Movies by definition are a form of escape, and require a form of social contract called “Suspension of Disbelief.” Basically it means that I am willing to overlook the fact that these are actors on sets in order to believe that I am somehow watching an actual story unfold before my eyes. Suspension of disbelief can easily be shattered, however, by something like the presence of a low hanging boom mike or a continuity error. When this happens, you mentally leave the story and are forced back into the reality that this is just a movie.
Hollywood is particularly guilty of violating suspension of disbelief when it comes to cars, whether it is the Charger in Bullitt that loses no fewer than eight hubcaps, or in the case of my personal cinematic pet peeve, the car that is being driven while the transmission is in Park. The screengrab from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in the title image above illustrates this quite succinctly.
I was binge-watching the latest season of Atypical on Netflix over the weekend (a great show you should check out, BTW), and I noticed that this show is also guilty of this offense, with Doug Gardner (one of the lead characters) shown in several episodes driving his truck while it is in Park, as shown above.
I realize it is difficult for actors to get into character, emote for the camera, and remember their lines for multiple takes while simultaneously trying to drive a car with cameras and lights blocking their vision. So it is no surprise that filmmakers employ what is called a Process Trailer to film these scenes, like the one shown above. Obviously, since the car is not actually moving under its own power, it can be left in Park while being towed.
Free tip for aspiring (or experienced) moviemakers: If you are filming a vehicle with a column shift, either remove the shifter lever or tie the car down and put it in Drive before filming.
So what is your automotive cinematic pet peeve?
Any collision causing a car to suddenly catch fire and/or explode. Bonus points if all the cars around it catch fire and/or explode as well.
When the car explodes, it has to bounce a few feet in the air, or else you might miss the explosion!
Made up car problems that make no sense but are there to show something about the characters.
In Hidden Figures (the film about some important black women mathematicians who worked at NASA and of course experienced discrimination of all kinds) her 1956 Chevy Bel Air stops because of some problem. On woman looks under the hood and bangs something or whatever it was she did and it starts and continues on. This makes no sense. A car like that could fail to start because the starter won’t go and it might be fixed with a bonk of a hammer. But that would have nothing to do with why the car stopped running. No way to make sense out of this.
In The Green Book the almost new Cadillac comes to a halt with steam squirting forward out of the grille. First, highly unlikely. And that wouldn’t make the engine stop until it was so hot it would be unrepairable. I don’t remember how they continued on. They might have had a big tank of water in the trunk, but Refilling the radiator would last about another mile.
Bangiing on something to fix it? It can happen.
Carbureted engine, carburetor float sticks with needle valve open. Engine floods and stalls. Bang on carburetor, that MIGHT shake the float loose and once the engine is cranked enough to clear the flooding, it starts. I actually helped a stalled driver that way using a police flashlight.
Atlanta to Texarkana and back with the odometer “stuck” at 1,108 miles. Other than that, still the greatest movie of the 20th Century!
are we going 110? are we really going 110?! subtle use of the metric system.
It was 1977, and in the middle of the big push for metricization. Canada had just switched that year.
I caught that one immediately. The numbers in blue were a dead give-a-way.
Using cars to establish a time period is all well and good, especially when they’re interesting. But when they’re always perfect and clean, even cars that would be old at that time, it bugs me.
Martin Scorcese’s “The Irishman” has some fabulous cars. But there’s a mid-sixties Valiant parked on a city street in a mid-seventies scene that looks like new. Wrong.
As good as Ford v Ferrari was, it’s guilty of this exact error.
Joker did it pretty well, they seemed to find more distressed old cars or took the effort of dirtying up the nicer ones. Though if it took place in 1981 there were sure a lot of late 80s B bodies and panthers.
There is at least one interloper from the ‘90s, though I won’t go into further detail for those who haven’t seen it yet. You can look it up on IMCDB (spoiler warning) if you really want…that said, it’s pretty well hidden by its context in the film.
And there’s the inverse — portraying a car as an old beater on its last legs, when it actually would have been only a year or two old at the time the film is set. The Wonder Years was guilty of this in the episode where the family gets a new car. Their “old” car that was supposedly on its last legs was a ’67 or ’68 Dodge, in an episode set in 1969.
I noticed that as a kid!
American Graffiti was guilty of this. There is a scene set in a junkyard, and some of the vehicles are well-worn 1961 and 1962 models. Only problem is that the movie took place during the summer of 1962.
Or the`67 Caprice coupe in one of the motion shots from the same movie. Cars that came AFTER the year or time in which the movie takes place.
Better Call Saul is guilty of this – see my comment further below.
Freaks and Geeks was the most egregious to me. James Franco’s burnout character had a beat up 79 Trans Am with chalky faded paint, dents, a mismatched fender, primer touchups etc. The show took place in 1980!
I was 11 when the show was on, my Mom loved it but I was completely taken out of it.
In Starsky and Hutch Hutch had a new beater LTD, so they could contrast it with Starsky’s hot rod Torino.
Fargo season 2 handled that pretty well, the cars were good and weathered.
The biggest botch was the protagonist’s cop car, a 4-door hardtop Gran Fury,
and a little too old, a ’75 in ’79.
A smaller town might hang on longer to police cars as they wouldn’t get beat to death in 2 years as a big city police car.
It was a State unit.
At the risk of doxxing myself, I know neither our city police department, county sheriff’s department (at the time, they had both), or state highway patrol would’ve used 4-door hardtops. The year of that didn’t bother me, though, so much as one of the Kansas City gangsters having an early ’70s Olds 98.
Actually it was a ’69. I too thought it was a little too old for mobsters.
“out of time” cars drive me nuts (and it’s naturally worse on TV shows). Every teenage driver has a new car! No, Very few kids in 1957 had ’57 Bel-Airs. Most likely a 49 or 50 Chevy. At the opposite, The demolition derby scenes on “Happy Days” featured cars that would have been basically new at the supposed time!
True! Happy Days after its first few years took it’s nostalgic time-period role less and less seriously and became an almost purely character-driven sitcom.
Most teenagers back then didn’t have cars at all. And their access to the family car was extremely limited. If anything, shows and movies set in the Fifties are centered around incredibly moorhead-oriented kids who seem to be incredibly affluent.
And yet successful businessman Howard Cunningham is driving a 48 DeSoto through the 50’s (until he traded it for a Studebaker Lark). They could have at least updated the DeSoto a time or two.
I can think of so many, but no headrests in interior scenes is one that takes me right out of every movie or TV show I see it. I can guess the reasoning, to not obscure characters faces, or possibly to prevent shadows, Yadda Yadda Yadda. When I clearly see the holes for the pedestals my mind just wanders trying to figure out why exactly the main character would take out their front headrests.
Doubly annoying when the car is later used in an action sequence and you can see the headrests in place from the outside.
In The Love Bug movies, they added a headrest to hide the driver crouched in the back seat when Herbie was driving himself around. The “pad” on the headrest was actually dark screen so the driver could see.
