1) When they are in the ballast tanks, they are at the bottom of the ship - which is now out of the water. But yet when they open the valves, water pours in. Where is this water coming from? By my estimation the inlets would be high and dry.

2) Why would they design ballast tanks to automatically flood in succession? Since the purpose of the tanks is to add stability and correct the balance of the ship, I would imagine you would want more control of this activity.

3) At least once, the characters open a hatch and simply step through it - and find themselves standing on something. What? The underside of a convenient balcony? What gets me is that they stepped through the door without even looking to see if there was anything to stand on first. For all they knew they could have been stepping into a cavernous place like the engine room where the “floor” is now fifty or sixty feet “down”.

As a fan of the original, I have to say I was disappointed. In the original it was HARD getting through the ship. Things didn’t work… there wasn’t always a convenient place to stand or walk - and so on. With a track record including the fantastic Das Boot, I really expected a lot more attention to detail (and just plain avoidance of simple mistakes) from Wolfgang Petersen.

I agree with most of what Ed said, with the exception of Number 4. Most emergency lights have battery backups to provide light in the case of electrical fires and blackouts. That would have provided light for several hours assuming they were destroyed in the ship turning over.

Also, wouldn’t a ship sink bow first (like in the original movie) since the sloped front would have more weight from the steel of the hull over less surface area causing less bouyancy than the aft?

I suppose it could sink differently, if the aft filled with water, but since there were no holes in the aft section of the hull, there would be no way for the air to escape until the ship twists or turns upright when finally sinking.

1-The Poseidon had no anchors. The entire ship is computer generated, and I guess they focused on the hull design and not the anchors.

2-Rogue waves exist, but are the result of constructive interference between smaller (but still large) waves. The wave hit on a perfectly calm day… not a situation likely to result in a rogue wave.

3-LOTS of fire, but very little smoke. OK, if there was too much smoke, you couldn’t see the action and it would be a boring movie.

4-Too much power. Again, if the lights were completely off, the screen would be black and the movie would be boring.

5-Helicopters can’t fly too far offshore…Perhaps they were launched from a ship?

6-Bow thruster operation didn’t make sense. They would either be “blowing” to port or starboard, not inboard or outboard.

7-Bow thrusters were activated by a joystick on the bridge that had to be held in position. Yet later at the end of the movie, they are operated by a button that stays in position.

8-Air pockets in the ship would be under high-pressure. If an opening is made to the outside, there would be a great rush of air out. It would have blown them out of the bow thruster tubes.

9-Balast tank operation didn’t makes sense. Why would you put the controls to flood the tank on the inside of it?

10-The windows and doors above the hull itself are generally not watertight. So the ballroom would have flooded immediately.

11-There should not have been an access port to the bow thruster tubes. Opening this door at anytime the boat was in the water would have resulted in flooding the compartment.

After digging around - I realized that there is a very real possibility that there could be rogue waves… I still contend that they wouldn’t break like that though… (Although my original contention was that they wouldn’t exist… so I guess I’m half-wrong to start with)

Take one scary phenomenon, find the worst conceivable real-world scenario and scale it up a few notches ……