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Many Eyes, Shallow Bugs, and Spider-Man
Danious writes Seems
Spider-Man is clocking up 'bugs' at
movie-mistakes.com faster than any previous movie (now 95 and counting). The reason, according to this Independent article, is not that it may have more mistakes than usual, but that 'huge numbers of people are going to see it - and that makes for lots of pairs of eyes checking every inch of the screen.' The top movie is currently 'The Matrix' with 147." A lot of the bugs simply aren't really errors, and I'm sure the comic book guys out there can debate them.
I would agree that the romance plot may not have been done exceptionally well, but to say that it's useless is a bit strong. Parker's relationship with M.J. is one of the cornerstones of his personality. Without her, he becomes Batman - a vigilante. With her grounding him, he keeps his ties to the 'real' world in a way that would be impossible with just his Aunt.
Ok, besides the fact that if I see another "Spider Man" story, I'm going to scream...(the hype has, for me, moved it into the same category as Titanic, ie "do not ever bother to see because I'm so sick of hearing about it")
This whole "spot all the mistakes" thing is pretty common among people with no social skills and one of the reasons people hate "nerds".
Case and point was a informational session for a technical school's adult education technology classes(Oracle, C Programming, etc. etc.)
This one guy sitting behind me kept interrupting the guy giving his presentation and:
-correcting him
-disputing points that were(obviously) the presenter's/school's opinion, not statements of fact
-clarifying what he felt were overly general statements made by the presenter
Example(making up everything here):
"...and networking equipment stocks are taking a dive"
(in our pretend example world, networking stocks overall have in fact been declining)
Nerd: "Actually, Cisco systems was up 3/4 this morning."
How many of you reached for the reply button to correct my statement, even though I said "making this up"? Tada, you are one of those ANNOYING NERDS.
After about 5 minutes, I was ready to turn around and bitch-slap him and say "SHUT THE HELL UP!" The presenter was trying -extremely- hard to put up with the guy, who, at what was basically a sales pitch to a dozen or so people, felt it necessary to act like he was engaged in a DISCUSSION with the presenter, who was giving a "why we feel the time is appropriate for you all to take a class with us" PRESENTATION.
This kind of behavior is about as socially clueless as you can get; ignoring the interrupting and the fact that you just don't engage in a debate with someone giving a formal presentation(there's a reason one is called a debate and one is called a presentation)...it's bloody hell annoying when some asshole is sitting there finding fault with your every other word.
Want another example? There's a clip of a Red Dwarf con where some #$@%ing anal nerd fan says "In episode blah blah, where you were running from the Blahs, how was it that you were able to accelerate away on that motorbike when you were holding a gun in your throttle hand?"
Chris Bare(sp?) simply laughed...and never answered the question. The audience thought it was funny...but the guy asked the question dead serious. He was probably wondering why everyone was laughing.
What would be my answer? BECAUSE HES A #$%@ING ACTOR AND HE WAS SITTING ON FAKE BIKE ON A SOUNDSTAGE WITH A BLUESCREEN BEHIND HIM SHOOTING AN IMAGINARY GUN AT ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Keep in mind this is a series where, towards the end, people start getting hit on the heads by plastic alligators falling from the sky....and the special effects are REALLY bad on purpose(look on the P2P services for Red Dwarf A to Z; Patrick Steward is featured and talks about this...he almost called his lawyer because he thought it was a Star Trek ripoff, but after about 30 seconds, started laughing and stopped reaching for the phone, and loves the series now.)
Go see the @#$!ing movie and watch it for what it is, a story.
How many kids do you know that sit at bedtime and say "Oh, no daddy, that couldn't be. Bricklayer's unions would never let the pigs build that large a structure without hiring union workers, and the permits from the town take at least 2-3 weeks; besides wolves are pack animals..."
It couldn't have been a land-line either, as the phone system in the US won't give you a dial tone if the other party hangs up. [...] Obviously whoever wrote that scene hasn't used a phone for about ten years. Or maybe just never got hung up on.
Friend, this is not a new observation. There are certain conceits that we use in making movies and TV shows that are not realistic in the strictest sense. We use them because they make for a better movie, or because the audience is used to seeing or hearing them.
For example, find any movie from the past forty years or so that features a scene of two people driving as seen from the hood of the car. Chances are good that the car has no rear-view mirror. In some instances, you can even see the spot on the windshield where the mirror used to be mounted. Chances are also pretty good that you never noticed. That's because some directors feel-- rightly or wrongly-- that the presence of the mirror right in the middle of the screen, between the two characters, is distracting or unappealing to the audience. So it goes. This is not an error. It's a very deliberate choice to deviate from strict realism in an effort to more effectively tell the story.
Same basic thing with the dial tone anomaly you mentioned. In movies, when the character on the other end hangs up, you hear a dial tone immediately. Not because that's what you would hear in real life, but because the movie or TV show works better that way. It's kind of like a little clue to the audience: hey, so-n-so just hung up. You, sitting in the theater, get the point immediately, and the story moves on.
That's the thing with movies and such. If it advances the story, it's okay. Movies exist to entertain, and they don't lose points for inaccuracy.
So basically what are commonly referred to as movie mistakes break down into three broad categories: plot holes, continuity errors, and deliberate decisions to differ from the strictly realistic.
You don't get any geek points for finding moments in movies where the director-- or sound man, or whatever-- deliberately chose to break with reality. That's part of what making movies is all about.
Nobody cares about continuity, either; hell, Kubrick even used continuity breaks as a stylistic conceit. Remember the rape scene in A Clockwork Orange? There are continuity breaks all through that scene; they were deliberate, intended to make the scene more frenetic and disorienting to the audience. More recently, Spielberg did the same thing in a couple of scenes in Schindler's List. But in general, if you go looking for accidental continuity breaks, you will find them. There's nothing exciting or cool about them.
As for plot holes, we can talk about those if you want. Sometimes people cite plot holes that aren't holes at all, like the fact that nobody guesses that Clark Kent is Superman despite the fact that they look exactly alike. That's not a plot hole, it's a plot feature. Other plot holes arise as a result of the movie-making process: the fifth replicant in Blade Runner that later got ret-conned into being Deckard himself. Other plot holes are legitimate, but they ultimately are like that one loose thread on your sweater. You could pull it, but the whole sleeve may unravel. So you just leave it alone, and keep on wearing your warm, comfy sweater.
"Movie mistakes" are, in my opinion, just not all that interesting.