Goofs for
2012 (2009/I) More at IMDbPro »

• Revealing mistakes: When Jackson shows his driver's license in Yellowstone Park, his name appears on the card as "Jackson, Curtis." It should be either "Curtis, Jackson" (Last name, First name) or be written without the comma.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: It's explained that the events are happening way before schedule, so this was not taking place in December 2012, but earlier in the year (most likely the summer). Therefore the summer Olympics in London could indeed be happening at the time.
  
  
• Factual errors: The term "mutating neutrinos" is incorrect as mutation is a biological process. The correct term that physicists use is "decaying neutrinos".
  
  

• Factual errors: As the USS John F Kennedy capsizes onto the White House, the ship's name and number (CV-67) are visible on her flight deck. No US aircraft carrier has its name painted on its deck in this manner; only the number '67' was painted on the deck at the extreme forward end of the ship.
  
  
• Plot holes: Sasha plans to refuel the Antonov on Hawaii, but since Hawaii is destroyed and they don't have enough fuel they have to do a water landing. Gordon mentions they lost the landing gear when they took off in Vegas so that won't be in the way. How, then, were they planning to land to refuel and take off again like originally planned?
  
  
• Factual errors: No aircraft could function with an atmosphere choked with volcanic ash, which would cause engine seizures.
  
  
• Continuity: When the decision to open the bays of the arks and let in the crowds of people, the scientist tell the captain to open the bay door, and the clock says 14:39 until impact. The camera then switches angles and the captain responds, the time then says 14:42 until wave impact.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Yuri refers to the An-225 is Russian. It is in fact Ukrainian, built by the Antonov Design Bureau during the Soviet Era.
  
  
• Plot holes: Near the beginning of the movie, a massive and sudden tide hits the ocean liner Genesis while she is preparing to sail, making her collide against the docks quite hard. Such an impact would have caused significant damage to the ship and the need for immediate repairs; yet the trip is neither delayed nor canceled. (Furthermore, when we later see the Genesis at sea, the ship shows no signals of having crashed.)
  
  
• Continuity: When the children are on the camping trip they are bitten by mosquitoes. Both have several fairly serious bite marks on their faces. However in the scene in which they return home (the following day) their faces appear unblemished.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Sasha crosses oneself while flying the Antonov, but he does it like the catholics, from left to right, while over 97% of Russians are Orthodox, and they do it right to left. Yuri Karpov also makes the same goof.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The flight range of the Antonov AN-225 Russian aircraft is 15400 kilometers, which is way more then enough to reach China. Considering the panic on the ground the plane is not necessarily fully fueled when they leave, however.
  
  
• Continuity: When the arks have launched, the camera pans across them and it is obvious that one is missing, the door that it should appear from shows "5", however it is Ark 3 that did not launch.
  
  
• Errors in geography: In the scene where CNN shows the destruction of Rio de Janeiro and earthquakes ravaging South America, immediately after it shows Mexico City being devastated by quakes. Mexico City is in North America not South America.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): The news report about the mass suicides report suicides by followers of the Mayan quiche (one syllable like the food) calendar. "Quiché" has two syllables, with the emphasis on the second syllable.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Curtis is racing to get his family out of their neighborhood and the limo flies into the air, the wheels aren't moving.
  
  
• Errors in geography: The kids are wearing sleeveless shirts and shorts in Yellowstone in the tent. Even in the summer the temperature drops drastically at night. The kids would have been in danger of hypothermia.
  
  
• Continuity: While camping, Jackson Curtis' children call him to the tent. Jackson, in response, places his laptop down in the folding chair in front of him and moves to the tent. In the next shot, the laptop is clearly atop the ice chest and then moves back to the chair for the following shot.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: During the ark scenes, the giraffes are shown to be making sounds - this is indeed possible. It is a myth that giraffes do not make sounds or that they do not have vocal chords. Giraffes make a quiet bleating kind of sound like sheep or goats but they do not do it very often because they rely more on body language to communicate.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: The sound from the engine of the light twin does not match the type of engine powering it. It is heard to be a piston engine, but when it is shut down, it spins slowly down to a stop. A piston engine would stop quickly much like a car engine does.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When the camera pans to Caesar's Palace before the boxing match, you can see for a small moment the Las Vegas Strip and the Caesar's Palace marquee showing Bette Midler's "The Showgirl Must Go On" poster. While Midler's last show is slated at the end of January 2010, it is entirely possible that Midler's show has a second run in 2012.
  
