Lights, camera, action… edit!
The world is divided. The stage is set for the final battle. Anticipation, fear and terror have gripped the entire world. A lot of these people might perish before the morning sun. The tension is through the roof. And amidst all of this, sneaking into Winterfell, is a White coffee cup. You read that right, I did not misspell white walker.
'Game of Thrones' is undoubtedly the biggest thing to have happened in television history. With the stakes and number of people watching this show increasing every season, there was a lot of anticipation for the final season. However, when winter came to Winterfell, it brought along a cup of coffee from 'Starbucks' (Aww! No one brings me coffee).
The first two episodes were slow, the third one was too dark (no it wasn't your computer screen, it was the episode) and the fourth one had a coffee mug from 2019 in it. It's fair to say that the finale hasn't been as 'awesome' as it could have been. This somehow feels like the story of the school topper who scored 90s in every exam but ended up with 75 per cent in the final exam.
But this isn't a story dissing 'Game of Thrones'. Instead, this is a tale of all those toppers who made silly mistakes in their final exams. Trust me, there's a lot more than you think.
You think leaving a coffee cup inside a shot and not picking it up in editing is a blunder? Imagine leaving an entire person from the film crew in a scene! In 'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl' (God! That's a long name), you can see a crew member over Jack Sparrow's shoulder. No not a crew member with a sword but a crew member with a camera. This is fondly known as the day where the 'editors almost caught a mistake.' Get it?
Another popular movie, which forgot to take out the crew from the screen is 'Saving Private Ryan'. In the final battle where Tom Hanks' company is trying to hold the bridge against the German assault, where the intensity is so high that Hanks almost dies four times, three people with a camera appear on screen casually filming all of this taking some credit away from this otherwise great film.
Films like 'Jurassic Park', 'Twilight', 'Titanic', 'Jaws' and 'Braveheart' are all guilty of leaving a crew member inside a shot. The Starbucks cup seems like a pretty small deal now, doesn't it? But wait, the list is long and full of terrors.
'American Pie' is another movie guilty of making an on-screen mistake. Although a lot of parents believed that the movie itself was a mistake, there's one that happens on screen. In a scene inside the bedroom, a girl is drinking beer from a blue cup and when the camera returns to her a few seconds later, the cup has become transparent. But let's be honest, none of us were watching 'American Pie' for the colour of the beer mug. *wink wink*
Harry Potter is also guilty of something (apart from creating a fanbase of annoying and irrational people). In the first instalment of the 8-part movie series, Harry Potter is seen sitting next to Ron on the table at the feast and immediately in the next cut, he's seen sitting on the opposite side next to Emma Watson who was playing Hermione. To be fair to Potter, any of us would have switched seats to sit next to Emma instead of Ron, so this is one mistake I'm willing to forgive. Also, for people claiming it's a magical school and anything can happen, this was before the syllabus started and I'm sure there are no magic tuitions before school starts there.
The on-screen mistakes, however, aren't just limited to these big budget mainstream movies. These mistakes seem to pop up anywhere. Even in the Quentin Tarantino classics. For example, the movie 'Reservoir Dogs' (which was taken by Bollywood and made into 'Kaante' - an absolute abomination) sees a character on the floor with his hands handcuffed behind him. In the next scene, the hands are cuffed in the front. Unless someone took off the handcuffs and let him switch his hands in front and the cuffed him back again, that is impossible. I almost lost my right shoulder testing the theory.
'Pulp Fiction' (did he say PULP FICTION? Yes, he did), considered one of the greatest films to have been ever made, also has a mistake. The iconic scene with John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson breaking into a house and pointing a gun at someone before the shootout, had bullet holes on the walls even before the first shot was fired. No Marvel fans, Nick Fury didn't time-travelling to make those gun marks, they were caused in the earlier take. Another mistake in this film (that's right, there's two mistakes in this one) is the disappearing of the red mark from the time when Uma Thurman got her adrenaline shot. It just vanished!
Another Tarantino movie that bites the dust in this regard is 'Inglourious Basterds'. Oh yes, that's going down too! The German officer that gets beaten to death with a baseball bat has a badge on his left which disappears for the rest of his scene and no one really carved that out (despite the movie having a lot of carving out scenes).
Blockbuster movies like 'Gladiator' also made it to the list owing to careless editing. In the scene at the colosseum, you see a chariot turning over in war, which is pretty cool until you see a gas tank under it. That's part of the reason why Russell Crowe is pissed in the movie.
But the biggest on-screen mistake of them all comes from Bollywood. This is from Tiger Shroff's movie 'A Flying Jatt'. The film, which struggled at the box office saw one of the gravest mistakes by the editors. Their mistake was leaving Tiger Shroff on screen for the entire movie! There have been mistakes but none that can match this.
There's been so many mistakes, yet all these movies still remain classics for us. A minor mistake doesn't take away everything from the creation. So, all I'm saying is sit back, relax, ignore the Starbucks cup and watch the last two episodes of 'Game of Thrones' because this is a once-in-a-generation phenomena and we should let a cup of coffee ruin it (which sounds like a good tagline to tinder dates as well.)
- The writer is a stand-up comedian