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Anachronisms (1) |
Audio/visual unsynchronised (9) |
Character error (7) |
Continuity (33) |
Crew or equipment visible (5) |
Errors in geography (12) |
Factual errors (22) |
Incorrectly regarded as goofs (6) |
Plot holes (1) |
Revealing mistakes (14) |
Spoilers (11)
Anachronisms
Bond orders a bottle of Bollinger from '61 in the hotel in Hong Kong, but the bottle in his room is actually a forgery. It is simply a standard "Bollinger Special Cuvée" from around the film's release with the year "1961" added to the top corners of the label. Vintage Bollinger bottles from 1961 had a totally different label, quite unlike the modern one seen in the film.
Audio/visual unsynchronised
At the end of the movie, when Bond and Jinx are in the helicopter he tries to start it, you hear a piston engine trying to start. That helicopter is a NOTAR, equipped with a Rolls-Royce turbine engine.
When Bond first appears on the platform of the abandoned underground station, the door of the stairwell leading down can be heard to slam shut behind him. Wider shots of the platform show that there was, in fact, no door, and that Bond simply appeared on the platform without entering via any door whatsoever.
While inspecting a borrowed Smith & Wesson revolver in Cuba, Bond opens the cylinder and spins it, resulting in a "ZZZZZZ" of rapid clicks. S&W revolvers make no noise when the cylinder is open and spun in this manner.
At the very end, the night shot of Vauxhall Bridge and MI6 Headquarters has a 2002 built Wright Gemini double deck bus passing in the foreground, the dubbed bus sound however is clearly that of a early 1960s-built Routemaster bus.
When Bond is talking to M in the subway there is a shot over Bond's shoulder that shows his mouth moving when he is not speaking.
When Bond is caught by a German guard outside Graves' quarters at the Icelandic compound after the Icarus presentation, the guard asks him what he'd be doing there and tells him to put his hands up and turn around. The guard's mouth isn't moving for most of his speech.
When Jinx shoots the doctor in the clinic in Cuba, she fires two shots. She fires one shot, and then she stands up and fires a second shot. For the second shot, it plays the sound effect of a bullet being shot through a silencer, but if you look closely, not only does nothing come out of the gun, but it also appears that she doesn't even pull the trigger.
Bond puts his car into invisible mode, and goes reverse up the wall in order to avoid Zao's car, and fastens the car in a vertical position using the car's spikes. However, we never hear Bond rev his engine up to go in reverse so quickly.
During the ice lake car chase scene, when Bond's Aston Martin is sliding on it's roof, Zao launches a rocket at Bond. When we hear the rocket launch and fly past the Aston Martin, the sound is that of a race car, possibly a Formula 1 engine.
Character error
When Bond returns to the Ice Palace (after stealing the land speed vehicle) he gets back into to his car. When he approaches the car, just before entering, he hides behind it. However, this would be pointless, as the cameras on his side of the car would project the image of him onto the opposite side, as the car is in 'stealth mode'. Which means any guards who looked would clearly see 007 squatting in the snow.
When Bond is using the sniper rifle, Jinx utters some nonsense about "Windage 1 and 1/2." This information is useless to Bond, without some type of direction or denomination. Equally we are told that Bond is only shooting from 300 metres making such information unnecessary.
Zao is not a Korean name, it is Chinese. Although many Koreans do have Chinese names, including Zao, they have no "z" sound in their own language and pronounce the name as "Jo" or "Cho".
The pronunciation of Zao is Chinese, but the well known Chinese last name is actually pronounced Zhao, which both spells and pronounces differently from Zao. Of course nothing prevents someone from choosing any of the Chinese characters that are pronounced Zao as their last name, but it'd be a very uncommon one.
The pronunciation of Zao is Chinese, but the well known Chinese last name is actually pronounced Zhao, which both spells and pronounces differently from Zao. Of course nothing prevents someone from choosing any of the Chinese characters that are pronounced Zao as their last name, but it'd be a very uncommon one.
After the fencing dual with Graves, Bond gets a package. The hotel employee calls him Commander Bond instead of Mr. Bond indicating that the employee is either in the British Secret Service as well or knows that Bond is an agent.
