Follow TV Tropes

Following

Context Headscratchers / IndianaJonesAndTheLastCrusade

Go To

1* After Walter Donovan drinks the wrong grail, shouldn't he have just dropped dead from old age? Instead, he ages all the way to the point of decay, and is still trying to kill Elsa. The novelization even mentions his bony arms are still flailing when Indy kicks him across the room!
2** Evidently God went out of His way to make the punishment for drinking from the False Grail especially gruesome and painful.
3*** It's probably more than just old age, too. It's probably the weight of all his sins being visited on him at once... a dress rehearsal for Hell, if you will. Considering who he was in bed with, he probably had a ''lot'' of sins to get smacked with.
4** I think we gotta chalk this up to some FateWorseThanDeath shenanigans going on here. Even when he was decayed away, he probably wasn't exactly ''dead'', if you catch my drift.
5** The true Grail gives you eternal life. The wrong one gives you eternal ''death''.
6** This is the same God that’s behind the [[Film/RaidersOfTheLostArk Ark of the Covenant]]. He's a bit of a drama queen.
7
8* Near the ending, Elsa (stupidly) tries to take the Grail away, and the place starts falling apart. Indy grabs her hand, and she greedily reaches for the Grail, not giving Indy her other hand and falling to her death as a result. So when Indy immediately finds himself in the same situation, his father seeking to pull him up? What does he do? He... reaches for the Grail too. What the hell?
9** It's meant to show that Indy was all too-human, and not exactly above everyone else to also be tempted to reach for the Grail.
10** The Grail seems to have that effect on people. A Holy IdiotBall? Divinely, rather than anything else?
11*** The way its shot and framed, with Elsa and Indy wearing identical expressions of insane obsession, seemed to imply a mystical compulsion to try for the Grail at the cost of your life. If you're virtuous enough to overcome the temptation, you get to live. If not, you die. Fortunately, Indy had his father there, who knew just what to say to snap Indy out of it. Because greed is just as much a flaw for Indy as for Elsa, albeit in a different way. He won't risk his life and the lives of others for the power of a mystical artifact, but he will risk his life and the lives of others to put an important historical artifact in a museum.
12** It's the freakin' Holy Grail. You wanna take it if you have any chance of taking it.
13** Justified by the RuleOfFunny.
14** Further, Indy ''is'' closer to reaching it than Elsa.
15** Remember what Henry Sr. says after they've all escaped: "Elsa never really believed in the Grail. She just thought she'd found a prize." So extrapolate from that. Elsa was trying to reach the Grail because of her personal greed, and ended up paying the price when she refused to give Indy her other hand even though he was all but begging her to. Indy, on the other hand, wanted to save the Grail because it was the culmination of his father's lifetime of work, but he willingly abandoned it when his father proved that he at long last respected his son. While Indy and Elsa both made the same mistake, Indy at least made it for a noble reason, and therefore was spared. Consider also that the bond between Indy and his father was a ''lot'' stronger than the bond between himself and Elsa; Elsa may have loved Indy, but she loved the Grail more. Indy gave up the Grail because he realized that neither he nor his father needed it any longer; they'd finally found the bond that they'd been missing all of Indy's life. It's touches like this that turn a merely adequate scene into a truly beautiful one.
16*** Furthermore, Elsa never realized her mistake; if she did, she didn't learn from it. As mentioned above, Indiana learned from the same situation, and - quite literally - pulled himself out of the hole they made for themselves. One perished, the other didn't. Ultimately, the Grail represents - among other things - the search for something even greater.
17*** Wasn't it, kind of, THE POINT that people will do anything to get their hands on the Grail?
18** The Creator/LucasArts Adventure game even leaves you with multiple choices what to do with the Grail. If Elsa takes it she falls down the chasm, but then you can still recover the Grail with your whip!... why didn't Movie Indy think of that?
19*** Grabbing something with a whip is exceedingly difficult (Please note that Indy never uses the whip to "grab" something. Knock something out of somebody's hand, yes Swing across a gap, yes. Grab something and pull it to him, no). Grabbing something that's light and not held in place by stone or someone's hand, with only a couple inches of space if that much from the ground at any "grabbable" point becomes, [[ImprobableAimingSkills more importantly than just implausible,]] ''visually'' implausible.
20*** I think one thing everyone's overlooking was that this scene was very significant in closing the arc of Indy's relationship with his father. Throughout the film, Elsa and other people remark on how alike Indy and his dad are, particularly in their obsession with archeology and relics. By letting the grail go, they both turn away from their obsession (which symbolizes the past, and by extension, death) to each other (the present, life).
21*** Also, the danger isn't that he can't reach it (please note, he is touching it), but that his father can't hold him up by one hand. Using his whip would not negate that problem.
22*** Please remember that the crevice the Grail fell into wasn't originally there. The ground opened up when Elsa crossed the Great Seal. If Indy did manage to retrieve the Grail, the ground might just open up even further killing them all. If God doesn't want you to claim the Holy Grail, ''you're not claiming it''.
23** Elsa's choice in wearing those slippery leather gloves on her hands inside the temple was also perplexing. If she hadn't worn them, she might've had enough time to reach the grail (of course that wouldn't have set up the classic "let it go" moment, so it's understandable that she didn't make it).
24*** What? They're part of her uniform. It's not like she went in knowing that she was going to end up hanging from Indy's hand while reaching for the grail.
25*** Not to mention wearing gloves is practical if you're going to touching objects in a place as old as the temple to avoid getting cut and infected by something.
26
27* When Jones Sr. is explaining why they need the diary, he says he found the clues they need in the ''The Chronicles of St. Anselm''. If he remembers what book he found the clues in, why don't they just look it up again? Surely it would be a lot easier than going to all the trouble of getting the diary back from the Nazis.
28** That depends on the assumption that it would be easier to dig up a copy of a presumably rare medieval text. They may not have known where the nearest copy of the ''Chronicles'' was and, even if they did, there's no guarantee that they would be able to get their hands on it. Also, as long as the Nazis have the diary, there's the chance that somebody would have wised up and used it to get around the three booby traps after enough red shirts got their heads lopped off.
29*** And while Henry found the clues in there, it never says where in the book he found them (plus he's probably translated them), so if they were to get their hands on a probably very rare medieval book, they don't really know where in the book it is.
30
31* Aren't "I" and "J" the same letter in Latin?
32** According to Website/TheOtherWiki, "I" and "J" represented the same sound in Latin, but "J" was only used to end words, not to start them.
33*** You've, er, misunderstood. The development of an astonishing number of letters - including ''all'' of lower-case Greek and Latin - was the result of medieval scribes looking for faster ways to transcribe works accurately. In this case, "j" developed when scribes put a flourish on "i", originally at the end of Roman numerals. (Originally, neither of them had the crowning jot.) It slowly became the glyph of convenience when distinguishing the vowel use of "I" from its consonantal use - the flourish denoted the consonant. During the Renaissance, "J" separated from "I" entirely. However, all of that ExpoSpeak is for naught; "j" didn't really come into use, even as a flourish, until more than 200 years after the First Crusade, and while it made for good drama in the movie, it doesn't make ''sense'' (unless the Crusader snuck back out and ''re-carved'' one or more of the non-platform stones).
34*** Well, he didn't have much else to do.
35** As stated in the movie there is no "J" in Latin, but came from Latin "I" (Jones Sr.)
36*** So why were there J tiles?
37*** Because Latin is not the only language that existed when the tiles were made.
38*** The same reason there are ''any'' tiles other than the necessary ones. To kill anyone who doesn't know exactly where to step.
39** It's a biiit more complicated, see [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfB9mX5UUNU here]]. Basically, Romans had a "j" letter that represented a long "i", and, as the speaker in this video notes, the tile Indy breaks could be interpreted as a written "t" just as well, or even a very flourishy Greek tau. What this tropes finds puzzling is how the whole thing stays uncrumbled, if there's only six thin pillars supporting the "right" tiles and absolutely nothing to keep the misleading tiles up but friction. Because misleading tiles being there to mislead is kind of the point. About languages - alphabet and language are not the same. We assume the tiles are in Latin alphabet and that the password is written in Latin, because... it was the language of Church? And the artifact is the Holy Grail? Maybe?
40
41* In the challenges, one can see on the DVD that not only is there a blade that comes out from the wall, for the "kneel before the breath of god or lose your head" challenge, but also a blade that comes out of the floor, so that anyone who ''doesn't'' have the foresight to do a rolling flip and just kneels, possibly bowing, as the task implies, one would get his head chopped off anyway. And, less of a problem with the challenge and more of a problem with Indy's reaction to it: If it was an invisible bridge, leaving the handful of pebbles would have been justified. But it was painted to look exactly like the opposite wall, ''from the viewpoint of the first entrance to the cabin.'' If it was because the grail couldn't leave the room, and he did it so they could bring his father in to be healed, ''he didn't know that until after the bridge''. So leaving the pebbles on the bridge would only make it easier to slip and fall into the chasm, or let the nazis into the grail chamber.
