Gun Related STUPID Movie Mistakes

I think we have missed four of the biggest gun related movie mistakes, the Death Wish Sequels.

Death Wish II: Second Verse, Same as the First
Death Wish III: Most Absurd Gunfight Ever
Death Wish IV: Written While Drinking and Watching Scarface
Death Wish V: I Need a Paycheck

Most of what's described in this thread is "typical", par-for-the-course errors.

The most "out there" was the end of Jumanji, where the Great White Hunter couldn't hit anything at close range with an AR-10, and the prominently-and-fearfully displayed suppressor rendered all shots almost silent yet scared everyone in the store silly from the loud noise.

While a bit larger than mere firearms, everytime I watch "Independence Day" and see the F-18's shoot their load of dinky air-to-air missles at an alien spaceship that's *15 miles in diameter* I really have to mash down hard on the "I believe" button.

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I remember thinking the same thing last time I watched that movie. Like trying to bring down an elephant with spit wads.

Not to get off topic too much, but this is one of the funniest sites I've seen in a long while:

http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/mpmain.html

Independence Day gets it's fair share of ribbing . Movies are by title are near the bottom of the main webpage.

For VARifleman and Funderb - Body armor will not always save your bacon from a shotgun. I did a ballistic vest test where I fired two slugs at body armor - see here - one slug penetrated, the other slug did not go through per say, but check out the pictures and you will see that it was not survivable.

As for movies, Blackhawk Down had lots of goofs that you can only see when you slow the film down - http://fateoflegions.blogspot.com/2008/04/movie-guns.html - Like when the Delta Soldier reloads the 1911, the first shot fires and then the slide locked back but the gun keeps on firing anyways. They add the muzzle flashes after the footage is shot.

In We Were Soldiers Sam Elliot did cock the hammer back on the M1911A!, but his finger was on the trigger. You can also clearly see that he was firing before the gun was even raised and he often didn't even aim in the general direction of the BG that he "kills."

Check out the movie WAR. There is some crazy stuff in there, like putting FN FiveSeveN magazines into a Walther P99, 5.7x28mm "Depleted Uranium rounds with titanium cases!" Yeah, good stuff.

Body armor test:

Ouch.

was that level 2? It didn't look like there was a ceramic plate in it, not that level IV vests are readily available...

You should try a standard target arrow at 70# and see hoe it does, I have a hunch that is may poke a better hole without the broad head. Very interesting, thanks.

"The New World". Fortunately, the loading sequences for the matchlocks weren't shown in the flick. I got the skinny from some buddies at Jamestown. Their "musket expert" was telling the actors playing musketeers to prime and load their muskets WITH THE MATCH COCKED, because otherwise it was impossible to load and fire quickly enough. This is basically filling the priming pan with powder, with a burning coal about 1-2 inches away from the pan. Then, with the pan primed and the match still right there, turn the gun muzzle up and pour in more powder.

Never mind that doing it by the book (specifically, Jakob de Gheyn's Wappenhandeling of 1607), any of the Jamestown regulars can load and fire in under 30 seconds. I'm more in the 15-to-18 second range, myself.

What about the whole liberal fantasy of NOT shooting the bad guy at the end?

If someone has just executed a bus full of school children, raped my wife and killed a fellow police officer I have worked with on a daily basis for 12 years.
I am not going to lower my gun and walk away, only to have some pretty girl shoot him in the back when he goes for his back-up gun and tries to shoot me!!

It's these Hollywood twits that have everyone believing you are more likely to get shot with your own gun than kills someone with it or whatever that B.S. Mantra is.

In Saving Private Ryan, one obvious error I saw was that a soldier thumbed the en-block clip into his Garand and then slapped the operating rod handle forward to load the first round. Garands close on loading the clip.

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That was perfectly correct. You almost always have to "bump" the op rod handle to move it forward after thumbing in the clip in an M1, it usually sticks.

I used to wonder about that too, and then I acquired a couple of Garands and invariably have to "bump" the op rod handle to strip the top round off the clip.

