What's with all the Union Jacks in the trailer?

[FlapJoy]

Apparently Mr. Spielberg made a whole bunch of real historical mistakes it his latest masterpiece Lincoln

Did he fuck up the flag? My guess is no, and that's my point.

He may have made a few choices or altered certain events for the story he was telling (I don't know, I've yet to see Lincoln) but my guess is he payed a lot of attention to certain details.

It's impossible to get everything right, but a flag isn't easy to fuck up unless you're just not giving a shit.

 

[DonIago]

Here's a novel thought...why not wait to judge the movie based on the movie itself rather than the trailer?

Not that trailers ever contained material that didn't appear in exactly the same way in the final product...

 

[DarthTom]

It's impossible to get everything right, but a flag isn't easy to fuck up unless you're just not giving a shit.

Oh good lord. At first glance it appears symmetrical as someone said but after you read about it - it's not. It's not as if to the casual American viewer or even someone who's a skilled American director that such a thing would be obvious whereas I'm assuming even to the most inexperienced British director hanging the American flag upside down would be an obvious and stupid mistake unless they were trying to make a political point.

I'm doubting that Abrams thought having special production people on staff to make sure the Union Jack was flying in a few frames right was worth the cost and no one in pre and post production caught the mistake.

If anyone deserves blame here it's set design not Abrams.

Oh and BTW, why didn't Benedict Cumberbatch who is a British actor catch the problem when they were filming it?

or

Mickey Smith from Dr. Who is another famous British actor who was cast in some of the scenes where the flag is flying.

They must not be patriots?

 

[FlapJoy]

Here's a novel thought...why not wait to judge the movie based on the movie itself rather than the trailer?

Not that trailers ever contained material that didn't appear in exactly the same way in the final product...

I totally agree... sometimes scenes are reversed, flipped, even played backwards for trailers... but I looked at a screen shot... and it's just wrong. It doesn't really matter, it has no real bearing on anything important or worthwhile (although a British citizen might see it differently)... but it is lazy. Lazy is bad for movies.

It's impossible to get everything right, but a flag isn't easy to fuck up unless you're just not giving a shit.

Oh good lord. At first glance it appears symmetrical as someone said but after you read about it - it's not. It's not as if to the casual American viewer or even someone who's a skilled American director that such a thing would be obvious whereas I'm assuming even to the most inexperienced British director hanging the American flag upside down would be an obvious and stupid mistake unless they were trying to make a political point.

I'm doubting that Abrams thought having special production people on staff to make sure the Union Jack was flying in a few frames right was worth the cost and no one in pre and post production caught the mistake.

If anyone deserves blame here it's set design not Abrams.

Oh and BTW, why didn't Benedict Cumberbatch who is a British actor catch the problem when they were filming it?

or

Mickey Smith from Dr. Who is another famous British actor who was cast in some of the scenes where the flag is flying.

They must not be patriots?

It's not about patriotism. It's not about blame, it's just dumb... really, really, dumb.

 

[DarthTom]

but it is lazy. Lazy is bad for movies.

Meh. Alfred Hitchcock is well known as one of the most particular film makers ever and even he was prone to some glaring mistakes. In the film Psycho:

When Marion is driving her car through the night, she keeps looking at her speedometer. You can clearly see that the gear shift lever is in "park" as she is driving.

When Norman picks up Marion's body to carry it to his trunk, a bra is visible through the shower curtain. Gus Van Sant included this goof in his 1998 remake.

When Janet Leigh is shown lying dead on the floor of the shower, there is a close-up of her open eye. The pupil is contracted to a pinpoint (obviously due to the bright lighting) where it should have been dilated. After the film was released, Hitchcock heard from several ophthalmologists who pointed this out and suggested he use belladonna eyedrops in the eyes of "dead" people in future films, as the chemical prevents the pupils from contracting.

When Marion and Norman are talking after he has brought in some sandwiches, Marion tears the same piece of bread 3 times on different occasions.

 

[Urgent Sky]

Do you think they could fix it in post? I read somewhere that they changed all the Chinese flags to North Korean flags for that "Red Dawn" remake that nobody watched. Maybe they could correct the Union Jack so it's flying correctly?

Not that fixing it matters to me, but if people are going to make that big a deal out of it...

 

[Shazam!]

May be upside down for a reason; London does get attacked after all.

 

[FlapJoy]

but it is lazy. Lazy is bad for movies.

Meh. Alfred Hitchcock is well known as one of the most particular film makers ever and even he was prone to some glaring mistakes. In the film Psycho:

When Marion is driving her car through the night, she keeps looking at her speedometer. You can clearly see that the gear shift lever is in "park" as she is driving.

When Janet Leigh is shown lying dead on the floor of the shower, there is a close-up of her open eye. The pupil is contracted to a pinpoint (obviously due to the bright lighting) where it should have been dilated. After the film was released, Hitchcock heard from several ophthalmologists who pointed this out and suggested he use belladonna eyedrops in the eyes of "dead" people in future films, as the chemical prevents the pupils from contracting.