In that same vein is the missing interior rear view mirror, an error regularly occuring to this day.
Another that, with CGI, hasn’t happened in sometime (at least that I’ve seen) is undercranking the camera while filming so that when it’s played back at normal speed, the cars appear to be moving much faster. It’s a cheap trick that’s easily spotted.
Yeah, I hate that one. Black and white era productions almost always did that and it looks really cheezy.
+1 on the headrests. That seems to be a universal industry rule to always remove the headrests. Doesn’t even seem like you’d have to be a car guy to notice that. it’s just so obvious and unrealistic and usually unnecessary. Give the audience some credit that we can understand what we are seeing if a character’s head is in front of a headrest.
Oh brother…
1. When there’s a through-windshield view and the car is supposed to be tracking straight, yet the person has the wheel turned 90 degrees.
2. Similarly, when the character is sawing at the wheel like it’s some kind of workout
3. When someone locks or unlocks the car with a key fob and it makes that stereotypical “chirp chirp” noise. Exactly zero modern cars do that, and I’m not sure there was ever a factory keyless entry system that did.
4. When they use obviously fake engine noise. A 1980s Escort does not sound like a contemporary 5.0 Mustang, no matter how hard you try.
5. When a car has an itty-bitty fender-bender and immediately explodes. When self-aware, this trope can be funny, but it’s rarely portrayed n that manner.
6. When the interior shot of the car is clearly not the same car as the outside, and…
7. When they very obviously swap car models between shots. In the recent CHiPS movie, one of the featured cars was a Chevrolet SS, but it was unceremoniously swapped for a B-pillar-forward shot of a 2013-2015 Chevrolet Malibu in the same color, replete with a fake fender vent to make it look like the SS (so they knew what they were doing).
“4. When they use obviously fake engine noise. A 1980s Escort does not sound like a contemporary 5.0 Mustang, no matter how hard you try.”
One of the worst is the chase scene in The Seven-Ups using a Pontiac Ventura (Nova-version) and Grandville, both of which had automatics. Yet, the sound effects from the manual transmission cars in Bullitt were recycled (same producer for both movies), ruining what was otherwise a pretty decent chase. I mean, the actual sounds of automatic-equipped cars shifting at speed would have been fine.
“7. When they very obviously swap car models between shots.”
I can still remember watching Earnest Goes to Camp when I was a kid (I’d probably hate that movie as an adult, but it was the sort of thing I liked at that age). In the scene where Earnest is driving a busload of campers, the bus keeps switching back and forth between a Ford and an International Harvester. I noticed cars and trucks at a young age so the constant switching was jarring to me, but those two makes are so dissimilar looking I have to imagine even an untrained viewer would notice the switch.
My mother once said that taking some of her grandkids to “Ernest Goes to Camp” was the longest afternoon of her life.
2! Yes! I was about to post the exact same thing. The car would be off the road and plunging into a ditch in about five seconds if steered like that in real life.
Having the driver of the car enter and exit via the passenger’s door. It is such an unnatural thing to do in real life and this breaks the movie fantasy completely.
The Andy Griffith Show was big on the driver using the passenger side door. I think that might be the real reason that Andy never wore a gun.
Back in the era of big cars, column shift, and bench seats, we were taught to slide across to enter/exit on the curb side of a busy street. If the movie was filmed before the early 70s, I’m not sure this is wrong.
There were a number of 30’s – 40’s cars that only had a key on the passenger side. There was a slogan, “curb side – safe side”.
The real reason: for safety, for chivalry, to save a buck – take your pick.
Yeah my 1950 F1 only had a key on the passenger side.
I hadn’t heard that slogan in a long time—funny that (re Andy Griffith) I turned it up in 1961, in a North Carolina paper:
Heck, my 2013 Nissan Versa only had a door lock on the drivers side
I am with you Tom. The car being left in park has for years been my biggest movie pet peeves. Once you notice it, you can’t unsee it, and it looks so ridiculous to me. I have also seen where one camera shot shows it in park, then the next it’s out of park, then switches to a new angle and it’s back in park. With fewer and fewer column shift cars, I guess the problem may become less common.
What will also alleviate this issue is that a lot of cars (certain BMWs and Rolls-Royces, most Mercedes-Benzes, most Teslas) have monostable column selectors, wherein the selector responds to a change in direction and always returns to the same place. “Park” itself is achieved by pressing a button toward the edge of the lever. All of that is to say that you’d have no way of telling whether or not the car was in gear just by looking at the lever.
I don’t like those monostable things. I don’t think they’re safe. Remember, Chekov got run over by his own Jeep because of one.
I have been ranting for ages about the gear lever position. I look for it on purpose, as most of the time it’s in Park. I never understood why until that picture you included. They could have put it in Drive. I guess that in the US, where most everybody drives, that should be obvious for all. Of course, they could be driving in 2nd all day long 🙂
Than again, there are next to none column shifters.
I don’t think I’ve ever noticed that. But I’m sure I will now. Thanks a lot guys. 😉
Yeah, never noticed that either. Thanks guys.
A minor quibble but in some movies you wind up seeing the same 10 cars all over town in different scenes.
And if you’ve ever seen “Hidden Figures”, it’s set in 1961 and starts with the three protagonists broken down at the side of the road in their immaculate 1957 Chevy. A cop car pulls up behind them and I say to my wife “they must have been waiting quite a while, that’s a 1964 Ford cop car”
Yup, and not uncommon in TV shows particularly the cop shows from the 70’s.
Good example. I thought that movie generally wasn’t too serious about historicity. People in the 60’s talking and acting like 21st century people, or at least 21st century people’s idea of what 60’s people should talk and act like.
In Green Book, the same parked Imperial shows up several times.
Hah, I remember that!!
When the driver is looking at the passenger for extended amounts of time, we all know you need to look ahead when driving.
Here’s the explanation. Comedy gold from Bob & Doug McKenzie:
https://youtu.be/hWORVTX9mnU?t=104
Wrong aspect ratio(how does that even happen?) but great video. That film is probably best seen in three minute bits.
My co-worker did something like this in real life…he was in Scotland in the front passenger seat with our 2nd level manager in the back seat…who asked him a question and he rotated completely around 180 degrees to answer him…the manager had a “are you crazy?” look on his face, he thought my co-worker was driving as he was seated on the left side (but of course they were in Scotland, which the manager must have forgotten).
I guess you should add “don’t rotate 180 degrees while driving” to “don’t text and drive” to avoid distracted driving
When the sports car can’t outrun the economy car or van that is chasing them.
Yes!
The worst example that comes to mind is “Risky Business” where Tom Cruise can’t outrun a mid seventies Cadillac DeVille with a Porsche 928!
I thought Cruise did eventually outrun the Coupe DeVille…plus most of the chase took place in a suburban neighborhood, where it was difficult for the Porsche to reach full speed.
This has always bugged me: In Goodfellas a 1965 Impala is prominent in a scene that stated it took place in 1963.
