Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade

Factual error: When the soldier from Hatay attempts to pass through the booby trap and his head is chopped off there is no blood. Any wound to the head or neck tends to bleed profusely but the head rolls by without a drop.

Factual error: When the Nazis are meeting with the Sultan of Hatay he remarks he wants their Rolls Royce Phantom II, he quips about the size of the engine being 4.5L engine with 30HP. In reality, the Phantom II had a 7.7L I-6 engine with 40-50HP. Also, the vehicle shown in the movie is a Rolls-Royce 20/25HP Barker Saloon, not a Phantom II. It also makes little sense that the Nazis would be driving a Rolls Royce since it is a British car. In the novel, the car is said to be a Daimler-Benz, which matches what the Nazis actually used in real life.

Factual error: The stamps on the mail at Sr. Jones house are Texas Statehood issued in 1945. A bit late for the scene. (00:24:15)

Factual error: When Indy and his father rotate into the control room, the eagle on the uniform of the woman who raises the alarm is on the wrong side, left instead of right.

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Suggested correction: As it's an SS uniform, the eagle insignia should be on the upper left arm.

Factual error: In the 'The Last Crusade', the Germans and their lackeys use MP 38 or MP 40 submachine guns extensively. The MP 38 was still a new weapon in 1938, and not around in such large numbers to arm each and every soldier with it (total of 1 million MP38/40's vs. more than 20 million troopers in WW2).

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Mistakes

Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade mistake picture

Plot hole: When Indy is stepping on the letters at the end, trying to spell out God's name, he steps on J, incorrectly, causing it to collapse. When he falls through, however, he grabs onto another letter so as not to fall down. The letters he grabs onto and pulls himself up are an L and a Y, which are not in the word Iehova, so should have collapsed too. (01:46:20)

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Quotes

[Henry has activated a secret lever which rotates him and Indiana from a room on fire to a room full of German soldiers.]
Henry Jones: Our situation has not improved.

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Trivia

Trivia: Harrison Ford was a Boy Scout in his youth, reaching the level of Life Scout. Steven Spielberg paid homage to this by making young Indy a Life Scout.

Jedd Jong

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Questions

Question: They didn't make it out of the cave with the grail because they dawdled... I wonder, would someone be able to make it out running at a dead sprint once they crossed the seal? And if so, does that mean that they're home free? Or would disaster follow them outside of the cave?

Answer: The implication is that disaster would follow them outside of the cave as well. It wouldn't make much sense if you could simply outrun the disaster.

BaconIsMyBFF

"Followed by disaster" is a kind of curse, a thing not common in Christianity. It doesn't make much sense anyhow. A seal is just a dot - OK, so let's at least grant that the seal represents a circle that the grail has to stay in. Who decided where those borders are? The grail was taken there during the first crusade. That was closer to 1938 than it was to 33 AD. The three knights could move the grail about then. Why not afterwards? The knights could have built the traps. But the borders could only have been set by god, in an unusually late and completely atypical miracle.

Spiny Norman

There are several examples of curses in the Christian Bible: Lot's wife is turned into a pillar of salt for looking back at Sodom, the plagues visited upon Egypt, Adam and Eve are cursed for eating fruit from the tree of knowledge, etc. The knights did not move the grail around after finding it, they stayed in the temple for 150 years and then two left leaving the third behind. The great seal and it's restriction was already in place when the knights got there.

BaconIsMyBFF

Where in the movie is that stated? I interpreted the knight's story as them having made that place. Looks like it isn't actually specified. But if God made it, then I submit that he would have used Greek, not Latin, for the stepping stones. (All of those curses are from the old testament. The book where god kills firstborn children as long as they're Egyptian. Grail is by definition new testament where you turn the other cheek. There simply are no curses in the gospel, that's just not how Jesus rolled).

Spiny Norman

The tests were made by the knights, but the seal had God's power in it. Just like the cup.

lionhead

It's still a bit dodgy. What if you take a shovel and dig yourself a back door? Basically this film really excels at stuff that makes no sense but helps the storytelling, or to be precise, creates dramatic effects.

Spiny Norman

Every fictional story is like that in some way. That's why it's called fictional. It's just a story.

lionhead

Not a particularly convincing argument, "stuff happens for no reason all the time", if I may say so. Why is this website even here then? The fact is that some stories are more coherent than others. (♫ "In olden days, a hole in the plot, would seem to matter, quite a lot. Now heaven knows, anything goes..." ♫);).

Spiny Norman

It's the difference in what story they want told. Is it a fairy tale or based on actual events? A huge difference in plausibility between the two. The site is there to look at mistakes, not how believable the story is.

lionhead

It is not set in another universe so plausibility isn't somehow suspended. Maybe take a look at the categories recognised by this website. Plot holes, factual errors, even stupidity. (They? Who are they?).

Spiny Norman

It is set in a fictional universe because it's not a true story. With "they" I mean the writers/director. Mistakes in a plot (plot holes) have nothing to do with how believable the story is. As long as it's plausible, it's not a mistake.

lionhead

Pretty sure it's the same universe, just with some added characters/events. What about the total lack of spaceships or orcs or talking animals for example? The seal business is not a mistake YET, but it's very dodgy because no-one knows how it works or why. Like all Indys "trapped" secret places, it's (among other things) unclear who resets the traps for the next visitor. We can't brush it ALL off as "the hand of god" every time.

Spiny Norman

Huge amounts of stuff in films isn't exhaustively explained. Doesn't mean there isn't an explanation that's perfectly believable. There's zero evidence either way to say how "followed by disaster" would manifest, and just because there's not a thorough explanation doesn't mean that it's "dodgy", and it's not worth bickering about either, because there's no concrete answer either way.

Jon Sandys Premium member

OK but I would like to note that not everyone who offers creative explanations has recently seen the movie; some people just invent their own. E.g. "followed by disaster" is not an actual explanation from the movie, it was just one of the suggestions made here and only here. Or the ones on my own question below. All I'm saying is, it's very hard to tell what the "rules" / "logic" of this place are supposed to be, so I understand what the OP was driving at.

Spiny Norman

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