Still puzzling over the Private Jackson's removal of the scope from his Springfield-I am guessing they didn't do that routinely?

I also wonder about some of the tactical decisions made. Weren't Jackson and his partner awful vulnerable in that bell tower? Why not just pre-position all the belts of .30 cal. with the machine guns instead of having some soldier schlep them around when needed? Even a non-cowardly soldier would have found it difficult to move it around under fire.

Darn good movie, nonetheless, and a lot less silly than most here.

In True Lies, Arnolds wife drops an Uzi down a flight of stairs. The gun fires full auto the whole time as it tumbles down....

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That was very deliberate parody of the "gun magically kills only bad guys" scenes in these movies, and actually pretty amusing.

It was also a MAC 10 (or variant), not an Uzi.

Transformers: After figuring out one weakness of the alien robots Josh Dumall tells one of his troops to relay that everybody should load "sabot" rounds. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I thought sabot rounds were for shotguns and main-battle tanks? I've never heard of sabot rounds for an M4.

Terminator 2: The famous sceen of Linda Hamilton cocking the shotgun by holding the slide and flipping the shotgun up and then sharply down.

Preditor: The mini-gun scene. The whole scene was fantesy, but the concept that you could carry enough ammo in that dinky back-pack to unload for the 3 minute scene is laughable.

Die Hard: Willis dives across the room shooting 2 Beretta 92's (IIRC), in dramatic slow-mo of corse, and actually hits targets. Meanwhile the bad guys, with full auto weapondry can't hit the fully laid out Willis in mid flight.

Any show that depicts the hero using a snub-nose 2" barrel revolver to drill an escaping convict 187 yards away or down an aircraft.

The obligatory scene where maniac criminal mastermind jams a gun in a hostages face and yells his demands. Then, when the hostage bravely remains silent, the lunatic mad-man, who has likely killed several people by this point in the movie, pulls back the slide on his automatic to chamber a round and repeats his demands. Maybe it's not a mistake, per se, but it doesn't make sense that (1) a raving wild-eyed killer would carry a weapon without a round chambered (2) said killing machine wouldn't have a round chambered when threatening the hostage in the first place (3) that having fired his weapon earlier in the movie, this homicidal killer would then unchamber the round "just to be safe"

OOH, just thought of one.

How about the scene in Batman where the Joker shoots Bruce Wayne at close range and later on Vicky Vale finds the sterling silver tray that had stopped the bullet, what the heck did the Joker fire at him? a .22 short? loud pellet gun maybe?

I'm no physicist, but I've never known silver to be that strong of a metal, let alone an 1/8" thick serving tray; to be able to stop bullets.

LtLabner,

in Transformers, he was referring to their under-barrel grenade launchers.

Terminator 2: The famous sceen of Linda Hamilton cocking the shotgun by holding the slide and flipping the shotgun up and then sharply down.

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Hmmm what was the problem with this one? Dramatic, sure, but I can't see why it wouldn't work. Especially if you only had the use of one arm.

Dope

I remember how in Shooter Mark Wahlberg was firing .50BMG, .408CT, etc with no hearing protection. Furthermore, the dog was standing right beside him and didn't seem to care.

Also, in the Matrix series the various Agent Smith clones use Desert Eagles that have apparently been cured of all recoil.

I've seen several films where optics were not founded properly, particularly on ARs and other military rifles. Backwards EOTechs and Aimpoints are common mistakes.

Some mistakes that seem to be common to most movies:
1. Expending far more rounds than the gun actually holds / never reloading
2. Improper cocking / reloading, particularly on handguns
3. Having huge gun battles with zero hearing protection and being able to hold conversation in the middle of them, with apparently no ill hearing effect afterwards
4. No recoil
5. Firing rifles or SMGs from the hip and being able to hit targets left and right
6. Improper shooting form, for both handguns and long guns

My favorite is the TV shows or movies that show people shooting a handgun who never run out of ammo. They just keep shooting & shooting going through hundreds of rounds without ever needing to reload. Same thing with full auto M-16 assault rifle - they have a 30 round magazine & shoot tens of thousands of rounds without ever reloading. Simply amazing.