Me too! That same exact heist scene at Idlewild airport also has another shot that’s always bugged me: they show a B-roll clip of a 747 landing, but the 747 didn’t enter airline service until 1970.
I love Goodfellas and have seen it dozens of times. No doubt one of the greatest films of all time. But still, I noticed at least two more automotive “sins” :
1. Henry is driving a yellow 1966 Chrysler Newport convertible when he rescues Karen and beats up Bruce. But this scene takes place sometime before their wedding, which was in 1964.
2. In a 1955 scene, the young Henry is shown parking a wiseguy’s shiny black, brand-new looking 1948 Cadillac Series 60. Would any self-respecting mobster in the 1950’s allow himself to be seen driving a 7 or 8 year old Cadillac, even a beauty like this? Probably not.
If you want to visit the Holy Grail of mistakes, watch “The Cars That Made America” next time History Channel runs it. It’s laughable, yet quite entertaining.
The History Channel is crap. Nothing’s watchable on there if you know the subject.
Robert DeNiro yanking the steering wheel in ” Ronin “.
In fact I have a negative response every time an actor is yanking a wheel that is obviously connected to nothing.
Have you ever noticed that nearl all Fast and Furious movies destroy all the American cars, but not the rice burners?
Worst part is in canon the Charger Vin Diesel drives that gets catastrophically destroyed in Every. Single. Installment. is portrayed as the same car as the one in the first movie.
This leads to another peeve actually…
I’d say if you are counting the number of hubcaps the charger is losing in Bullitt, then they have already lost you. Besides every CGI car stunt is ridiculous.
The explanation for the Charger losing eight hubcaps is that the cars only went down that hill one time; it was just filmed using multiple cameras so the same shot was seen from different perspective. Hence, you got to see a couple hubcaps fly off filmed from several different locations.
Cars are infinitely repairable. I mentioned the fast and the furious Charger above, the one flipped, crushed in a collapsing cave, crushed in a collapsing parking structure, blown up by a nuclear submarine. All ok, “that’s Dom’s dads Charger, we’ll fix it!
It irritated me in Max Max Fury road too. There’s an ambiguity to these movies admittedly but the V8 interceptor from the first and second films was clearly in it, and we saw it destroyed in the latter. And also destroyed in fury road, twice. Regardless of where in the series that movie takes place I have a hard time believing max not only rebuilt it, but did bodywork, sourced all the odd specific parts etc. to make it whole again. It seems ridiculously out of character, beyond his abilities and most notably beyond his resources to get that car remotely resembling an intact XB coupe for the next installment, even if he could somehow get it otherwise mobile.
Last one. Race scenes where the two cars are perfectly nose to nose for the entire drag race, but once the finish line gets closer, suddenly the left car gets the lead, then the right car gets the lead, then the left car, right car, left car, right car! Such suspense!
…but what drag race has this happened ever? I see this mostly watching old 50s-60s era movies admittedly but wasn’t SoCal the birthplace of hot rod culture? How could Hollywood be so clueless at portraying it?
Elvis, neck & neck with “other driver & car”. Elvis sees other, then presses gas pedal further, to go faster. Brings to mind the stories of NASCAR & “Strokers”.
A lot of movies and TV shows in the ’50s used the SAME set for the interior of the car. It was a late ’40s Chrysler or DeSoto with Highlander upholstery, and a ’39 steering column. You’d see the faces through the steering wheel, with the fastback small rear window visible between the passengers, and then you’d see the late 50s or early 60s car from the outside.
I remember seeing some 40s movie where the characters were in the interior of a car with a three-speed on the column, and the driver shifted it into first… and left it there… even though the car was clearly going too fast for first gear.
A lot of the old police dramas from the 60’s and 70’s would use the same old stock footage of car chases and crashes rather than film new ones. In Hawaii 5-0 McGarett would be driving his 70’s Monterrey Brougham, but if a chase ensued suddenly the next clip would show his 68 Park Lane.
They’re a lot better about that in the new series.
They mixed shots of McGarrett’s 68 Park Lane 4 door and his 67 Mercury Marquis 2 door too.
Adam–12 mixed up 1968 and 1969 Plymouth Belvederes a lot. They DID almost look alike. Less so with a 1967 Belvedere.
Also, cops and robbers in TV and movies mostly drove Nashes. This made no sense, but must have been a paid product placement. In reality cops and robbers mostly drove Fords.
…and in Quinn Martin productions such as The FBI. Virtually 100% Ford.
Superman Loves Nash. Clark Kent drives a Nash-Healey.
“The Green Book”. Takes place around Christmas, 1962. In the very opening scene there is a 1964 Chevy parked on the right side of the street. Have to look quick, but it’s there.
Just happened to think, was watching “Modern Family” last night and Phil was driving his two girls in the minivan. Lots of cars and scenery zipping past, but not once did he move the steering wheel. Not once!
Also from the same movie, ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ is playing at a small town theater. Not a car ‘error’, but the movie didn`t go into wide release until months later in `63, long after it played at the premium theaters.
Shifters in Park.
Country artist Cole Swindell debuted five years ago with an image that turned out in a video to be in a 1972 Chevy Blazer…but the close-up stillshots show it in PARK!
At least his music has dramatically improved from his tossaway debut “Chillin’ It.”
https://www.coleswindell.com/news?page=23
This can’t be real, certainly not in the late seventies.
I have a vague childhood memory of riding in an early 70s car that had a seat belt buzzer that wouldn’t relent until you buckled. Was some kind of foreign job, mostly likely a Volvo.
Any owners/former owners of a Volvo of that era who can back up my fuzzy memory?
I wasn’t around then, but didn’t pretty much every 1974 car do this, along with the ignition interlock?
I believe that was a one year only deal (1974) By the time I got my beater ’74 Matador this “feature” was defeated long before.
1974 was the only year for the seatbelt/starter interlock (US), but for several years the alarm would sound if weight was sensed on the driver seat but the belt was unbuckled. By the late ’70s the warning light would stay on but the alarm would only sound for the first 10 or 15 seconds, and buzzers were then changed to chimes (usually electronic, but sometimes mechanical bells as in our 82 Nissan).
Yes, 1974 was the year. My mother was a school nurse then, and some kid cut his finger off in shop class. She grabbed him, and put him in the passenger seat of her New Plymouth to rush him to the hospital … and the car wouldn’t start. There was no thought of buckling the kid in – he was holding his arm up, wrapped in a towel, and bleeding …profusely. Since she always wore her belt my mom had no idea that the car even had that “feature”. She just knew that the kid was bleeding like hell, and her brand New Plymouth would-not-start. They had to take another car to the hospital…and the kid lost his finger (he no doubt would have anyhow, but my mom felt responsible)….and her damn car failed her. Three weeks later she had a Chevy (and my dad had that system disabled on the Chevy before he picked up the car from the dealer).
My mother drove a 1973 Volvo 144. Yes, the seatbelt buzzer sounded continuously until the belt was buckled (two front seats only). The rear seat also had two outboard shoulder belts but only a lap belt for the middle passenger. That car was so different from Mother’s previous ride, a 1965 Buick Skylark.
