Topic: Location Errors in Movies

[m.cellophane]

Last night I was watching Boys and Girls. I was enjoying the San Francisco and UC Berkeley locales. I was born in SF, lived there some, and UC Berkeley is my alma mater.

But then I started noticing really odd location problems and that yanked me out of the movie. Then I just kept watching to spot location errors. 

For instance, Claire Forlani lived in SF while attending UC Berkeley. One's commute would be nearly an hour. I did it for a couple of brief stints, but it wasn't fun. Not to mention that the apartment she lived in would be out of reach financially for a student, but that's a different topic. 

There were 2 hilarious errors in location. First, Freddie Prinze Jr. was sulking on a bluff overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. He was in Marin County, across the bay from not only San Francisco but also from Berkeley. It would take one or two bridges to get there and probably about an hour's travel. Then Claire Forlani runs down the trail and finds him there. No way would 2 students from Berkeley just happen to find each other there. 

Later, she's leaves her San Francisco apartment and heads to the airport. In order to get to the Oakland Airport (east of San Francisco), she travels south across the Golden Gate Bridge toward San Francisco.  She glances back at the Marin headlands to see if Freddie Prinze Jr. is on the bluff pining for her. 

So what movies have you seen where the location problems are so bad that it pulls you out of the film?

[Achim]

I remember seeing "Taget" with Gene Hackman and Matt Dillon. At some point in the movie they are in Hamburg. They arrive at the train station, no problem so far. However, when they go up the stairs from the platform to the shopping area and turn towards the street, I recognized that they are now in the train station of the City Lübeck (I was living in Hamburg at the time and commuted to Lübeck by train on a daily basis).

If I think of more, I'll post them.

[m.cellophane]

Cool. I figured this would be a good topic for an international crowd. 

[DJ Doena]

Bourne Supremacy comes to mind.

Bourne leaves the Hotel on the Ku'damm (S-Bahn station Zoologischer Garten), runs a few meters and is suddenly on the S-Bahn station Friedrichstraße (where he does this stunt under the bridge). While the first is in the center of former West-Berlin, the latter is one of the former border crossings between East- and West-Berlin and quite a few miles away from the former.

Also shots that are supposed to be Moscow are also shot in Berlin, ironically in front of the Café Moskau (Moscow) on the street that was called "Stalinallee" (Stalin Avenue) in the 50s and where the east german revolt took place in 1953.
A few seconds after these events they were actually in Moscow.


Whenever an 80s show or movie was supposed to play in East Germany it had nothing of an resemblance to "my" country.

[DJ Doena]

I am also not quite sure if it is possible what he did in Bourne Ultimatum: The travelling from southern Italy to London, UK by train in that few hours and then to be suddenly in Madrid, Spain.

The first distance is 1260 miles by car, the latter 1075 miles.

[Najemikon]

He must have worn the same shoes as Kevin Costner in Prince of Thieves. They made the journey from Dover to Nottingham look like a brisk stroll! I know Americans think we're such a small country we all know each other and the Queen, but bloody hell, c'mon...

[movie diva]

In Transformers they went from Hover Dam to Downtown Los Angeles in less than 10 minutes and had a fight along the way, it takes 3-4 hours from there to LA, in Virtuosity they shot a scene by my house at a freeway underpass, next thing they are downtown, and any thing from 24 it takes them 15 minutes to get anywhere during rush hour traffic which is all the time in LA.