'Bonkers' Geography in Movies
January 19, 2010 9:08 AM
What are your favourite movies with a shameless disregard for the limitations of real-world geography? Having enjoyed the recent Sherlock Holmes movie with its gritty recreation of late Victorian London with all the real mess and construction work, I was perplexed and entertained by the generally bonkers approach taken by the narrative (or editing) to real London geography at certain points. Mild spoilers...
Holmes and Watson travel by carriage from Baker Street to Pentonville Prison necessitating traversing a bridge from south London to north in order to 'establish' the construction of Tower Bridge, which they admire. But the prison is actually a short hop north from Holmes' address. Later, there is a subterranean chase from Parliament to the bridge on foot, which, as someone who has run the London marathon, I can tell you is far more incredible than any of Lord Blackwood's mysterious shenanigans. I'm not nitpicking - the movie had already brilliantly and accurately established the layout of the city. Also - I don't have a problem with this kind of 'movie-convenience' where the world must be warped to suit the plot and/or aesthetics. What are YOUR favourite crazy abuses of real-world geography (location or distance) in the movies?
Holmes and Watson travel by carriage from Baker Street to Pentonville Prison necessitating traversing a bridge from south London to north in order to 'establish' the construction of Tower Bridge, which they admire. But the prison is actually a short hop north from Holmes' address. Later, there is a subterranean chase from Parliament to the bridge on foot, which, as someone who has run the London marathon, I can tell you is far more incredible than any of Lord Blackwood's mysterious shenanigans. I'm not nitpicking - the movie had already brilliantly and accurately established the layout of the city. Also - I don't have a problem with this kind of 'movie-convenience' where the world must be warped to suit the plot and/or aesthetics. What are YOUR favourite crazy abuses of real-world geography (location or distance) in the movies?
This post was deleted for the following reason: There's probably places on the internet that track this sort of thing in detail if you go looking, but tossed out on askme like this it's just chatfilter. -- cortex
That the main character can park his or her car outside of any building with no sanction - that's an abuse of real-world geography!
posted by stenoboy at 9:25 AM on January 19, 2010
posted by stenoboy at 9:25 AM on January 19, 2010
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posted by mkb at 9:25 AM on January 19, 2010