Pocahontas
Sometimes the errors that make it into films are not really visual ones at all and if they’re noticed during production, they may evolve into intentional parts of the story. Take Disney’s 1995 animated romance, Pocahontas, for example. This is a family-friendly version of a classic American tale, cast as a love story. But the historical details it’s based on were very different from what made it into Disney’s movie!
When she met John Smith, the real life Pocahontas was only about 10 years old, so, of course there was no whirlwind romance between the girl and the English colonist. Instead, Pocahontas married a colonist named John Rolfe, but that was after she was kidnapped and brought to live with Rolfe. In fact, by that point Rolfe had changed her name to Rebecca. It was nothing like the romantic affair portrayed in the film.
Families watching the Disney version of the story recognize they’re watching a romantic fairy-tale, but they may not know how many details were so drastically changed.
The writing and directorial decisions in Pocahontas may all have been intentional, or they may have been errors, but sometimes with live-action films like the next one, the practical details of organizing production result in honest mistakes:
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
Eagle-eyed viewers of Terminator 3 may have noticed that two different airplanes played the role of one in the film. Even big budget movies end up borrowing or renting vehicles, locations, and other props according to schedules and other factors that are out of their control and that means if different shots in the same sequence are shot days or months apart, the exact same vehicle may not be available.
In the case of the airplane (above), the tail number on the plane changes three times in the course of the movie! First it appears as N3035C, next it’s N3973F, and later it changes back to N3035C. It’s pretty likely that very few in the audience even noticed the change, as the two planes look virtually identical, otherwise.
But in our next example, the studio staff in charge of costume continuity may not have taken the best notes. See that boo-boo on the next page:
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