Dear Johnny Fanboy,

In Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines at the end of the car chase in which the police are involved, our heroes turn on to a highway slip road. Parked on the hard shoulder is a car that looks for the split second it is on screen like a police car. By the time we cut to it again the car is gone.

I'm being a bit vague as I have only seen the film once, but can you explain this continuity error?

Regards,

bonfire

a.k.a. Charles Moreira

Johnny Fanboy replies:

I don't usually worry too much about such production-related continuity gaffes. I tend to regard them as imperfections in the way events are presented to us, rather than as problems with the events themselves (in other words, the story). For instance, I put the continuity error involving the turbolift level numbers in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (during the scene with Spock's rocket boots) down to the fact that we simply see the events in slightly the wrong order.

But since you ask, maybe a cop drove the car off (admittedly very quickly!) to try and head off the offending vehicle. Or maybe the T-X used her remote-control abilities to move a potential obstacle out of her way. Or perhaps - since this movie trilogy is all about altering history - we were looking into alternative time for an instant, and saw a timeline in which the only difference was the position of a single police car!

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