Corrected entry: When Indiana Jones picks up the Holy Grail, he says "That's the cup of a carpenter." Harrison Ford was a carpenter before becoming an actor.
Corrected entry: When the Zeppelin takes off, you see the German officer has fallen into a pile of bags. These bags obviously belonged to the passengers on the Zeppelin, so why weren't they on the Zeppelin when it took off? (01:12:55)
Correction: Perhaps the bags belonged to passengers on the incoming flight rather than the outgoing flight?
Zeppelins didn't turn around that quickly.
Corrected entry: When Indy is desperately trying to rescue his father during the desert tank chase, he successfully explodes one of the tank's cannon barrels, but then becomes (impossibly) entangled on the exploded barrel by his bag strap. Indy even dangles his entire weight from the strap for a couple of shots. For the Indiana Jones films, Indy's bag is and always has been a government-issue gas mask bag, made of raw canvas with decidedly weak cotton seam stitching (the gas mask bags were never expected to last more than a few years in service). For the movies, the bag's actual canvas web strap was replaced with a 60" length of seasoned and durable bridle leather (which can easily support the full weight of an adult human). The problem is not the strength of the leather strap; rather, the problem is the strength of the canvas bag stitching. The bag's strap attachments were never designed or fabricated to support full body weight, so the bag stitching should have ripped out immediately (and fatally) when Indy dangled from the cannon barrel.
Correction: The fact that Indy has had this bag since at least 8 years before they were produced notwithstanding, it's obvious he replaced the strap himself with something more durable due to the rough nature of his work as an explorer and archaeologist. It stands to reason that he used a much more durable thread and stitch when he did this for the same reason.
Corrected entry: In the tank scene, a German fires a bullet which hits the tank driver and he falls on to the controls, turning the tank. As almost everyone in the tank is dead/unconscious nobody would move the body so the tank should go round in circles.
Correction: Henry Jones Sr and Marcus Brody were in the tank when this happened and they weren't killed nor knocked out. It is likely that they moved the body.
Senior and Marcus are consistently depicted as totally useless in practical situations. They get out and there's no indication that they contributed anything like that off camera. The original mistake should stand?
Corrected entry: You can't swim in petroleum. The human body is much denser (and thus, would sink like a brick) when you would try to swim in it. Not only that, but the fumes above it are toxic, so you would also die of poisoning.
Correction: Yes, the human body is more dense than petroleum, however it doesn't necessarily mean you'll sink like a brick. You also need to take into account a person's body mass, fat distribution, and lung capacity, all of which make it possible to swim for short periods of time in oil. As for the inhalation of the fumes, the toxic effects are not likely to manifest immediately. People have been purposely inhaling gasoline, glue, aerosols and other hydrocarbons for years, and it takes long term exposure to cause death.
Although, any ingestion of petroleum can cause immediate affects, such as nausea, vomiting, dizziness, and it would intensely burn your eyes if you got any in them. Speaking from experience.
They were in Venice. It is likely the tunnel was at or below water level. The petroleum is able to float on the surface of water. It is possible they would be able to swim underneath the layer of petroleum.
Corrected entry: After the motorcycle chase, Indiana drives past the road sign, which points to Venice and Berlin. He then talks to his dad before looking straight ahead at a sign which is behind him.
Correction: He's not looking at the sign, he's making a decision. The shot of the sign was for the audience's benefit.
The combination of the two shots is conventional movie language for him looking ahead at the sign (which, I agree, signifies his decision). But he drove PAST the sign.
If it's not in the same shot, he is not looking at the sign but towards the road ahead. The mistake is an assumption and has been corrected appropriately.
Indiana Jones is not some experimental, challenging movie, like Fellini Satyricon. It follows standard montage conventions for understandable viewing. Person looks ahead, followed up with a "subjective" shot. It's textbook stuff - it's called the Kuleshov effect ("a mental phenomenon by which viewers derive more meaning from the interaction of two sequential shots"). Also, since they drove past the post, they should then be visible in the second shot.
