Headscratchers / Olympus Has Fallen

• As much as it would be of course very bad to lose the US President, how important is keeping him alive compared to having the Korean War from reigniting by agreeing to the terrorists' demands, which could easily escalate to a nuclear exchange? Not to mention what would happen if Cerberus was activated...
  • This was actually addressed in the original script: During the Hydra sequence, the Speaker of the House would have inserted a second operative with top-secret orders to kill the President in order to prevent Cerberus's activation.
  • It's implied throughout the movie that the Speaker thinks that the situation can be resolved with an assault on the White House. He doesn't think that the Cerberus protocol could be brute-forced, and that if they take out Kang they can just turn the Seventh Fleet and the 2nd ID back around. It takes time for a fleet and 28,000 troops to pick up and move. You're not going to get a force that entrenched to move itself completely from the Korean DMZ at the drop of a hat. It isn't until the very end that they realize the nuclear arsenal is actually in serious threat of subversion.
  • He's still willing to let what he thinks is the President and the remaining hostages be kidnapped by Kang, with the assumption that they'd just follow the tracking beacon and rescue all of them after the fact. If Kang didn't simply kill all of them before they were saved, he probably would have done it after he found out that the new President put the 7th Fleet and DMZ troops back into place. The Speaker was actually pretty shitty at the job: most of what he did consisted of watching what happened and giving in to Kang's demands, including supposedly letting the terrorist get away with most of the remaining Presidential administration, and fully allowing the Korean War to reignite all in the name of not letting the Cabinet die.
  • Unless Easy Logistics is being employed by the movie quite egregiously.
• Just curious how did the terrorist get their hands on the advanced army air defense system, its never really explained?
  • They even lampshade the mystery in the crisis room and then never mention it again. It would have been simpler, if less cool, to just pull out a couple of shoulder-mounted Stinger missiles.
• This movie could have been over really early had the speaker had to brain cells to rub together, all he would have to do is call the North Korean leader and tell him that if is nutjob commando's didn't release the president than Pyongyang would get a nuclear makeover, given how the North's leader values himself I think he would quickly capitulate.
  • The film never fully confirms that the North Korean government is behind the operation. According to Banning, at least some of the terrorists are North Korean commandos (apparently they wear distinctive tattoos behind their ears), but the only real reference to the DPRK government is when Pyongyang deny any involvement. This troper's interpretation is that it's a rogue DPRK faction, by the use of the world's most wanted terrorist, rather than a salaried special forces operative, as the commander of the mission.
  • While the movie doesn't tell us directly, it's likely that the terrorists are backed by the government of North Korea due to the ridiculous amount of resources and sophistication they had at their disposal. Either that, or they're an N.G.O. Superpower.
• The President keeps telling his people "give them your code, they'll never get mine". Sure, maybe he could withstand pain inflicted on him (or so he thought), he'd quickly give it up as soon as he sees another hostage tortured. It's astonishing that Kang didn't try it, considering it worked like a charm twice.
  • This is acknowledged when Banning is told to prioritise getting Connor to safety; they are aware that the president can't hold out indefinitely, but he will hold out for as long as possible, and torturing Connor was the only guaranteed way they had to get through to him.
