers" into his computer: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, etc. But 1 is not a prime number. (Note: 1 used to be considered prime number, but modern number theory doesn't think so - Josh ought to be up to date with these things.)
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When the Golden Gate Bridge is melting away, one of the main support wires whips back and slams into the car of the guy whose arm was burnt. The audio has him screaming, but if you look in the rear-view mirror, you can see that his mouth is only partially open in the same expression of confusion he had seconds before.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Near the end of the movie where Rat's computer sends the "secret" information to the Internet, the message on the screen is "On It's Way".
  
  
• Factual errors: There is no direct power link from the lower 48 to Alaska. The Continental electrical grid extends up to northern British Columbia, then stops. The Yukon (which actually is between BC and Alaska) is not "tied in to the grid", so therefore it would be impossible for them to "draw power from the rest of the US", which is silly anyway, because all the power they were drawing would actually have to go through Canadian power lines.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): A display inside the ship misspells "integrity" as "intregrity".
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: Shortly before the two remaining survivors get rescued, the sonar on the carrier is switched to speakers and we hear the sound of humpback whales. But the whales actually circling the remains of "Virgil" are killer whales (orcas).
  
  
• Factual errors: When Rat is trying to "hack" his way into the DoE's "Intranet Database", on his first try to access a file he gets an error "404 - Access Denied". Actually, web server error message 404 corresponds to "File Not Found", while 403 is "Forbidden / Access Denied". Since Rat is working from a seemingly secured computer - he seems to have no trouble at all accessing the DoE's "Intranet" as clearly stated on the screen - probably the correct error message should have been "401 - Unauthorized".
  
  
• Factual errors: When the space shuttle has to make the emergency landing at the beginning of the film, it retracts its landing gear to fit under a bridge. However, in order to save on weight, the space shuttle landing gear does not have the necessary machinery to retract its landing gear; the gear must be manually returned to its stowed position.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Some of the lines holding the USS Abraham Lincoln to the dock are visible on the side as the camera sweeps around the ship, disappearing as they pass in front of the water. Also, the aircraft are arranged for display as if the ship is in port, completely blocking the catapults and landing traps.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Dr. Zimsky states that he chose the Marianas Trench as the launch location because the crust is thinner there. The Marianas Trench is a subduction zone, where the Pacific plate is being pushed under the Philippine plate. Large amounts of sediments are built up at subduction zones as one plate scrapes the top off the other plate, so the oceanic crust is actually a good bit thicker at the trench. A better location would have been in the middle of a plate, such as near Hawaii.
  
  
• Errors in geography: When the ship comes out from under the Earth near Hawaii, it is incorrect because Hawaii is in the middle of the Pacific tectonic plate. There is no way they could have come up by Hawaii because there is no crack in the oceanic crust. It would have been more accurate if command had said that the ship found a 'hot spot' in the crust.
  
  
• Factual errors: After Virgil is launched it is accompanied for a short time by humpback whales that sing to it. Humpback whales do not swim at 800ft beneath the surface.
  
  
• Continuity: While on the ship at sea looking for Josh and Beck, Rat's hair seems to grow shorter. When Rat is talking with the general inside, his hair is normal length, but when he runs to alert the general about the ultrasonics, his hair is at least an inch shorter.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Virgil first enters free-fall after drilling into the empty space, the characters are all thrust forward in the direction of the fall. This is opposite of what should actually have occurred due to Virgil's sudden rapid acceleration. In actuality, rapid acceleration would cause them to be thrust backward.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Josh takes the reactor core to make the last bomb "larger" he (and Beck) would have been exposed to an immense amount of radiation which realistically killed both of them very quickly. Not only that but the Pu used in reactors is not weapons grade so wouldn't have worked
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: At about 9 minutes into the film, when the pigeons are all dying, the people run from Trafalgar Square into a building with large windows at the front. Moments later, we see several birds striking and breaking the windows. If you watch carefully, you will see that at least two of the birds that hit the window are, in fact, fish. This was deliberately put in by filmmakers as an inside joke.
  
