worst film anachronisms

[sundog]

the placement of an enya song in scorsese's "the age of innocence"

like a stinky turd on an otherwise good film

late 19th century new york does not equal late 20th century new age whatever

plus she's irish... what the hell? daniel day lewis assumed irish citizenship in 1993 so um, maybe...yeah? go on marty

he's walking on a street in friggin new york & enya starts playing?????

grrrrr

the horror, the horror

[CBHagman]

1. This could spark some discussion..

I actually don't have a problem with certain features of movie-making, such as using a 20th/21st century composer's score. After all, J.R.R. Tolkien's hobbits didn't leave sheet music, did they? :-)

I also am quite all right with Kevin Costner's accent (though not his acting!) in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, as British English as we know it today did not exist in the 12th century. No one would have sounded like Alan Rickman; they wouldn't have even understood him.

But I don't care for putting, say, '90s-style slang into the mouths of 1950s characters, or 1960s hairstyles and make-up on 1940s characters. The Dirty Dozen has some of those problems.

[sundog]

4. not saying contemporary music can't be used in period film

but when so much attention is paid to detail in every other minute aspect of a film, it just looks like piss on snow

[MonkeyFunk]

2. So every period piece

needs to use period music? That would be pretty limiting.

[sundog]

6. see above

no not really... scorsese is bordering on obsessive in detail in this film & to hear enya all of a sudden was frightening to me

i wanted to cry

enya for fuck's sake

[MonkeyFunk]

7. sorry, I'm not seeing it....

should the opening scene of "2001: A Space Odyssey" have used monkeys beating on tree stumps?

You just hate Enya - admit it :P

[sundog]

8. yes i hate enya

i was enjoying the movie

it fucked up my whole night

i started a thread about it

now fuck off :D

[SouthoftheBorderPaul]

36. He did the sme thing in Gangs of New York...

Used some type of electronic, booming dirge in the opening fight scene. It sounded like it came off a Nine Inch Nails album. My LEAST favorite part of the movie.

[ThoughtCriminal]

3. The Bell Helicopter in "Where Eagles Dare"

OK - I know the Germans had experimental helicopters even before the war, but they were nothing like that.

[Deep13]

5. Let's see...

There's the Kevin Costner Robin Hood film with the gunpowder and telescope.

Any film set in pre-medieval times with candles or keys.

The cartidge loading revolvers in the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. That film was set in the Civil War. Metallic cartridge pistols were still 10 years in the future.

Any WWI movie with parachutes: still 10 years away.

On the other hand the surgery scene in Glory was gratuitious as chloroform and ether had been around since the end of the 1840s.

An anachronism in Tolkien's original story: "What's taters, Precious?" They are plant indigenious to the new world and not brought to Europe until the 16th century. Same with pipe tobacco, although Tolkien seems to have been mindful of that calling it simply pipe weed.

[ThoughtCriminal]

9. Parachutes in WW-1

Balloon observers used them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parachute

The first military use for the parachute was for use by artillery spotters on tethered observation balloons in World War I. These were tempting targets for enemy fighter aircraft, though difficult to destroy, due to their heavy antiaircraft defenses. Because they were difficult to escape from, and dangerous when on fire due to their hydrogen inflation, observers would abandon them and descend by parachute as soon as enemy aircraft were seen. The ground crew would then attempt to retrieve and deflate the balloon as quickly as possible. Allied aircraft crews, however, were forbidden from carrying their own parachutes. It was believed to encourage a lack of nerve in action. As well, early parachutes were very heavy, and fighters lacked the performance to carry the additional load through most of WWI. Only the German air service, in 1918, became the world's first to introduce a standard parachute.

[Deep13]

12. Also, those 'chutes were not worn folded like a modern unit or...

...even those in WWII. They were carried in tubes under the aircraft making them especially cumbersome.

[Spider Jerusalem]

11. Keyed locks have been around since ancient times.

They weren't uncommon in the Roman Empire. And the tallow candle was a Roman invention, too. So neither of those things in a film set in the pre-mediaeval era is anachronistic.

And the first cartridge-loading revolver was manufactured in the mid-1850's by Smith and Wesson (the Spencer repeating rifle used to some extent in the US Civil War also used cartridge ammunition).

[Deep13]

17. I am guessing that Roman lock keys were huge,...

...not something a person could keep in his pocket. Perhaps candles were in existance, but weren't oil lamps far more common.

The Revolvers in the G, B and U were cap-and-ball models retrofitted with cartridge cylinders. While metallic cartiges existed in the 1860s, they were far from common and the converted models used in the film were '70s vintage. In fact most cartidge loaders were breech-lock carbines that accepted paper or linen cartridges.