Considering it’s the Kentucky Fried Movie (done by the same folks who brought you Airplane!), it’s done for laughs, mocking the various alarms and buzzers on cars — until the last one stops due to him zipping up his fly.
I wanted to post the movie’s shower enclosure scene. But alas, no cars involved. Let alone any pet peeve worth mentioning.
Endless upshifts.
Soundtracks that don’t match the vehicle – 2 stroke dirt bike sound and 4 stroke cruiser street bike image.
They’re all good gripes, but endless upshifts as committed in “Bullitt” is the one that grinds my gears.
I agree with most of the things that have been mentioned, especially the gear shift position. I mainly watch old movies and TV shows, so I may not be aware of some more modern tricks. I will add a few…
The stars quite often drive convertibles and the top is usually down. I know it is often sunny southern California but come on… Better star exposure is what I figure.
Cars that obviously have the glass removed.
Car swaps have been mentioned; some more detailed gripes are where in a chase scene the car is a late model nice car, but when it drives off the cliff it is a old junker that is the same style and color. I guess it is too expensive to run newish cars over the cliff. Chase scenes where a car gets damaged but keeps going – then in the next scene there is no damage – and when the chase concludes the damage is there again.
Movies or shows where all the cars are the same brand. Good advertising but not very realistic.
Back when front bench seats were common two stars would often sit together (passenger in the middle) regardless of their supposed relationship. I presume that was necessary to fit them both in the camera view, but it sure looks odd when they are two macho type dudes.
Based on my experience with various family members most of these items are only seen by car nerds. All in all I enjoy watching the cars in the classic movies and TV shows.
In Baby Driver, a 2013+ Ford Taurus transforms into a 2010-2012 model and then into a first-generation Infiniti G35 in a certain scene.
I was going to say the same, Rockford Files and CHiPs were particularly bad for it. Often times if it was going over a cliff you could often see that the engine, transmission, driveshaft, exhaust and occasionally fuel tank was missing. Of course even with that fuel tank missing it somehow still explodes in a huge fireball when it hits bottom.
Kollyfornya law? Car MUST be full of gasoline-soaked haybales? Guard rails made of balsa? Vandalizing rubber gasket of master cylinder disables brakes?
In Bullitt, where the Mustang’s passenger door window was fully down, then slightly up a split second later, then fully down again a moment later …
Thanks, Tom. Now I’ll never be able to unsee the shifter in park. ;o)
And seeing that “RetroStang” corralled for a movie shoot is just wrong. That filly wants to run!
As others have said, the getting the years wrong bugs me. I point it out, and my wife gets annoyed, but she is not a car person, so there’s that.
We were watching some TV show that showed a junk yard scene. It was set in 1964 if memory serves. There was a ’63 Impala that looked tired and ready for the smasher. Sure, new cars get totaled, but it was in the background in an establishing shot, and was clearly to show an old beat up car.
I know cars did not last as long back then as they do now, but 2 years or less? C’mon!
Sidebar Pet Peeve, and slightly off topic, but it has to do with airplanes in movies.
Someone in the movie is talking a trip. They show them boarding. It’s clearly a double aisle wide-body. Then they show the plane taking off. It’s a 737. But wait, it gets worse…
They show the plane in flight. It’s a 747, with twice as many engines. Wearing Boeing’s marketing livery, not the livery of the airline… did I mention that the airline was different from that which was shown at the airport in whatever kiss-good-bye scene they had going?…. Oh, I ain’t done.
The plane lands at its destination. It’s a 727 with 3 engines.
ARGH$#@%&^$%!!! – Do they expect us not to notice?!?!?!?!
I think they made fun of this sort of thing in “Airplane!”. The hero plane was a 707. It sounded like Connie or a DC-6.
“This plane has 4 engines. It’s a totally different kind of flying, all together”. ;o)
“It’s a totally different kind of flying.”
It’s a totally different kind of flying.
Also airplane-related, is that they rarely show the flight control surfaces A) moving at all, or B) moving the right way in CGI-generated scenes. Midway (2019) actually gets this right in almost all scenes, which was a pleasant surprise.
Another CGI peeve is that flight dynamics are usually very stiff and often completely incorrect as to how an actual aircraft moves through the air.
I’m a warbird fetishist, so seeing Avengers flying off carriers, plus Corsairs and Hellcats in the old 1976 Henry Fonda Midway totally killed my suspension of disbelief. Not to mention angled deck carriers equipped with twin 5″/38 guns and enclosed bows standing in for the Enterprise, Hornet and Yorktown.
At least they got the Japanese planes mostly right in that one by using footage from Tora, Tora, Tora and Storm Over the Pacific, which was a film from 1960 that made extensive use of models.
I’d go see the new Midway, but I heard the dialogue is awful.
See it – the dialogue is fine. It’s almost dramatized documentary in style – the script writers included quotes, both actual and apocryphal, from the actual people portrayed in the film. The practical, model, and cgi work is done very well – there are a few clunky spots but they are rare. Well worth seeing on the big screen and much better than Midway 1976, which I saw in the theater – in Sensurround!
The 1998 Suzuki in the first few seasons of Better Call Saul always bugged me, as those seasons were supposed to be set in 2002. I know the Suzuki Esteem was not a benchmark for quality, but c’mon, this looks like the 17-year-old car it was in 2015, not the 4-year-old car it was supposed to represent.
I think the creators sought it out just for the name Esteem. Honestly if it were in normal 4 year old condition it would have still fit the character, they didnt need to distress a Suzuki Esteem to drill into our heads LOOK HOW MEDIOCRE JIMMY/SAUL IS!
Similar gaffe in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Johnny Depp is driving a beat up Maverick. It would have been a new car in the time setting of 1971.
Cars “arriving” after an extended drive, with white condensation trailing from the exhaust pipe. I see it constantly.
My peeve is when a car has its vent windows removed as if they’d never been there in the first place, presumably so the actor can be better seen from a particular angle. A good example is the early-1960s Ford convertible driven by Frank Sinatra in Tony Rome; also there’s a first-season Twilight Zone episode, “The Hitch-Hiker,” where Inger Stevens drives a ventless 1958 (maybe ’57) Mercury hardtop. In the latter case, it’s hard to see how a one-piece side window would roll up without leaving a big gap… this may be excusable by the fact that the Stevens character (60-year spoiler alert) is already dead when she starts seeing the hitcher, but doesn’t know it yet.
Related is when, in racing scenes, the protagonist(s) wears an open-face helmet (so their face can be seen), and every other racer is wearing a full-face helmet.
That 61 Ford missing its vent windows is the first thing I think of when someone mentions one of those 60s Frank Sinatra detective movies.
When a car slides around an intersection and there are skid marks from the last 20 takes.