007 is not wearing the correct fencing uniform during his match. He is right-handed, and therefore the zipper should be on his left side. Also, the jacket he is wearing stops at the waist. These jackets are meant for Sabre fencing only, not Epee.
The American official states that if the beam "crosses the 38th Parallel, we'll hit them with everything we got!" The 38th Parallel has not been the dividing line between the two Koreas since 1950. The DMZ splits the two countries and most of the 38th Parallel lies south of the DMZ.
(Around 0:26:15) When Bond goes into asystole (flatline on ECG), the nurse and the technicians rush to defibrillate (electric shock) him and administer atropine. According to the resuscitation protocol, both of the measures are not used for asystole. Instead, adrenaline is used.
Continuity
When Bond arrives at the ice palace the valet gets into his car, but never takes it away, and is not in the car in the next shot of the car.
When Gustav lands in the parachute, a man is seen helping him take the harness off. When the camera angle changes, the man disappears, and he seems to be taking it off himself.
When Bond orders the Mojito in Cuba, they make it with golden rum, but when the drink is handed to him, it has been (correctly) made with white rum.
Bond's glass shattering ring changes hands and sometimes is non-existent throughout the film.
(at around 34 mins) Bond is in a Cuban bar about to look through a pair of binoculars. There are striking diagonal shadows on him from the roof of the bar. When the cut goes to him holding up the binoculars, all these shadows are not there - the shot is clean.
When Bond and his buddies surf out of the sea onto land and pushes the head covering back, you notice his hair is soaking wet, which would be correct if he's wearing a wet suit, a few seconds later when they go to "meet" the landing helicopter and unzip their suits, they're fully dressed and dry underneath- this would be correct if they were wearing dry suits, but his hair wouldn't be wet if he was wearing this kind of suit.
When Bond is flirting with Jinx after her Ursula Andress-style entrance, his cigar moves in and out of his mouth depending on the angle of the shot.
When Jinx comes out of the water, she is wet (obviously). However, when we see her again just a couple of seconds later, she is dry.
After the Icarus demonstration, a blond henchman walks up to the laptop to close it with a black haired henchman to his left. After the close up of Bond, we see that the two henchmen have switched places.
When Bond leaps through the window at the clinic he takes a grape from the fruit bowl. When he goes through the door of the room he can be seen chewing and then putting another grape in his mouth and eating that one. However he only picked up one grape and therefore can't have been eating anything originally, despite his mouth moving.
When James Bond inserts the remote detonation device into the C4, whilst in the helicopter at the beginning of the film, the first shot shows that it's not fully inserted, the close up reveals that it is.
When Bond tries to start the falling helicopter the indicators are going off in sequence 3 times instead of one.
When the Aston Martin is flipped, its wing mirror housing is smashed off (and a piece of it flicks away), but the car has intact wing mirrors in all the subsequent shots inside the Ice Palace.
Following the Icarus demonstration, there is a woman wearing a fur coat standing behind Bond who is not wearing sunglasses. In a subsequent wide shot, she removes her glasses along with other members of the audience.
The large plane that Graves uses to escape is an Antonov 124, this plane has a solid nose that lifts up to allow loading front and back, when they go inside to the front of the plane it has changed into a IL-76.
When Jinx is in the cockpit of the plane, the cockpit is actually that of the An-225 Myria, not the An-124 fuselage/Il-76 nose plane used in the film. This is evident because of the six power levers. The plane in the movie only has four engines.
After being recovered from the Koreans in a prisoner exchange, and while talking to "M" in the hospital, there is a deep wound on Bond's left shoulder that comes and goes or changes location.
When Bond is flirting with Jinx after her Andress-style entrance, his cigar moves in and out of his mouth depending on the angle of the shot.
Open scene, surfers are riding on narrow boards, just a tad larger than the length of their foot, which can be seen tucked under a foot grip. However, once on land, suddenly their boards are transformed into regular surfboards, much wider than just previously ridden.
When M offers Bond a glass of bourbon on ice in her office, you can hear ice swirling around, but there is never any ice to be seen in the glass.
A metal strut in the broken aircraft window repeatedly disappears and reappears between shots.
Bond inspects his sword twice in rapid succession (unnaturally so) before the fencing match.
The zip on Jinx's catsuit moves up and down between shots during the laser sequence.
The level of the drink Bond and Jinx share.