42** Actually, the reason why he left pebbles on was SO that Elsa and Donovan can follow after him into the chamber.
43** Not going to deal the extra blade issue in the first task but he threw sand or dust over the walkway as I recall, that would hardly cause him to slip and help define the edges of the pit. Even if it wasn't matching the opposite wall on the other side it would have still have been hard to distinguish. Also how likely was it that the Nazis would make it through, they didn't know that he had disabled the traps nor that they would choose the right letters to step on, maybe they sent more men through and over-heard Jones Sr.
44*** Being that they never show his return trip, it's possible and likely that he could have simply shuffled his feet to help kick away the pebbles and sand. And sand would not be the worse idea since the sand would scrape the surface making it less smooth and slippery. Besides, he didn't really have any other things handy to mark the path.
45** Perhaps the second blade is because the [[FridgeBrilliance penitent man should realize that the hallway of doom isn't really God and he shouldn't be bowing to it]]. He gets up after the first blade and is spared the second.
46** One possible explanation which has rather bad implications: someone who mistakenly thinks they have to bow, as in a Muslim bowing towards Mecca, completely to the floor, is going to be weeded out as much as a nonbeliever. You have to ''kneel'' before God, not prostrate yourself.
47*** I find this explanation a small win for the hive mind in the war against FridgeLogic, since the grail ''is'' an extremely Christian artifact and Muslims would have been part of the Them that the crusaders Did Not Like.
48*** Except prostration is not an explicitly Muslim act. Plenty of Christians prostrated as an alternative to some other form of bowing or kneeling.
49*** But did the Crusaders who built the traps know that?
50*** In Crusader times, it was not uncommon for regard other Christians who had the wrong beliefs or rituals as heretics who were just as bad as outright infidels. I don't know of any specific schism on the issue of how to properly kneel before God, but the trap designer may have assumed that a proper Christian would do it in a specific ''right'' way.
51** Also, Indy only figures out he has to kneel before God at the last second, when presumably he's in the kill zone for the second -- vertical -- blade. The penitent man would have been on his knees shuffling along at a slower speed, and presumably wouldn't walk into the horizontal blade or the vertical one, since the vertical one would activate before the penitent man's body had crossed onto it.
52** Watch the scene again. If he had caught on quicker and knelt just as the breath started coming, he wouldn't have been in the path of the floor's back-up blade.
53** Simpler explanation: There’s a lot of spider webs heading into the hallway with the blades. They mysteriously disappear after the duck and roll, but they’re there for at least part of the scene. Maybe there’s a mural or something with a depiction of god meant to indicate ‘kneel here’ to the pious.
54
55* Why wasn't the Crusader bat crazy when Indy found him. What did he do from those few hundred years, what did he eat, use the toilet, why was he old?
56** Simple. He stayed at a Holiday Inn Express. And they had both Netflix and Wi-fi.
57** He prayed, he drank from the Grail, which provided him with sustenance, and he peed into the chasm. And he was old because the Grail grants eternal life, but not eternal youth. As for being crazy, I'd say anyone who voluntarily spends a few hundred years in a tiny room ''is''.
58*** He knows ''exactly'' how many cracks there are in the walls of the Grail chamber, and has given ''each and every one'' of them a unique name.
59*** According to the {{Novelization}}, the Grail knight occasionally had impure thoughts. On those days he refused to drink from the Grail, and hence his age did advance. As for going crazy ... AWizardDidIt. Not to mention that he's an ascetic monk now who has absolute proof that God exists and that he's likely going to Heaven when God gets around to calling him there.
60*** The guy didn't seem extremely well adjusted to *me*.
61*** To be fair, he's about as well-adjusted as you'd expect of a man who's lived in self-imposed exile in a cave for any number of centuries to be. He's not exactly normal by mid-twentieth century/early-twenty first century mental standards, true, but he's coherent, fairly aware of his surroundings and those in them, and capable of rational thought and conversation.
62** Possibly, he also wandered back through the traps to tend to them as well as any number of possible activities from the profound to the mundane. And even without the impure thought justification, it would make sense for the Grail to grant life not youth. Old age usually is associated with wisdom; one begins to appreciate things beyond themselves much more. And it's also a matter of irony; those who seek eternal youth - for the sake of youth, for power, for whatever - clearly would not be the sort of people that would appreciate the Grail. Thus those that might take advantage of it would find that eventually, what they seek took away what they wanted and gave them what they were trying to avoid; all this even without the false Grail test.
63*** Do we ever really figure out ''what'' the knight is? He's clearly not an ordinary person; it's not too implausible that he's more a ghostly than physical being at this point. The Crusader may no longer ''need'' to eat, sleep, or relieve himself anymore.
64*** FridgeBrilliance sets in when you realize that with the knight drinking from the Grail to remain alive all that time, it wouldn't have any dust on it while the other Grails, presumably remaining untouched, would be covered in dust. Yet when Indy gets in there, they're very clean. So he probably maintains the room, making sure that if anyone shows up they don't wind up with thirty or so obvious fake Grails and one non-dusty real one.
65** Moreover, how could a French knight of the Crusades speak perfect Modern English (with an English accent, no less)? At the time of the Crusades, the English spoken in Europe was most certainly not the Modern version of that language, but Old/Middle English, which is much more similar to German than to Modern English (just try reading ''Literature/{{Beowulf}}'' in the original).
66*** Because Indiana probably doesn't speak the language the Knight would have spoken fluently, and while the movie getting derailed because no one could understand the Knight or make themselves understood to him would have pleased the very small group of people who praise accuracy over anything else, everyone else who just wanted to watch an entertaining movie would have been rather annoyed.
67*** Given the [[{{Omniglot}} improbable number of languages Indy speaks]] it's hard to believe that Old English is not among them.
68*** Fair enough, but in that case switch the objection to "the movie getting derailed by having Indy and the Knight speak a dead language to each other requiring subtitles for almost all of the audience to understand solely to make the minority of the audience who care about the Knight speaking Old English slightly happy". Either way, you risk annoying a large portion of the audience who can't understand what's being said in favour of satisfying a slightly pedantic minority who might.
69*** In the Bible, prophets and men of God can speak in many languages. Obviously, the guy was given that same ability.
70*** The Grail probably confers the ability to understand and be understood in any language. That's what happened with Jesus' disciples on Pentacost.
71*** Indy speaks lots of languages. Henry Sr. teaches medieval literature, so he probably understands medieval French and medieval English, and has probably taught them to Indy. There's a logical explaination not requiring to add other supernatural elements: the dialog happened in the knight's own language and has been rendered as modern English as TranslationConvention.
72*** However, the knight does speak to Donovan and Donovan understands him, despite admitting to not being a historian and being less likely to know medieval French.
73*** It seems to have been quickly forgotten that we are discussing a character in a fantasy-adventure movie who is quite explicitly stated to the guardian of the Holy Grail, i.e. the Son of God's favourite cup. Remember that [[TowerOfBabel very famous Bible story]] about how everyone in the world got arrogant enough to build a tower all the way up to Heaven, only for God to get very annoyed at this and curse them to speak different languages so that they could no longer understand each other and cooperate? A deity that can do that is almost certainly able to do it the other way, especially if it's for someone who is guarding something that said deity wants guarded and who is very likely to encounter people who may not speak the language he initially learned to speak with. In short: the Grail Knight can almost certainly speak Modern English because, in some way or another, ''God literally made it possible for him to do so''.
74** I mean, the guy ''is'' the guardian of the sacred cup used by the Son of God at his final meal and which grants eternal life. One presumes that if The Big Guy Upstairs feels it's worthy of having a guard posted to watch over it forever, then He's capable of fixing things so that said guard doesn't completely lose his mind over however long he's on guard duty for. Presumably drinking from the Grail heals mental decay as well as physical decay.
75*** Drinking from the symbolic Cup of Christ (at the Lord's Supper) is supposed to bring us into fellowship with him. It's reasonable to assume that drinking from the literal Cup of Christ would bring you into even closer fellowship, the kind of awareness of and communion with God that few experience in this life.
76
77* Two questions...when Fedora tells young Indy: “You lost today kid, but it doesn’t mean you have to like it.” What does he mean by that?\
78And also why does Indy wear a tie with his outfit? That just randomly showed up
79** Fedora's comment to Indy is a gesture of respect and acknowledgement of Indy's motives. Fedora and his crew were just in it for a payday, and Straw Hat wanted the Cross of Coronado out of personal avarice, while Indy was trying to save an artifact of historical significance ("it belongs in a museum!") from the hands of glorified grave-robbers. Indy's efforts failed because Straw Hat convinced the sheriff he had a legitimate claim of ownership - thus he "lost" - but by telling him he doesn't have to ''like'' the situation, Fedora is advising Indy not to let this one event discourage him.\
80Basically it's a "this wasn't personal, you put up a hell of a fight, keep at it and better luck next time" kind of thing.
