The ten most mistake-filled movies of 2016

Did you spot these errors in year's most gaff-tastic films?

One day Marvel will finally make a film of Pedantico, the superhero with an innate ability to spot tiny continuity errors in films as they happen. Robert Webb for the lead. Until then, fans of major plot spoilers rejoice – here’s our annual run-down of the year’s biggest movie mistakes.

  1. X-Men: Apocalypse

What went wrong: Don’t know about you, but with an ancient Egyptian psychopathic mutant threatening to annihilate mankind, I find it notoriously difficult to remember what colour tie I was wearing ten minutes ago. Clearly an issue for James McAvoy’s Charles in the latest X-Men romp as his neckwear switched from burgundy to black outside Mystique’s class. More neck-based errors cropped up when Michael Fassbender’s beard changed length upon receiving a bunch of new powers too. Oh, and they may be able to shape-shift, read minds and teleport, but director Bryan Singer was arguably the most powerful team member of all, capable of shifting the Earth itself so that it’s daylight in Cairo, Sydney and New York all at the same time.

 

Advertisement

  1. Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice

What went wrong: What went right? Many would argue the movie itself is one enormous mistake, merely compounded by the minor mess-ups. Like Batman running through a dust storm without getting a speck on him, Superman’s hair miraculously grooming itself after a tangle with the Dark Knight, Clark Kent’s obituary having the opening paragraphs repeated further down the article and – gnnnfffgg, this makes us so angry – a pen changing colour.

 

  1. The Divergent Series: Allegiant

What went wrong: Another high-profile victim of magic hair syndrome, Romit from the Bureau Of Genetic Welfare sported a barnet that cut and grew itself in the blink of an eye throughout the movie. Shailene Woodley’s Tris has a less severe form of the condition, with only a single lock of hair leaping on and off her face when she reunites with Four in Erudite, but she has developed more useful powers. In one scene she’s able to instantly fill an empty bowl with food without touching it, she manages to control drones that can only be worked with the left hand with her right, and she can even effortlessly move Four’s hand from her neck to her shoulder when he’s trying to convince her to go to Chicago with him, presumably having taken some kind of Jedi self-defense class.

 

Advertisement

  1. The Conjuring 2

What went wrong: There were clearly poltergeists rampant on the set of this fictional retelling of the Enfield haunting of 1977 – how else can you explain the bowl that moves across a kitchen shelf and loses its pattern, Ed Warren’s vanishing red napkin in his breakfast scene and the ghostly boom operator’s arm that appears in the window while he’s playing an Elvis tune. What’s more, since the house itself had an American cellar and fireplaces, the school sign has a telephone number that could only have been implemented in 1995 and the ‘Janet’ that hangs out of her bedroom window at the climax of the film is very clearly a dummy, perhaps the whole film takes place in an alternate dimension that shall become known as the Anti-Continuity Zone.

 

  1. Jason Bourne

What went wrong: Now how the hell is the leader of a CIA operation to hunt down a crack rogue agent with near-superhuman abilities ever going to succeed if he doesn’t know which way up to hold a mobile phone? All dramatic tension in Jason Bourne is lost the moment Tommy Lee Jones gathers assets by speaking into his camera – or, indeed, when his script for a telephone conversation is visible on the desk in front of him, proving that he’s a puppet of some shadowy higher power. And what chance does he have anyway, when Bourne is hiding in a ‘London’ where you can see the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas out of his van’s windshield and, when he eventually arrives in Vegas, can teleport instantly from Bally’s to the Riviera, casinos situated several miles apart.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-17dJ5c1dHw

  1. Sully

What went wrong: The real miracle on the Hudson is the amount of stuff from 2015 that turns up in a film set in 2009 – magazines, taxis, American and Continental Airlines livery, even the Space Shuttle Pavilion, which was only installed in 2012. They also, in 2009, apparently had airplanes capable of changing their in-flight entertainment systems from touch-screen to push-button during the passenger boarding process.

 

  1. Now You See Me 2

What went wrong: All sense of logic, for a start. Why, at the end of the film, are so many thousands of people still turning up and mindlessly cheering for the Horsemen when they haven’t pulled off a successful illusion in over a year and their comeback act went wrong? And that’s before we even get to Jack’s quick-change trick – instantly swapping from a security uniform to leather jacket during an FBI chase – or how he was supposed to have been hypnotising McKinney’s brother at the same time as performing a card swap trick in London. And how does the clock in Thaddeus’ prison cell leap from 7:52 to 7:55 in one second, Chase’s sunglasses disappear during a bar scene and nighttime fall in Sydney when it’s midnight in London? Magic you cry? I cry bullshit.

 

  1. Captain America: Civil War

What went wrong: To be fair, much of Captain America’s impressive gaff list is down to the perfectionist streak of directors Joe and Anthony Russo – scenes obviously took so long to film that they seem to span entire sun-cycles. But that’s no excuse for Tony Stark’s vanishing wedding ring during the first Avengers briefing, the fake snow failing to melt during the climactic battle scene and Black Panther’s eyebrow wound miraculously healing at the end of the film. Captain Gaffmerica, more like, am I right?

 

  1. Zootopia

What went wrong: When it comes to drawing, I can’t do hands. The makers of Zootopia – Zootropolis in the UK – can’t do remembering where stuff is. So many background props, bits of furniture and items of clothing shift around you’d think this animated favourite was directed by the Enfield poltergeist. Try to keep track of the bag of flower blubs jumping all over the shop during Judy’s chase, for example, or the absolute continuity shitshow going on when Judy and Nick drive off in the truck.

 

  1. Deadpool

What went wrong: Either Deadpool, by some genius in-joke, is the first movie to actively troll us avid hunters of continuity mistakes by putting in as many as possible, or everyone was laughing too much to give a toss about whether the entire crew can be seen in a wing mirror when gunmen are approaching Deadpool on the bridge. I mean, Morena Baccarin’s Vanessa has several tattoos which shift position or disappear during sex and Skee-ball scenes, and the hand that Deadpool cuts off to escape on the bridge is his left, but seconds later his right hand is missing instead. I guess the joke’s on us for taking this stuff too seriously, huh.

 

You May Also Like

Advertisement

TRENDING

Advertisement

More Stories