The check that Jinx gives to Dr. Alvarez is different to the one seen a few shots later. The handwriting is different and the surname has changed from Johnson to Jordan.
When Bond lands after surfing the huge pressure wave, the clouds behind him multiply between shots from a few to a sky-full.
Jinx starts to cut into a whole green fig in bed. In the next shot she is slicing a half of a guava in two once more (creating two quarters of the original whole).
Bond's shadow as he rides the ice wave jumps about inconsistently on the water's surface.
During the ice car chase, the rear bumper of Bond's Vanquish is plain silver but, entering the Ice Palace two black strips appear on the bumper and stay for the whole Ice Palace section.
When Bond is flirting with Jinx after she emerges from the sea, his cigar is in/out of his mouth between shots.
When Colonel Moon is shooting the helicopter a soldier next to him is holding his weapon up, but in one shot it is down and he raises it.
When bond is "surfing" using the parachute and trunk covering (from the jet powered car), as he reaches the big ice berg which he airs off, he pulls the parachute towards him and his hands are below his waist. In the next shot his hands are above his head
When Bond is running done the dome, the rope changes between the shots. (From a steel wire to climbing rope and back, best seen at the knot)
Crew or equipment visible
A boat is visible in the lower right corner of the screen filming the three surfers in the opening sequence.
Reflected in Miranda's sunglasses during the initial demonstration of the Icarus satellite.
The camera is reflected in the back of the Aston Martin in two different shots when Bond carries Jinx out of the car after saving her.
Crew members, almost lined up, are reflected in Bond's binoculars at the beach bar as he looks out to sea. (These are not extras at the beach bar, as subsequent shots reveal only a couple of sparsely populated tables within the vicinity.)
Lighting equipment is reflected in the land-speed-record car before Bond pitches it over the ice cliff. Suspended vertically on the ice cliff, the camera and the back soundstage wall are visible, likewise reflected in its screen.
Errors in geography
Korea, whether North or South, does not have surfable beaches.
A water-buffalo witnesses the cars crashing into the rice paddy, supposedly in Korea, where no water-buffaloes live (water-buffaloes are creatures of the tropics; Korea has roughly the latitude and climate of New England.)
Bond and Zao are swapped in the middle of a thick evergreen forest. Panmunjom, the only point along the DMZ where one can walk between North and South Korea, is grassy fields and hills.
There are absolutely no gymnosperm forests in Iceland at all. So a wildfire caused by a laser weapon can't take place.
The ice-fields and glaciers of Iceland are mostly in the center of the country, not near the coast, where it is barren and rocky. An exception to this is the lake of Jökulsárlón, which is famous even though much smaller than the lake shown.
After escaping from the Royal Navy cruiser and swimming to the shores of Hong Kong, Bond arrives on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong (the background shows Hong Kong Island). However, there is no Yacht Club on Kowloon, only on Hong Kong Island.
The license plates in the Cuba scenes are wrong. This is especially notable with the car that Bond gets from Raoul, which has black plates with yellow-ish lettering, a combination that did not exist in the time period the movie is set in. Black plates designated foreign diplomats and had white lettering. The car should have had a yellow plate with black letters, designating a privately owned vehicle.
There is a scene that states "U.S. Command Bunker De-Militarized Zone." There are no high-level command posts in the DMZ-it is too close to the fighting. The closest high-level command post is in Seoul and the others are further south. Additionally, the scene shows clips from an Army helicopter hanger-that is not where the U.S. military puts high-level command posts. They are usually below ground.
Bond and Zao are exchanged at the Bridge of No Return in the Korean DMZ. This is depicted as a heavily fortified border crossing with armed troops facing each other. In fact, the bridge has no fortifications except for small guardhouses and hasn't been used for prisoner exchanges since the 1970s.
The camouflage uniforms of North Korean Soldiers are actually the uniform from the division of Republic of Korea Reserve Forces from Changcheon-dong, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul.
The Icelandic car number plates shown in the film do not have the correct typeface (they used the same typeface as on British number plates).
The Bridge of No Return is 2 kilometers inside the DMZ straddling the Military Demarcation Line. The fence line in that area is more than 2 kilometers away. There are no "Do Not Enter DMZ" signs in that area as civilians would be prevented from going there by the civilian control line.
