A WWII vintage sub in peacetime might indeed have traveled mostly or exclusively on the surface. It might make sense, though, to dive at least until the freighter was out of sight, and the Captain does indeed yell “Dive” as the montage plays out with the red line running to the base.
Legend has it that footage was shot of Indy clinging to the periscope of the U-boat while it ran submerged, but that it wasn’t included in the final cut (or the current DVD special edition for that matter, though it was supposed to have cleaned up the glare in the snake pit that Phlosphr mentioned). I’ve never heard any details about why Spielberg made that cut. I’d guess that it seemed too unbelievable and cartoonish, though that didn’t seem to bother him about the jumping mine car and parachuting raft in Temple of Doom, or the airplane chase in Last Crusade. I think those scenes were intentionally outlandish as an homage to the '30s serials.
Regarding the Staff of Ra – LateComer is right about the separate sockets for various days. A bigger problem to my mind is how the Germans were able to replicate not just the instructions, but the crystal, from the impression on Todt’s hand. While the metal setting might have quickly gotten hot enough to burn flesh, it seems less likely that a piece of glass or rock crystal would. Even if it did, it seems unlikely that the Belloq and the Germans would expect to be able to duplicate the exact refractivity of the original just by approximating the facets on one side. Oh, well, it obviously didn’t work anyway.
The only other real “plot hole” that comes to my mind is the “basket switching” when Marion is kidnapped. It doesn’t seem to me, given the way the scenes played out, that Indy ever even saw a basket put into the truck that blew up. Given that they seemed to plan on killing Indy during the snatch, it’s not clear who they would have intended to fool anyway.
Here are a few technical nitpicking points:
The submachineguns used by the Germans were MP-38s or MP-40s. Neither was in use by 1936, the alleged date of the movie.A WWII vintage sub in peacetime might indeed have traveled mostly or exclusively on the surface. It might make sense, though, to dive at least until the freighter was out of sight, and the Captain does indeed yell “Dive” as the montage plays out with the red line running to the base.
Legend has it that footage was shot of Indy clinging to the periscope of the U-boat while it ran submerged, but that it wasn’t included in the final cut (or the current DVD special edition for that matter, though it does clean up the glare in the snake pit that Phlosphr mentioned). I’ve never heard any details about why Spielberg made that cut. I’d guess that it seemed too unbelievable and cartoonish, though that didn’t seem to bother him about the jumping mine car and parachuting raft in Temple of Doom, or the airplane chase in Last Crusade. I think those scenes were intentionally outlandish as an homage to the '30s serials.
Regarding the Staff of Ra – LateComer is right about the separate sockets for various days. A bigger problem to my mind is how the Germans were able to replicate not just the instructions, but the crystal, from the impression on Todt’s hand. While the metal setting might have quickly gotten hot enough to burn flesh, it seems less likely that a piece of glass or rock crystal would. Even if it did, it seems unlikely that the Belloq and the Germans would expect to be able to duplicate the exact refractivity of the original just by approximating the facets on one side. Oh, well, it obviously didn’t work anyway.
The only other real “plot hole” that comes to my mind is the “basket switching” when Marion is kidnapped. It doesn’t seem to me, given the way the scenes played out, that Indy ever even saw a basket put into the truck that blew up. Given that they seemed to plan on killing Indy during the snatch, it’s not clear who they would have intended to fool anyway.
Here are a few technical nitpicking points:
The submachineguns used by the Germans were MP-38s or MP-40s. Neither was in use by 1936, the alleged date of the movie. Any SMGs in German service should have been MP-35s, recognizable by non-weapons geeks as the gun that falls apart when a Grail guardian fires it in Last Crusade
It seems unlikely that Egypt, controlled by the British through a puppet king, and enormously strategically important to the British due to the Suez canal, would have welcomed a company or so of heavily armed German troops in 1936.
Germany had no Aegean islands in its possession in 1936, and was probably not on good enough diplomatic terms with either Greece or Italy at the time to build a secret U-boat base on their territory.
That spiked gate in the ancient pseudo-Mayan tomb was triggered by, what, ancient pseudo-Mayan photoelectric cells?
It seems unlikely that Egypt, controlled by the British through a puppet king, and enormously strategically important to the British due to the Suez canal, would have welcomed a company or so of heavily armed German troops in 1936.
Germany had no Aegean islands in its possession in 1936, and was probably not on good enough diplomatic terms with either Greece or Italy at the time to build a secret U-boat base on their territory.
That spiked gate in the ancient pseudo-Mayan tomb was triggered by, what, ancient pseudo-Mayan photoelectric cells?