81** As for the tie, the guy wears it mainly in situations where he's just trying to look halfway presentable -- when he's wandering around Venice with a pretty lady, breaking into fancy castles to find his dad, that kind of thing. Notice that when he's rough-and-tumbling it in the desert on digs and punching Afrika Corps troops, the tie quickly disappears.
82** Fedora's comment is essentially "DareToBeBadass"; he's pointing out that while Indy lost on this occasion, he doesn't have to give up and let his life be defined by this one loss because he's got what it takes to win on other occasions.
83
84* How does the knight falling over trying to lift his own sword count as being "vanquished" by Indy?
85** Because he was initiating a fight by trying to lift the sword, and losing that fight by demonstrating he couldn't.
86** He can't even lift his sword, let alone win a fight. If Indy breathed on him hard enough, it would probably break a couple of bones. Rather than get killed outright, he surrenders in hopes that either Indy is a bad person and will go *POOF* from the wrong Grail, or is a good person and will bring about the end of his eternal mission of guarding the Grail. Worst case, he could always tackle Indy off the bridge into the chasm.
87** Note also that when the Knight stumbles, Indy instinctively reaches out and grabs him in order to help him regain his balance. In doing so, in a way he technically 'overpowered' the Knight.
88** "My strength is failing me." The Knight is simply acknowledging that Indy has won, if only by default.
89
90* Just how, exactly, is having a magical cup which heals wounds and grants immortality (without immunity to causes of death other than old age) going to win the war for Hitler? What, will they pass the Grail throughout the Wehrmacht and have everyone take a sip? I'm not sure having a soldier who will theoretically live forever is much use if you can still shoot and kill him. And if the cup is to be used for healing wounds, then I somehow doubt it's going to make much of an impact on a worldwide war featuring millions of combatants. I'm not seeing Henry Jones' 'Armies of Darkness marching all over the face of the Earth' in the event of the Nazis getting the grail.
91** Obviously it is supposed to grant much of the same invincibility-granting abilities for an army that bears it as the Spear of Destiny or, for that matter, the Ark. Remember what they said about Hitler's obsession with these things in "Raiders".
92** Loads of Nazi propaganda was used to brainwash generations of German boys into going out and getting themselves slaughtered in the name of the Fatherland. Being able to promise them instantaneous magical healing if they got wounded, ''even if they never actually used the Grail for anyone but themselves'', could've been a morale-boosting coup for Hitler and his croneys.
93** Donovan seemed to think that the Nazis just wanted to claim they had found it, but weren't interested in keeping the Grail itself. He was probably way wrong on that. I could see Hitler wanting to keep the Grail for himself, to give himself eternal life, and become even more of a Godlike leader to his people.
94*** That, or he was planning a double cross. He never actually states that Hitler doesn't personally want the Grail, just that "Hitler can have the world, but he can't take it with him."
95** Not to forget...what's the point of being the leader of Nazi Germany, a dictator at that, if there's any possible chance of dying before your work is completed? Forget seconds in command taking over - do it right, do it yourself. With that in mind, war is on the horizon, and the world doesn't exactly have a positive image of you. Not to mention the numbers of assassination attempts made on you. Add it up, and searching for anything to prolong your life, even (or especially) a Christian artifact, can only make sense.
96*** Historically, Hitler was showing profound symptoms of some kind of degenerative neurological disease before his suicide. He may have noticed the early symptoms years before that, which would make him likely to seek an object that carried the promise of healing any injury and curing any illness. [[FridgeHorror The particularly frightening thing is]], if Hitler had been given a magical cure in 1938, he might have been a lot more competent during the war instead of being increasingly inclined toward StupidEvil.
97*** Hitler was terrified of getting cancer after his mother died painfully from it when he was a teenager. It makes perfect sense that he would stop at nothing to keep himself healthy.
98** In short, it's somewhat like the USA's motivation for beating the Soviets to the moon. Partially strategic, but mostly a status-improving scientific achievement.
99** There is also another part of the legend. It is said that in the hands of a just ruler, you can use the Grail to heal the land itself. They may have wanted it for that purpose, ill-defined though it may be.
100** For what it's worth, Hitler himself didn't really buy into the supernatural and {{Ghostapo}} stuff as much as later reputations and depictions would suggest; It was actually Himmler and his cronies at the SS who were more obsessed with all the Wagnerian / Arthurian / mystical legends of destiny stuff. Hitler was mainly only interested in it as much as it helped his propaganda effort. So chances are Hitler didn't personally buy into the mystical properties of the Grail and was only interested in having something he could use to further the myth of the glorious Thousand-Year Reich he was trying to build. This may also have been what Donovan was alluding to; Hitler doesn't truly believe in the Grail, he's just using it as a weapon, and so he isn't going to really benefit from it in the same way that Donovan, who does truly believe, will benefit.
101** Most of Europe and the United States were at least ostensibly Christian at this point, so gaining control of the Holy Grail would be a ''huge'' propaganda and morale victory for Hitler. With the (apparent) endorsement of God, a lot more people would follow him and a lot fewer people would be willing to stand up to him.
102** ... You're seriously asking why an army might want a mystical device that can apparently ''heal wounds and grant immortality''? Injury and death tend to be major impediments for soldiers fighting on a battlefield. Remove the enemy's ability to cripple and kill your soldiers while keeping your ability to cripple and kill theirs, you essentially remove their ability to, you know, ''defeat you''. Yes, in the form of a single cup it might be somewhat impractical, but they don't know exactly how it works until they actually find and use it, and if you can take that cup and somehow manage to figure out how it works and how to reproduce its effects, you can become unstoppable. I'm pretty sure the scientists of the Reich were probably going to be studying that cup closely. And in any case, even if they can't do any of that, Dr. Jones isn't exactly wrong to want to keep the mystical device that can heal wounds and grant immortality as far away as possible from the fascistic lunatics intent on world domination; the last thing the Nazis needed was ''more'' reasons to feel like unstoppable super-humans capable of crushing the entire world under their jackboots and eradicating the people they believed to be lesser than them.
103** They also didn't know exactly how the Grail works, or what it does. "Promise of Eternal Life" is pretty vague, and can mean [[ThisIndexWillLiveForever a whole lot of different things]]. They may have thought that one sip from the Grail means you live forever, are proof against all wounds, etc. and so on. That would certainly put the "uber" in the ''ubermenschen''. In fact, in the film, the grail only provides a temporary benefit, and it can't leave the temple it's stored in. Tactically and politically useless. But the Nazis didn't know any of that at the start.
104** The film seems to imply that the grail makes you invincible, or that it is possible that it does. When Henry talks about the armies of darkness marching over the face of the Earth he's got to at least be concerned that if the Nazis drink from the grail they will be invincible. If the grail doesn't grant invincibility and only prevents you from dying of old age, then the Nazis finding the grail wouldn't make things any worse than if they didn't find it.
105
106* Why exactly was Donovan working with the Nazis? What could they possibly contribute that he didn't already have? There's no indication that he supported their beliefs, and he outright said that he just wanted the Grail for himself. He had his own money and already had possession of the Friar's book and the first Grail tablet, as well as access to the world's leading Grail expert. He could have done everything on his own without the Nazis!
107** Donovan is rich sure, but he's not invigorated-industrial-nation rich. He can't command tanks, soldiers, castles as a side-job to running a country and still devote time to finding the Grail. His wife was complaining that he's neglecting the party guests just to show the archeology professor an old artifact. It's too easy to mistake "being rich" for "having the level of authority commanded by a dictator of an industrial nation."
108** Sure, he could have, but remember the Nazis are going to be looking for it anyway, and they're probably not going to be happy if someone else finds it first. If he pursues the Grail on his own, that makes him their enemy, and makes them try to kill him or worse. If he partners with the Nazis, then he gets to use ''their'' resources, gets their protection, and still gets what he wants. Sure, he could have done it on his own, but it would've been the easier, safer option to do it with them.
109*** Well, the problem with that theory is that the Nazis didn't have any of the clues until Donovan joined up with them. Were the Nazis even looking for the Grail before Donovan joined them? If so, how would they know that Donovan was on it as well?
110** Didn't Donovan need Elsa's help finding some of this stuff? She was with the Germans, so he may have needed to let the Nazis in on some of it to get her help. Also, considering that some of the relics were in Italy, having Nazi contacts would be ideal for smuggling things in and out of it, as it was Fascist by that point.
111** There's no ''overt'' indication he supported their beliefs. He doesn't exactly launch into crazed anti-semitic rants at the drop of a hat, but the very fact that he's willing to work with them in the first place suggests a certain cosiness with Nazi ideology, and he's perfectly willing to associate himself directly with their cause by wearing the swastika on his ring or tie-pin or whatever it was that got blown away when he was turned into rotting dust at the end. It can be safely assumed that even if he's not a card-carrying die-hard fanatic member of the German-American Bund, Donovan is at least somewhat pro-Nazi, at least sufficiently so to have few scruples in aligning himself with them.
112
113* How on Earth could the strap on Indy's bag get stuck on the tank's gun barrel during the desert fight? First, said barrel was blown wide open, so he would have had trouble getting the strp there if he tried. Second, the strap is under his jacket in all the other scenes.