Factual errors
In the scene where med-techs run in to resuscitate Bond, he touches one defibrillator paddle to each of the two male technicians and shocks them. In reality this would not work, as the current flows from one paddle to the other through the human body, and the paddles require 25 lbs of force at minimum to establish a good circuit. As the technicians are not touching, there is no completed circuit from paddle A to paddle B and thus, no current would flow.
As one's DNA is found in every cell, live or dead, in one's body, destroying bone marrow would not change it. To change DNA, it would require replacement of every cell, including, in effect, total brain death.
When ice is heated by light from above, it begins melting at the top and progresses downward. But the ice hotel melts at all levels simultaneously, and for no apparent reason, all the melt-water flows up and into Jinx's room. The only ice that doesn't seem to melt is her ceiling, and water doesn't collect anywhere else.
The amount of C-4 Bond places in the case at the beginning of the movie would be enough to flatten a huge land area, equivalent to the size of a large building. In the film, however, the explosion is incredibly small, and bystanders next to the detonation are shown to have only minor injuries.
When Bond fights Zao in the Cuban clinic, he disarms Zao by switching on an MRI, which makes the gun fly out of his hand, then switching it off to grab the gun. MRI magnets take hours both to charge up and to power down. In addition, everything else in the room - the bed Zao was on, the IV stand, a steel tray that gets knocked over during the fight - all would have gone flying into the MRI along with the gun. In fact, it is impossible to have any equipment in an MRI room other than the actual MRI - a patient's bed would certainly not be situated right next to one.
While it has a small chance of passing over one, a hovercraft can set off any type of land mine, either from the skirt contacting the trigger, or by the steel in the chassis triggering the magnets. If it passes over several, at least one would destroy it.
As Bond and Jinx are running to get aboard the Antonov, you hear the engines powering up for takeoff. However as the front of one of the engines comes into shot, it shows that the turbine blades are moving very slowly, as if the engine isn't even running. (Note also that a typical human cannot run faster than 15-20 mph which is well slower than the speed of a plane taking off. If the engines of the Antonov were powered up, Bond and Jinx would have no hope of catching up and boarding.)
Near the end, cars are ejected out of the airplane and land in rice fields vertically and they stay intact. Any vehicle that falls from a height of even 10" vertically will not stay intact, but the doors and trunk door will bust out and the frame will bend under the weight of the engine being in the rear. The cars seem to have fallen a altitude of 1000+ feet.
During the hovercraft scene in North Korea, Bond shoots the land-mines and they eject into the air before exploding. Though this is correct, the mines were shown exploding close to head height whereas in reality the mines would explode a waist level or lower so as to cause the most crippling injuries to soldiers.
The cruising speed of the Antonov 124 is approximately 500mph, which equates to nearly 1 mile every 6 seconds. It is very unlikely that cars dumped several seconds apart would land within a couple of hundred yards of each other.
At one point in the film an onscreen graphic incorrectly spells Pyongyang as Pyongang.
All soldiers in the North Korean People's Army must wear a Kim Il-Sung badge over the left breast pocket but the more junior soldiers are missing these badges throughout the movie. A real NK soldier would be severely punished for not having this badge on.
Gustav Graves' parachute jump over Buckingham Palace could never happen in real life. Any plane that flies within a kilometer of the palace will put Britain's anti-terrorist units and the Civil Aviation Authority on full alert. Location manager Simon Marsden had to negotiate long and hard with the appropriate authorities to secure permission to film in this most sensitive of locations. His negotiations were further complicated by the death of the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.
The NOTAR helicopter has a rotor diameter of 27ft and would not fit in the Antonov An-124 which has a width of 24ft.
Some of the vehicles inside Colonel Moon's base are American Humvees, and the weapon picked up by Bond is a MAC-10. North Korean forces would never use American technology in real life.
The North Korean helicopter has Russian descriptions in the cockpit, the GPS system is in English, and the German registration D-HOXQ can be seen in the cockpit, as the helicopter was most probably rented from a Berlin-based company for filming.
South Korean troops, which are smashed by Ikarus appear to use Soviet-made Ural trucks, along with Land Rovers. Both are not used by South Korean troops.
