MovieChat Forums > Dear John (2010) Discussion > How could they not catch this????

How could they not catch this????


I am a military officer, so I catch on to little details that most people don't notice. However, if you will notice in the scene where John comes back and he is at Savannah's house in his uniform, his epaulets are on upside down! Then when they switch and move to another room I noticed they were fixed. I just wonder how they could miss something so obvious in editing. After that, I really couldn't believe him as an SF soldier (not that I did in the first place).

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Yeah, pretty obvious things slip by sometimes. Those shots were probably made on different days.

Even great films have SNAFUs in continuity. I recall in Gone with the Wind when the soldiers are retreating from Atlanta, one wounded guy staggers and collapses; then two shots, later he's walking along again. The two shots were put in the wrong order.


P. A. T. (Needy's Boy)

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htrgirl2000 writes:
"THAT makes you think less of him (because he's not believable as a soldier....?)"

I can see where a military man would be distracted by a mistake in uniforms, medals, etc. The military seem anal about these things.

I wonder if anyone noticed the Swedish flag flying over one of the bases in Iraq? Sweden has no troops there that I know of. I don't think the Swedes have fought a war in over 300 years. However, the director was Swedish.


P. A. T. (Needy's Boy)

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Lol, I noticed the Swedish flag too, and though wth? I live in Scandinavia, and I know my country had troops there, but I'm pretty darn sure Sweden didn't/don't.

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So I'm not the only one...

P. A. T. (Needy's Boy)

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The Swedish flag was an homage to Lasse, the director. He is Swedish.

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Nooo, I thought he was a collie!

P. A. T. (Needy's Boy)

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[deleted]

Denmark baby!! :D

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Faroe Islands, baby! Faroe Islands.

P. A. T. (Needy's Boy)

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I wonder if anyone noticed the Swedish flag flying over one of the bases in Iraq? Sweden has no troops there that I know of. I don't think the Swedes have fought a war in over 300 years. However, the director was Swedish.

Lol, I noticed the Swedish flag too, and though wth? I live in Scandinavia, and I know my country had troops there, but I'm pretty darn sure Sweden didn't/don't.


This is a late reply, I know, but I need to educate some people:

Sweden have troops in Afghanistan, they've been there since 2002, in force since 2003. 5 soldiers have been killed during the deployment. Right now there are about 500 Swedish troops in Afghanistan.

http://www.isaf.nato.int/

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Actually...

According to the DVD extra, the Swedish flag was for the benefit of the director Lasse Hallstrom (he's Swedish).

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Spectra96 writes:
"This is a late reply, I know, but I need to educate some people..."

Thanks. I did not know that. I thought Sweden was always strictly neutral.

P. A. T. (Needy's Boy)

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Actually found this out recently too from watching the ULTIMATE SOLDIER CHALLENGE on the History Channel that Sweden had a presence in Afghanistan post 9-11.

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Swedish have Troop at one point in Iraq, also A LOT OF Swedish AID organisation in Iraq.

They also have around 500 troop as continuous basis in Afghanistan as part of ISAF operation, i think they also have a PRT up in Helmand Province at some point and i believe by now, it have moved North.

All those could have contributed to the Swedish Flag you saw in the Movie

I was a Soldier with the 82nd, i met my Swedish in Iraq when i was stationed there and she came and inspect our POW facilities for Human Right Violation.

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Huh? You live in Scandinavia? That's a country? I think not.

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Wow.... Let me spell it out for you, then.

"Lol, I noticed the Swedish flag too, and though wth? I live in Scandinavia, and I know my country, DENMARK, had troops there, but I'm pretty darn sure SWEDEN (WHICH IS ALSO A PART OF SCANDINAVIA) didn't"

Difficult?

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I'm talking about this quote:

"Lol, I noticed the Swedish flag too, and though wth? I live in Scandinavia, and I know my country had troops there, but I'm pretty darn sure Sweden didn't/don't."


According to the way you wrote it there, it is grammatically unclear. "Scandinavia" in this sentence appears to be the "country," in question when the country is not mentioned.

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Yes Sir, Chester, I caught both the inverted shoulder tabs of the Staff Sgt and the Swedish Flag. Great fun on the part of the Director. This dude is one really sharp dude who loves to stick a pin in you while the essence of the movie flys over your head. Loved it.

P.S. - always get a head shot in. Never, ever think they're dead.

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You are correct that there were no Swedish troops in Iraq, as they opposed that war. They have been a presence in Afghanistan, however.

It's remarkable what people will write without ever having looked into the subject. All while they have a computer right in their hand.

