Men In Black, Bond, Batman And Spider-Man Rank In Chart Of 2012's "Movie Mistakes"

[Brendon Connelly]

The continuity flub fetishists at Movie Mistakes have published their listing of 2012's most glitchy pictures. Well, providing your definition of a glitch matches theirs.

To give you some idea of how they think, here's a sprinkling of fudges they attribute to The Avengers, which they've classed as 2012's fifth most... er... mistakey movie.

In the scene where Black Widow is hanging off the back of the flying Chitauri chariot, one of the Chitauri fires his gun, but there is no sound effect to go along with the blast as there is with the other blasts.

When Iron Man and Thor are fighting, Thor grab Iron Man's wrist at one point. In the next shot, he is holding him by the forearm.

The Königsstraße in Stuttgart is located in the city's main shopping area, not its cultural center as the film would suggest.

Those are just some of the 22 errors set against this picture's name.

Here's the full list of the top ten films, in ascending order of supposed screw-uppiness.

10. The Hunger Gameswith 10 mistakes listed

9. Underworld: Awakening with 10 mistakes listed

8. Argo with 13 mistakes listed

7. Prometheus with 13 mistakes listed

6. Looper with 14 mistakes listed

5. The Avengers with 22 mistakes listed

4. The Amazing Spider-Man with 24 mistakes listed

3. The Dark Knight Riseswith 24 mistakes listed

2. Skyfall with 35 mistakes listed

1. Men in Black III with 63 mistakes listed

How it's decided to order films with matching numbers of mistakes and in which way is not clear. Perhaps positions 10 and 9, for example, are actually interchangeable.

As the "goofs" are often reader submitted it stands to reason that the most watched films will run the risk of being picked over more, and more of their basic continuity wibbles be nailed to the cross. Having said that, 63 mistakes plays 10? That's a big gulf between first and tenth place.

It's not too hard to find so-called botches that actually might be nothing of the kind, not even on a small scale. For example, here's one of the Looper mistakes:

Young Joe was right-handed. (He shot people with his right hand) but Older Joe was left-handed.

Did Rian Johnson really not notice this? I'm not so sure. Could there be more to it than a simple oversight? I'm not saying there is, but I'm not ready to write this off as a screw-up just yet. Johnson's too smart to share his room with such a big elephant, surely? All I can say for now is that I'm keen to look at Looper again, right now.

This is interesting too, in a similar way. Another transformation:

Joseph Gordon-Levitt's eye colour changes part way through the movie. It is like no one realized that Bruce Willis doesn't have brown eyes until he came to film scenes with Joseph.

BBC Three have milked this kind of movie mistake for a couple of years' worth of TV so I suspect it's a popular type of trivia.

I certainly find it interesting that Men In Black ended up so far in front, even that Skyfall had some distance on its nearest rivals.

I guess it's fair to say that some shoots and post production processes let a few more little jitters through the net than others - but whether or not we should hold all of these things against the films is another matter altogether.

[Blackfist]

I don't think it's the amount of mistakes but rather the size of them, little mistakes you can ignore), it the big ones that take you out of the experience (in film at least)

[Michael P]

So, does the one who finds the most goofs get crowned King Nitpicker?

[CBattles6]

I do think it's a bit silly that people nitpick movies to this degree. However, I think many movies have "continuity" people in charge of preventing such mistakes, so when the larger ones get through it is a bit surprising.

[mfolwell]

10 seems ridiculously low for the 10th most "mistakey" movie of the year, considering the mistakes are often at the level of reverse angles not matching up exactly (which is a certain byproduct of the way most films are shot, and happens in pretty much every single reverse angle ever).

Also, Rian Johnson addressed the left-handed/right-handed business by saying Joe was ambidextrous.

[0bsessions]

Also, Rian Johnson addressed the left-handed/right-handed business by saying Joe was ambidextrous.

That works. The eye color thing is pretty easy to chalk up to a probable side effect of the drug he was taking.

[_OM_]

...Funny. I could have sworn the biggest mistake in MIB3 was that it was actually made.

[oz the malefic]

...Funny. I could have sworn the biggest mistake in MIB3 was that it was actually made.

I think you meant to type "Prometheus" there...

[AudioPhantom]

In the scene where Black Widow is hanging off the back of the flying Chitauri chariot, one of the Chitauri fires his gun, but there is no sound effect to go along with the blast as there is with the other blasts.

My problem with these nit pickers is they don't think outside the box.
What if this were a misfire or a different type of laser fired? Maybe that's why it didn't have a sound effect. Maybe its audio was so high, humans couldn't hear it.
It's like when Roger Ebert complained about War of the Worlds and asked "Why would they have 3 legged machines? It didn't make sense."
Well, maybe not to us, but we don't know what an alien we've never met before is thinking. Maybe it worked better on THEIR homelworld.

I just think for every mistake, there's an "out of the box" answer.

[awesomesauce]

I think what matters is the size of individual mistakes, rather than the total amount.