That’s another good one. in the same vein a couple of years ago I was on a public street and saw those signs of several takes of sliding around corners and a serious donut in the middle of a bridge. A month or two later it turns up on Youtube. Here is a shot from a bystander. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8B-PwOnYpE
And the final video, complete with the tracks left from previous takes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM0qmMb3sCg
In a slightly-related vein, the big opening dance number from “La La Land” bugged me a little given that all the cars had sizable dents from dancers stomping on them in previous takes. Alternatively, the in-universe possibility that the characters have traffic jam dance parties every morning is sort of heartwarming.
Yeah, the pre-crumpled roofs were pretty obvious.
The manual transmission sound the General Lee makes when it’s an automatic.
Haha, actually, it’s worse than that. It’s shown as a 4 speed, column shifted auto, and console shifted auto.
Some folks mentioned some other dukes mistakes below, another one I haven’t seen mentioned is the roll cage in some of the cars was obviously plastic. It moves pretty dramatically when people touch it entering/exiting the car.
The only reason I watched that show was named Catherine Bach
How about screeching tires on a dirt road?
Agreed, that is annoying;
Was about to cite the chase scene in Dr No for this. Among other things…
That bothered me for years. Finally, went to Jamaica for Jamaica Motor Rally. On the bauxite roads, when dry they are hard enough to screech tires.
I admit I’ve never noticed the column shifter issue. But I have a couple. One was touched on above.
At least in TV series (less so in the movies), the interior rearview mirror seems to be missing a lot. Especially in a buddy show with the camera looking into the front windshield.
In Perry Mason particularly, when filming a night scene, they would put the headlights on, but use a filter to portray ‘night’. I don’t recall full moon evenings being that bright or that frequent. (My, what prominent shadows everyone has in the parking lot.) That’s because they turned day into ‘night’ for the screen. It actually reminds of the solar eclipse recently, where I was had 97% coverage, it got near dark but everyone still had sharp shadows (sun was above us, not on the horizon like regular twilight). It got better once the 1960s came around.
The car windows are always crystal clear, no matter the age of the car, which leads to … most of the time for exterior shots of other cars in the distance, the windows are almost always down. Why? So the camera can see the occupant(s) as a plot point. If the windows were up, the glare reflection (nowadays, window tint) would obscure the driver occupants. Whoops, missed that stalker or police surveillance team. Who rides with the windows down nowadays, unless their HVAC system is kaput?
We’ve rewatched the entire “Peter Gunn” series on one of the nostalgia cable channels. Everything you say about “Perry Mason” automotive-wise also applies to “Peter Gunn”, but we do get a kick out of seeing all those lovely giant-finned Mopars (there MUST have been a product-placement deal!).
Oh yeah, Peter Gunn’s town is a Forward Look dream land. My favorite fifties detective show. Gunn himself always drove a new convertible with the top down. Here’s an IMCDB link to some of the cars of “Peter Gunn”.
A movie set in 1973 and there goes a Chrysler Cordoba
Or just about every car is a full-size 1973 Chevrolet as in the James Bond movie Live and Let Die.
America, the way GM expects it to be when they are paying the bill…
Freeway scene, nothing but GM products, also no headrests in CTS: https://youtu.be/L8OZpmIWcxg
And in the original Blade Runner in the future there are no flat screen TVs :O
Steven Seagal movies were bad for the shift lever in park, not that I watch any of his movies now, but back 10 years or so i used to, countless times he’d chase someone in a tahoe and the lever in park, sliding around or shooting out the window. Never mind that he had a stunt double for his takedowns.
One of my biggest movie pet peeves is in Smokey And The Bandit 2 where in some scenes where the driver’s side mirror of Smokey’s 1980 Pontiac Bonneville is missing in some scenes and it appears to be intact in others.
Or in 8 Mile which takes place in 1995 but one of the characters was driving a rusted out Ford Escort (mid 80’s model) and the car would’ve likely been 10 years old or newer.
In Fargo (the movie, not the TV Series), the Buscemi’s infamous stolen “tan Ciera”, which plays a major role in the film, changes back and forth between a facelifted 1989 and a pre-facelift 1988, complete with different roofline and taillight design.
Just curious…
Which do you prefer?
I like the latter, myself.
Old one is better – that gloss black panel where the window used to be is awful
I like the face-lifted model much better. The rear-end on the pre-facelift looks stubby in comparison, and I much prefer the cleaner roofline of the 1989-1996.
Also, the Ford Tempo that flips…and the rear wheels keep turning. It’s an ‘84-‘85, so it has to be FWD, not AWD!
Not so much with cars, but with conestoga wagons in a 1930’s western movie.
While being chased by Indians, my father stands up in the theater and yells “ look at the airplane” high in the background when the camera pans to the pursuing tribe.
Dad didn’t get another date with the girl in question. 😚😚
In the James Bond film Goldfinger (my all time favorite), the crushed 2 1/2 ton Lincoln is dropped into the rear of the Ford Ranchero with a service load of 500 lbs.
The Ranchero should be flatten under the load, but Oddjob acts like nothing has happen.
In Goldfinger the TBird that Felix Leiter’s driving loses it’s fender skirts between shots.
In Dr No the Chevrolet Felix drives changes from a 4 door sedan to a 4 door hardtop.
Also it peeves me that Felix is so different in all the Bond films
To be fair, the Lincoln has no engine, trans or radiator. You can see light coming through the grill. That said, still my favourite Bond movie, and favourite Bond.
The Ranchero should flatten under the weight of Oddjob’s hat, if we’re honest.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned the Dukes of Hazzard yet. Interior color changes within a particular scene. But the worst is when the General takes flight. Ok not so much the taking flight as the landing shot, often recycled, where the car gets significantly bent, yet still outruns Rosco and shows zero sign of body damage.
I did, but you beat me by two minutes!
Not to mention stacked headlight Furys that randomly change to round headlights, or even AMC Matadors. Every time I catch an episode I ask myself “was the editor asleep when they showed that landing??? The general lee and it’s occupants have clearly died!”
I think Dukes contains every single peeve mentioned so far!
I am enjoying the comments a lot. I remember some of these and many I just head about.
Deniro in Ronin I noticed the first of the 10 or so times I’d seen it. But I figured it was Deniro, so whatever he is doing must be correct and is just over my head. That movie also has a scene where a big Audi is chasing and about to overtake a Citroen and for some reason doesn’t. But its still one of my favorite movies.
Fast and Furious movies are always blah. Everybody scowling, dirty and sweaty in precise ways and the cars are obnoxious. Vin or Van or Vippity-Voo Diesel is annoying, too. Can’t understand half of what he says. Plus he made those “Brudduh-huud of mussoh” ads for Dodge. Ugh. Take him back, too, Tom Petty…
I’ve seen too many car errors in classic TV to count. From the Dukes being chased by a Monaco, then an older Monaco, then a Matador, then a Satellite, then a current Monaco again. All in one or two scenes. Knight Rider’s KITT doing about 40 while the speedo shows 200 or so. Jim Rockford’s cars changing years scene to scene, but this may be because they were “over-edited” at some point for reruns and some effort was made to replace some of the running time by using stock footage. I dunno.