• Is it just me, or is Cerberus among the worst-designed systems ever in fiction? They say it's a nuclear failsafe so that in the event of an accidental launch the missile can be self-destructed before reaching its target. Good so far. Except that in order to activate the failsafe, you need the codes of all three top-ranking government officials. But in the situation where you would need Cerberus, there's no guarantee that all three would be available and able to enter their codes. Second, the system is also able to detonate every nuclear warhead, even when in the silos. There is megatons of difference between "self-destruct" and "detonate". Third, once the codes have been entered, there is no way to shut down the system without entering yet another code, and the missile silos themselves seem to have no way to abort launch or detonation on their own. So a system that is supposed to be able to prevent nuclear weapons from going off accidentally would in practice do the exact opposite.
  • And fourth, the system can be brute-forced. Even some of the most basic security systems - as in the password on someone's email account or a lock screen on someone's smartphone - will lock after three wrong attempts. Yet this super-secret terminal that's so important that it's isolated from outside tampering like that will just sit there and accept incorrect passcodes until it gets the right one? Did some programmer get a screwdriver lodged in his skull or something when he was writing this software?
    • This is partly acknowledged; emphasis is placed on the fact that they only had to brute-force one of the three codes, which would be easier to manage without tripping the warning systems once they had the other two codes as examples of what wouldn't trip it.
  • Just wondering: why would there not be some way for authorized personnel (e.g. the Joint Chiefs of Staff acting as a group) to disable Cerberus if one or more code-holders has been captured, such as happens in this movie?
• All right Mr. Acting President, you have five minutes before the entire land based nuclear arsenal of the United States blows up in its silos and covers the nation in nuclear fallout. Why not launch the nukes so that when they go off, they'll be way up in the air, showering the country in EMP, but sparing the worst of the threat, as this would result in no explosive damage on the surface and minimal fallout?
  • Presumably, the complete control that the Cerberus system gives over the nuclear arsenal would have been able to prevent just that.
  • Actually, an underground detonation is the next best thing that can happen. For one, the program detonates the missiles not the warheads. This could be a case of North Koreans not really knowing how nuclear weapons work, in that they'll only go off when they're supposed to, not because the missile they're attached to suddenly explodes.
    • The Americans also react with horror at the thought of the detonations and they even have fancy computer graphics detailing the destruction and death toll, including listing the fallout. It's pretty apparent that it's an error on the part of the filmmakers that can't be explained except by either rewriting the laws of physics in the Olympus universe or suggesting that literally nobody there knows how nukes work. Judging from the idiocy displayed in the film....the latter may be plausible.
    • Not surprising to say the least. Only those that either work with nukes directly (manufacturers, maintainers, and the guys that actually deploy them), or those that bothered to do the research on them actually know how a nuke works. For the benefit of those that don't know, a typical nuclear bomb is typically a Uranium or Plutonium core that is wrapped in high-explosive plates. These plates must detonate at precisely the exact same time to cause the desired reaction (basically a nuclear implosion) to get the desired blast. If one of these plates goes of prematurely, or is damaged, or the wiring connected to the detonator is damaged, the nuke will not work. This is intentional... as I'm sure no one in the 60s wanted a nuke from one of their own bombers to land in their swimming pool... let alone actually go off. Also, it's much easier to clean up the mess when the missile/bomb is still in recognizable pieces... and not in a the midst of a heavy fallout zone.
    • Which is why having the nukes go off in the silo's would be a good thing since they would do a remarkably good job of containing the blast and the plutonium dust.
    • Another thing they didn't consider is that the warhead is not installed on the missiles all the time. The warheads are only installed when the USA is at elevated risk levels.
  • Also the map that shows where the nukes are located is completely inaccurate, all land based silos are located in the upper Midwest.

