Saturday, March 14, 2009

A Continuity Mistake In The Movie "Crimson Tide"

***Caution: Spoiler Ahead***

I watched Crimson Tide a few days back. I usually read user comments, goofs, trivia, etc., on IMDB after finishing watching a movie. When I read the list of goofs in Crimson Tide, I was surprised to see that nobody had pointed out this important mistake.

Throughout the movie, Hunter kept insisting that the crew should try to receive the second EAM, which the Alabama wasn't able to receive due to a chopped cable first, and due to a faulty radio thereafter. This second EAM was shown partially twice, before being shown completely the third time. However, each of the three times the message shown is different in some ways, as demonstrated by the screenshots below

FROM field ends with D.C.; SUBJECT starts with NUCLEAR

FROM doesn't end with D.C.; SUBJECT still starts with NUCLEAR

FROM ends with D.C.; SUBJECT starts with TERMINATE

My claim that this is an error rests on the assumption that an EAM is like a SMS message - it stays queued at the sender end until it is received correctly, and the sender keeps attempting to send the message until the recipient acknowledges that the message has been received successfully. The contents of the second EAM could not have changed (the way they are changing in the screenshots above).

An Error In The Movie "Chaos"