Corrected entry: When Indie rescues his father and shoots the Germans, the one that he pushed over stayed on the floor. Surely being pushed over couldn't have caused him that much damage.
Correction: He probably stayed down to avoid getting shot, since that's what happened to the others.
I checked the scene just now - the guard who has some lines is taken out without any sort of proper fight. I ask you, Mitchell and Webb excepted, when do Nazi henchmen EVER decide to take it easy and live to tell the tale instead? At any rate, he's taking a huge risk that the Joneses won't sway the gun on him for good measure.
Corrected entry: When Indy and his father are rotating via the fireplace into the radio room and are noticed by the female operator, she screams in German: 'Los. Die Gewehre.' and the soldiers fire their pistols. But in German, the word 'Gewehre' refers to rifles; for pistols or handguns the word 'Pistole' is used.
Correction: The operator is pretty flustered by the appearance of two bound prisoners in the secret door, and just screams out the first command she can think of. She forgets that the other persons in the room are officers who do not carry rifles, but they get the message; to shoot at the Joneses.
Corrected entry: When Indy is using the grail to heal his father, he empties the grail on the wound. Moments later there is water in the grail.
Correction: Hmm... a holy artifact performing a miracle refilling itself... Well, that's just odd, now isn't it?
Corrected entry: While Donovan and Indy are looking at the tablet, if you freeze the movie while it shows the tablet, you can clearly see the word "deorum", meaning "of the gods". Not something you would expect a Christian to be carrying around, considering they are monotheistic. (00:17:50)
Correction: Firstly if you have to pause the movie then it's not a mistake but aside from that, some early Christian theology believed that the holy trinity was to be interpreted literally and hence Christianity was not monotheistic.
It's visible without freezing - although the normal viewer wouldn't start reading. It's not coherent Latin to begin with, deorum is basically just one example of that. Borderline. They knew what they wanted it to say, so they could have made a better prop. But if someone is reading a newspaper headline and there's nonsense below, is that a mistake? Not sure.
The tablet simply should not speak of gods, plural, because the Crusaders were monotheistic. The trinity (although a confusing concept) is not referred to as three gods. And other, obscure and far away versions of Christianity have nothing to do with it.
Actually it says "rex deorum nostrum" which means "Our king of the Gods." Meaning the one true God, above all other gods. If you read the few words before it left of the cross it fully says "The army of the king of the Gods.", meaning the templars I think.
I feel that this is putting a positive spin on it. Nostrum by the way should be "noster" for your interpretation to work. I stand by my earlier opinion that they could have made a better prop, one with a "prop-er" Latin text without errors.
I think for a prop it's actually pretty good. Most parts of the text in Latin is almost identical to what Indy is reciting. He just happens to skip the part we are talking about. The tablet is worn down and partial too so the wrong spelling is explained by the missing words or letters, like "nostrum." They took a while to make this thing for the movie.
Oh right. Good, except that the fact that there were plenty of people just a phone call away who could have made a CORRECT Latin text. And I don't want to sound sarcastic or anything, but I didn't know stone inscriptions could develop spelling errors. It hasn't been badly copied by a monk - they are looking at the original - epigraphy is generally very reliable, when it's there, it's there. And IF there were gaps in the text, then we would see the actual gaps. (Also: If you want to connect "exercitum" to "rex" then the latter should become "regis.").
You know what? You may be right. For those few seconds of screen time, I'm OK with it though, personally.
Yes that is what I agree with as well. It's not visible long enough for any normal person to start seeing the errors.
Corrected entry: When the tank falls over the cliff and is rolling to a stop, you can see that it leaves a trail of paint behind it (a cheaply-made model, I guess). (01:36:55)
Correction: It's not paint being left behind but clean dirt which has been uncovered by the rolling tank, if you look to the right there is a rock the same colour which wasn't touched by the tank.
Corrected entry: In the motorbike chase after the rescue of Indy's dad from the castle, you can see how they pass the border between Austria and Germany. The guardhouse is waving the Austrian flag. Austria however ceased to exist as a sovereign state after the annexation by Germany in March 1938. Looking at the weather it rather seems to be spring than winter. Therefore there would no longer be a guard at the border nor a guard house waving the Austrian flag.