  
• Errors in geography: They fly in over Dodger stadium, heading south. Endeavor ends up with sun shining on its port side, indicating it's nose is pointed north. The 6th street Bridge (with double steel arch) behind it could not be behind the aircraft because they showed multiple shots of gliding over it as they headed south.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Virgil's locomotive section is coming back up from the core a technician says that they found a space between two tectonic plates "somewhere near Hawaii." Hawaii is a hot spot in the middle of the Pacific oceanic plate and near no plate boundaries.
  
  
• Continuity: When the space shuttle crash lands in the river way, the last bridge it hits as two support pillars and it goes in between them; however after the shuttle stops a reverse angle is shown and the closet bridge has only one pillar.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Virgil is falling through the water it is clearly traveling at high speed, yet the digital depth gauge is counting feet at about 1 per second (922, 923 etc) which is less than 1 mph!
  
  
• Continuity: During the space shuttle crash, when Rebecca is trying to find an alternate landing site, the writing on the maps disappears in the next shot.
  
  
• Factual errors: At the end, there are orca's circling the ship of the survivors. Orcas are not whales, but actually dolphins, and their natural territory is not near Hawaii. They are also not known for their songs. A better choice would of been humpback whales who naturally inhabit the waters off of Hawaii and are also famous for their songs.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After the shuttle Endeavour hits the river, Beck deploys the speed brake, but in the shot with the police cars approaching, the speed brake is retracted.
  
  
• Plot holes: Why would the crew have protective suits in the ship? They only occupy space, and there is no way they have expected that they will have to go outside the ship. The suits can't stand the heat of the reactor, so they wouldn't have these suits for repairing reasons either.
  
  
• Continuity: When Zimsky is explaining what destiny is all about, he spells out the project name as an acronym of 'DESTINI', but just two minutes later, and a number of times after, the text that comes up on screen, over a shot of the fictitious location, clearly spells it out as 'DESTINY'.
  
  
• Factual errors: Shortly before the two remaining survivors get rescued, the sonar on the carrier is switched to speakers and we hear the sound of humpback whales. But the whales actually circling the remains of 'Virgil' are killer whales which sound differently.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): While Rat is looking up Project DESTINI (Deep Earth Seismic Trigger INItiative), he types Project Destiny instead of using the proper acronym.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the scene where Rat is being recruited, he uses a whistle to hack Josh's cell phone, telling him he now has "free long distance for life." However, by the time the movie takes place, not only were all land-line telephone trunk exchanges digital (meaning that temporary free long distance could not accomplished using a 2600 Hertz tone), but any cell phone exchange would be exclusively digital and therefore would not utilize tones as signals to (mechanical) trunk lines. Also, the whistle Rat uses is far lower in pitch than the necessary 2600 Hz.
  
  
• Errors in geography: When Rat sends information to news networks, when he reaches Al-Jazeera, the message says "Al-Jazeera, Ryadh, Saudi Arabia", but Al-Jazeera broadcasts in Doha, Qatar.
  
  
• Continuity: During the "pigeon stampede" the taxi windshield is cracked when a pigeon hits it. This causes the driver to swerve onto the sidewalk. Then cut to another angle and as it drives up on the sidewalk, the windshield is no longer cracked.
  
  
• Factual errors: When the shuttle's landing gear is deployed during its emergency landing, two buttons are pressed; the first one is labeled "ARM". There is nothing to arm with respect to the orbiter's undercarriage. The deploy mechanism simply opens the doors and allows the undercarriage to swing down by gravity.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After the shuttle comes to a halt on its emergency landing, it is possible to hear the sound of a jet engine shutting down. The shuttle doesn't have any jet engines, and when it lands it does so as a glider.
  
  

• Miscellaneous: SPOILER: Braz makes a point that when he built the ship, he couldn't think of a reason someone would willingly disconnect a section, so he didn't put an option in to do this. Later, he sacrifices himself in order to release the sections by disconnecting the couplings. Yet, when the final section is to be released, there is a large button marked "Emergency section release", used to jettison it.
  
  
• Continuity: SPOILER: In Josh's narrative, he says that the ship is divided into 6 sections. In the diagram on the screen, there are a total of seven sections. The last one ejected, which was not mentioned in the list, is the nuclear reactor compartment.
  
  

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