  
• Plot holes: Assuming that neutrinos have caused to heat the earth core, what was the cause of cooling it in such short time?
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): At the G8 summit in Canada the President (Danny Glover) enters the conference room and asks to be left alone with the heads of other states. The Russian President then whispers to his interpreter to stay put : "Ti ostajes" but he does that in the Serbian/Croatian language and not in Russian. When the President (Glover) speaks out again, the Russian interpreter can be heard in the background translating in Russian, but again when the Russian president tells his interpreter that he is free to go ("Mozes ici") he says it in Serbo Croat, not Russian.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: An officer says that all communications from Earth have stopped, yet later the Indian scientist is able to call Dr. Helmsley to tell him about the tsunami. However, they may be using satellite phones. Considering their identities, it is quite possible.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: There is no such thing as an Antonov AN-500. However there is an Antonov 225 Mriya. This might deliberate from the filmmakers since the AN-225 does not have a rear loading door like the AN-124. It is also entirely possible that given the movie is set a few years in the future, such a plane may have been developed by then.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Charlie is broadcasting in Yellowstone he says he is at the top of Mount Bighorn. No such peak with that name exists in Yellowstone. However, given that the movie is set in the future, it is possible that such a name could have been given by then. It also may be that Charlie is crazy and either doesn't know where he is, or he believes it should be called Mount Bighorn.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Jackson is camping with the kids, Kate calls and tells him to bring them home early, which he does. However, he then comments he is late for work. While Jackson had at least one more night of vacation planned, it is entirely possible he spoke with Yuri during the drive back and told him he would be able to come in to work.
  
  
• Factual errors: At the end of the movie, the sky is clear, sunny, and relatively warm. However, the massive eruption at Yellowstone alone would be enough to place the entire world in a nuclear winter.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jackson comes to pick his kids up to go camping, he is shown passing by the back side of his limo and the trunk is fully opened, but in the next shot the trunk is still opening.
  
  
• Factual errors: The Yellowstone Caldera would explode with roughly the force of 1 million Hiroshima bombs, or 400 Tsar Bombs, the largest atomic bomb humans have ever detonated. The Tsar Bomb's shock wave leveled everything in its 20-mile blast radius instantaneously, so if an explosion took place that was 400 times the size, it would completely obliterate everything near it instantaneously; not to mention Charlie Frost who was on the rim of the volcano, and everyone near the plane as they appeared to be little more than a mile from the explosion, if that.
  
  
• Factual errors: While Jackson is in the Antonov plane, he is seen to be scanning frequencies using the Bentley's radio. However, the channels he is searching through are in the range of 90-110 MHz, which is the FM range. FM frequencies would not be heard at all when flying over open ocean.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: On one of the first trailers/previews the calendar shown moving and forming into position on CGI at the beginning is not the "Maya" but the Aztec Calendar, another pre-Columbian civilization from Mexico. A very interesting mistake regarding a film about the apocalypse foreseen on the "Maya" not the "Aztec" calendar.
  
  
• Errors in geography: When the camera pans to Caesar's Palace (on the boxing night), the Bellagio is on it's south. But as the camera pans to the south of Las Vegas Strip (showing destruction of Vegas), the building south of Caesar's becomes Paris Las Vegas.
  
  
• Factual errors: Chinese helicopters are seen airlifting numerous different kinds of animals to the tunnels where the Arks are located, but they are flying at extremely high altitudes (over the Himalayas) in weather cold enough for a thick layer of snow to remain unfrozen on the ground. Between the altitude, the temperatures, and the frigid wind blowing past them in flight, the African animals would die of either hypothermia or oxygen deprivation.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: An old portable TV (with an old rotary dial tuner) is shown with a scrambled picture on screen as if it's been watched recently. Without some digital converter, you wouldn't even be able to get the bad picture. Although during the emergency it might have been decided to broadcast again on analog.
  