Correction: The "anschluss" of Austria didn't happen overnight, although it did happen rather quickly. However, the people of Austria were not immediately integrated into Germany, for example the Jews were first to be subjected to the Nuremberg laws. Its safe to assume border guards stayed put during all of 1938 to prevent attempts of "unwanted" people entering Germany. The flag of Austria also couldn't have been replaced by the official flag of Ostmark until later in 1938. So during spring, which the movie probably takes place, the Austrian flag is still used on various places, especially unimportant ones like a small border post.
Corrected entry: When Indy kicks the near-skeletal form of Donovan against a wall, you can see that Donovan has part of his shirt on his arm. When Donovan smashes into a wall in the next shot, there is no shirt.
Correction: As you even said, he had part of his shirt on his arm. He is very quickly decaying and you see his clothes deteriorate and fall apart. There is also a strong wind blowing, that is pushing the clothes off his body. So, it's quite plausible, that when they switch to the scene where he's flying back, against the wall, that his clothes have completely dissolved and all that remained was his skeleton.
Corrected entry: When Indy gets on the plane to go to Venice, the map traces his route from New York City. But when he first set out in Raiders of the Lost Ark - when he was working with Denholm Elliot at the same university - the map showed him starting out from California.
Correction: The fact that the map starts tracking his journey from a different starting point doesn't make it a mistake. He could have gone to New York for any number of reasons before setting out.
Corrected entry: Three people involved in this film have won the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award. They are George Lucas, Harrison Ford, and Sean Connery.
Correction: So what? I'm sure that it's not unique in that regard. Trivia is about the film, not about coincidences relating to those who made it.
Corrected entry: When a second "volunteer" gets to the first challenge, he looks down and sees a body lying on the floor with its head lying next to it. Yet when he gets decapitated, his head flies off and rolls about 10 meters, before finally being stopped by a rock. (01:40:55)
Correction: Considering that this "Booby Trap" was built about 1000 years ago and was powered by gears, you could assume that it wouldn't be precise enough to cut at the exact same speed each time it was tripped. So, each time someone walked through the trap and their head was sliced off it wouldn't land in the same place each time.
Corrected entry: When Indiana finally breaks through the giant 'X' on the library floor, he simply pops out the remaining marble in that area. In reality, the marble "tiles" would have been held together by some sort of cement joint, rendering it impossible for him to remove a neat square of marble without using some sort of cutting tool first. (00:29:55)
Correction: the pieces were meant as a secret door.
Corrected entry: In the library scene, the Grail Protectors hit Marcus in the head and drag him. What kind of spies/soldiers/agents are they if they didn't find the grail diary on Marcus's pocket? Surely the book would be interesting to them, since it contains lots of directions to find the grail...
Correction: The Protectors have a much higher priority - eliminating Indy and Ilsa before they can find the directions to the Grail. They've got no reason to search the unconscious Marcus - it would simply waste time. There's no indication that they know about Henry's Grail diary, so they wouldn't know to look for it.
Corrected entry: Both this movie and the first one revolve around Hitler's fascination with the occult. In reality, Hitler only had a mild interest with spiritual matters. Heinrich Himmler was the one with the strong interest in such things.
Correction: We never see that it is literally Hitler ordering these missions, though the non-German characters generalize that Hitler is pursuing them. Someone within his administration, like Himmler, could be carrying these out without specific approval and the Americans would assume that it is Hitler's orders. Actions of a country are attributed to that country's leader.
Corrected entry: How did the Coronado-guys manage to come after Indy so quickly? He had a horse, while they had a car, and they certainly couldn't drive it in that rocky landscape, so they would have to run some distance on foot.
Correction: First off, this happens to be more of a coincidence than trivia since the Holy Grail belonged to Jesus Christ, and English translations of the Bible refer to Jesus as a carpenter. Plus, Harrison Ford was an actor before becoming a carpenter. He didn't become a carpenter until the 1970's when he needed to support his family, which he felt he wasn't able to do with his acting career.
Bishop73