Oh yeah, Hunter. It deserves it’s own paragraph. So many 80s GM crapboxes doing insane speeds and stunts. The stunt drivers on that show were top-notch. So were the ones on The Fall Guy. Damn truck is somehow always tail heavy like the Smokey And The Bandit T/A and lands on all four wheels. I think this is unrealistic. With my first car, an ’82 Mustang, I jumped a small hill at 45 mph and the front was ready to dig itself to China, and it didn’t even have a heavy V8 in it.
Wow I watched a lot of crap as a kid!
I’m getting the feeling TV and movies might not have been reality. Bummer.
Those Vin Diesel Dodge ads actually made my stomach hurt, I love muscle cars and like the Dodge lineup, but I never felt more ashamed to admit it than when that specific ad campaign was running!
Hunter was a recent discovery to me, one of those retro channels started running marathons of it last year and it quickly became a guilty pleasure watch for me. Hammy acting, cliche angry captain, and the car chases, my god! They could catch 15 feet of air going over a speedbump, yet cars would explode from a .38 revolver bullet ricochet!
Kitt’s turbo boost never made sense to me, it makes kit jump what in those words means “jump”? Why not just call it “jump”?
Fall Guy + many others – bullet goes through tailgate, trunk, back window, then ceases to exist.
In the movie “The Ghost Writer” , the protagonist (the Ghost Writer) gets into a 2003 Lincoln Town Car with the antagonist (the former British Foreign Secretary). There is the distinct sound of a diesel engine emanating from under the hood when the Ghost Writer exits the Lincoln.
Since the movie originated from Germany, not sure if the sound crew presumed all luxury cars had diesels (aka BMW, Audi, MB), or they were having fun with the audience. The Lincoln scene take place in the US.
I don’t know if anyone’s mentioned it but how instances containing technical jargon by the characters? 9/10 times it sounds like the writers picked up a workshop manual and picked out cool sounding words and abbreviations.
My top two examples:
The first fast and the furious is notorious, with flammable NOS(and the pronunciation), and “danger to manifold” on the tuning laptop that somehow led to the floorboard falling off. “Granny shifting, not double clutching like you should”.
I love the Mad Max movies, but there is dialogue with the mechanic who built the pursuit special boasting “sucks nitro” “phase IV heads” “ “twin overhead cams”. First of all, there is no way it is fueled by nitromethane based on anything we see, let alone the circumstances of a post apocalyptic setting, and no there’s no evidence nitro refers to nitrous since the clutch activated blower(also nonsense movie tech) is the only thing presented for a speed boost. Second of all, Phase IV heads must refer to the cancelled Phase IV Falcon GT, ok, fine, I don’t know if the heads were actually anything special vs standard 4V on those but whatever, it’s rare and would support the “how the hell did you put this together” line… but twin overhead cam makes ZERO sense in this context, pick one or the other: either it has rare Phase IV heads or it has twincam heads from something else somehow cobbled onto the 351 block, it can’t be both!
It’s one thing to have inept car conversations in a hallmark Christmas movie “Oh no, I ran out of blinker fluid in my old truck and how I’m stuck in this small town with this hunky carpenter I met through the holidays!” but in a car centered movie it’s like a punchline to a good portion of the audience.
To be fair, “danger to manifold” made for a funny Internet meme.
I think a secondary reverser gearbox to allow a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VII to go backwards in direct gear would be a pretty unique selling feature.
Woo! Brian O’Connor school of driving! How ’bout them apples, man?
Matt, I think you are correct that the Phase IV heads refer to the still born Falcon XA GT-HO Phase IV. These cars were to have different heads than the Phase III cars, which used the US made 4V closed chamber quench heads. Finding reliable information on these cars is difficult, but I did find this description of the Phase IV heads:
“What made the phase 4 different to ALL the other GTs was the revision of the cylinder head combustion chambers.( PHASE 4 HEADS ).
The shaping had been changed to give much better breathing ,flow and volume around the inlet valves. It reduced compression slightly, but made the engine more efficient, torquier and spread
the torque over a much wider power band. It came in strongly a full 1000 rpm lower than the phase 3.
The new combustion chamber shape improved fuel consumption slightly, too.”
Based on this description, it sounds like these could have potentially been the 4V heads with open chambers and the smaller valves (D3 castings introduced in late 1972 for 1973 MY). They used the smaller 2.06 valves, but actually flowed very well compared to the 2.19″ valves due to the valves being more unshrouded.
Great info, I figured if anyone knew it would be you! I only have a cursory knowledge of the phases, I had assumed it was more of the chassis upgrades that separated the phase IV from the standard GT.
Still not twin overhead cams!
All of the ones mentioned have been pet peeves of mine as well, but one that gets me, and its admittedly something my overanalytical brain gets cheesed about. Stock car clichés and the complete lack of semblance to them belonging there.
What do I mean by this? Giving the hero a big awesome performance car, the bad guys all drive stock black cars that are high end, the loser character driving a “Loser car”, hot chick drives a convertible, etc, etc, etc, ad infinitum. I get why these are tropes, normally they don’t bother me too much, but it does when its so blatantly ill-fitting or unoriginal that its irksome. Like the character driving a badass performance car, I would go “Why is he driving it? What is it about his personality that makes him seem like the sort of person to own that car? Does the image the car conjures up fit the image of the character?” Sometimes, there is an explanation for all of this and I’m fine with it. But other times, it’s clear the writer’s answer to those questions basically boils down to “Uh, uh, e- SHUT UP!! Just enjoy the cool car!!”
Speaking as someone who likes to write fiction in his spare time, I often ask myself the question of, “if this person existed in real-life, what sort of car would they reasonably drive?” Something minor to someone else is very important to me, because you can tell who actually was thinking the writing through and who was just using any excuse to put in visual eye candy (Which, come to think of it, describes the vast majority of Hollywood in the past 15 years). As much of escapist fantasy there is to films and TV, its important to have some identifiable traits in the fictional people we’re following.
Basically what it boils down to: don’t just put cool cars in your movie for an excuse to put cool cars in your movie. Because at some point, I’m going to stop caring about that sort of thing if you’re so blatant about it. There’s only so many times a so called “rebel” or “alt” character is seen driving a red convertible 65 Mustang before it starts feeling contrived.
I remember watching a “Man From UNCLE” episode back in the mid-sixties. There was a car chase with the bad guys driving a (then) late model Plymouth. When it came time for the climatic wreck the bad guys car had turned itself into an early fifties Plymouth, roughly the same shade of green as the new one. And yes, the car that tumbled down the hill was exploding all the way.
Even companies that should have known better were guilty of things like this. Back when Firestone was the tire sponsor (and only tire choice) for the Indianapolis 500 they would annually produce a 60 minute film showing the highlights from practice, qualifying and the race itself. I can remember watching these and being fascinated by the sounds of tires squealing on pavement while the car was actually spinning through the infield grass.