114** Not only that, but Indy could have just slipped his arm through his bag's strap and escaped.
115*** Actually, if you look carefully, in all of the original trilogy, Indy always wears his bag beneath his jacket. All slipping his arm through the strap would have done was trap him further.
116** He could have, but he at the least wanted to stick with the tank to rescue his father and the book. If he let go, he'd have to run to catch up, and be an easy target.
117** Wasn't the Diary in the bag? They would need that to get past the traps.
118** From the looks of it, there's no real way, outside actually ''trying'' to get it hooked on the ruptured barrel, for the strap to be hooked on the barrel, and when the part of the tank Indy is clinging to is no longer heading for a giant rock, Indy just hauls himself onto the roof of the tank, with the strap no longer caught on the barrel, so it looks like a some sort of plot contrivance-induced continuity error.
119
120* A bit of HollywoodTactics on the part of those keepers of the Grail. They launch a hopelessly ineffective last ditch effort to stop the Donovan, the Nazi's and the local troops. This attack was foreshadowed when we saw the one agent with a speaking part in the palace, when the sultan agrees to help Donovan with their journey. And the sultan listed, right in front of him, ''everything'' he was giving them to help, including the tank. Yet they attacked anyway, hopelessly outmatched (although they really should have gotten a few more kills in, I don't remember seeing them kill a single exposed soldier from their close-range ambush), without a single anti-tank weapon. If they didn't care about dying, why didn't that agent kill Donovan right there in the palace? It would have been way easier, much more effective, and only required one sacrifice.
121** Attacking Donovan in the palace might have turned the sultan into an enemy. Would ''you'' be happy to learn that a covert organization of religious fanatics had infiltrated your personal residence and was not above murdering those they saw as a threat? The sultan has an entire fleet of cavalry, troops, and tanks at his beck and call and apparently has them trained well enough to mobilize them in a matter of days. NOT someone you want to piss off.
122** Also, assassination and murder isn't particular in tune with the religious aspect. They attacked at the time they did because before hand, they had no reason to believe that violence would be necessary; before then, the group, even if they knew they were not nice people, weren't armed and dangerous. Also, their greatest strength is secrecy; an expedition disappearing in the desert wouldn't be completely out of nowhere and serve to frighten any others that might follow.
123*** They seemed perfectly willing to murder Indiana Jones and Elsa back in Venice. More probably, they reasoned that killing Donovan would have made a negligable difference- the Nazis had a ''battalion'' with them-, but they still had to take a shot at it. They were hopelessly outmatched, but they still had to ''try'' because this was their best and last chance.
124*** Not a battalion. Maybe a company - a battalion is ~1000 men.
125
126* "Jones" is a stereotypically Welsh last name. And yet Henry Jones Sr. is obviously Scottish (being played by Sean Connoery and all.) So, was it just that Indy's grandmother was Scottish and married a Welshman or what?
127** [[SarcasmMode Of course not. That makes no sense whatsoever.]]
128** Stereotypically =/= exclusively. I had Scottish family named Jones.
129** The Jones family could have emigrated to Scotland at some point in the past, then emigrated again to the US more recently.
130** Considering that Wales and Scotland are separated from each other by what is -- even at their most distant points -- no more than a few hundred miles of land and have for more than three centuries been part of the same political entity (and even before then have had many close links), it's hardly a huge stretch to imagine that the name 'Jones' might have moved to Scotland in such a fashion at some point in the Jones family's lineage. Especially considering that 'Jones' is one of the most common family names in the United Kingdom.
131** My grandmother's family is Scottish with a Welsh surname going back a number of generations. It happens.
132
133* The movie is set in 1938, and it seems by the weather and surroundings that it is summer in Austria, when they infiltrate that castle. Austria was annexed by Germany in march of 1938. So why is there a cartoonish secret planning facility and base hidden in the castle? Who are they hiding it from and why. They could easily have an open garrison there, or have such facilities in Vienna or anywhere. Its just so funny that ThoseWackyNazis just want to have hidden lairs even if they don't have any need for them.
134** Just because people know you're there doesn't mean you want them knowing what you're doing. The Nazis might well have had an open garrison stationed at the castle, but whatever they were doing in that room was obviously something they wanted kept secret.
135*** But that's funny in its own way. The castle is not really guarded or anything, they can just approach it without anyone knowing and the only one stopping them is the old servant. Think about it. If the CIA for example had a secret project which needed a headquarters with maps and movable pieces for the maps, surely you'd find a secure location and guard it from all intrusions and if on American soil, just use any of the prepared premises already existing, instead of going to a rundown mansion in the Ozarks and hiding out in one of the basements. Remember, they're in their own country. It just seems that Nazis have a natural instinct to burrow into secret HQ-bases in old castles.
136*** Of course the American mansion secret base wouldn't be in the Ozarks... it was in [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Greek_Island West Virginia]].
137*** Sometimes, just letting people know you've got a base somewhere can be a bad thing. Likely, just as there's a reason for them to have the base, there's a reason to hide the true nature of what it is. It's possible even that the garrison was there as sort of a cover up; make the castle look just like any old supply station but in truth, more important.
138*** Do also keep in mind that this is officially peace-time. There is NO reason to station a garrison there during that time. Besides holding Henry prisoner (which I'll get to in a moment), the rest of the base seems to be conducting covert operations. Holding Henry hostage is something Germany wants to keep VERY secret, because if the US found out that the German state was holding a US citizen hostage during times of peace for no real reason (in ''Raiders'' Indy is working for U.S. intelligence and is technically a spy, so it doesn't apply) would be a very problematic situation politically and if the reason why the Nazis want the grail hint even more about their eventual war-plans, it could in the worst case lead to war. This is the reason Hitler are quick to order Henry and Indy be executed. As such, they want to keep it all very much under the radar and keep it hidden.
139*** "Officially" peacetime...in Nazi Germany (or the Greater German Reich, to be specific). Its not a stretch that they would have set these up on the off-chance war broke out at any moment. In fact, they were in the middle of the Czech Crisis and Hitler was ''hoping'' for a war, even a continental war with France and Britain, so its not unreasonable that they would have something like that set up. Not to mention their long-term plans for Eastern Europe. It could even just be for training.
140*** Also, it wasn't a "run down castle". It was in-use and belonged to a family of art collectors (who were probably held hostage, quietly evicted or were in on the whole thing. Or less likely, killed).
141*** And the family who lived in that castle wouldn't want any anti-Nazi Austrians to find out how deep they were in with Hitler's regime.
142** Who says it was the Nazis who built the secret passages in the castle? Could easily be that they just discovered that this castle had hidden chambers and decided it would be a good location for a secret facility.
143
144* Yeah, about that letter...Hitler writes to kill 'the American conspirators'', or some such to maintain secrecy. So shouldn't [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness Donovan]]...?
145** I'm pretty sure he means "the Americans conspiring against us", not "the American conspiring ''with'' us". They still kind of needed Donovan at that point.
146** They didn't have the Grail yet. Odds are, if Donovan had walked out carrying the Grail, he would have been shot and the Nazis would have taken it back to Berlin. You wait for them to outlive their usefulness before you off them.
147
148* When Indy is told that the Holy Grail exists (and that it grants eternal life), Indy is doubtful and pretty condescending to Donovan when talking about it. Yet in ''Raiders'', he learns that the Ark of the Covenant not only exists, but '''contains the spirit of God Himself'''. A healthy amount of cynicism is a good thing, especially for an archaeologist, but when you have proof a divine being exists, shouldn't you take any Judeo-Christian relic that claims to have supernatural powers seriously?
149** Well, remember that the Grail was always his dad's thing, and at this point he still sort of resented it. Even if, rationally, he should be taking it seriously, he probably still thinks of it as, "That damned fool thing Dad obsessed over."
150** Just because the Ark of the Covenant really existed and really contained the power of God doesn't mean the Holy Grail was real. After all, the legend of the Ark stems from the actual text of the Hebrew Bible, whereas the Holy Grail legend has no known Biblical basis, doesn't appear in writing until the 12th century (IIRC), and could very well have started as an old pagan legend that was adopted and Christianized by medieval Europeans, much like All Hallow's Eve. It could very well be that while the Ark of the Covenant was real, the legend of the Holy Grail was simply a bit of fantasy dreamed up by the overactive imagination of some medieval parish priest to inspire his flock.
151*** Note that when Donovan brings it up, Indy refers to it as "The Arthur legend." He clearly doesn't think it has any Biblical provenance and is a load of Chivalric hogwash.
152*** He doesn't have proof that God exists. He has evidence that there's a mystical force out there. He would want/need more evidence and testing to pin it down to something more specific than that. He can't really say it was God without more than just face melting; all he could reasonably say is that something happened. Whether it was God, whether it was something else (which was then ascribed to God), he couldn't be sure. Also, even if he got to the point that he could say "God exists", that doesn't mean he shouldn't still be skeptical of any further claims. Heck, the Church requires 3 miracles in the process of becoming a saint; clearly, even they realize that simply assuming something isn't exactly the smartest idea. Remember too that while the Bible contains some historical fact, it's still heavily influenced by the beliefs of the writers (as is any other text). As for the Grail, it was made up (to really gloss over the matter) for Arthurian legend because it's a good MacGuffin; it wasn't really even a cup of any sort.
