Indiana Jones inaccuracies. Add to the list.
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drusselmeyer
Master Member
The dial of destiny is, of course, stupid. Time travel is impossible...without a flux capacitor.
Yeah; the Dialtone of Density is stupid. Only Cher can turn back time...
VanPersie
Well-Known Member
It's not impossible. Fly from Australia to the USA and you can end up going back a day
Riceball
Master Member
The funny thing is that it wouldn't have taken the prop shop very long to make at least a semi-accurate Panzerfaust since the launcher was just a straight tube with no grips whatsoever, They could have just gotten a PVC pipe, painted it, added something that looked like the trigger mechanism on top, then stick a slightly modified RPG round in the front and they would have had a passable Panzerfaust.
And somebody mentioned the MP40, that's kind of excusable. Whil it may be anachronistic for the '30s, just about every movie involving the Germans during WWII has German troops carrying MP40s eve when they were never that prevalent being reserved for use mainly by NCOs and officers, much like how the US Army issued out Thompsons. Say what you want about Dial of Desitny, at least most of the Waffen SS troops shown in the beginning part of the film were mostly armed with Mauser K98ks, although I wonder if they used real 98ks on set or some other bolt action rifle like the plentiful Mosin Nagans or US Springfield 03s.
A valid nitpick.
Yeah, aren't Voodoo dolls like some kind of African-New Orleans mythos?
Lets be fair now, Crystal Skull is stupid too. Aliens really don't fit into the Indy lore very well.
Yes, KotC is also stupid. Those last 2 movies don't belong in my head canon.
Probably should have made the last film end with Indy waking up in a nursing home to find out he hallucinated the last two films before he grumpily mumbles to himself that swinging on vines through the jungle with a pack of monkeys is silly and unbelievable. Then he takes his medication and goes back to sleep. The end.
drusselmeyer
Master Member
When AI takes over H'w'd, we can have Indiana Jones and the Lost McGuffin movies forever.
I think it fits better than people realize.
Each 1980s Indy movie dealt with a major world religion. Judaism, Hindu, Christianity.
In the mid-2000s the logical next choice for the 4th movie was Islam. But that was too politically radioactive after 9/11.
The "ancient aliens" thing checked off many of the boxes for a modern religion. It also fit the pulp zeitgeist of the late-1950s setting. It fit the Commie bad guys too, because the USSR was generally against all old religions. They would not have been going on missions to find religious relics like the Nazis would have.
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Respectfully disagree. Indy explored human archeology, there were numerous directions they could've gone while breaking the tendency of focusing on Judo-Christian lore. Egyptian history would have been a fun one, mummies may have been done to death already but theres lots more to ancient Egypt than mummies.
Islam is tricky because they have numerous rules against depicting Mohammed but its further complicated by the fact that Islam basically ended the depiction of animals and humans in any religious context. Sure, they do floral and geometric patterns better than anyone else but all those things make it tricky to convert into an Indy-style flick. Plus, Indy explored lost ancient stuff and in the grand scheme of things Islam is still pretty young. Are there any ancient artifacts important to Islam that are lost or legendary that aren't sinful to depict? Not really. Heck, they ran out of good ones for Christianity and had to resort to using legends from the Crusades to make the third one.
Aliens, on the other hand, are a totally modern concept. Sure, ancient peoples have stories of beings from the heavens/stars coming to earth but up until the 20th century it was always understood these were gods--the creators of humanity and not aliens in the sense we'd consider. Spacemen from Mars just doesn't fit the style of Indy, even South Park commented on this when Crystal Skull came out. Its clearly Lucas trying to jam his other franchise into Indy (I've heard theres a comic book that features an ancient spaceship crashed in the jungle with Han Solo's skeleton or something like that which was probably the inspiration--aside from the wad of cash Disney threw at Lucas to make an unnecessary sequel.)
The greek/roman angle would have made more sense since we're already dealing with a pantheon (since Temple of Dooms gods mean we're not stuck in a strictly monotheistic universe.) Same they botched it so badly; the Greeks invented a time machine? Yeah, no thanks. That also belittles the true wonders of ancient Greece; they were pretty darn smart and advanced but by sci-fying the culture they wasted a good chance to make these interesting parallels relevant again.
Scifi doesn't fit in an archeological adventure series.
There are no errors or nitpicks in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
It’s a perfect movie—even the inaccuracies are perfect.
I won’t address the subsequent movies.
It’s a perfect movie—even the inaccuracies are perfect.
I won’t address the subsequent movies.
It's
It's really a toss-up for me whether I think Raiders or Last Crusade is my favorite I.J. film. They are both so good, and so "Indy."
It's really a toss-up for me whether I think Raiders or Last Crusade is my favorite I.J. film. They are both so good, and so "Indy."
Well that's not 100% accurate. Multiple Native American tribes routinely, and still do, talk about "star people" who came and imparted knowledge to them in the past. They never called them gods, literally aliens from the stars, hence the name. So yeah they didn't call them "aliens", but it's the same thing.
Sure, there were other options. I'm not saying there weren't.
But it's fair to say those ideas would have been more niche things than Judaism, Christianity, Hindu, or aliens. I'm pretty sure the ancient Egyptian gods don't currently have a church/denomination anywhere in my state.
Yes, which is partly why Islam wasn't looking very appetizing when they were brewing up the 4th movie in the 2000s.
I agree that aliens weren't an ideal fit. But they were 4 movies in and running out of ideal choices.
The fact remains that ancient myths, especially in the Americas, include events that read like alien encounters. Why are aliens so cringe-worthy when magic wooden boxes and living 900yo knights and heart-ripping bad guys are perfectly acceptable?
I feel like the big pushback against the 4th movie's aliens was like the nuked fridge. In reality the franchise is full of other stuff that far out. We just liked those older movies better so that made it okay. IMO if Indy had found an alien artifact in 'Temple of Doom' in 1984 then the internet wouldn't be full of complaints about aliens not belonging in the franchise.
drusselmeyer
Master Member
Of course the Egyptian mythos were alien! The pyramids were landing pads from starships!
Riceball
Master Member
Getting back on topic, are the uniforms worn by the Germans in Egypt anachronistic? They look to be Afrika Korps uniforms but the Afrika Korps wasn't formed until 1941, several years before Raiders takes place. So, wouldn't those troops be wearing a standard Heer style uniform in feldgrau since Germany had not gotten involved in North Africa yet in 1938 and thus had no need for a desert uniform?
drusselmeyer
Master Member
There was this author named Lovecraft...
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