My favorite is how the Illinois Nazis can bend the space-time continuum. They’re chasing the Blues Brothers through the streets of Chicago in their Red Pinto wagon, suddenly they pass the Blues Brothers and launch off of a bridge of a never completed highway in Milwaukee, and then find themselves falling 20,000 feet over central Chicago, landing by creating a grave-like impression into the asphalt somewhere near River North…Oh and the red pinto wagon changes from a pre-74 bumper to post-74 bumper and back again throughout the chase through space and time, and their buddies in the large green casket-shaped ford wagon follow into the grave dug for them…interesting how fords were used by these guys…a nod to the racist leanings of Henry, no doubt.
I’m curious about the never completed Milwaukee highway. I thought I recognized that section of highway in Chicago, near McCormick Place. But I may have that all screwed up, because it’s so long ago. I love how it was SO high in the air!
Did you know they actually dropped a real car over a large area used for storing winter salt and stuff? The camera angles hide how far away from the loop it is. They had to do aerodynamic tests and everything, because no one knew how a car would move through the air when dropped from such a height. They didn’t want it to move diagonally miles off course.
I never thought of the Nazi-sympathizing of Henry Ford being why the Illinois Nazis drove Ford cars. I just thought it was because Ford wagons were so uncool at the time. I think they’re kind of cool now. A little bit. But Nazis still suck.
In the Pinto drop you can actually catch a glimpse of the island used to store materials that it actually hit.
I lived in Wisconsin at the time. Finishing the Milwaukee highway was postponed due to lack of funds. It jokingly became known as the “Highway to Nowhere”. It was eventually finished.
In the “Blues Brothers” movie a total of 6 Pinto wagons were dropped from a helicopter or large crane (I can’t remember which)for that scene. They all had to be balanced so they would remain upright during the drop. This was from an article I read in the Milwaukee Journal or Sentinel. The papers were not merged together at the time.
Bob
Thanks for the B.B. info everyone. I learn something new everyday.
I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes from the movie:
“Hut! Hut! Hut! Hut! Hut!”
Ha ha, in a weird way, all the crazy substances that they ingest in Fear and Loathing, the car being in park makes sense in an ass backwards, “you must be high” type of way, where right is wrong and everything is upside down…..even if that extends to the continuity and details people that were working on the film.
In magnum force the taxi scene starts out as a 63 chev and then the interior becomes a 72 ford. always noticed the shape of the rear side window was wrong for a 63 chev even with all the crazy going on in the cab. and the upholstery changed.
I recall seeing the Bob Hope movie “Beau James” made around 1956; takes place in Mayor Jimmy Walker’s 1920s New York City. There is a big parade and Walker is walking in the parade. At one point we see a 1956 Cadillac on a side street.
Budgets must’ve gotten bigger. In older films you could almost bet which cars would crash or burn.
During a rollover scene, when the underbelly shows, ever notice how often the powertrain is missing?
A burning high-end car? Chances are in the flames will be the silhouette of a not-so-pricey job.
Rollover – the Needham Rocket – another Kollyfornya law? Cars MUST be equipped with cannon to fire chunk of utility pole @ pavement? See: McQ. One movie had a bus rolling over, showing two utility pole cannons, smoking, with chunks of utility pole sailing around.
Several years ago there was a commercial (I forgot the product, maybe yogurt?) featuring two women driving down the road in a red ‘65 or ‘66 Mustang convertible. There were prominent red diagonal straps across the women’s torsos that were obviously not actual shoulder harnesses, and simply put in place to make it appear that the maker of the product wasn’t promoting irresponsible behavior.
Another peeve is hard braking accompanied by the sound of screeching tires, when the character is driving a modern car with ABS.
My observation is in contemporary TV shows if a scene features a car about 10-20 years old in it that car WILL be destroyed during that show or scene.
One of the more famous examples of a different car being destroyed was at the climactic end of the cult-classic Vanishing Point when what is supposed to be a white 1970 Dodge Challenger running at high speed into a bulldozer blade was obviously a white 1967 Camaro carcass being slowly towed into the bulldozer.
I was about to comment on this
It’s actually fairly convincing and well done until they showed the firefighters, police and onlookers scavenging through wreck during the end credits, there you spot glaringly obvious things like the 67 vent windows and silver painted steel wheels.
Up too the credits though you can only clearly tell it’s a Camaro in one frame and it’ll take a few pause attempts to catch it, the flat plain hood flipping through the air over the bulldozers after the explosion is the most obvious part, otherwise it’s a white blur in real time or obscured by flames. Other than the end credits close ups I’d rank Vanishing Point as one of the best examples of model substitution, E bodies look like first gen F bodies when squinting, and that’s exactly how they filmed it.
This trick was also done in the Australian film Running on Empty, one of the star cars was a Dodge Challenger, the film ends with it being driven flat out into a concrete wall, the actual car destroyed was a 70s fuselage 4 door Valiant with the B pillars cut out, haven’t seen the film for years but I think it was fairly convincing when playing the film at actual speed, but obvious when you play it at slow speed.
Someone may have mentioned the instances when the interior and exterior of a car in a scene that cuts back and forth are not the same car.
When a car in a period movie is supposed to be nearly new yet has wrong hubcaps, or is painted some modern color or has some other unusual “classic car” mod done to it. I recall back in the 70s there was a miniseries called The Autobiography Of Miss Jane Pittman. There was a reporter driving a rented 1963 Ford Galaxie hardtop. It was wearing those cool flat Ford hubcaps that were used in the early 70s.
One specific example – the show Burn Notice that prominently featured the 73/74 Charger, black with white interior. It had a white steering wheel. Aaaaagggh. Lots of 1970s cars offered white interiors. None of them had a white dash or steering wheel. The wheel/dash/carpet was always black or some other normal color.
Kollyfornya Highway Patrol specified white steering wheels.
The missing windscreen in Al Bundy’s Dodge. If memory serves the Fox Mustang he won had the same problem. And speedo and tacho needles not moving when the car is supposed to be.
Windshields were regularly removed from vehicles used in interior film stages to avoid light reflections on the glass.
If you look carefully at the 1955 Pontiac convertible used for several episodes of I Love Lucy, you can see that the wraparound windshield has been removed.
1 – Convertibles with tops down when it’s obviously cold.
2- Never shutting car doors. Just leaving them hanging open.
3 – Squealing tires on dirt roads doing 40 mph.
4 – Actors who consciously try to act like they’re driving the car by constantly working the steering wheel while the projection screen shows they’re on a straight road.
My favourite ever was the Charlie’s Angels episode where Jaclyn Smith’s character discovers a bomb’s been planted in her Mustang II. To save blowing up the more “valuable” new Mustang, it’s replaced for the explosion shot with a ’65 (or so) model, tarted up to make it look like it’s a ’74. Talk about irony.
Too bad the new Charlie’s Angels couldn’t get their hands on a Mustang Mach-E, they could have duplicated this scene using an older Infiniti FX SUV or a RAV4 as a stand in!