4. In Saving Private Ryan, one obvious error I saw was that a soldier thumbed the en-block clip into his Garand and then slapped the operating rod handle forward to load the first round. Garands close on loading the clip.

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The bolt/op-rod in my M1 comes forward about a quarter-inch (enough to let you know the clip was inserted all the way) and stops. One almost always needs to bump the op-rod forward with the heel of one's hand.

It's not 100%, of course, and I've had the bolt close on its own. Fortunately, my thumb hasn't been in the way.

Saving Private Ryan: the infamous scope shot, but hey, that was still cool at least.

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those shots have been proven to be possible

4. In Saving Private Ryan, one obvious error I saw was that a soldier thumbed the en-block clip into his Garand and then slapped the operating rod handle forward to load the first round. Garands close on loading the clip.

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it is not uncommon to slam the operating rod home to ensure a complete load

6. Bullet holes blowing tatters and debris TOWARD the shooter.

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that actually happens in real life... blood for example can spray backwards toward a shooter upwards of 36 inches

How about "Fight Club" when the main character fires the 9mm in his mouth to kill his other/split personality. The imaginary guy gets his head blown away yet main character only has a whole in his mouth. I'm pretty confident a 9mm going off in your mouth would be more than unpleasant.

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ive actually watched that in slow motion several times, the angle of the shot is toward his cheek and the shot blows his cheek out, not his skull... that said, i could imagine that the powder burns would be horrendous...

Terminator 2: The famous sceen of Linda Hamilton cocking the shotgun by holding the slide and flipping the shotgun up and then sharply down.

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works on my 12ga

my favorites are from CSI

the lab tech holds up a little glass jar with the bullet they just took out of a dead guy... says "mmm a .38" ... im fairly sure that it could also be a 9mm and possibly a .380 or a 9x18

another CSI fun one... on CSI Miami, i saw a scene where they showed someone firing an autoloader in slow motion one handed... after the muzzle blast, an unfired round ejects from the gun...

May have been mentioned... I've seen a lot of movies, usually low-budget ones, where someone is shooting a gun where the slide is clearly locked back.

I hate the wrist flick people use to show recoil. Half the time it's out of sink with the firing anyway, like it's the flick that fires the bullet.

Lame. Superlame.

In my fantasy zombie film I want to have the hero making most of the mistakes mentioned. Things like 3 shots out of a double barrel, swapping one gun that clicks empty when it shouldn't for another 2 that do the same, .45 that kill with a flesh wound while 9mm head shots bounce off, stuff like that.

"It's only a fleshwound!"

Die Hard: Willis dives across the room shooting 2 Beretta 92's (IIRC), in dramatic slow-mo of corse, and actually hits targets. Meanwhile the bad guys, with full auto weapondry can't hit the fully laid out Willis in mid flight.

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No such scene in any Die Hard.

At the end of The Bourne Ultimatum, Dr. Hirsch leads Bourne into an interrogation room. Bourne merely raises a Glock pistol to the doctor's head which is accompanied by the Hollywood standard "click-click"

Near the very end of the German film "Downfall" (Der Untergang), a few dozen Waffen SS officers are holed up in a building, waiting for the Russians to come. A look out comes into the room and says "they're here" -- whereupon all of the men spring to their feet, draw their pistols (Walther P38s) and rack the slides.

The idea that none of them would carry a round chambered in a war zone is kind of silly. But not as dramatic I guess.

Probably the most common reason for these humorous errors is the simple fact that most movie guns have no moving parts - like these examples:

I thought dawn of the dead (newer version) did it pretty well aside form a couple things. One would be that there is basically no recoil on the shotgun and that when he ejects the shell it sparks... Another would be when the old woman gets shot like 4 times with a 9mm but still manages to kill the guy.

Gun Goofs in Pvt Ryan

Back to Saving Pvt Ryan, the MG ammo belts in the final village scenes do not have primers in them.