10 Sci-Fi Movie Mistakes You Never Noticed Before
Blank newspapers! Self-drying clothes! Magic mouthpieces! England in South Africa!
Sometimes a mistake or two manages to slip by even the most careful filmmakers.
Directors are busy people, so it’s understandable that most productions let a goof or two escape their grasp during the complex process of creating a feature film. Regardless of the movie's scope and the crew's size, nearly every film will end up with at least a few mistakes that canny viewers are able to single out upon a re-watch.
That said, of all genres sci-fi films really can’t afford too many missteps.
A famously ambitious genre whose entire premise requires world building, faraway galaxies, and alternate realities, the slightest slip up in a sci-fi film can derail the film’s attempt to create a believable world for its action.
Despite this, there are countless examples of classic sci-fi films that let a few mistakes escape their grasp on the way to the silver screen. Call it a lack of oversight, a slip up in the editing suite, or just a hilarious goof that everyone missed out on in post-production.
Whatever the cause, this list is here to run down the oddest oversights and most unexpected mistakes that you never noticed in big budget sci-fi films.
10. The Thing - Breaking Down The Door
To be fair to John Carpenter, the man had a lot of plates spinning when he filmed 1982's The Thing.
Featuring some of the most impressive practical effects work ever committed to film, the intense Antarctic-set paranoid sci-fi horror sees a small crew of scientists infiltrated by a body-hopping alien monster. The tense plot works thanks to some fantastic character work by the sparse cast, but it's Rob Bottin's incredible effects that are the star of this show.
Endlessly impressive, these gory innovations saw the technician hospitalised for exhaustion due to the incredible hours he put into them during shooting.
So it's understandable that some small background details were ignored during the shoot.
Take the scene late in the film wherein Childs axe a doors to bits, breaking a huge hole in its centre.
When he comes back later?
The hole is tiny and in a totally different area, prompting him to hack at the door all over again. Wouldn't have been necessary if you'd just stuck with the same prop you used in the earlier scene, Childs.