[Spider Jerusalem]

19. Actually, the keys for Roman locks weren't large at all.

Some were only a few inches long. Small enough to keep on a leather thong around one's neck, anyway.

And candles were used by the poor, mostly (tallow being cheaper than olive oil of sufficient quality to burn in a lamp).

[Deep13]

34. Didn't know that.

I suppose the tallow had the added benefit of being useable without needing to buy a lamp.

[Pendrench]

10. Sort of like the character Donald Sutherland played in "Kelly's Heroes"?

A 60's-like hippie during WWII.

Tim

[slj0101]

13. "The Patriot."

The whole movie. Mel Gibson's vision of the Revolutionary War as he saw it. Total crap.

[LostinVA]

18. And, most of "Braveheart," for the same reason

I know alot about the Carolina Campaign, and you are dead right about "The Patriot."

[Spider Jerusalem]

21. The essence of both films can be summarised as:

'the English are vile, inhuman scum', with Edward I and Banastre Tarleton respectively illustrating the point. Gibson's anti-Semitism has been analysed to death, but I don't remember hearing anything about his apparent Anglophobia.

[LostinVA]

24. And, his Christ Complex is seen in both films, too

Both literally and figuratively.

(And, making that murdering scum Fox into a hero is sickening.)

[SteppingRazor]

31. Fox who?

:shrug:

[LostinVA]

32. "The Swamp Fox"

[SteppingRazor]

40. Ah! Now I get it

Ol' Francis Marion. Kinda harsh to call the dude a "murderer," isn't it?

I mean, don't get me wrong, movies that amount to war pornography don't usually sit well with me either, but calling a guy a murderer because he didn't follow the prescribed tactics of the day seems somewhat exaggerated.

Admittedly, I don't know enough about the guy to call myself an expert, so maybe I've missed something that you know more about.

[LostinVA]

45. No, I'd call him a murderer

Killing civilians and slaves just because, and committing all kinds of totally criminal acts make him a murderer. I honestly believe he -- and many of his gang -- was a sociopath.

[SteppingRazor]

47. Like I said, you may be more familiar with this than me, but...

I'm unaware of the instances you're referring to.

[SteppingRazor]

43. True enough...

Although, to be fair (I know, I know ... why be fair to Gibson?), both Edward I and Banastre Tarleton are pretty easily villainized given their actual biographies. Edward I was ridiculously brutal, even given the standards of his time. And Tarleton had that whole Waxhaw Massacre thing -- generally speaking, after an enemy force surrenders, you don't hack them all to death with sabers.

But, really, you'd think Gibson wouldn't have dealt with Edward I so harshly -- the king did slaughter English Jews, and boot the remainders out of his country, after all.

[Orrex]

29. Not sure about that

Hey, I'll support any criticism you want to make about The Patriot, but are these complaints really about anachronisms, or are they (understandably) about rampant onscreen narcissism and egotism?

[NewWaveChick1981]

14. The ATM in the background in "The Two Jakes"...

:rofl: Geez, folks, check your continuity problems BEFORE releasing your film... Yeah, it's just sooo believable to have an ATM sticking out like a sore thumb in a time when there was no such thing... :rofl:

[itsmesgd]

15. not an anachronism, but pisses me off so bad when improperly used in a movie

Dialects:
1. Please do not let a "non southerner" attempt a southern accent:

Kenneth Brannaugh playing a Savannah lawyer in The Gingerbread Man.
Nicholas Cage in Con Air.
Allison Eastwood in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

I realise that this affects me primarily because I live in Savannah.

[Orrex]

26. If y'all'd learn to talk right, this wouldn't be a problem.

:evilgrin:

It's not just southern accents, either; any accent poorly portrayed onscreen is grating. But I imagine that it's worse when it's a representation of your own home town!

[u4ic]

35. The Shipping News

other than Gordon Pinsent (who had to tone his Newfie accent down significantly, lest he not be understood at all), no one got it right. Judy Dench had it some of the time - but that film was lost on me for the bad (and inconsistent) accents.


At least Dench later admitted it was the hardest accent she'd ever attempted, and didn't quite succeed.

[CBHagman]

44. Julia Roberts is from the South, and yet...

...her accent in Steel Magnolias was -- How can I put this kindly? -- not anything I'd ever heard South of the Mason-Dixon line. I don't know what real Louisianans made of it.

[LostinVA]

46. I know -- the only true Southerner has the worst accent

(Richmond doesn't have a "real" Southern accent, so that's why I'm not counting MacLaine.)

[LostinVA]

16. Most of MASH the movie

Hairstyles, etc. were absolutely NOT like 1950's-era Korea.

[terrya]

20. Touch Tone telephones in the movie "Swoon"

Which was this wonderful film about Leopold and Loeb. But I sort of liked that particular anachronism.