Or maybe they did, like everyone else I didn’t see it. Ba dum tss.
Cars are ubiquitous in our world today, and hence have become ubiquitous in movies that take place on Earth in the 20th or 21st centuries. But many people don’t really notice, know about or even care about cars, and I think that extends to film makers. What bugs us is not something they even notice, like the folks who think their non-GM-powered XJ Cherokee has a 4.0 V6 or put snow chains on the front wheels of their rental Mustang. My personal pet peeves:
– Random use of seat belts, even now, even with kids in the back of minivans in sitcoms. Though maybe this is more realistic than I think. Also, scenes where the driver and passenger seem to have put their seat belts on and off as the camera cuts between them.
– Ease of breaking into and hot wiring a late model car. Or, if it fits the pacing better, the frequency of finding an unlocked car with the keys in it, just when the hero (or bad guy) needs to escape. Or, similarly, the ability of the escaping hero to extract their keys from their pocket while running at top speed, putting them in the ignition and starting up while under a hail of bullets. Though modern keyless/push button starting will make this easier.
Don’t forget – grab two wires from under the steering wheel/dashboard, with insulation conveniently stripped away, touch together = sparks, engine starts & runs.
Not automotive per se, but the principle holds. In the Marx Brothers’ Go West, the train that Groucho, Chico and Harpo are chopping up to provide fuel is drawn by a locomotive of a 2-8-0 wheel arrangement. When the train careers off the track, the loco has a 0-4-4-0 arrangement. (One assumes it’s a dummy loco with a truck hidden beneath the bodywork.) Once it returns to the track, it reverts to the 2-8-0. .
While verisimilitude and the Marx Bros aren’t always close bedfellows, the jump here is particularly egregious!
That they went through the effort to build window frames ( to be used in the stunts for grabbing ), and added them onto this challenger Vs simply using a car that just natively had them in Death Proof.
Top pic makes it look like the driver’s about to shift that three-on-the-tree from second to high with a flourish…
It all started with the earliest Westerns, when the stage coach would pull out of Gopher Gulch at a full gallop, and then arrived at Possum Plantation, 24 miles away still under a full gallop. It makes driving a car in park seem realistic.
In addition to always galloping, riders jump onto an untied horse, gallop away, arrive at their destination and jump off without tying it, later to return to the horse standing in EXACTLY the same spot where it was left.
In most cases the rider would be walking if he did that. Horses don’t have a gear selector with a “park” position.
And then there’s constantly allowing the horse to rear, horses that magically change their markings from scene to scene, and whinnying all the time to “talk” to humans.
Hero jumps off of second story balcony without looking. Lands in saddle of horse in perfect position, rides away. Nice the horse was in that particular place. Feel free to make “Ow! My Balls!” reference.
My biggest automotive movie pet peeves?
– The Thermoquad/17-speed automatic transmission always kicking down and upshifting sound effect as used on cars with less than 8 cylinders (see a typical episode of ‘CHiPs: nothing like a woodgrain-equipped Pinto wagon going ‘whoOOOOOOM!! when puttering along at 35 mph)
– no matter what make, every car has a Chrysler starter.
– You-can’t-get-there-from-here car chases (just ask any Seattle-ite watching the John Wayne movie ‘McQ’)
-Sirens blaring and engine on full boil, yet every police officer in a pursuit can actually hear the radio (and calmly pick up the microphone and use it while pursing someone down Mulholland Drive…)
– The Magical Self-Healing Bodywork….plow into a phone pole, fender is wadded up. Next scene? Magically healed.
-Every Jeep, no matter how new, always gets the WWII Army jeep engine sounds dubbed in.
-Downshifting 2 gears to pass someone at Daytona……
Mannix always amused me; appearing at the last possible moment to rescue the damsel in distress; the more hurry he was in; the further away he would park the mopar; then run in!
The Movie ” Mud” was a good example of a two stroke dirt bike sounding like a four stroke, marring a otherwise great movie.
Maximum Overdrive has a scene where a Beetle had ran into a tree and there was steam coming from the front of the car.
Other than that, it seems like every time a character is in a classic car, it gets destroyed. Does Hollywood have some vendetta against old cars? I always cringe when I see a main character in something old.
Check out movies from 1950s, 1960s, quite a few Jaguars run off of cliffs. This includes English movies. Clutch, head gasket issues?
The implication that cars — regular, non-Bondian vehicles — are a whole lot more bulletproof than they actually are. Movies routinely imply that ducking behind a car door will stop bullets, which is as dubious as the “car-related damage always causes flames and explosions” trope. I could buy that something in the door might conceivably stop A handgun bullet (it got lodged in the window motor or something), but not that car bodies would provide any reliable protection otherwise.
Mythbusters did a segment about this. True, not a good place to hide from bullets.
Weirdest part is in the same movies the characters hide behind their door shield, there’s a high probability they’ll manage to shoot through panels to blow up the gas tank or damage the engine in another scene.
Screeching tires on perennially WET streets, with no sign of the “rain” on car bodies or windshields, car pulls up at night, driver shuts off engine and gets out leaving headlights on and/or doors left open, cars involved in MAJOR accidents and the characters jumping out with no discernible injuries!!
“driver shuts off engine and gets out leaving headlights on”
This. You see it all the time. They leave the car, often in the middle of nowhere, do their business elsewhere and do not worry about the lights. In such surroundings you might worry that the battery is full enough to restart the engine.
Someone said it before – hot-wiring a car. Even in fairly new cars. A grab under the dash, three seconds with some wires and hey presto.
When they twist those two wires to start a car I always wonder how that magically unlocked the steering column.
At one time my job required for me to travel overnight occasionally. I think it was 1986 or 87 when I was staying in a Holiday Inn in Crawfordsville, Indiana with several coworkers. One evening one of the women told me at dinner that the other coworker at our table was afraid to drive her ’83 Olds 88 because she was afraid that it would explode. Someone had backed into it in the parking lot and slightly bent the rear bumper and quarter panel. I told her that she had been watching too much TV and that if life was like those shows the countryside would be littered with burned out cars. Then I told her I was not afraid to drive it and proved so by doing several laps around the lot. To make her happy I also made a big show of getting down and checking the gas tank for damage of which there was none.
Don’t get me started on all the wrong ideas people have about fire sprinklers thanks to Hollywood.
In “White Lightning” Gator McCluskey drives that 71 or 72 big Ford with the interceptor engine and 4-speed, but when he pulls up and stops anywhere he puts the column shifter in park. I noticed this when the movie came out in 1973 when I was 16. Never understood this till I understood it was movie-making magic.
If you pay really close attention you’ll notice that the Interior 4-speed shifting shots as well as the shot of the engine are both from a 1971 Mustang. Note the shock towers a BOF Ford Custom wouldn’t have when they pop the hood.
Can’t believe I’m the only one to mention this but it’s bugged me for years – headlights left on! How many times do cars get parked, turned off, and exited in the movies and on TV with the headlights left on? So odd and annoying!