When Zimsky is explaining what Project (Deep Earth Seismic Trigger INItiative) is all about, he spells out the project name as an acronym of DESTINI, but just two minutes later, and every instance after that for the entire movie, the text is mistakenly written 'DESTINY'.
(at around 8 mins) During the "pigeon stampede" the taxi windshield is cracked when a pigeon hits it. This causes the driver to swerve onto the sidewalk. Then cut to another angle and as it drives up on the sidewalk, the windshield is no longer cracked.
During the space shuttle crash, when Rebecca is trying to find an alternate landing site, the writing on the maps disappears in the next shot.
(at around 1h 50 mins) When Josh is preparing the last compartment to be ejected, he brings in the fuel rod, sets the timer, and manually ejects the compartment. But, Josh never pulls out the trigger within the bomb after he sets the timer.
(at around 2h) While on the ship at sea looking for Josh and Beck, Rat's hair seems to grow shorter. When Rat is talking with the general inside, his hair is normal length, but when he runs to alert the general about the ultrasonics, his hair is at least an inch shorter.
(at around 1h 30 mins) During the bridge scene the microwave energy can melt through several feet of galvanized carbon steel wire (main cable) and the bridge beams themselves but not through less than 2mm of metal on the car's body shell.
(at around 1h 2 mins) When Virgil first enters free-fall after drilling into the empty space, the characters are all thrust forward in the direction of the fall. Actually since they are in free-fall, they should suddenly become weightless in the cabin as they would fall at the exact same rate as Virgil.
(at around 17 mins) When the space shuttle has to make the emergency landing at the beginning of the film, it retracts its landing gear to fit under a bridge. However, in order to save on weight, the space shuttle landing gear does not have the necessary machinery to retract its landing gear; the gear must be manually returned to its stowed position.
The Virgil crew radio mission control from the mantle/core. Radio waves cannot transmit through the dense Earth. If they used Extremely Low Frequency waves, the transmission rate is poor ( a few characters at a time), and The Virgil would need a huge antennae to pick up the signal.
As a body enters the interior of a large mass, such as the Earth or any other planet, the force of gravity begins to decrease at a linear rate, and reaches zero at the center of the planet. With the ship hovering directly above the inner core the gravitational force would be ~4.55m/s^2, so the actors should fall half as fast as on the surface. (For comparison, the gravity at the surface of the moon's is 1.62m/s^2, and at the surface of the earth is 9.8m/s^2). In the film, they walk around as if under the influence of normal gravity experienced on the surface of the Earth.
(at around 9 mins) When the pigeons are all dying, the people run from Trafalgar Square into a building with large windows at the front. Moments later, we see several birds striking and breaking the windows. If you watch carefully, you will see that at least two of the birds that hit the window are, in fact, fish. This was deliberately put in by filmmakers as an inside joke.
(at around 2h) U.S. Navy aircraft carriers are not equipped with sonar (the only one so equipped had it removed in the early 1980s). The Petty Officer on the bridge says "Combat relay says that our sub has something on the sonar", the aircraft carrier doesn't have the sonar; it is being relayed via CIC from a sub.
Virgil's compartments are designed to eject automatically when damaged. Braz says he didn't have time to design a way to eject undamaged compartments. But later, Josh ejects the final compartment by pushing a button clearly marked, "Emergency Compartment Ejection."
(at around 53 mins) When Virgil is falling through the water it is clearly traveling at high speed, yet the digital depth gauge is counting feet at about 4 per second (490, 491, 492, 493, 494, etc) which is less than 3 mph.
In the final credit/end scene of the earth rotating and going from night to day, the planet is rotating the wrong direction, and the sun is rising in the wrong direction (compared to now, and where you were in that Earth.
The initial image shows Central America and the middle Atlantic, with Florida at the very top, and Africa to the far right, but the day/night terminus is running more EAST/WEST, instead of mostly North/South as it normally does (23 degree tilt). From observations made out of that spinning image, the visible Pole is somewhere in Northern Pakistan and the whole planet has somehow tilted 67 degrees off its' axis.
If the sun rays were really hot enough to melt the hardened steel of the Golden Gate Bridge's deck and cables as depicted, the people in their vehicles would have surely roasted to death and their cars gas tanks, windows and tires exploded long before any damage was done to the bridge itself.
(at around 1h 30 mins) We see a man quickly pull his hand into his car after it gets burnt. In the meantime, shots of other things getting fried are visible, followed shortly by the man looking terrified in the car, while outside, someone walks calmly past. (Not present in the Blu-ray version)
In the credits, Bruce Greenwood's character is listed as "Richard Iverson" when he was actually "Robert Iverson" and frequently referred to as Bob throughout the entire film.
(at around 1h 30 mins) When the Golden Gate Bridge is melting away, one of the main support wires whips back and slams into the car of the guy whose arm was burnt. The audio has him screaming, but if you look in the rear-view mirror, you can see that his mouth is only partially open in the same expression of confusion he had seconds before.
(at around 50 mins) When the crew approaches the launch site where they will descend to the Earth's core, a caption reads, "Marianas Trench - South Pacific". The Marianas Trench is in the North Pacific, east of the Philippines.
(At around 1h 58m) Technician says they found a space between some tectonic plates somewhere near Hawaii, but Hawaii is in the MIDDLE of the Pacific plate (over a geologic "hot-Spot" ... hence the volcanoes). The nearest plate boundaries to Hawaii are actually both 3740 km away, to either the north (Aleutian islands), or NE (San Andreas Fault).