• They run facial-recognition on Kang (before they knew who he was) but it came up with no matches. But then, as soon as they find out he's Kang, they pull up his file on the computer- WITH HIS PICTURE!
  • He worked as the South Korean Prime Minister's head of security - presumably someone just added the picture from that to the criminal file once they had confirmation.
  • Yeah, but the facial recognition search should have returned his South Korean identity. There's no way that the head of security traveling with the Prime Minister of South Korea wouldn't have any identification.
  • Either he had his legend worked up to make sure it's free of suspicion or he acted to make sure that he wasn't suspicious.

• Kang's whole plan relies on several factors that he could not have possibly accounted for. The Vice President and Secretary of Defense had to be in the bunker, and his plan would have been stopped cold if the President hadn't broken protocol by bringing the South Korean PM and his entire security detail with them.
  • He knew the president would break protocol, since that's who the president is as a person, and considering the timing, the last thing either of them needed was for the Prime Minister of an allied nation to basically be told to 'fend for himself'. So while the movie shows it to be a stupid move due to the people that snuck in, it's a move that makes sense in context.

• How did a bunch of North Korean terrorists get their hands on an AC-130? They simply built one. The C-130 is available openly on the civilian market, and is popular with cargo airlines because of its reliability and utility, so they likely just bought one that was on the market and painted it in (what they thought) were USAF colors. After that, it was merely a case of getting their hands on the weapons, and wiring them up to be operated from the cockpit.
  • But they need to GET weapons. 20mm Vulcans aren't exactly saturating the black market, nor is a huge amount of 20mm ammunition (the amount of cannon shells fired by the plane would have a weight in the tons). Then ship all of it over to wherever they were building and then fly it over to restricted airspace without getting questioned or caught in the act.
    • Not so much, you see, we've been dealing with Taliban rebels using AR15-patterened rifles, or even M32 grenade launchers. They're crude, but they do work, so it's not much of a stretch that a terrorist group with this kind of funding (and maybe backing) could get one, maybe two examples, and just make their own from materials found around the country. As for the ammunition, they likely made it as well, and for what they were doing, all they'd need is ball rounds and the occasional tracer round. I mean hell, these guys turned a normal C-130 into a pseudo-AC-130 with pilot operated guns, and then used it to open the front door into the white house (and technically back door as well)... I wouldn't put ANYTHING past these guys.
    • Never mind the commonality of the AR-15, but both of those weapons are in use with the very people that they're fighting. US military weapons and such huge amounts of ammunition (the C-130 fired a downright obscene amount of ammo), to say nothing of the plane and a full complement of flares, would be hideously expensive. Same for the various firearms used by the huge amount of attackers, all of which would need to be smuggled in or acquired in the United States. While it might be excusable if it was North Korea behind the attack, Kang was simply an independent terrorist. The entire plot revolves around Kang being hypercompetent, extremely wealthy, and prepared for any possibility while the United States and their allies are nimrods who defend the White House with a bunch of amateur airsoft players.
    • It's not necessarily Kang being hypercompetent and wealthy, but his backers. If he's actually being funded by the DPRK or elements within, it's not -entirely- beyond the stretches of plausibility.
    • The problem I see is that you cannot just by a C-130, strap some guns on it and call it a gunship, the AC-130 has a very different structure inside to support the weapons it carries, if you put four avengers (the guns looked like avenger gatling guns) on a regular C-130 and pull the trigger the plane will get shaken apart by the recoil.
    • Going off of the mere physics involved, that C-130 would have to be severely reinforced in order to withstand the recoil from mounted Vulcans, and second, they probably did have gunners in the plane. Next, the ammunition for the Vulcans must be in the range of around 5000-6000 rounds, given the strafing run and civilian attack. Add in the AC-130s trademark Angel Flares, and that is a serious amount of weight for that plane. Add in the fuel needed and it is a very heavily armed (and expensive) way of getting in the front door.

• Why do the four missiles fired from the White House go for the flares while the one fired from the Raptor hit home? Because the missile fired from the Raptor is AIM-9X which has a nice little computer chip that tells it to ignore flares and go for the REAL target.
  • A bigger problem is that the White House missiles simply detonated in typical action movie fireballs that look pretty but do nothing. In reality, a missile detonating at that proximity to an AC-130 would pepper it with shrapnel and likely knock it clean out of the sky, or at least force an emergency landing.
    • Unless the AC-130 was heavily reinforced...

