Movie Mistakes
 

I just fired up my son's Transformer III Blu-ray and found some huge mistakes less than 3 minutes in.

In the NASA director's office there are a bunch of scale models. The scene is set in 1961, so that means Mercury Redstone and prototype Mercury Atlas should have been there and maybe even a prototype Gemini Titan. However, I noticed that there are Proton, Saturn 1B, and Saturn V models. (Saturns look like 1/100 Centuri/Estes kits).

On top of that, the Saturn V roll pattern for the first stage has the top portion removed. This was done after they found temperature issues on an assembled Saturn that had the designed roll pattern and subsequently modified on all the rest of the Saturn V's. That pattern would not have been on any concept model. I also doubt we had a clue about the Soviet Proton, much less have a detailed scale model of one. It didn't fly until 1965.

As a bonus, the Saturn 1B looked like many of our kits. The escape tower was broken off! :chuckle:

Oh...and I just remembered that the VLA didn't exist in 1961, but it's in the movie in 1961. IIRC, it was approved in the early 70's and finished around the end of the decade. :rolleyes:


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Ummm.... you were expecting historical accuracy in, of all things, a TRANSFORMER movie?? :chuckle: :chuckle: :chuckle: :eek: :confused:

I hear ya... moviemakers are SO lazy today it's not even funny... biggest stinker I've seen in awhile was "The Astronaut Farmer"... :rolleyes: Oh brother!

I was surprised at the "accuracy" of "Apollo 18".... it was actually well done, from a technical perspective... (I'm sure rivet counters could REALLY find a bunch of mistakes, but for "everyday spacefans" it was pretty close to the mark... other than the sucky "Blair Witch meets NASA" storyline....

Later! OL JR :)

Not really. I was mostly amused. To be honest, I immediately honed in on the Saturn 1B's escape tower right from the start and didn't think about the time frame issues until I got over chuckling about it being busted like so many of our old flight models. ;)

But with today's (and with expectations that the situation will get worse with time) uninformed, misinformed, "I don't care about it if it does not involve the latest pop singer/band, hip-hop artist, TV/movie actress, TV/movie actor" youth attitude about American history the movie "Apollo 18" will become the defacto explanation of why we stopped going to the moon as supposed by teachers, parents, and peers that today think the Space Shuttle landed men on the moon. (Ask tbzep about teachers dispensing such misinformation.) Hell, there are young people today that believe that the movie "JFK" is an accurate portrayal of the Kennedy assasination and/or that "W." is an accurate portrayal of Bush 2 (though it is closer to truth than JFK).

There is an entire job on set called continuity. I suggest finding out who did that or technical consulting and rating him down on IMDB.com.

Just expert Jerry

Or have a party mocking the worst continuity errors of all time, but don't be geeky and limit it to technical errors, drink beer and shots and mock bad movies too. Get a life!

I could see perhaps a mock-up of a Saturn, perhaps even something vaguely resembling a Saturn 1B, in a NASA director's office in 1961. The initial concept designs were well underway by then. (Not for a moon rocket though, but for a super heavy lift vehicle.) Perhaps even a concept mock-up of something that sort of resembled the eventual C-5, or Saturn V. And Chelomei had been pushing his "Universal Rocket" concept for several years. Whether or not that was known by NASA at the time is another question, though. The actual movie scene as described is full of anachronisms, of course, but perhaps the presence of something resembling those models wasn't quite so far-fetched.

My wife and I declared that whole movie a fiasco. So, as far as we are concerned, there are only two Transformer movies...
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What I read....
 

From what I read and heard about this flick, It was the best so far. I still don't care for the main charactor, whats his name.

I would expect to see something similar to a Saturn 1 Block 1 and an early design on the Saturn V (C-2 or C-3) or maybe a Nova.

I didn't like the movie as much as the others. Maybe it was because I'd heard it was the best one and expected more. Maybe because it was mostly action and very little character interaction.