  
• Factual errors: Towards the end of the movie, where countries that have agreed to open the "gates" are being listed, such as Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom the "continent" Africa is named in this list off as well. It's important to note that Africa is not a country.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Jackson and Gordon are in the back part of the truck, driving to the arks, you can see that they are going very fast, but their hair has no movement.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The Antonov in which the main characters flee to China crashes because of empty fuel-tanks. But the explosion when it finally hits the ground after falling of the cliff indicates a large amount of fuel left. This may have been due to residual fuel in the systems of the plane, while not enough to keep the vehicle airborne, still sufficient to cause an explosion. (Furthermore, the plane may have had other volatile substances or liquids in it.)
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the movie, neutrinos interact with the earth's core and cause temperature to rise. But, since they come from the sun, the first matter they should interact with is the water in the oceans, and as result our oceans should start to boil. For some undeclared reason in the movie, only the earth's core interacts with them.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Curtis drives the Bentley out of cargo hold of the Antonov, he fights to retain control of the vehicle and bring it to a stop. Therefore he should be able to see the Antonov and the other driverless cars move away from him in the same direction. Instead, the cars ignore physics and move away from the plane towards him.
  
  
• Errors in geography: From room containing the Mona Lisa, it's not possible to see the Eiffel Tower.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Washington DC is flooded by the tsunami wave, it is at night. The previous shot was of the Genesis off the shore of Japan, and it was also at night. Some said it can't be nighttime in both Washington DC and Japan. However, it was mentioned in the movie that the new south pole is somewhere in Wisconsin due to shifting of earth crust, therefore Washington DC should be in the polar night zone. Alternatively, the cloud from the Yellowstone explosion could very easily be blocking out the sun in D.C. (hence the ash falling when the President wakes up to see the wall of water coming at him).
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Firemen working on the accident of the Louvre director are not firemen from any part of France, according to their uniform.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The White House Chief of Staff would normally never in a position to succeed the office of the President of the United States. There is always a designated survivor amongst the line of succession to maintain continuity of government. However, it is stated that the Vice President is already dead and the House Speaker is missing. Considering the amount of confusion, it is possible that no other cabinet members were able to board Air Force One before it left Washington. If there were, he would not have appointed himself Acting President.
  
  
• Errors in geography: When the #3 ark is in risk of colliding with the north face of Mount Everest, a view of a massive mountain with generally jagged pinnacles, uneven ridges and couloirs strewn across most of the mountainside. The general shape of the mountain is also very much in the shape of a pointy pyramid with pretty steep slopes on the ridges. The north face of Everest in reality looks very different with a prominent stretch of ridge (the north east ridge) that slowly rises from an elevation of 8500 meters up to the summit at 8850 meters, thus forming a massive wall with a large amount of snow covering it's north face. With little to nothing protruding except for three rock steps, it is very much unlike the mountain depicted witch has pinnacles strewn across the upper slopes and ridges. Even though the west ridge of Everest (which marks the other border of the north face) is slightly steeper and more jagged that too has no major resemblance to the mountain in the movie.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The footage of riots in London purportedly at the 2012 games is in fact from the Poll taxes riots of the early 1990s. This is quite clear from the uniforms, and the footage is relatively iconic in the UK.
  
  
• Errors in geography: The kids get severely bitten by mosquitoes in Yellowstone. With the high altitude and frigid nighttime temperatures, Yellowstone is not the ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes.
  
  
• Plot holes: A 1,500-meter-high wave would barely flood Denver, much less the valleys around Mount Everest, which peaks at over 29,000 feet (8,800 meters) high.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: While in Charlie's trailer, he tells Jackson to "download his blog". However, the Windows 7 superbar clearly shows the computer to not be online (small red X over the monitor icon near the clock).
  
  

• Factual errors: SPOILER: The Yellowstone eruption's pyroclastic cloud would have overtaken Jackson Curtis well before arrived at the airfield even if it had slowed somewhat due to friction with the terrain (seeing how fast it was moving when the aircraft took off.)
  
  
• Factual errors: SPOILER: The enormous fireball erupting from Yellowstone would have incinerated Charlie Frost and Jackson Curtis within seconds, because the intense heat radiates far beyond the actual fireball (think of the heat you feel even a dozen feet from a bonfire.) The same fireball probably would have seriously burnt the airplane and its waiting passengers.
  
  

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