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The Swedish flag was put there on purpose. Read the whole IMDB. It wasn't a goof.

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Swedes are the biggest cowards in the world...so having a swedish flag in a war zone is ridiculous.

All swedes care about is getting their own country invaded by muslims migrants.
Such wussies.....a country lead by feminists and spineless men

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The director is Swedish. So, unless he had the forethought to hire a military advisor, it would be easy to get wrong. You can bet that the odds of anyone on set having any military experience is nil.
I'm ex military, and uniforms don't rankle me as much as procedural stuff. Like Hurt Locker where EOD guys run up to explosives and try to disarm them, rather than blowing them up in place.

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there is also a continuity error when they go to savannah's parents' house. they show a wide shot of them walking up the porch and she is just wearing the red dress, but the when they show the close shot, as they walk up the stairs you can see she was wearing these black baggy pants under the dress, probably because it was cold out or something. i couldn't believe they missed that in editing.

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I just watched the movie and saw something I find a bit disturbing. When Savannah goes to meet John at the airport and she jumps into his arms, there's a guy in the background watching them as he's doing up his belt. How could that possibly have been missed in editing??

"If you want to see something funny, it's a tough hood sticking his tongue out at his big brother."

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JoanAndAdamForever writes:
"...there's a guy in the background watching them as he's doing up his belt."

Uh, yeah. I think that guy is about to go through security. Wouldn't his belt buckle set off the metal detector?

P. A. T. (Needy's Boy)

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True, I hadn't thought about that. Still looks creepy though because he's staring at Savannah as she literally jumps on John.

"If you want to see something funny, it's a tough hood sticking his tongue out at his big brother."

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JoanAndAdamForever writes:
"Still looks creepy though because he's staring at Savannah as she literally jumps on John."

Yeah.

But I think it was probably intended to be humorous.

P. A. T. (Needy's Boy)

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my dad is in the military and we watched it....they HAVE to do something wrong with a military uniform to have it shown in a movie, he couldnt remember why but he said that it was meant to be like that

can I get an encore?

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That has not been true since 1970. See Schacht v. United States (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schacht_v._United_States)

So since a perfect uniform is perfectly legal, that just leaves error. As noted by another in this thread, the uniform was correct in a later scene. This tells me that they realized the error after the shot was in the can, and that someone decided fixing it was not worth the cost of re-shooting.

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Hey "Military Officer named Dpiddycanfly - yeah, sure" Yo Yo.
Why didn't you catch the Rhodesian Jump wings on the right breast of his dressed green uniform???

They were given between 1962-1980, for any parachute jump in that country. Way too early for this young man to have qualified.

I guess those "little details" that you catch kind of slipped past you on this one. Senior Moment, Amigo???

Another one of those little pins that the director so carefully stuck in the stiff bottoms of the chair-bound "warriors".

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Is it not a legal requirement for the uniforms to be "off" just a little? If their uniforms were equivalent to what an actual soldier would have, it'd be a federal offense to wear them, as they have not been authorized by the government. They'd be committing the crime of impersonating a serviceman and wearing military decoration under false pretences.

A buddy of mine told me this when he worked on the set of a movie where they had military uniforms. He said they mixed up the placement of a few ribbons and reversed patches, and such so they wouldn't be committing a crime. Could this be the reason why in just about every military movie you can find some sort of mistake with the uniform?

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[deleted]

It is a commonly held fallacy that uniforms must be wrong somehow when worn by actors. Two U.S. laws and a subsequent Supreme Court decision made this established law in 1970.

• 18 U.S.C. §702 makes it illegal for anyone to wear a U.S. uniform (in part or in whole) without proper authorization from the government.
• 10 U.S.C. §772 (f) grants an exception to actors "if the portrayal does not tend to discredit that armed force"
Schacht v. United States (1970) found the quoted clause to be unconstitutional on first amendment grounds.

In theory the government could repeal 10 U.S.C. §772 (f) and then no actor could wear even a partly correct uniform. This should not violate the first amendment since it would be a blanket ban on impersonation a soldier. But as long as the government allows some actors to wear a uniform, it has to allow all of them.

So for the last 41 years any uniform mistakes are just sloppiness on the part of the production.

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I heard somewhere that in movies where there is a Military uniform they always do something wrong on purpose. It had something to do with people being able to impersonate soldiers or something, or it could be a sign of respect to not copy the uniform exactly. It may have been intentional. Don't know for sure, its just something I remember hearing.

"I take a problem and chew on it til all the flavor's gone, then I stick it in my hair"

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