153*** "He doesn't have proof that God exists. He has evidence that there's a mystical force out there." ...A mystical force that is sentient, responds to Hebrew prayer, inhabits a Hebrew religious artifact, and has been worshiped for generations by the Jewish and Christian people as their God. It's God. It may not be ''your'' god, but it is the entity Jews and Christians consider to be ''their'' god.
154*** It's worth noting that the whole Ark affair supported the existence of the ''Jewish'' god. Yes, it inhabited an artifact from the Old Testament and responded to Hebrew prayer, but this only proves the Old Testament god of the Jews is real. The Grail, on the other hand, is a ''Christian'' myth (and, as noted above, one that surfaced only centuries after the New Testament was written). From what happened with Ark, Indy could deduce that at least one Jewish myth is true and the Jewish god possibly exists, but it doesn't follow from this that all Christian myths are true and that the Jewish god is the same as the Christian god.
155*** Christianity is based heavily on Judaism, and one of Judaism's teachings is that there isn't a "Jewish god" and "Christian god", just God.
156*** That still doesn't mean that proof of God as described in the Tanakh/Old Testament translates to proof of the New Testament also being accurate. It's entirely possible to believe one is correct and not the other; millions of Jews do that every day. And the Holy Grail, even it really is a genuine Christian artifact rather than an adapted pagan concept, is still nowhere near as strongly linked to God as the Ark of the Covenant. Yes, (if real) it once carried Christ's blood. But so did the Crown of Thorns and the Spear of Destiny. And the lashes used on Jesus during the Passion. And anything He might have bled on while working as a carpenter. The Ark of the Covenant, on the hand, contains objects ''brought down directly from Heaven by God''. If there's ''any'' artifact that would be imbued with God's power, it would be the Ark.
157*** Indiana undoubtedly believes in God. He even probably believes in him in a quiet way before Raiders, but he has to maintain a certain amount of skepticism until things are proven to be true ''because he's a scientist.''
158*** In what part of the movie does the Ark responded to Hebrew prayer? If is a reference to the ritual made by Belloq, then the opposite happened and the Ark killed the ritualists. All he knows is that there is some sort of unknown energy or force that may as well be an EldritchAbomination that was somehow put in the Ark or connected to it and the ancient Hebrews thought it was their God. That said, it is truth what the above troper said, Indy doesn’t seem to be Agnostic, he seems to be non-denominational theist, so is logic that he is skeptical of medieval myths like the Grail.
159** Indy's seen similar evidence that ''the Hindu pantheon'' is real, but that doesn't mean he believes in them either. He knows there's '''something''' empowering the Ark, Shankara stones, and Grail, but that doesn't have to mean he buys into the underlying mythology that professes to ''explain'' that something. The Crystal Skull turned out to be an alien artifact, not the work of Meso-american mythic gods; the mere fact that other artifacts have power doesn't prove that power came from a divine source, either.
160** Indy probably believes in God, thanks in part of the Ark incident. He just doesn't broadcast that to a person he doesn't fully trust.
161** Another important point to make is that Indy has no idea whether this trail will lead to the Grail (it could just be an elaborate ruse for all he knows), and he wouldn't likely believe any evidence of the Grail's location even if he were Christian himself due to how unfathomably unlikely it is to find it.
162*** True. He's an archaeologist, he's probably dealt with who knows how many dead ends. And even if it's legitimate, Indy has probably run into a number of artifacts claimed to have supernatural powers that didn't. He's probably taking them on a case-by-case basis at this point.
163** Even if Indy believes that the Grail is real, that the trail they have to find the Grail is real, or that the Grail might still be where the trail says it is, he still has an overriding reason to show no interest until Donovan dangles his father's disappearance before him. The last time he got involved with that, he almost died and quite a few other people (not counting the Nazis and Belloq) either died or almost died. And then, after that, the government locked the artifact away and told him to buzz off because their "Top. Men." were going to handle it. He's got plenty of reason to pretend to not believe in the Grail, even if he does think it's real.
164** He doesn't have proof that the Ark of the Covenant is directly connected to the Old or New Testament God. He has proof that if you take the lid off the Ark of the Covenant and look inside, some unfathomable and inexplicable power is going to melt you. Precisely what causes the melting remains unknown (and unknowable) to him; he can certainly ''hypothesise'' that it's the Literal Wrath of God, but beyond that he has no proof at all. For all he knows for certain, it could be the aliens living inside the Ark who melt you because they're grumpy you woke them up.
165** I'm surprised no one's pointed out the obvious. There is a kind of running gag throughout the series that Indy always pooh-poohs belief in the supernatural early in each film. He did it in his conversation with Marcus at the beginning of ''Raiders''. It's possible that at the time ''Raiders'' was made, the implication was that Indy began the film as a genuine skeptic and became a believer by the end. But then came ''Temple of Doom'', which took place earlier than ''Raiders'', and it followed the same format where Indy first acts like he's being presented with a fairy tale then later acknowledges the mystical powers of what he's after. I think the implication is that Indy puts on the public face of a skeptic in his regular life, because he doesn't want to be seen as a flake, but secretly he knows better, and has had supernatural encounters many times.
166** Indy's a scientist. He pooh-poohs the idea of "magic" and "mysticism" and the supernatural because those imply that these things cannot be explained, and that one has to just give up and accept that there's some kind of big supernatural power or force out there that can never be understood and so you might as well not bother trying. Being a scientist, however, generally comes with the mindset that ''everything'', no matter how inexplicable it might seem, has some kind of explanation that can be reached so long as you apply enough time and rational thought to studying it. Indy sees plenty of things that he cannot easily explain, and he might find some of these things humbling because they remind him not to get too cocky and full of himself, that there are limits to his understanding of the world and all it's mysteries. But he's not willing to just pass them off as 'magic' because that would mean conceding that they are ultimately inexplicable, which is anathema to the way he views the world.
167
168* Where, exactly, did the people who set up the Grail temple get 20 fake, enchanted, solid gold grails that kill you if you drink from them?
169** God.
170** Pillaging. They were Crusaders.
171** The old man had to pass the time somehow, didn't he?
172** The whole temple is basically God's storage facility for His son's favourite cup. You think He's not capable of conjuring up a few more enchanted cups to hide it amongst?
173
174* Why does Indy have such a bad Scottish accent when his dad, y'know, is Scottish? Granted, they weren't on speaking terms, but surely the one's accent must have rubbed onto the other?
175** It doesn't always work that way. My dad has a very strong New Jersey accent that I have a hard time replicating - and I'm an actor (or maybe that just means I'm not very good at my job).
176** Indy has his ''mother's'' accent. She's an American.
177** Because accents are picked up from where you grow up as much as parents. Indiana grew up in America, surround by people with American accents and works at an American college. That’s going to affect his accent far more than his estranged father. My grandparents both had strong Irish accents, but my mother and her sisters have London accents from growing up in London, and my siblings and I have southern ‘posh’ accents from growing up in Dorset.
178** Because his father was never around enough for his accent to rub off on Indy, and/or he resents his father so much, that he modelled his speech patterns on his mother's.
179** I am from southern Spain, and I have quite the accent - but I've had my moments of speaking with the accent from other places.
180* A minor one, but catacombs under Venice? Moreover, mostly dry catacombs?
181** And a more major one - I know that Venice is old and that not everyone knows exactly what's in it and where, but...they never thought to see where the drainage for that café went? They don't have any plumbers ([[Franchise/SuperMarioBros NOT HIM!]]) who might get sent down every so often to check that nothing's blocked or about to collapse or anything?
182** Given that our friends from the Secret Cult Dedicated To Keeping Everything Concerning The Grail Schtum show up mere minutes after Indy and Elsa find the tomb and set it on fire with them inside, I suspect that they probably have at least one person whose job it basically is to hang around in that area and keep an eye on the catacombs in that particular location for precisely this eventuality. Perhaps even the plumber himself?
183** The catacombs themselves are just pure RuleOfCool. It's still an Indiana Jones film, dusty skeleton-filled caverns are kind of their thing.
184
185* So, towards the film's end, Henry Sr. is at death's door and only the true Grail can save him, but a false one will kill any who drink it. Indiana thinks the wooden one is correct but can't know for sure until testing it, so he drinks from it. This book's author points out that Indiana was taking a pointless risk and should have just given it to his father -- the worst case scenario (father dies) would be identical to the result of doing nothing, whereas the worst possible outcome of Indy's plan was that they ''both'' die (and the Nazis manage to get the true Grail, etc). Why did he drink it himself? Of course, I can answer this one myself: Most people in Indy's situation would have done the same thing because they wouldn't want to be directly responsible for killing their own father, whatever a cold strategic algorithm would say. This may be the (rare?) situation where a StrawVulcan would make a better choice than an emotional human.
