Gun 'mistakes' in Books, TV, and Movies - feel free to post your own

[Jago668]

There was so much wrong with Ant Man though.

[Skiprr]

Not goin' back to watch it again, but I think there was another scene in Ant Man where he, in his diminutive state, leaps up over the muzzle and onto the slide of a Glock immediately after it's fired...except that--despite the slow-mo muzzle flash--the slide never moves.

Oh, and how about the scene where the guy sitting in the helicopter grabs a nickel-plated 92FS and, on the third shot, manages to hit Ant Man's flying steed amidst a huge swarm of other flying ants buzzing in and still yards away. Man, if I could shoot a flying ant out of the air at 10 yards...

On all the hammer-cocking and slide-racking sounds effects, I've become convinced that, if it's the sound only, it's the director, the editor, and the foley artist having some beers in a studio and adding all the clicking and racking in post-production. That even if a film hires (and listens to) a firearms consultant, once he and the actors have gone home the doofuses can get crazy all on their own with no one to correct them. Kinda like it's almost inevitable that they consider silence anywhere to be a vacuum, so even in scenes where your skilled operator is being ultra-stealthy, they always make it sound like he or she is wearing tap shoes and clacking across a wooden floor.

[LSUTiger]

All guns are Glocks.

Recently I was watching one of those who true story cold case files crime drama TV shows.

In the show they identified the murder weapon was a .38 Spl Revolver and they kept showing a guy using a Glock in the re-enactment. What worse is I don't think Glock was even on the market yet at the time of the crime!

[Jago668]

Not goin' back to watch it again, but I think there was another scene in Ant Man where he, in his diminutive state, leaps up over the muzzle and onto the slide of a Glock immediately after it's fired...except that--despite the slow-mo muzzle flash--the slide never moves.

Oh, and how about the scene where the guy sitting in the helicopter grabs a nickel-plated 92FS and, on the third shot, manages to hit Ant Man's flying steed amidst a huge swarm of other flying ants buzzing in and still yards away. Man, if I could shoot a flying ant out of the air at 10 yards...

On all the hammer-cocking and slide-racking sounds effects, I've become convinced that, if it's the sound only, it's the director, the editor, and the foley artist having some beers in a studio and adding all the clicking and racking in post-production. That even if a film hires (and listens to) a firearms consultant, once he and the actors have gone home the doofuses can get crazy all on their own with no one to correct them. Kinda like it's almost inevitable that they consider silence anywhere to be a vacuum, so even in scenes where your skilled operator is being ultra-stealthy, they always make it sound like he or she is wearing tap shoes and clacking across a wooden floor.

Not even just the gun stuff. The you shrink but retain the same mass. So how are you jumping off bullets, how was the guy able to still hold his pistol with you running on it? How was Dr Prym able to walk around with a tank on his keychain if it still weighed the same?

[Flightmare]

Not goin' back to watch it again, but I think there was another scene in Ant Man where he, in his diminutive state, leaps up over the muzzle and onto the slide of a Glock immediately after it's fired...except that--despite the slow-mo muzzle flash--the slide never moves.

Oh, and how about the scene where the guy sitting in the helicopter grabs a nickel-plated 92FS and, on the third shot, manages to hit Ant Man's flying steed amidst a huge swarm of other flying ants buzzing in and still yards away. Man, if I could shoot a flying ant out of the air at 10 yards...

On all the hammer-cocking and slide-racking sounds effects, I've become convinced that, if it's the sound only, it's the director, the editor, and the foley artist having some beers in a studio and adding all the clicking and racking in post-production. That even if a film hires (and listens to) a firearms consultant, once he and the actors have gone home the doofuses can get crazy all on their own with no one to correct them. Kinda like it's almost inevitable that they consider silence anywhere to be a vacuum, so even in scenes where your skilled operator is being ultra-stealthy, they always make it sound like he or she is wearing tap shoes and clacking across a wooden floor.

Not even just the gun stuff. The you shrink but retain the same mass. So how are you jumping off bullets, how was the guy able to still hold his pistol with you running on it? How was Dr Prym able to walk around with a tank on his keychain if it still weighed the same?

Not to mention, how would he even be able to fly on an ant? Every ant I've ever tried to set foot on got squished.

[Noggin]

OK I have a few old ones to add here:

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - the final shoot out scene the camera cuts between their faces, their guns and their hands. Here we see they are all armed with Cap and ball revolvers, OK those would be approximately historically correct. Now for the "buts" They have belt loops for metal brass cartridges, to be fair rim-fire cartridges though not common did exist back then but would be no use with their wheel guns. However I don't think rimless centre=fire brass like 9mm shown on the belt was too common back in the 1860s IF that were not bad enough none of the nipples on the cylinders of the revolvers had any caps fitted, which would have made for a very quiet gun fight. To further compound the error the "Ugly" asks Eastwood when he unloaded his gun after several attempts to shoot and hearing it go click. You think he might have noticed the lack of caps on the nipples before the showdown. If on the other hand, Eastwood had simply taken the trouble to dig all the balls out of the chambers and pour out the powder to render the gun harmless, he would have needed to leave caps on the nipples so that it still looked ready for use. In which case there would have been a bit more than a click when it was fired.