The National Security Agency/Central Security Services, better known as the NSA is another DoD agency that deals with foreign intelligence gathering. The NSA has two primary functions: converting cryptic foreign intelligence communication into comprehensive text (codebreaking) and protecting U.S. government information systems by using cryptography (codemaking). The NSA does not have field agents who do in-person intelligence gathering who travel the globe... like Jinx here.
Source: h-t-t-p-s://angelialevy.com/2011/05/11/an-overview-of-the-major-u-s-intelligence-agencies-what-is-the-difference-between-the-dia-nsa-cia-and-fbi/
Source: h-t-t-p-s://angelialevy.com/2011/05/11/an-overview-of-the-major-u-s-intelligence-agencies-what-is-the-difference-between-the-dia-nsa-cia-and-fbi/
When Bond and Jinx meet at Iceland, Jinx asks from Bond if he is looking for penguins (due the covert story Bond told Jinx in Cuba). There are no penguins in the Northern Hemisphere excluding the Galapagos Islands.
One of the North Korean soldiers in the hovercraft that crashes into a tree uses a South Korean Daewoo machine gun.
When Gustav Graves says that he is to be knighted at Buckingham Palace, a previous shot shows that the Queen's personal standard is not flying. If Queen Elizabeth II were present in the Palace, her standard would definitely be flying.
In the command post scene at the end, there is a two-star general with a 2nd Infantry Division patch wearing a dress uniform. The 2nd Infantry Division Commander (the 2-star) would not be in this command post which belongs to the 4-star United Nations Command/Combined Forces Command Commander. He would be in his command post somewhere else. Also, everyone in the command post would be wearing the camouflage "Battle Dress Uniform" (BDU), not dress uniforms as most of the actors have on. Also, there would also be senior Korean officers in the command post as well as Americans since it is a combined command post.
Incorrectly regarded as goofs
Upon leaving the clinic, Bond has four diamonds. He then gives five to M. This is because he wagered one of his four with Graves and received an additional diamond when Bond won.
Bond places the ticket for the Alvarez Clinic in his inner right pocket, only to remove it later from his inner left pocket. This is a deliberate reference to a similar error in a previous Bond film, Licence to Kill.
Bond enters Vauxhaull Cross Station and says that he has never been there before, but then we see that his old friends from Q Branch have their laboratory there. Previous films show that they relocate constantly.
The knives Jinx uses for throwing, while not purpose-designed for throwing, are well suited to the task. Any hobby knife thrower would be able to throw them effectively. Nor will the holes in the handle cause them to tumble: many purpose-designed throwing knives feature holes in the handle.
In some scenes, Bond's invisible car is completely 100% invisible. In other scenes, the car appears with a blurry outline while in "invisible" mode. Since it's all imaginary technology, it works however the filmmakers want it to.
In the virtual reality headset simulation, the virtual reality action scene should be visible from a first-person perspective. In spite of this, the scene is filmed in third-person perspective, with the user visible. Given that no other James Bond movie has ever had a view from his perspective, and given that we would only be able to see a narrow vision and not what he's sensing around him, it's perfectly explainable that they chose to see what Bond was doing at the time and not just from his point of view.
Plot holes
Colonel Moon disappears the day Bond is captured and is presumed dead. Bond spent fourteen months in captivity and perhaps one month in the medical suite in M's remote headquarter. In that time, Moon has completed the gene therapy to transform into Gustav Graves, establish himself as a billionaire philanthropist, and get honored for his services with a knighthood. Generally civilians are honored with the Order of the British Empire, which has several levels and a knighthood is rarely offered until after decades of service. For example, Roger Moore received a Commander of the British Empire in 1999 after a decade of working prominently with UNICEF; he received the Knighthood four years later.
Revealing mistakes
At 10:10, during the hovercraft gun battle, the unconscious passenger is seen covering his ears due to the noise and particles of the explosive squibs 'ricocheting' around his head. When they stop, he lowers his hands back to act unconscious.
Colonel Moon is beating up the punching bag. Afterwards, it is unzipped and a man falls out. However, when he was beating up the punching bag, it was shaped like a regular punching bag, not like it had a man inside. If it had a man inside, there would have been a lot more air in the bag.
During the fencing match between Bond and Gustav Graves, one of the paintings hanging on the club's wall is slashed, however it is clearly made of paper and not canvas.