186** Assuming Indy even could have brought one of the false grails out of the cup room (if it gruesomely kills you for drinking from it, imagine what it does if you try to steal it) the bad guys probably would have shot Indy, and probably Sallah and Brody as well, to death for failing to retrieve the right grail. Also, the point of that scene was faith and humility. Indy chose the humble cup (whereas Donovan chose the fancy gold cup and was killed) and he took a drink from it on faith. If he had tried to do any sort of scientific test on the cup it probably would have failed horribly.
187** It's StrawVulcan for a reason. If you're going to be that cold about it, technically Indy should have refused to believe his father could be saved by any sort of force he hadn't already seen work anyway, and that the Nazis were likely to kill him and his father even if he did get the Grail. By pure, rational, unemotional logic Indy should have simply blown his own brains out or let the first trap kill him since it would have expedited the eventual outcome anyway. This is why no one, not even Vulcans, actually operates on pure logic: it can wind up telling you to do really stupid stuff at times.
188** The point of the whole sequence is that Indy would die to save his father - it's part of the whole film. His suicidal behaviour on the boat (''"Damn it, tell me! Tell me!"'') or the tank (off the cliff) is completely out of character for the survivor he is. For Indiana, the worst possible scenario is his dad's death. By pure logic, then, he must follow any non-zero probability of saving his father, though it kill Indy in the process. If he refuses to enter the traps, his father dies. And by testing the grail on himself, he increases his dad's chance for survival: even if it kills him, someone else (Elsa?) might take the right one through.
189** Plus if he gave his father the wrong Grail, then his father would have died a gruesome death like Donovan. The fact that he was near death anyway wouldn't change the fact that, in that scenario, he would have died specifically because Indy gave him the wrong Grail. Plus, in that scenario, Henry would have been led to believe that he finally saw what he spent so many years looking for, only to have that hoped dashed with a terrifying death. In that case, Indy would probably to be willing to risk his life than live with the guilt.
190** It also might not have worked. Indy not drinking from the cup himself but forcing someone else to take that risk instead suggests a lack of faith on his part, and that's probably not the kind of thing that a mystically-imbued religious object belonging to a religion that demands faith is going to respond well to. In other words, the power infusing the Grail might have demanded that Indy demonstrate enough belief in it in order to work, and the best way to demonstrate belief in it under the circumstances would be to try it yourself.
191
192* Why did the defender of the Holy Grail at the end of the Venice set piece reveal the location of Indy's father in the presence of Elsa. What made him think that both of them were trustworthy. I think if he knew that Henry Sr. was trapped there, I don't see how he couldn't have known about Elsa?
193** Because there was no point in hiding it from her. Indy wouldn't have believed him if he said Elsa was a spy (assuming he already knew, which he probably didn't), and if he took Indy aside and told him privately, Indy would have still taken Elsa along with him anyway. So, yeah, zero point in not just telling them both.
194** If he knows that Elsa's a spy working for the Nazis, then presumably she already knows where Henry Sr. is, so telling them both can't make a difference anyway. Besides which, if Indy takes her to help rescue his dad, then she's not going after the Grail, and the agent would much rather than they were both distracted by going to rescue Indy's dad than going after the Grail.
195
196* More to the point, how on Earth does Kazim know where Henry is being held prisoner? The Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword has nothing to do with the Nazis (heck, they're trying to ''stop'' them, and everyone else for that matter, from finding the Grail). I get why they would be aware that the knight's tomb is under the Venice church (since they've existed for centuries for the sole purpose of protecting the Grail, it makes sense that they'd know where people strongly connected with the Grail are buried) and that due to their purpose they would make a move to stop anyone who gets close to finding it (as Indy does). But knowing where the Nazis took Henry after abducting him in Venice? How could they possibly know that?
197** Perhaps he overheard where they were taking him.
198
199* Wouldn't the illusion of the bridge completely fall apart if it were a different time of day or the sky clouded over, thus changing the lighting? Indy must have incredible (or incredibly bad) luck to have walked up to the chasm at the one time of day with the precise weather conditions for the illusion to actually work. The only explanations are that the chasm is lit using artificial light, which would remain constant, or [[AWizardDidIt that God contrived all the events leading up to Indy making it to the cavern so that he would be properly tested by the illusion, up to and including the weather]].
200** ... What weather, what time of day, what light? It's ''in a cave''.
201** To be fair to the OP, there does seem to be some source of light in that particular cave which is causing the optical illusion in the first place, and it does seem to be coming down from above Indy, so it's not unnatural to assume it might be open to the natural sunlight in some way. Given the circumstances, though, it's far more likely to actually be some kind of artificial lighting. There's probably some torches set up at particular points to create the illusion.
202
203* The Nazis are the villains of this movie, but there's a big sequence set in Venice with no reference to Mussolini or Italian fascism.
204** A few show up in the {{Novelization}} briefly.
205
206* Where did Indy and his father crash-land after escaping the zeppelin? If they're still in Germany, how did they escape? If they weren't, how were the Nazi planes able to come after them without starting the war early?
207** It could be Nazi allied Italy, they wouldn't object, or "neutral" Spain (it was pretty much an open secret that it was German allied, despite official neutrality). It's a pre-radar era so unless the other government has active eyes on those planes there is a good chance they could get in and out without too much fuss. Not to mention that in 1938 a lot of Europe was very studiously ''avoiding'' noticing things that might lead to war, for a variety of reasons.
208** Spain was in the middle of [[UsefulNotes/SpanishCivilWar a civil war]], landing there would have been somewhat tough. It's more likely that, if they aren't crash-landing within Germany, their target was Switzerland, which is much closer and, being actually neutral, more likely to let the Jones through (as long as they did it legally, of course).
209
210* Speaking of planes, why the smeg did that one chase them into the mountain? Mountains are generally pretty hard to miss (metaphorically speaking) and avoiding obstacles ranks pretty high in the priorities of a fighter, I should think; but no, he speeds round a corner at ground level, so focused on the chase that he apparently forgets he's ''flying an aeroplane''. Why on Earth couldn't he just pull away and then strafe the car when the terrain got less dangerous?
211** Target fixation? He may have been so focused on getting Indy in his gunsights that he stopped paying attention to flying the airplane. It wouldn't be the first time a pilot got killed by that.
212
213* I know they showed the aftermath of how he survived the Tank Fall, but how did Indy manage to get ahold of the cliff branches when it did fall. Last we see him prior to the fall, we see him trying to get off the tank, but we never see how he went from the tank to the edge of the cliff? As if that wasn't enough we even have a brief scene where Brody is confused to how he managed to survive.
214** Brody's confusion is a LampshadeHanging of Indy's PlotArmor. There is no way he could have survived that. It doesn't make sense. But he's Indiana Jones, so...
215** He probably leapt off at the last possible moment and was lucky enough to grab ahold of the branches, and was also in turn lucky that they were strong enough to support his weight while he pulled himself off.
216
217* Is young Indy being a DesignatedHero with the Cross of Coronado? Whether the cross is an important relic or not, what business did he have stealing it from Fedora and company? Because he thought it belonged in a museum? How is that his call to make? And to make matters worse, he steals it ''again'' from Panama hat, when Indy's an adult. What's going on here?
218** In the first case, he's a kid. Impulsive. ill-thought out decisions based on flimsy reasoning aren't an exactly unheard of phenomenon when it comes to kids. Note that the whole sequence ends with the cops basically showing up to take it off him and give it back to the 'rightful' owner. As for the second question, this is what NoodleIncident is for. There is clearly a long history of enmity between Indiana and Panama Hat. The fact that Panama Hat's first instinct on seeing Indy is to throw him overboard in a storm (i.e. murder our hero) suggests that he's not a particularly ethical or nice person. As for why Indiana believes it belongs in a museum, he's a professional archaeologist who works at a university and with a museum; rightly or wrongly, his ''whole profession and character'' suggests that he believes that historical relics should be made accessible to the people and available for the enjoyment and benefit of all through public research and display rather than cloistered away in someone's private collection. That's all we need to know.
219*** Jones could've just lobbied for the university to try and buy the piece anyway. Even if Indy had gotten the Cross of Coronado by force, Panama Hat would only need to send his lawyers to lawfully retrieve it and stick a lawsuit up whatever institution got it from Dr. Jones, probably ruining his academic career along the way. But then again, Panama Hat just had to catch Indy infraganti [[VillainBall and throw him overboard]], didn't he?
220*** He could have, but then, that wouldn't have made a particularly exciting scene in an Indiana Jones movie, so...
221*** Indy's always been [[IndyPloy a short-term planner]] even as a kid, but let's be honest - what are the odds that those guys had the permits to be digging in that area? Indy's later insistence on putting the Cross in a museum ties right into the historical context - the lion's share of 1920s and 1930s archaeology was "find a shiny thing, take it back home, put it on display in a museum someplace." It's why British museums are filled with Egyptian artifacts. Lack of regard for logic or who the proper owner of something is isn't exactly new, either - Indy ignores the booby traps in Raiders (something that archaeologists these days would kill to examine) in favor of the shiny idol.
