Because, as you say
**
Had Indy bothered to switch glasses, or to mix the contents of his and Lao’s glasses, Lao could have gone ahead with his plan.
“A marvellous vintage, don’t you agree Mr Jones? Of course, it tastes so much better when chased with this.”
“. . . What is that?”
“Why, the antidote to the poison we just drank! Cheers!”
Indy leaps over and grabs the cup. In the struggle, the anitdote is spilled.
“You fool! Now we will both die!”
“Will we?” Indy grins as Lao collapses, dead.
“So the poison was in his glass all the time!” Willie exclaims.
Indy laughs. "Not exactly. You see, being an educated man, I’ve done my research. I know that Lao habitually uses a poison derived from the extract of iocane plant. Now, the extract of the iocane plant is tasteless and scentless to most, but having exposed myself to minute amounts of this extract daily for the past few years, I have come to recognize it’s scent, even when dissolved in a fine wine. I’ve also become immune. So when I recognized the iocane in the wine, I merely mixed the contents of our glasses, knowing that my built up immunity would make me the only survivor of this encounter.
I’ve tried out the Nazi Flying Wing in a flight sim. In real life, it would have been almost impossible to control.
I don’t doubt the reasoning behind using the sub would be so it could sneak up on the African freighter and seemingly appear out of nowhere. Had a surface ship been used, the freighter crew would have spotted it from a distance and Indy could have had at least an hour to prepare a hiding place. It certainly would have slowed the pace of the movie.
Of course, the chances of the sub even finding the freighter are remote, unless German spotter planes had repeatedly flown overhead and kept reporting its position.
So, it doesn’t bother anyone that Indy basically never eats, sleeps ('cept that one scene on the boat), or goes to the bathroom? Forget the sub, focus on some basic body functions!
Same problem with Star Wars - that one breakfast from Aunt Beru apparently sustained Luke for days!
Actually, he went to the bathroom while strapped to the periscope of the sub.
What, like you never peed in the pool?
Barry
Lumpy
Good catch on the rocket launcher. That had jumped out at me the first time I saw the movie, but I’d long since forgotten. I’m not sure what kind he’s actually holding (my guess would be a propmaster-modified Soviet RPG-7), but the world’s first rocket anti-tank weapon was the American Bazooka, which debuted in 1942. The first RPGs were based on the latest model German Panzerfausts (technically recoilless, rather than rocket propelled), which didn’t appear until 1943. The only man-portable anti-tank weapons in existance in 1936 were large caliber rifles (examples of which are also shown at the above link).
I don’t think there were many fundies highly placed in the Roosevelt administration, though his then Secretary of Agriculture and later Vice President, Henry Wallace, had something of a mystical bent, and might have been willing to accept the idea of a Nazi supernatural threat. A bit of knocking around on the web will show all kinds of links expounding on an alleged clandestine supernatural struggle between the Axis and Allies, which is what that intro scene was probably meant to hint at. To the extent these have any basis in fact, it was probably focused in Great Britain, where the intelligence agencies did explore just how widespread mystical and spiritual beliefs were within the Nazi heirarchy, in hopes of exploiting those beliefs in some way. I don’t think our own intelligence apparatus was nearly so organized or focused in 1936.
With regards to anacronisms or things that violate what we know of history, I really don’t consider these to be “plot holes” as such. Indiana Jones lives in an alternate history universe where artifacts have supernatural powers and weapon development proceeded at a slightly quicker pace than in our “real” universe. Calling these plot holes is like saying the flying car in “Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang” is a plot hole because cars can’t really fly.
No, a plot hole is where there is literally a hole in the plot: the story goes from Point A to Point C with no mention (or logical possibility) of Point B.
As an example, take the movie “Superman.” The fact that Superman is somehow able to reverse time by flying counter-clockwise around the earth may be ludicrous, but it’s no more a “plot hole” than the fact that superman has powers in the first place. The fact that he apparently didn’t bother to stop the missiles after reversing time, on the other hand, is a plot hole. Sure, he may have done it off screen in some way best left to the imagination of the viewer (not that I’ve been able to think of a way, especially since he wasn’t able to stop them both the first time around), but the movie does not explain it (ergo, a “hole”). Similarly, while it’s possible that Indiana tied himself to the periscope with his whip and managed to hold his breath for extraordinary lengths of time while the sub submerged, the fact that the movie didn’t explain this constitutes a hole.
I’m just saying, is all…
Barry
godzilla - the real Superman plot hole is that he can fly fast enough to SPIN THE WORLD BACKWARDS AND REVERSE TIME, but not fast enough to get to two different missiles!
LC
Two words: air resistence.
Does it count as a plot hole that while Indy is dragged by, and under, the German truck, that he isn’t killed, or at least beaten to a bloodly pulp, like a normal person would’ve been?
Nah, because in the universe in which Indy exists, all roads have a convenient rut down the middle that allows a moving truck to pass over somebody without killing them (I never even noticed that rut until it was pointed out in the DVD behind-the-scenes commentary).
Barry
Another plot hole in the Superman movie is the question of why Superman reverses the earth’s rotation. How did he know that this would reverse time?
I’ve always wondered how Marion could drink forty shots of whiskey and then be sober five minutes later.
Seconded. I remember reading the comic back in the day, and remember this part quite clearly.
The “plot hole” of Indy on the submarine is one of the great things about the movie.
You don’t just suspend disbelief with that movie, you shoot it into space. Raiders blows Star Wars away.
Dal Timgar
Hey, Clark spent a few years in the crystal Fortress of Solitude (I’m not sure if that term was actually used in the movie, though) being edumacated by a holographic version of Marlon Brando. Marl even method-mumbled the phrase “You are forbidden to interfere in human history!” at some point, and the line was repeated during the time-travel sequence. Presumably Kal and Jor hashed the subject out somewhere along the line, possibly over a father-son campfire.
Not a plot hole, as such. Just a heavy-duty deus ex moment. Of course, it doesn’t answer the problem of how he could fly fast enough to go through time, but not fast enough to take out two ICBMs.
For that matter, the second ICBM hit, so why didn’t California fall into the sea?
And Mapquest tells me Hackensack is only about 17 miles from the center of New York City? Geez, you’d think Lex would have been smart enough not to drop an H-bomb just down the road from his own lair. If the writers wanted to clobber a city with a silly name, they could have gone after Walla Walla, or Seattle.
Hey, doesn’t anybody pay attention around here? It was the air resistence, I tell you! He had to get out of the atmosphere before traveling to light speed…
Okay, on rapid reflection, Lex’s lair isn’t in New York, naturally, but Metropolis (duh), which just looks identical to New York.
Anyhoo, a nuke going off anywhere in New Jersey would have massive negative effects on NYC (I doubt it would be good for Jersey, either), and since the destruction of California was supposed to be for economic reasons, it seems odd that Lex would want to clobber the U.S.'s two largest economic centers. He could end up being the holder of newly-valuable beachfront properties that no-one can afford to buy, and with the Mad Max anarchy sure to follow, no-one will respect deeds of ownership, anyway.
And is that the SOUND that it would actually make?!?!!!?!111