When Marion and Norman are talking after he has brought in some sandwiches, Marion tears the same piece of bread 3 times on different occasions.

And by itemizing the list of mistakes it means you noticed them... it's fun to notice them. But it's bad for movies. Now every time you see those movies you'll notice these mistakes, that's bad for movies... I'm just saying.

And what an optometrist notices or a British flag expert notices are going to be different and specific... but hanging a flag right? That's child's play.

 

[Greg Cox]

You know, I'm willing to bet that Chekov had a Russian flag in his quarters.

 

[DarthTom]

And by itemizing the list of mistakes it means you noticed them... it's fun to notice them. But it's bad for movies. Now every time you see those movies you'll notice these mistakes, that's bad for movies... I'm just saying.

You can find these types of mistakes in all of the Trek Films - from First Contact:

Not only is New Zeland's flag wrong - it's missing from the planet.

In the scene where Picard opens a viewing port and shows Lilly that she is in a starship orbiting Earth he shows her New Guinea and Australia. New Zealand is missing.

In the scene where Picard, Worf and Hawk are outside the ship and want to separate the transmitter dish from the hull, Picard must move a kind of tube out of an console and must turn it from a low to a high position. In one shot the tube is in the high position, in the next shot it is in the low position and then Picard pulls it out and turns it in the high position.

When Picard and Lilly go to the holodeck, the door says "Holodeck". When the Borg enter, it says "Holosuite".

When Worf's spacesuit is cut, a close-up shows it venting from a cut just above the knee. But a wide-shot shows the cut is just below the knee.

In the scene after Zefram's ship goes to warp, when the ship is being turned around to return home, Cochran remarks "Is that the Earth? It's so... small" He wouldn't have been able to see it, provided the distance the ship just flew. Warp 1 is the speed of light and in a 1 minute flight, the Phoenix would have travelled over 10 million miles - at that distance the earth would just appear like a bright star.

 

[FlapJoy]

The funny thing is... if JJ were to fuck up the UFP flag, you guys would tear him a sideways asshole.

 

[Dale Sams]

Harrison sounds English....Harrison attacks London...takes control...demands flags from 'the ol country' be flown in his honor...flags are flown upside down to spite him...Harrison is too busy to really notice.

 

[BillJ]

The funny thing is... if JJ were to fuck up the UFP flag, you guys would tear him a sideways asshole.

Nope.

 

[FlapJoy]

And by itemizing the list of mistakes it means you noticed them... it's fun to notice them. But it's bad for movies. Now every time you see those movies you'll notice these mistakes, that's bad for movies... I'm just saying.

You can find these types of mistakes in all of the Trek Films - from First Contact:

Not only is New Zeland's flag wrong - it's missing from the planet.

In the scene where Picard opens a viewing port and shows Lilly that she is in a starship orbiting Earth he shows her New Guinea and Australia. New Zealand is missing.

When Worf's spacesuit is cut, a close-up shows it venting from a cut just above the knee. But a wide-shot shows the cut is just below the knee.

In the scene after Zefram's ship goes to warp, when the ship is being turned around to return home, Cochran remarks "Is that the Earth? It's so... small" He wouldn't have been able to see it, provided the distance the ship just flew. Warp 1 is the speed of light and in a 1 minute flight, the Phoenix would have travelled over 10 million miles - at that distance the earth would just appear like a bright star.

Exactly...it doesn't matter... but it is dumb

 

[Franklin]

Could be the flags are supposed to be that way. They were seconds accidentally sent to that building. They knew they were wrong, but flew them anyway thinking no one would notice (or at least care). But then Harrison sees them and that's what makes him go batshit and start detonating things.

In other words, those flags could be an important plot point.

Or not.

 

[DarthTom]

Or not.

Likely not. What will be more interesting is if post production people who monitor and/or post anonymously on sites like the Trek BBS pay attention to such shit and will modify the image before the film goes to final print.

 

[DaveyNY]

Or not.

Likely not. What will be more interesting is if post production people who monitor and/or post anonymously on sites like the Trek BBS pay attention to such shit and will modify the image before the film goes to final print.

..and charge the production an extra $10,000 dollars for doing it.

 

[LobsterAfternoon]

I was in Rome at the end of 2012, and pretty much every Italian government building I passed had both the Italian flag and the EU flag, indicating that there was both a national government and a larger union of member states. So it seems very appropriate that the trailer featured a building with both the UK flag and the UFP flag. If anything, it might've been nice to also see a United Earth flag, but it's just a 30 second bit of video, how much can you really fit in?

 

[Dart]

This thread is literally the first place I ever heard of the Union Jack being able to be up-side down. Carry on.

 

[DarthTom]

This thread is literally the first place I ever heard of the Union Jack being able to be up-side down. Carry on.

Question. Would an Irish man get his titties in a twist if the flag went from orange to green on a flag pole instead of the reverse in a sci-fi movie?