Imagine you’re a plumber. You spend your days fixing leaky toilets, connecting up new sanitaryware, and unblocking pipes. You come home after a hard day’s graft, collapse onto your sofa, lift up the remote and switch on the TV. You decide to watch a movie, and the 1986 comedy The Money Pit catches your eye. After all, it stars Tom Hanks and Shelley Long, it’s bound to be a good film.
Except, you reach the scene where the two protagonists decide to take a relaxing bath, only for it to fall through the floor. You chuckle. But very quickly, this laughter turns into confusion…why wasn’t the bath connected to any pipes? Where did the water go? Surely, if a bath was to fall through the floor, it would be because of leaking water, but you can’t see any.
Your extensive knowledge of plumbing has ruined the scene for you as you’re left perplexed at the long line of inaccuracies.
Except, this problem isn’t confined to the world of plumbing. Screenwriters, directors, and producers make these kinds of errors all the time, some more frequently than others. Here are some of the most frequent ones.
Mistakes in Poker Games
Poker was once a game reserved for the back rooms of Las Vegas casinos but, thanks to the internet, it is a sport that is enjoyed by people from every walk of life. It has become infinitely more accessible, not only because the World Wide Web has allowed millions to play Texas hold ‘em and Razz without having to travel to a casino, but also because free online poker games are available to millions of players. This means it’s possible to enjoy the game without spending a penny.
With more people than ever playing Omaha hi-lo and five-card draw, there have never been so many opportunities for viewers to pick holes in the poker played on screen and reveal the inconsistencies online.
Sometimes, they’re small, like when in Rounders the dealer made the big blind in the final showdown game. In a heads-up game like the one depicted here, the dealer would make the small bind. Other times they’re bigger, like in Molly’s Game when a $300,000 bet gets “raised” by $200,000 when even the most elementary of poker players will know that it must be at least double the original raisers bet.
Mistakes in Explosions
Just about every action movie contains at least one (and often several) big explosions. This is usually accompanied by the character responsible for this spontaneous eruption confidently walking away as though it was an everyday occurrence for them.
According to Hollywood, explosions usually involve lots of flames and smoke, though this often isn’t the case. Of course, they do go hand-in-hand, but explosions themselves are actually caused by the rapid expansion of air. In real life, this causes a near-invisible blast wave that does the majority of the explosion’s damage.
But for filmmakers, invisible shockwaves don’t work very well on camera, so lots of flames are added in to enhance the effects.
Mistakes Involving Computers
Watch any detective show long enough and you’ll almost certainly come upon a scene where several people are watching CCTV footage that contains a blurry face. One will say to the other “enhance…enhance…enhance…” and magically, all of the detail needed to identify the figure is revealed.
This is just one of a myriad of mistakes made in movies when it comes to computers. The tired cliche of computer hackers sitting in a dark room wearing sunglasses has thankfully fallen out of favor among most directors, but scenes, where supposed computer whizzes work miracles with just a few key presses, are still prominent.
Take the long-running TV series Bones for example. In it, Angela Montenegro, an artist-cum-computer hacker regularly spouted meaningless sentences like “don’t worry honey, I’ve tripled my firewalls”.
The Netflix series Designated Survivor (which feels a lot like 24) also provides examples of science fiction. In one early episode, a former government employee gives a coin to the President. He tells him that it contains a computer hard drive. Except, computer hard drives are always at least 2.5 inches in width, much larger than even the biggest US coins.
These types of mistakes are common, which can leave those who have expertise and knowledge in that particular field amused or frustrated. However, sometimes it is difficult for directors to include all of the intricacies of real-life while still telling a compelling story. So perhaps it’s best we forgive them for the occasional inaccuracy, provided they don’t push the boundaries too far.