[hedgehog]

22. Katherine Ross's hair and make-up in Butch Cassidy and the

Sundance Kid. Any female's hair style and makeup in any historical movie made between about 1955 and 1980 or so.

[CanuckAmok]

23. Second Scorsese infraction:

The very last shot of "Gangs of New York", with the timelapse of the Manhattan skyline growing as the two graves in the foreground slowly become unrecogniseable....

That shot should have just had the ambient noise of NYC increasing in-sync with the visual transition, but instead it had an obnoxious overproduced U2 song blaring... awkward, bombastic, out of context, too contemporary, too loud, and so obviously bought and paid-for by Warner.

Marty, we need to talk.

[sundog]

33. whenever i think of new york, i think of u2

:shrug:

-audience herds out of theater to find "all that you can't leave behind" cd on strategically placed uni/interscope markdown kiosk of neighboring record store... must buy must buy-

[CanuckAmok]

37. Well, I still fuckin' love him. I still fuckin' love him.

This one' called Martin Scorsese
He makes the best fucking films
He makes the best fucking films
If I ever meet him I'm gonna grab his fuckin' neck and just shake him
And say "thank you thank you for makin' such excellwnt fuckin' movies"
Then I'd twist his nose all the way the fuck around
And the rip off one of his ears and throw it
Like a like a like a fuckin' frisbee
I wanna chew his fuckin' lips off and grab his head and suck out one of his
eyes and chew on it and spit it out in his face
And thank you thank you for all of your fuckin' films
Then I'd pick him up by the hair swing him over my head a few times
And throw him across the room and kick all his fuckin' teeth in and then
stomp on his face 40 or 50 times
Cuz he makes the best fucking films he makes the best fucking films
I've ever seen in my life
I fuckin love him
I fuckin love him

--King Missile

[Lautremont]

25. The plastic garbage bag in the 1940s-set opening sequence of "Pieces."

Marred an otherwise scrupulously-conceived movie.

[Orrex]

27. Two stylistic anachronisms

In Elizabeth, when Liz is practicing a speech in front of a mirror. The scene is shot as a series of abortive stops-and-starts, complete with hand-flapping and self-conscious laughter as the Queen tries to get it right. The effect is jarring and out of place in this period piece not because it's a modern technique but because it appears nowhere else in the film.

Likewise when Geoffrey Rush is interrogating some pour soul who's suspended upside down. The scene starts with an inverted POV and then the frame rotates around to right-side-up while the characters are speaking. This, too, is a modern gimmick that doesn't fit with the flavor of the overall film.

[Zavulon]

28. The red sports car in Ben Hur, of course.

My favorite, though, is driving me nuts because I can't remember where it came from, but it was 1930's Chicago and some guy was wearing a digital watch.

[jobycom]

30. I've given up caring. I just watch the film for what it has

It's almost unheard of for a period film to actually attempt to capture the period's mindset from its perspective. They are all films from modern perspectives, worrying about modern things, but pretending to be about people from another era. Usually those people wouldn't have cared about the things we care about and make films about. It's just what we find interesting about the past.

Given that, I don't often care if they use gunpowder in pre-gunpowder eras, or wear the wrong type of corsette, or adopt naval titles that don't exist. They are so far from historical that a few incidental details don't bother me. I just watch for the story the director is telling, and judge it on whether he made me care.

[Deep13]

38. Gettysburg: Lee and Longstreet's discussion about satellite photos.

The orbital photography of the 1860s did not have that kind of resolution. Also, the constant use of horse-phones was distracting. I'm also pretty sure that Chamberlain did not use an escalator to get to the top of Little Round Top. Geez, if it was that easy, the rebels would have used the same escalator to take the hill! Also, pretty sure Picket did not lead the charge from a Cadillac El Dorado. Lastly, as advanced technically as they were, I'm pretty sure the Union officers did not have quite as many 'droids as the film portrayed.

[CanuckAmok]

39. This one bugs me because so many plots have turned on it:

Vehicle gas-tanks WILL NOT EXPLODE if you shoot them with a gun.

Unless you're usung a phosphor-based ammunition, and even then it's iffy.

[eyepaddle]

41. The nuclear submarine in Top Secret

Oh, hang on a sec, this about WORST anachronism--I wanna talk BEST! ;)

Seriesly, I laughed my ass off at Top Secret!

[begin_within]

42. The sound of a 1960s-era desk phone still being used in films and TV shows today

It's like they have one stock sound of a desk phone ringing - the kind we had in my house when I was a kid in the 1960s. No phones sound like that any more. Yet they still use that same sound in movies and TV shows these days. Especially when there is a pause in the dialog... there's that phone ringing from the 1960s again...