222*** It's a lot simpler than that. The Panama Hat man was robbing a grave with his associates. The fact Coronado's heirs were all gone doesn't justify that. That Indiana Jones morphs into the kind of man who does this stuff is symbolized by the fact he grows up to be like the Panama Hat man until Raiders sets him straight.
223*** I always assumed it was [[TheGreatestStoryNeverTold yet another case of the Cross having some supernatural properties which Panama was plotting to misuse]], and the government sent Indy out to thwart him by snatching the cross back.
224*** There's certainly evidence this could be the case: right after Indy jumps overboard with the cross, the storm waves just happen to topple some of the cargo in such a way that it makes the barrels (fuel? alcohol?) ignite so that the freighter explodes and sinks. And the ship's name just ''[[ContrivedCoincidence happens]]'' to be ''Coronado''? Yes, DramaticIrony and LaserGuidedKarma to Panama Hat (possibly even a bit of arrogant TemptingFate on his part, too), but there could well be some divine/mystical power at work there.
225
226* Donovan is pretty bold when explaining he intends to betray Hitler and keep the Grail for himself. At least one of the German soldiers present speaks English ("Helmut, another volunteer.") and yet he faces no reprisal? Or did he bribe the Germans or something? Or just the one who spoke English?
227** Maybe they just intend to shoot Donovan once the Grail was retrieved and [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness he was no longer useful]]. Or perhaps just take it from him at gunpoint if he declined to hand it over on his own.
228** He's not saying he's going to betray Hitler. He's saying he wants the Grail for a different reason. Hitler wants the power that comes with it; Donovan just wants eternal life.
229*** Plus, the Nazis were evil but most of them weren't [[AxCrazy insane]]. Donovan's (presumably) not Jewish, Romani or homosexual, he's pretty close to the Aryan ideal even if his hair is gray rather than blonde, and he's been helping them throughout the film. YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness doesn't come into play here; the German soldiers aren't likely to kill him unless he goes from being an ally to a threat.
230** Listen to what he says carefully -- "Hitler ''can have the world'', but he can't take it with him." He's not planning on betraying the Nazis, he's just pointing out that he's planning on using it to live forever and Hitler isn't.
231
232* There were a ''lot'' of Crusades, and while I know this isn't ''super'' important to the plot of the film, which one, for our purposes, is the ''last'' crusade?
233** The implication is that the adventure in this film to retrieve the Grail is the metaphorical "Last Crusade," not any of the historical crusades.
234*** I just always assumed it was a mod to this being the last (at the time) Indy film. His last adventure, or crusade if you will...
235* The boat chase. Why exactly were those boats being pushed together by that tug that squashed that boat chasing Indy and Elsa? That seems like a good way to damage all three boats (the two ships and the tug).
236** I got the impression that it wasn't intentional, but that the tugboat was buffeted by the waves caused by the speedboats racing past it, and in turn nudged one of the ships into the other ship.
237
238* So, the 'J' tile crumbles under Indy's foot when he steps on it, as that's not how Jehovah is spelled in Latin. But when he grabs the 'Y' and 'L' tiles to save himself, they don't crumble, even though both letters are also absent from Jehovah.
239** The J tile crumbled under Indy's entire body weight. It's possible that simply grabbing the tiles with his hands did not result in enough pressure to make them crumble.
240*** Except his heel slips back onto a fake tile, barely brushing it, and that's enough to make it crumble.
241
242* When Elsa tries to take the Grail out of the temple, she crosses the seal (against advice) and the temple starts to crumble. However, she's backing slowly out and gets dropped into a chasm. If she had just booked it, would she have made it, or would the temple have just fallen apart faster?
243** Considering a crack opens literally under her feet, I'm going with "would have started falling apart faster". In fact, she might have ended up even worse off; if she'd been running, it would have been easier for her to stumble and fall.
244** Considering also that it's pretty much also the ''literal Word of God'' that the Grail cannot be taken past the seal, and that the cracks opening up are a sign of God's wrath when Elsa disobeys His instructions, then it's almost certain that it doesn't matter how fast she booked it: if God doesn't want you taking the Grail out of the temple, you ain't taking the Grail out of the temple.
245
246* The Leap of Faith trial. There's no way a narrow path could be successfully painted to perfectly blend in with the opposite side of the ravine it spans from ''both sides at once''. If it were just from Indiana's side - the only one that'd really matter for the trial - this wouldn't be an issue, but the camera cuts to the opposite side of the ravine and the path is just as invisible from that side as it is from Indy's.
247** Then of course that doesn't take into account numerous other factors, such as wind, wear and tear, fading of the paint, wind, and most crucially, the time of day. Unless the cavern was lit artificially, then there's no way that the bridge would blend in with the cliff and it would be completely obvious. Now of course, if the bridge appeared ready to fall apart as you stepped on it, that would still mean a required leap of faith.
248** Considering that the bridge is the final test leading directly to the Holy Grail itself, it's not too far a stretch to suggest that there might be some supernatural shenanigans going on in terms of lighting.
249
250* The Breath of God trial. Does a penitent man also have to leap and roll out of the way of a second blade coming up from the floor after he kneels? Because that seems like a pretty unfair KaizoTrap to me.
251** The first wheel cuts the head off anyone who doesn't kneel--the second is to cut the head off of someone who kneels too ''far''. Kneeling and bowing your head to pray is common in Christianity, but Catholicism didn't require bowing all the way to the ground, which is more common with Muslim prayers. Being that the temple was built by Catholic crusaders, the second wheel is there to catch Muslims who figured out they have to bow down to avoid the first blade.
252*** Holy crap, you actually found a sensible explanation. Thanks!
253*** Or the penitent man kneels and sees the hole in the floor where the blade is.
254*** More likely, the devout know where the switch is on the near side to turn it off.
255*** Which brings in additional fridge logic - how old could that rope he hooked around the gear to turn off the blades be?
256*** It's a rope in a mystical cave guarded by a ghostly knight containing the actual Holy Grail in an ''Indiana Jones'' movie. The ''real'' fridge logic here is why everyone on this page seems to be determined to act like everything inside said cave should operate according to a grindingly and unerringly realistic understanding of entropy and decay with absolutely no room for magic or fantasy whatsoever, as opposed to the more contextually appropriate explanation of, well, the Actual Will of God being involved somehow.
257** Maybe the Knights of the Cruciform Cross swing by to oil the gears, replace the ropes, repaint the bridge, and mop the floors to make sure the letters don't fill up with dust?
258*** The Knights know exactly where the Grail is - they say so themselves. They probably know all about the traps and maintain them - and it's probable they ''still'' don't visit the Grail Knight because they're devout enough to have the willpower ''not'' to.
259*** I always assumed it was the knight himself who maintained all the traps. Gotta do SOMETHING to keep yourself busy after 800+ years of isolation.
260*** The Knights knows the locations of the Grail temple and all the markers, are sworn to spend their lives defending it... and in 800 years no-one bothered to tag out the poor bastard acting as final guardian and stuck in one room? What assholes!
261*** Maybe they offered to, but he refused. Pride, perhaps?
262*** "I was chosen because I was the bravest, the most worthy. The honour was mine until another came to challenge me to single combat." We're getting a bit cynical here. The Knight clearly considers his duty to be an honourable and sacred task bestowed upon him by his God, and is quite willing to perform it until his strength finally leaves him and a suitably worthy and strong replacement arrives to challenge him. Context clues clearly suggest that no one was able to "tag him out". Furthermore, it's also made pretty clear that both the Knight and, almost certainly, God Himself will only allow his place to be taken by someone equally brave, strong and worthy, which narrows down the applicant pool quite a lot.
263*** Judging by their ethnicity, the Knights of the Cruciform Sword are probably Eastern Orthodox Christians while the Grail Knight would be Catholic. He might be willing to ally with Orthodox Christians, much like the real-life Crusaders, but wouldn't give up his position to them.
264*** The Knights of the Cruciform Sword know where the ''temple'' is. There is nothing to suggest that they know how to access the inner sanctum, where the Grail and the Knight can be found, that they can make their way past the various traps set up to keep out all but the most worthy, and that even if they could that they were capable of being deemed worthy to replace the Knight. There's nothing to say they didn't ''try'', of course, but they almost certainly didn't make it all the way through. Context cues in the dialogue clearly suggest that until Indy showed up, no one had made it all the way through to the Grail Sanctum.
265*** It's a mystical cave containing the Holy Grail and guarded by an 800-year old crusader who appears to be at least partly a ghost at this point. The suggestion that there is maybe some occult or divine explanation for why everything hasn't crumbled into dust by this point is surely not an unreasonable one.
266*** So AWizardDidIt?