• The film makers also don't seem to realize that DC is ringed by patriot missile batteries, in the movie they admitted that the plane had no proper transponder codes so why did it take that long for somebody to send F-22's up, and when those got blown up (if they were going to shoot it down why not use radar guided missiles) why didn't dozens of patriot missiles take that plane out of the sky?
  • Because it would take far too much effort to research every single defensive system in place around Washington D.C. and then develop a way to circumvent each one, especially if the director or producers didn't really care how realistic anything is. As a disclaimer of sorts, I find it absurd that they'd think anyone would believe the capital of the most powerful nation in the world would be so poorly protected, but I guess that's what the writers figured suspension of disbelief was for.
  • One thing to remember is that this set 20 Minutes into the Future with Obama shown as a past President. It's not that implausible that a previous President in the interim (or even the current one), had those batteries removed at some point for some odd reason (that, or in this films universe they were never installed to begin with). Yes, it seems unlikely to happen in the real world given past events, but remember that film makers and writers have gotten visits from the CIA and such for getting things too right in the past. Look at Red Dawn, Dr. Strangeglove, and The Hunt for Red October for some examples.

• How come the army didn't just walk in the front door and help Gerard Butler. The whole premise of Kang telling them to stay out or he'd kill hostages was defeated by the fact that they needed the Cerberus codes and he was killing hostages anyway as Butler was raising hell. This could have ended much sooner if the snipers just killed every terrorist they saw and and the army rushed the building. Sure some may have died, but it's less of a risk than flying six helicopters against a huge anti-air gun. Even at the end, with all the terrorists dead, the shot President still had to walk from the bunker out the front door to get a medic.
  • Easy. It takes several minutes to get from the front door to the elevator to the PEOC, compare that to the 5 seconds it would take someone with an MP5 to just kill everyone in the room. This is something that real hostage situations have. Yes, you have a half dozen hostage takers holding a dozen or so people, and the dozens of SWAT officers outside could easily storm the place and take out all of the terrorists through sheer weight of numbers, but if they do that, the terrorists may execute all of the hostages, and possibly even escape. In an ideal world, the government in question would rather that at least some of the terrorists survive to be questioned in order to prevent future attacks, and there's nothing worse for a government than having to explain to the media why they weren't able to save the hostages in the first place. If this happens multiple times, you can bet money that that government may become unstable as people start thinking that their government can't protect them.
  • Oh, and let's not forget that the White House was lined with explosives, so if they did attempt entry, half the entry team would be blown to bits (along with the White House itself most likely.)

• The entire Evil Plan doesn't make sense at all, for a number of reasons: 1) They are a rogue faction, not affiliated with North Korea. If NK condemns the attack, then they have no sovereign backup. 2) When he demands the 7th Fleet retreat from Korean territory, what can he do if they say no? Kill a hostage, yes people will die but more will die if the US give in; and the hostage is probably dead anyway. He had a finite amount of troops and hostages, and the USAF were ready to retake at a moments notice. 3) The CERBERUS system. It has already been discussed elsewhere how stupid it is, but from a luck viewpoint, Kang got everyone he needed right when he needed it. He got the POTUS, SecDef and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs all at the same time, which from a story perspective is a good thing as they can stop nukes if they have been launched, but in this case is bad... Except if they didn't give up their respective codes, then the rebels would need to brute force the code for all three, which would take a lot longer than one code. The system itself seems bizarre that it could detonate the missiles within the bunkers as opposed to those that have been launched. 4) The hostages. When the Cabinet is taken hostage, did it not occur to anyone to just storm the place? Even if he killed all the hostages, he is still no closer to getting what he wanted, and he just assassinated a POTUS...
  • 1) The North Koreans claim they are not affiliated with them, but that doesn't make it so. Regardless, if the CERBERUS plan worked, North Korea would be safe to invade regardless of whether they were working together or not, and frankly Kang likely doesn't need or expect sovereign backup either from the North or anyone else; 2) He doesn't care if they give into their demands or not- he's happy when they do, but it doesn't matter on his end if they don't since either way, America is doomed, and the 7th fleet won't be that much use whether they are in position or not. The military may indeed have been prepared to retake at a moments notice, but he knows they won't because they will and do want to keep the hostages alive and can't break into the command room regardless without risking him killing them first; 3) It wasn't luck, because the South Koreans were there to discuss serious security matters regarding North Korea military manoeuvres (which means they probably were involved despite their protests, as this prompts the meeting) so it is logical that both the Secretary of Defence and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs would be present given the situation. The fact that they can brute force them at all means they have a (risky) backup plan if they weren't present, which is unlikely; 4) It did, and we see them planning to, but Kang tells them to back off or he starts killing hostages. Yes, if he killed them all then he'd lose his edge, but that's a risk every hostage taker takes- and given his hostage was the President, good chance they'd back off. Obviously his Evil Plan relies on several gambles, but that doesn't mean it was illogical.