(at around 7 mins) At the start of the Trafalgar Square sequence, the POV from behind the statue of Nelson is toward the National Gallery on the north side of the Square. In fact, the statue of Nelson at the top of Nelson's Column faces the other way (south) down Whitehall.
At around the 13 minute mark, while the Shuttle is approaching L.A, the computer shows "Off course by 129.0276 Miles" from Edwards AFB ... in actual fact it's only 83 miles from the Shuttle runway at Edwards to the coast at Long beach, and only about 65 miles to where they touched down on the LA River. (129 miles would be half way between the islands of San Clemente and Santa Catalina.)
The coordinates given to NASA (33 Deg 55' N, 118 10'W) is actually accurate, the section of river going north from near the Long Beach fwy/Glen Anderson fwy junction, but the computer shows 33 Deg 15' N, 118 10'W ... a point 7.5 miles SE of Santa Catalina Island ... IN THE OCEAN. The actual LANDING coordinates would be 34 02'N, 118 13W, since they SOMEHOW seem to be traveling SOUTH when they touch down at that point.
PS. If they were coming from the North (as indicated by flying over Dodger Stadium), then they OVERFLEW Edwards AFB about 1/2 hour before touchdown ... and if they're coming from the South, why didn't they just turn left and land at LAX ... Nice LONG, STRAIGHT, UNOBSTRUCTED runways, with emergency services readily available. (for HARD runways, 2 miles seems to be the length required, SOFT runways [Edwards AFB dry lake beds, White Sands, etc, require 4 miles) EDIT: The filmmakers had originally planned for a shuttle landing scene at LAX, however, due to the events of September 11, 2001, they were not allowed to film at LAX. The scene was then rewritten with the LA river landing.
PS. If they were coming from the North (as indicated by flying over Dodger Stadium), then they OVERFLEW Edwards AFB about 1/2 hour before touchdown ... and if they're coming from the South, why didn't they just turn left and land at LAX ... Nice LONG, STRAIGHT, UNOBSTRUCTED runways, with emergency services readily available. (for HARD runways, 2 miles seems to be the length required, SOFT runways [Edwards AFB dry lake beds, White Sands, etc, require 4 miles) EDIT: The filmmakers had originally planned for a shuttle landing scene at LAX, however, due to the events of September 11, 2001, they were not allowed to film at LAX. The scene was then rewritten with the LA river landing.
(at around 18 mins) They fly in over Dodger stadium, heading south. Endeavour ends up with sun shining on its port side, indicating its nose is pointed north. The 6th street Bridge (with double steel arch) behind it could not be behind the aircraft because they showed multiple shots of gliding over it as they headed south.
(at around 1h 7 mins) When they're stuck in the geode and realize the lava is going to reach them, there is no reason they can't all retreat to inside the ship. They can clearly see that the lava is melting the crystals, and the ship can easily handle the temperature of the lava. There is no reason to risk anyone's life to continue trying to cut through the crystal that is jamming the lasers.
The sections of Virgil are designed to be detached if they become damaged. What would happen if a large diamond damaged section 3, but all the other sections were fine? You'd have to lose every section behind the damaged pod.
At the end of the film, when the US navy find Virgil, how do they haul it up from 800ft down in the ocean so quickly and how were the navy able to attach salvage cables in such a short space of time? The divers are all wearing wetsuits and aqualungs, so are clearly not deep sea divers. A deep sea salvage at such a depth is far too complex to be done in such a short space of time. It would take days or weeks of planning by which the crew would have run out of oxygen, food and water, and not to mention the problems of dealing with the decompression factor.
Braz tells the crew that their suits can withstand 5,000 degrees. When Josh carries the fuel rod to the compartment, it burns right through his glove. Before Josh shuts down the power to Virgil, a screen reads that the reactor temperature is over 2,OOO degrees. The fuel rod grab handles wouldn't be able to burn through his glove since his suit can withstand 5,OOO degrees.
Brazz tells the crew that the pressure suits can withstand half of the 9,000 degree heat inside the impeller shaft, where he must go to activate the switch that will allow it to detach the sections of the ship one by one. Given that his suit could only withstand 4,500 degrees, then the remaining 4,500 degrees would have killed Brazz and disintegrated him and his suit within only a couple of seconds.
(at around 56 mins) Dr. Zimsky states that he chose the Marianas Trench as the launch location because the crust is thinner there. The Marianas Trench is a subduction zone, where the Pacific plate is being pushed under the Philippine plate. Large amounts of sediments are built up at subduction zones as one plate scrapes the top off the other plate, so the oceanic crust is actually a good bit thicker at the trench. A better location would have been in the middle of a plate, such as near Hawaii.
(at around 35 mins) When Rat is being recruited, he uses a whistle to hack Josh's cell phone, telling him he now has "free long distance for life." However, by the time the movie takes place, not only were all land-line telephone trunk exchanges digital (meaning that temporary free long distance could not accomplished using a 2600 Hertz tone), but any cell phone exchange would be exclusively digital and therefore would not utilize tones as signals to (mechanical) trunk lines. Also, the whistle Rat uses is far lower in pitch than the necessary 2600 Hz.
When Virgil is crashing through the gemstones, it comes to a sudden stop against one. The camera transitions to the interior of the ship and all of the characters except Josh Keys thrust forward. He remains still against his chair, and even appears to say an expletive, knowing he had missed the motion. The camera then pans around the characters, and Josh is sitting much lower in his chair than the previous shot.
The General had 4 stars in the beginning of the movie and three the remainder of the movie.
Dr. Joshua Keyes cannot correctly pronounce the word nuclear.