The internet is really great at drawing wide attention to mistakes that would otherwise likely receive no further notice after you'd finished whispering them into the ear of the guy sitting next to you at the movie theatre. Exhibit A: the community of film-loving posters over at MovieMistakes.com, who have recently assembled a list of small and not-so-small boo-boos in Sam Mendes' 007 effort, Skyfall.
The current error count is at 32—more than half of which relate to problems in the film's continuity. For example, we can blame the costume department for James Bond's mid-scene shoe swap in the heat of some train-top hand-to-hand combat—I assume that stopping to change your footwear would put your enemy at a serious advantage in almost any fight situation. The site also points out a broken windshield that manages to repair 50% of itself between cuts—seems art department was asleep at that particular wheel. There's also blame to be laid at the feet of the script supervisors (Skyfall had three). Their job is to catch mistakes made by other departments. It's an unenviable task. They are supposed to outfox even the most eagle-eyed moviegoer, catching everything from a flubbed line to an improperly increased or decreased level of whiskey in an actor's glass. It's a tough job.
But error-spotting for sport is fun! And I'm not denying that a character's sudden wardrobe change can take you out of the moment and somewhat detract from the overall experience as a viewer. While it's not as though Skyfall contained terrible historical inaccuracies or misrepresentations (you know, like portraying Margaret Thatcher as actually having some redeemable qualities? I'm looking at you, Streep!), when someone gives you $200,000,000 to make a movie, audiences expect you to be on top of things like making sure an actor's sunglasses don't reappear on his face after they've been knocked off in a fight. And a wallet shouldn't be pulled from the right-hand side pocket, when it was slipped into the left earlier on.
Some might say that we should be willing to suspend a little more disbelief, and I do understand that point of view, since nothing ruins a movie like your fascistic movie date (why are you dating that fascist, anyway?) whining about windshields and whiskey labels for two straight hours.
Except maybe an actor's necktie blowing over his right shoulder when clearly, it should be over his left.