Live and Let Die - I am working from memory so some details are not totally clear Bond is about to board a boat when girl in a bikini grabs a revolver (not sure about the make and model might have been .41 S&W with 4" tube) and threatens Bond with it. He then proceeds to snatch it out of her hands telling her that she forgot to release the safety catch, while I may not be sure of the make or model one thing I am certain of is that it was not a Webley-Fosbery, which is the only revolver I know of with thumb safety.

There was a Japanese movie back in the 80s I can't remember the title when a group of soldiers referred to a .50 cal as 50mm machine gun, to be fair that could have just been lost in translation.

I think I may wander a bit off topic at the moment to try and explain some cultural references. I was very conscious that people of my parents and grand parents generation would frequently refer to a semi auto as a revolver, furthermore they would generally only use the term pistol to refer to a single shot muzzle loaded handgun. This habit was also common in British books, movies, early TV shows and radio etc. I think these errors are to some extent mirror firearms evolution and gun control in the UK. In age of single shot or double barrelled pistols there was no gun control in the UK, there was little need such things were expensive toys and most common criminals could achieve their ends just as well with blades or clubs which did not need reloading. OK there were a few exceptions like “Dick Turpin” but his type were rare. With the advent of revolvers gun control remained a non-issue in the UK until just before the end of the 19th Century. By this time for most people the default handgun was a revolver and thus the term was used for any one handed gun. At this time semi autos were both rare and invariably of foreign manufacture. Then politicians started to get the jitters about anarchists and revolutions. It was from that time onwards that a steady increase in restrictions and licensing began to develop. As a result there was no real increase in gun ownership if anything there was a steady decline. Therefore the semi auto never became as well established in the culture and most people continued with the late 19th Century habit of calling any multi shot handgun a “revolver”

Strangely enough in the British military the situation is almost reversed – the term “pistol” is used generically to refer to any sort of handgun be it revolver or semi auto, the latter two terms being used a sub-categories of pistol.

[Jusme]

OK I have a few old ones to add here:

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - the final shoot out scene the camera cuts between their faces, their guns and their hands. Here we see they are all armed with Cap and ball revolvers, OK those would be approximately historically correct. Now for the "buts" They have belt loops for metal brass cartridges, to be fair rim-fire cartridges though not common did exist back then but would be no use with their wheel guns. However I don't think rimless centre=fire brass like 9mm shown on the belt was too common back in the 1860s IF that were not bad enough none of the nipples on the cylinders of the revolvers had any caps fitted, which would have made for a very quiet gun fight. To further compound the error the "Ugly" asks Eastwood when he unloaded his gun after several attempts to shoot and hearing it go click. You think he might have noticed the lack of caps on the nipples before the showdown. If on the other hand, Eastwood had simply taken the trouble to dig all the balls out of the chambers and pour out the powder to render the gun harmless, he would have needed to leave caps on the nipples so that it still looked ready for use. In which case there would have been a bit more than a click when it was fired.

Live and Let Die - I am working from memory so some details are not totally clear Bond is about to board a boat when girl in a bikini grabs a revolver (not sure about the make and model might have been .41 S&W with 4" tube) and threatens Bond with it. He then proceeds to snatch it out of her hands telling her that she forgot to release the safety catch, while I may not be sure of the make or model one thing I am certain of is that it was not a Webley-Fosbery, which is the only revolver I know of with thumb safety.

There was a Japanese movie back in the 80s I can't remember the title when a group of soldiers referred to a .50 cal as 50mm machine gun, to be fair that could have just been lost in translation.

I think I may wander a bit off topic at the moment to try and explain some cultural references. I was very conscious that people of my parents and grand parents generation would frequently refer to a semi auto as a revolver, furthermore they would generally only use the term pistol to refer to a single shot muzzle loaded handgun. This habit was also common in British books, movies, early TV shows and radio etc. I think these errors are to some extent mirror firearms evolution and gun control in the UK. In age of single shot or double barrelled pistols there was no gun control in the UK, there was little need such things were expensive toys and most common criminals could achieve their ends just as well with blades or clubs which did not need reloading. OK there were a few exceptions like “Dick Turpin” but his type were rare. With the advent of revolvers gun control remained a non-issue in the UK until just before the end of the 19th Century. By this time for most people the default handgun was a revolver and thus the term was used for any one handed gun. At this time semi autos were both rare and invariably of foreign manufacture. Then politicians started to get the jitters about anarchists and revolutions. It was from that time onwards that a steady increase in restrictions and licensing began to develop. As a result there was no real increase in gun ownership if anything there was a steady decline. Therefore the semi auto never became as well established in the culture and most people continued with the late 19th Century habit of calling any multi shot handgun a “revolver”

Strangely enough in the British military the situation is almost reversed – the term “pistol” is used generically to refer to any sort of handgun be it revolver or semi auto, the latter two terms being used a sub-categories of pistol.