• How was there no way to disconnect Cerberus? No line that could be cut, no satellite dish that could be destroyed? Assuming it was a dish and it couldn't be hit because of the air defenses, couldn't they just destroy the satellite itself?

• So Kang's plan was to fake his and Ben Asher's death to escape, keeping Ben as insurance. But wouldn't Morgan Freeman just go, "Okay, the President's dead anyway, send the troops back into South Korea."?
  • Kang's objective wasn't to get the US to leave South Korea in the first place, it was to gain control of the CERBERUS system and then use that control over the nuclear arsenal to completely devastate the US.

• Does the South Korean Government not perform background checks on their agents? Like, literally ALL OF THEM were with Kang.
  • Presumably, Kang weaseled his way into the SK PM's security detail and then slowly began putting in his own people as a means of planning the attack. It was obviously very calculated and there was a lot of setup involved, after all.

• What was the point of Forbes telling Kang Banning was dead when Banning managed to do precisely jack shit before showing Kang that he was alive anyway, ruining any element of surprise?
  • It was a resource that didn't wind up being useful. It's like packing an umbrella in case it rains. It might not be helpful, but you're going to want to have it in case it does.
  • Also it was a degree of redemption on Forbes' part. He had nothing to gain by lying he was going to die soon regardless, but he chose to help Banning instead of reporting what really happened.

• So the movie is an act of war, right? Whether they were affiliated with North Korea or not they still held the South Korean and American presidents hostage and caused several dozen deaths. There has to be a casus belli there for the 38th Parallel to no longer apply.
  • Declaring war over the actions of a rogue group - while not entirely without precedent - is not something the US is likely to do. Unlike the Middle East, there's nothing except revenge to be gained by going to war.
    • Problem with that, the NK government has 0 credibility and nobody would really believe they had nothing to do with the terrorist strike.
• What was the point of wiring explosives to the PEOC's walls? The end of the film shows the PEOC's doors still work and can be opened from the inside, so wiring explosives to blow out sections of the wall makes no sense.
  • They mentioned it earlier: there used to be tunnels in the basement that lead to the PEOC, but they were all sealed. They were blowing the walls to get back to those tunnels.
• So what exactly was Kangs plan after setting off all the Nukes in the US? Like that many atomic explosions is liable to kick up enough dirt and detritus to block out the sun worldwide for a good long while, It would be like the KT Extinction event that wiped out the Dinosaurs, only worse because there would also be countless tons of fallout in the atmosphere that would spread worldwide as well. Basically he's dooming the entire human race, like sure North Korea would be open to conquer the South but fat lot of good that is when the sun is blotted out by radioactive debris, all the world's vegetation dies, and everyone on the planet develops radiation sickness from the global fallout.
  • You are vastly overestimating how powerful the detonations would be. The current ICBM employed by the U.S. is the LGM-30 Minuteman-III, which can pack 3 warheads that each have a 170 kiloton explosive yield. Even being generous, and saying Kang could detonate all 405 that are currently in service, and all of them had 3 warheads, that’s “only” 206.55 megatons of explosive force. The asteroid that caused the K-T extinction was estimated at 100 trillion tons of TNT. That comes out to 100 million megatons, over 484 thousand times more powerful. All the nukes detonating would be bad news for the U.S., but it wouldn’t be near enough to impact the world.