Wheel tracks from earlier takes visible early in the ice-lake car chase.
When Bond escapes and jumps from the boat, his hands are clearly visible at the bottom of the screen after he rebounds from the trampoline.
Some of the supposedly native North Koreans speak Korean with either South Korean accents/vocabulary or terrible Korean-American accents. North Koreans have different accents and use some different words than South Korean.
When Bond escapes from Graves' lair by running down the outside of the dome, the stuntman is shown using a rope tied to his harness, but Bond clips a metal cable to his.
When Bond gets away across the lake in the jet-powered ice racer, the cable pulling it along is clearly visible in the overhead shot.
When Jinx is pressing buttons in the airplane cockpit, the lights next to the buttons are going out before she presses them.
When M visits Bond after he has been traded for Zao, she unlocks the door to enter his sealed room, then leaves 'locking' the door behind her. However, the light on the door locks remain green (unlocked) after she re-locks them, despite them originally being red when locked, then becoming green upon unlocking.
After showing the mechanical "second sun", the men take the control unit out of the auditorium and walk it to another area where there is a door operated by a "card-key'. But the door starts to open moments before the card-key is inserted into the slot.
(at around 1h 27 mins) The skids of the rocket sled leave marks on the ice that are ahead of the sled, not just behind it.
When Bond escapes from Graves' lair by running down the outside of the dome, the stuntman appears to be wearing sunglasses, while Pierce Brosnan, in the shots immediately before and after the stunt, is not.
Bond spent over a year in captivity in North Korea, but when he is shown without his shirt on in the hospital bay, he still has a deep dark tan.
Spoilers
Character error
When Jinx and Bond leave the airplane on a helicopter at the end of the movie Bond struggles against time to try to restart the helicopter engine. In reality this would be unnecessary because Bond could safely bring the helicopter down by just auto-rotating the rotors to slow the helicopter's decent.
Continuity
Jinx is cut on her torso during the sword fight on the plane. Later that day, when she is with Bond in the Korean hut fiddling with diamonds in her belly, the cut is gone and she is scar-less.
When Bond arrives to the cockpit where Graves is and accidentally breaks one of the windows, there is a shot which depicts the cockpit as being behind the reactors of the plane, but when Bond pushes Graves out of the plane through the same window, the reactors are behind the cockpit.
When Bond and Jinx get on the Antonov 124 Jinx's gun is a polished chromed Beretta 92. When Miranda disarms Jinx in the cockpit, the gun has become a matte black Beretta 92.
Errors in geography
When Jinx is trying to regain control of the airplane, the automated voice announcements are speaking English. Despite English being the most commonly used language in aviation and international air traffic control, the voice prompts on a North Korean military plane would definitely not be in anything but Korean.
Factual errors
Standard Hollywood make-believe. After the hole is shot in the window of the airplane, several people get sucked out and the plane goes into an uncontrollable dive for several minutes. In reality, although noisy, pressure equalization between the atmosphere and the interior of the aircraft only lasts a very few seconds regardless of altitude, nobody can get sucked out through a bullet hole, and the only reason that a dive would occur would be if the pilot needed to rapidly get below 10,000 feet for passenger welfare.
When Graves shoots General Moon, the bullet doesn't exit his body through his back. Shooting someone at that distance would result in the bullet penetrating the body and the hull of the plane.
Incorrectly regarded as goofs
In the bedroom scene at the ice hotel, Miranda gives Bond his P99 pistol. It is often assumed that she empties the pistol and given that the difference in weight between a loaded and empty pistol is quite substantial, it would then be highly unlikely that a well trained and experienced secret agent would not notice. However, she has only removed the firing pin, so the weight difference would be next to nothing.
Plot holes
When Bond and Jinx take over the plane in the 3rd act, Jinx enters the cockpit after one of the two pilots goes to the bathroom. She takes out the second pilot and controls the plane until Miranda enters and starts a fight with Jinx. However, the first pilot stays in the bathroom for the rest of the flight, even when the plane is shook up by Icarus' laser beam.
Revealing mistakes
When Graves holds Bond captive, and reveals that Bond has again been betrayed, a henchman can be seen behind Graves holding a G36 assault rifle. There is no magazine loaded into the weapon.
The chandelier misses Zao, landing in the water well in front of him.