Great post Noggin, we only have a vague estimation of UK gun laws, and restrictions. It's great to have someone here to give first hand info. I had forgotten the James Bond gaffes regarding guns, but looking back, not only were they laughable, but in hindsight I can see that they probably reflected the limited information available in the UK at the time.

[surprise_i'm_armed]

IIRC, when the film about Sergeant York was made, the moviemakers could not get
the gun he used, a 1911, to fire reliably with blanks.

They used a pistol that did fire reliably with blanks....a P08 Luger in 9MM. Horrors!! :-)

SIA

[Noggin]

Great post Noggin, we only have a vague estimation of UK gun laws, and restrictions. It's great to have someone here to give first hand info. I had forgotten the James Bond gaffes regarding guns, but looking back, not only were they laughable, but in hindsight I can see that they probably reflected the limited information available in the UK at the time.

Thanks - another Bond reference at the start of Dr No, bond told to quit using his Beretta .25 (because it is an underpowered "ladies gun") He is for the first time provided with his PPK, which in 7.65mm is described as "having a delivery like a brick through a plate glass window"!!!!!! Ok it was a step up from the .25 but hardly anything to shout about.

I have noticed that it many old b&w movies with stories in a contemporary 30s/40s setting (therefore Westerns excluded) most of the hand guns used by both heroes and villains tended to be much smaller than we see on screen today. OK the S&W Model 29 might not have existed back then but there has to be more than that to the fetish for small handguns in the B&W era.

Oh and what about all those movies and tv shows where they swing out the cylinder of a revolver and spin it whereupon it makes a clicking sound!!!!

[Noggin]

Great post Noggin, we only have a vague estimation of UK gun laws, and restrictions.

Today I thought I would provide a bit more information by starting a new topic in the Off Topic Section.

[dwsintxs]

Found another good 'mistake' in a movie that I watched last night.

The movie is 'Reclaim' with John Cusack. Not a bad movie.
The movie is set in Haiti, and involves a man and his wife adopting a baby, and they pay $100k for the baby, and then find out it's a scam because John Cusak, the bad guy, has stolen the baby back and is about to leave town with all their money. So, the chase is on.

The movie has it's moments. . . BUT, at one point, the hero is tossed into the trunk of a car, along with the body of a dead sheriff and the bad guys are driving the car. . . the good guy tries his best to get out of the trunk, but he's tied up, and the car is moving. Finally,. the car stops and the guy sees the gun in an ankle holster on the dead sheriff.

He grabs the gun, and shoots the lock out of the trunk lid. . .his face is about 12 inches from the gun, which looked to me (I didnt get a good look at it) like maybe an old style walther ppk 380 or something.

But he shoots it, eyes open, a few inches from his face, and hops out of the trunk and starts running after the bad guy.

I would think that he'd have at least closed his eyes when he fired that thing off so close to his face, and I would think that his ears would be ringing for a couple hours. Oh, and also, when he fired it off. . .the muzzle flash looked about like someone using the striker on a bic lighter once without getting any flame. . . .

[HadEmAll]

Not so much a mistake, but always irritates me, is that Clint Eastwood, in every movie where he shoots a handgun, blinks with the shot, whether cowboy or detective.

[KHickam]

Hawkeye (Nathaniel) in the latest Last of the Mohicans using a Bucks country rifle (and the rifle being about 40 yrs too late) and the like "Silk another 40 yards"

[JagsfanNtexas]

Season 2 of the FX show Fargo, I don't remember the episode but it was definitely towards the end of the season, had the bad guy blast a few slugs from a pump shotgun into a hotel room from outside the door. He opens the door and finds the room empty. He starts slowly walking in and slowly cycles out the empty shell to load a new one into the chamber. Only no empty shell falls out, and a new one does not empty the chamber. He had a completely empty shotgun, but still managed to get off several shots after that.

[Vol Texan]

In the Lee Child book Die Trying (Jack Reacher, Book 2), Chapter 1, Page 3, you can read this:

The handgun was a nine-millimeter automatic. It was brand-new. It was oiled. It was held low, lined up right on his hold scar. The guy holding it looked more or less like he knew what he was doing. The safety mechanism was released.

But a few pages later (talking about the same situation, and the same gun pointed at him):

The leader was twisted around in the front seat with his gun hand resting against the thick leather headrest. The gun was pointed straight at Reacher's chest. It was a Glock 17.