Plothole: Cliffs in Iowa?

[Newspaper Taxi]

I don't think there's any cliffs in Iowa anywhere near as steep as the one shown in the beginning car chase. We have some little hills, but we're pretty flat. Unless anybody knows somewhere I haven't heard of? I figure that it could have been some sort of result of World War III or the Eugenic War, though.

 

[Frontier]

It was a Quarry, I thought. Hence the fence.

 

[Jeri]

I don't think there's any cliffs in Iowa anywhere near as steep as the one shown in the beginning car chase. We have some little hills, but we're pretty flat. Unless anybody knows somewhere I haven't heard of? I figure that it could have been some sort of result of World War III or the Eugenic War, though.

That's a quarry, which they do have in the midwest. Lots of rock underneath our glaciated landscape. The even cuts were easily visible, although pretty sure the quarry was CGI.

However, to me it was clearly California. Anybody could see the sandy soil everywhere on the farm roads.

 

[pookha]

yeah i also thought it was a quarry where they getting material for the ship yards and other buildings.
a lot of quarries have very deep cliff like walls.

 

[Aragorn]

Is it a plothole that Gotham City is in Chicago? Or that GM Place in B.C. is a location you can see in Detroit or Seattle or whatever city they claim it to be while filming in Vancouver? Or that in Steven Seagal's Chicago, there are mountains and palm trees? The space scenes in Star Trek weren't actually filmed in space.

Plotholes are what you find on Heroes or Smallville every five minutes.

 

[Newspaper Taxi]

I'd forgotten about the existance of quarries; Iowa definetely does have those. As a Doctor Who fan I should of thought of that sooner. I'd still be interested in where this shot was filmed, though.

Edit: The Plothole thing was tongue in cheek, of course. : )

 

[DaveyNY]

Maybe it was just a Big Plot-hole in the road he took...?...

and nobody got a chance to fill it in yet...

 

[Jeri]

I'd forgotten about the existance of quarries; Iowa definetely does have those. As a Doctor Who fan I should of thought of that sooner. I'd still be interested in where this shot was filmed, though...

I noticed it said Kern County in the credits, among other California locations.

 

[NCC74894A]

This one looked too deep and wide to be just another quarry - it looked more like the Grand Freakin' Canyon to me. Do they really need that much rock to build their shipyards?

 

[Newspaper Taxi]

Shoot. It looks like it is Kern County, California. I guess that rules out a short daytrip and a drive-by. I googled and I found a story related to this: http://trekmovie.com/2008/04/09/produer-talks-iowa-shoot-video-of-scene-being-shot/

We wanted something that looked like Iowa, and we also wanted to stay close to Los Angeles. So, we came out here and scouted and realized that we can kind of make Iowa out of Bakersfield.

 

[M'Sharak]

^ It was a few miles northwest of Bakersfield, if I'm remembering correctly. I think someone had worked out the nearest intersection to the filming site and located it on Google Maps.

This one looked too deep and wide to be just another quarry - it looked more like the Grand Freakin' Canyon to me. Do they really need that much rock to build their shipyards?

Many of them are quite wide, but that one does seem unusually deep, compared to pictures of other Iowa quarries I've seen. Better quarrying technology and a particularly good bed of limestone near Riverside, perhaps.

 

[HortaVorta]

This one looked too deep and wide to be just another quarry - it looked more like the Grand Freakin' Canyon to me. Do they really need that much rock to build their shipyards?

Their shipyards and those arcologies we saw on the Iowa horizon.

 

[John Picard]

I don't think there's any cliffs in Iowa anywhere near as steep as the one shown in the beginning car chase. We have some little hills, but we're pretty flat. Unless anybody knows somewhere I haven't heard of? I figure that it could have been some sort of result of World War III or the Eugenic War, though.

I have driven through Iowa, and you don't know flat until you come here, to Oklahoma

 

[MisterPL]

I don't think there's any cliffs in Iowa anywhere near as steep as the one shown in the beginning car chase.

Not yet, no.

 

[cooleddie74]

Probably a quarry or something similar. But then, Hollywood doesn't get landscapes right sometimes. After nine years of LITTLE HOUSE I grew up thinking Minnesota had bigger hills and mountains than Virginia.

 

[GMSkarka]

Here's a shot of a quarry near here in Kansas (just SW of Iowa):

http://academic.emporia.edu/aberjame/ice/lec17/f17m2.jpg

 

[Franklin]

I don't think there's any cliffs in Iowa anywhere near as steep as the one shown in the beginning car chase. We have some little hills, but we're pretty flat. Unless anybody knows somewhere I haven't heard of? I figure that it could have been some sort of result of World War III or the Eugenic War, though.

I have driven through Iowa, and you don't know flat until you come here, to Oklahoma

Well, being from Iowa, I must say it's not Oklahoma flat, or central Illinois flat, for that matter (I swear you can see the Sears Tower from Normal). The landscape can mostly be likened to a rolling sea, as exaggerated by Grant Wood in his landscapes. To be fair, there are pool table flat spots, though. And, rather big bluffs around the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. And, the area around Riverside is a flat part of the state until you get up by Iowa City.

Having grown up only about two miles from a quarry, I never gave any thought to the quarry being in the movie (though it was nowhere that big).

 

[Grup]

I don't think there's any cliffs in Iowa anywhere near as steep as the one shown in the beginning car chase.

Not yet, no.

Exactly what I was thinking. Maybe there will be.

 

[John Picard]

I don't think there's any cliffs in Iowa anywhere near as steep as the one shown in the beginning car chase. We have some little hills, but we're pretty flat. Unless anybody knows somewhere I haven't heard of? I figure that it could have been some sort of result of World War III or the Eugenic War, though.

I have driven through Iowa, and you don't know flat until you come here, to Oklahoma

Well, being from Iowa, I must say it's not Oklahoma flat, or central Illinois flat, for that matter (I swear you can see the Sears Tower from Normal). The landscape can mostly be likened to a rolling sea, as exaggerated by Grant Wood in his landscapes. To be fair, there are pool table flat spots, though. And, rather big bluffs around the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. And, the area around Riverside is a flat part of the state until you get up by Iowa City.

Having grown up only about two miles from a quarry, I never gave any thought to the quarry being in the movie (though it was nowhere that big).

I grew up in Roscoe! We were darn near neighbors. Wisconsin is hella hilly, but trust me, you haven't seen flat until you head west of Oklahoma City.

 

[TremblingBluStar]

There are bluffs in Iowa! :-)

I haven't seen the film yet, so I can't comment. Surely it's not as ridiculous as the episode of X-Files where they go to Iowa and there are mountains in the background.