Plot hole: At the start of the film, a young Jürgen Voller gets hit square in the face, at high speed, by trackside equipment and gets knocked off the train. But somehow, he isn't killed and survives without so much as a scar on his face.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
Directed by: James Mangold
Starring: Harrison Ford, Mads Mikkelsen, Boyd Holbrook
Continuity mistake: When the villains are following Indy through the caves, the old wooden bridge completely breaks and falls apart. However, when they make their escape across the same bridge, it's intact with only a couple of wooden slats broken.
Factual error: The four-barrelled Flak gun is shown running out of ammunition, namely a belt of rounds. This is most likely intended to be a Flak 38, which used twenty-round magazines, not belts. It had a relatively low rate of fire as the magazines had to be constantly swapped out, and two barrels were usually fired at a time. (00:16:58)
Trivia: As Sallah leaves Indiana's place, he can be heard singing the same song that he sings in Raiders of the Lost Ark (when Marion gives him a thank-you kiss).
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Suggested correction: This is not true, he's actually singing "I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For Ice Cream".
Trivia: This is the first movie in the Indiana Jones series not directed by Steven Spielberg, nor with a story written by George Lucas.
Sallah: I miss the desert. I miss the sea. I miss waking up every morning wondering what wonderful adventure the new day will bring to us.
Indiana Jones: Those days have... come and gone.
Sallah: Perhaps...perhaps not.
Indiana Jones: I've believed in magic a few times in my life. I've seen things... things I can't explain. I've come to believe it's not so much what you believe... it's how hard you believe it.
Sallah: Give 'em hell, Indiana Jones.
Question: Maybe I missed some dialogue, but why exactly did Voller think the fissure they were flying towards would take him to his desired date in 1939? I get that the dial detects fissures in time, but why would he think that particular fissure was the one he needed to travel through?
Answer: There is a bit of dialogue en route to the airport when Voller sets the instrument that says, "the first hand sets the destination," as in the time you want to travel back to. This would make the device completely absurd in principle if true (that's why I wanted to mark it as a plot hole/stupidity). Since it's supposed not to open portals but just detect them, it can't be that there are infinite portals for every moment in time you can choose to go back to (and they even close). The sky, while vast, is not infinite. We then find out that it is a trick since it is set to actually bring you to just one destination, but they don't know it yet.
Answer: We're supposed to accept that the dials are pointing to the rift in the sky, which is what makes this plot decision so ridiculous. There's no common reference point (magnetism wouldn't be discovered until and used in compasses for another 2,000 years), and the dial is 2-dimensional. Thus, you could turn your body 90 degrees and aim it down, and there's no indication from the movie that the dial would in any way turn to face the previous rift.
I think, technically, the fact that there's no common reference point is addressed when Voller mentions that the coordinates given are 'Alexandrine coordinates'... which I think might be another anachronism since all I can think it means is the ones used by Ptolemy in his Geography, which was hundreds of years after Archimedes' time. The dial is 2-dimensional, but there are 3 hands. It can be argued that when all 3 align, it does show that the direction you are headed is definitely correct, including the height you are pointing at. I definitely think it's entirely implausible, but the way the unknown mechanism works, attuned to something that does not exist such as time rifts, is kind of a lesser problem. Even if it is supposed to work by some mathematical principle, and then acts as some dowser rod.
Not true. The Chinese were using compasses around 200 BC, and Vikings are believed to have had them as well.
Answer: As they approach the rift, all three of the dial's hands are suddenly pointing towards it. If that is no clear indicator, then what is?
The dial pointing towards it only indicates that they are heading towards the fissure. How does that give Voller any certainty that this is the exact fissure he needs to travel through in order to reach his desired destination, especially considering it ended up not being the one he needed? Were there coordinates in Basil's diary that indicated where the exact fissure would open? I only recall the date of August 20 (?), 1939 being written down.
Only the time is written in the diary (the date you mention is next to August 20, 1969, which would be then supposedly when the finale of the movie takes place). For the coordinates, you need to have the device, which, apparently, allows you also to input with firsthand your desired destination. Voller couldn't know that to concoct his plan, though, since he did not have the diaries at the beginning of the movie.
Question: When Indy and Helena go to the tomb, they find the watch on Archimedes' wrist. However, when they go to his time, Archimedes offers the watch atop the present-day Antikythera. How can the watch still be there if it was given back?
Question: Is it ever explained how Voller managed to survive his encounter with being hit square in the face and falling off the speeding train without a scratch? My thoughts were that he touched the spear of destiny earlier (focused on in a scene) and became immortal, but Indy said it was fake. Plus, Voller dies at the end in 217BC. He also seems to have aged little compared to Indy. Is that a plot point they dropped or forgot about or something?
Answer: It was never explained and seems impossible that anyone could survive such an impact. My own thought was the scene was deliberately exaggerated to appear as if Voller was killed in order to fool and then surprise the audience when he later turns up alive. I also thought it looked as if he hadn't aged. Voller may have been much younger than Indy, possibly as much as 25-30 years. When Voller reappears in the 1960s, he looks more like actor Mads Mikkelsen's actual age. The film should have made him look younger at the beginning. There's a lot of "suspension of disbelief" here.
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