267
268* The Grail Knight being able to speak modern English is confusing, since the knights of the First Crusade predominantly spoke French. If he was indeed periodically visited by members of the Brotherhood, perhaps they taught him other languages to ensure he would be able to communicate with any possible traveler who managed to get past the first three challenges.
269** The ability to speak in tongues is also one of the basic Christian superpowers, so to speak, and if we're relying on AWizardDidIt a lot, it's because this is a fairly miraculous place.
270** And also, just TranslationConvention. It's an action-adventure movie, not a documentary on medieval languages. The Grail Knight speaks English at least partly if not mainly for the benefit of the audience, if you have a problem with it sadly your only option is to suck it up and move on.
271
272* Why are Donovan's clothes rotting away with him?
273** RuleOfDrama
274** Or perhaps a touch of James 5:1-3.
275-->'''Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you.\
276Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes.\
277Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days.''
278** To put it another way, Donovan's demise is basically a miracle. There's no reason why a miracle can't rot his clothes, too.
279*** Exactly. To quote the late [[Creator/TerryPratchett Sir Pterry]], just because something's not ''nice'', it doesn't mean it's not miraculous.
280
281* In the opening scene with River Phoenix, the henchmen were armed with at least one gun. Why didn't they ever attempt to use them. They had a pretty clear shot when they first spotted Indy climbing up the rope and swinging around the cave and it should have been their first option when they saw him leaving the cave. Instead they run after him all the way to the train and engage in hand in hand combat when they could finish this pretty quickly by just using their guns?
282** Indy's still a kid. Most people balk at, you know, murdering a child, even if that child is being a pain in the ass. Plus, gunshots are loud, and the presence of one kid in a scouting uniform implies the presence of others. They only were able to get the Cross back at the end by claiming to be the rightful owners. A bunch of witnesses knowing they tried to shoot someone over it casts doubt on that story.
283*** Fair enough but one of them stabbed at Indy repeatedly with a knife, so it seemed like they had the intention to maim him or injure him
284*** Guns are very loud. Knives are very quiet. You stab someone, it makes less noise, calls less attention to itself, and gives you more time to get away before people start arriving to see what's going on. A gunshot, however, immediately draws people's attention.
285
286* Pretty much everything about the scene with the man with the Panama Hat as an adult. What was Indy's plan in being on a ship off the coast of Portugal other than stealing the cross and then diving into the ocean? How did the ship blow up? It was in the middle of a storm with water coming all over the deck.
287** We don't know the plan because by the time we catch up with the scene, the plan has obviously gone awry. He's been ''captured'' so whatever plan he might have had is moot. We see why the ship explodes: A bunch of fuel tanks on the deck get set on fire. It raining does not negate that.
288
289* Donovan and Elsa make it to Petra even though the tank and convoy got overtaken by Indy and Salah, so maybe all that stuff was unnecessary?
290** Of course it wasn't unnecessary. If they hadn't had it, Indy and Salah and the others could have ''easily'' stopped them.
291
292* This is kind of a weird question but where would Elsa go in the afterlife (which we know exists in this universe). She ''was'' a villain but was [[HeelFaceTurn starting to turn good]] and probably would have finished had she lived long enough. So maybe she'd go to purgatory instead of hell?
293** She was still trying to steal the Holy Grail for her own glory, had worked with and betrayed quite a few people, loyally worked with '''really bad people''', and whatever progress she was making on her HeelFaceTurn was pretty well undone when she decided the cup was claimable as a prize. Highly doubt any forgiveness is coming her way any time soon.
294** Everyone goes to Purgatory (according to the Catholic mythos), then those whose souls have been purged of sin can ascend to Heaven, while the others descend to the appropriate circinate of Hell. In Elsa's case, she was a Betrayer, and she exhibited the sins of Greed, Violence (she murdered Donavan) and Fraud (she was certainly a Seducer). Her punishments in hell will be of the worst sort
295*** Nope, Purgatory is for those who aren't bad enough for Hell but aren't yet good enough for Heaven; it cleans/burns away all the minor sins. *If* Elsa went to Purgatory, she'd eventually get to Heaven. (And, technically, if she'd genuinely repented at the last minute, that would be enough; God's supposed to be merciful like that.)
296* Why doesn't Donovan get someone else to drink first? He made Jones get past the obstacles, but at the final stage he goes and takes the risk himself? There's as many guinea pigs at his disposal as there are grail options. He can find the real grail by trial and error. He's way too trustworthy of Elsa choosing the grail for him. I guess he didn't heed his own advice: "trust no one."
297** Because he's overconfident and he wants it for himself. He doesn't believe Elsa will betray him.
298*** That's true, and I guess he wouldn't want to risk someone else having eternal life.
299
300* When the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword attacks Donovan's party, Donovan says "It's Jones, alright." How exactly does being ambushed by gunfire automatically imply that Indy is around?
301** It doesn't. But Donovan knows Indy is out there and that Indy wants to stop him. So, when someone shows up to stop him, he makes the not-unwarranted assumption that Indy is behind it.
302
303* If the letter J didn't exist in Latin, why would there be a J tile?
304** Because the labyrinth was made by people who did speak a language with a J in it.
305** And also because the whole point is that it's a test. They're trying to weed out people who aren't sufficiently keen on God from getting access to the Grail. Hence, they put in a decoy to trick treasure hunters who weren't as up on their Latin names for the Almighty.
306
307* Why does the Grail need an ancient order of protectors anyway if its power is ineffective outside the temple?
308** Because it's still a sacred artifact to them and also still a small cup that can be easily stolen by greedy people and enemies of the faith. It might not do magic outside the temple, but that doesn't mean that the crusaders -- or [[{{God}} Their Boss]] -- want any old Johnny-come-lately rolling up and nicking off with it whensoever it takes their fancy. They want it kept safely in one place under lock and key and a watchful eye because it's important to them. Look at it this way -- the Crown Jewels possess no magical powers whatsoever, but the British monarchy still doesn't want you going into the Tower of London and running off with them.
309** Also, where is it stated that anyone other than the Grail Knight knows that the price of immortality is to remain within the temple? Our heroes and villains are all working under the assumption that the Grail can be removed from the temple, there's nothing to suggest that the ancient order of protectors aren't also acting under the same impression (or, at least, would rather be safe than sorry).
310
311* From the boat sequence at the beginning. How does a water tank falling down (in lashing rain no less) start a fire?
312** It's not water; it's oil. Oil is both highly flammable and floats on water, so presumably there was a spark that was enough to ignite it.
313
314* At the end the mooks run away for no reason. It's important to note that there are several Nazis still alive at this point, so it isn't just the Hatayans saying ScrewThisImOuttaHere. Our heroes are unarmed at this point, and the only thing that could possibly scare the mooks is the presence of the grail... which just healed someone. This can't even be blamed on the temple collapsing, since that starts afterward and their retreat actually precipitates it (the confusion causes Henry to put the grail down, which is when Elsa grabs it and crosses the seal). You could also blame this on the death of Donovan, but the mooks don't run away when Indy and Elsa return without him, they do so afterwards for no apparent reason. (And again, there are still several Nazis present, who were the ones in charge of the expedition anyway, not Donovan.)
315** "No reason"? They've literally just watched a man -- a man they've just shot in the stomach after holding him hostage -- be restored to perfect health from the brink of near-death through the use of the actual literal Holy Grail. A good number of them were almost certainly thinking something along the lines of "Holy shit, I've just seen what is as good as actual proof of the literal existence of God, and as if that wasn't enough to make this brown-trousers time He's clearly shown favour to a man who up until a few moments ago was on the opposite side to me and who I am collectively responsible for almost murdering. I'd better get out of here before He decides that my presence here as part of a forceful military excursion into one of His temples to steal His property is an 'arrogant-to-the-point-of-blasphemous' insult and decides to smite me horrifically."
316
317* Word of God is honestly a really stupid trial the way it was set up. As seen when Indy almost falls through the J tile at the start, what's stopping people from just shoving down the other fake tiles, which would leave only the true letters held up by the pillars?
318** Well, there's hidden nature of the temple for a start; it's heavily implied that our heroes / villains are the first people to discover this place in centuries, if not ever. Then there's the other traps making it hard for people to even reach that point, and the fact that letters spelling out the name being carefully spaced out, meaning that our hypothetical treasure seeker would have to carefully balance themselves on the letter in order to push the other stones in. And then, by the time they get to the Grail, in theory they've already got what they came for, so who cares if they've exposed the secret of the traps for anyone following them to find?
319** Maybe none of the Temple of the Sun's discovers had been able to survive the Breath of God trial?
320
321* How do Donovan and Elsa get past the Word of God trial? We see that Indy fastened the blades on the Breath of God trial, so they were able to pass that one unscathed, and Indy put sand on the bridge to show anyone who might follow him how the Path of God trial works. But as far as the Word of God trial is concerned, other than destroying the J tile, Indy leaves no indication of how to get past it, and we do not see how Donovan and Elsa do this.
322** They can be seen in the background making their way through the Breath of God trial as Indy is working out the Word of God trial, so perhaps they overheard Indy talking through the way to get across.

Top