Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Plot hole: At the start of the film, a young Jürgen Voller gets hit square in the face, at high speed, by trackside equipment and gets knocked off the train. But somehow, he isn't killed and survives without so much as a scar on his face.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When the villains are following Indy through the caves, the old wooden bridge completely breaks and falls apart. However, when they make their escape across the same bridge, it's intact with only a couple of wooden slats broken.

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Suggested correction: You can see a goon holding it up when they come back.

He's just holding it steady, the mistake is right and there's a picture online to prove it.

Sacha

The picture you put online to prove it does not prove anything at all. It's a really lousy picture that doesn't serve as any sort of proof because it's too hazy and dark in the picture to see the wooden slats.

Factual error: While in Siracusa, there is a puppet show which features the music of the soundtrack from the movie Amarcord, by Federico Fellini (music by Nino Rota). The scene takes place in 1969, whereas Amarcord and its soundtrack appeared in 1973.

Factual error: The four-barrelled Flak gun is shown running out of ammunition, namely a belt of rounds. This is most likely intended to be a Flak 38, which used twenty-round magazines, not belts. It had a relatively low rate of fire as the magazines had to be constantly swapped out, and two barrels were usually fired at a time. (00:16:58)

Farmersboy

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Suggested correction: Harrison Ford's voice has always sounded the same. Watch any film he's done.

Gavin Jackson

It's a noticeably "older" voice than in previous films when he was about the age his de-aged self is meant to be. I mean he's now in his 80s not 40s, of course his voice is different! An unavoidable mistake but still clearly different.

Actually, it is easily possible to augment his older voice to sound young. If his older voice is too deep, for example, Ford could merely speak slightly slower when recording the dialogue - and then it could be sped up slightly in the final cut. Or, audio AI can be used to alter voice patterns as desired nowadays (ex. To remove the 'gravelly' aspect of his voice).

Harrison Ford's voice has definitely become pretty gravelly.

Phaneron

Factual error: When flying towards the time fissure, the German commander says that Hitler is awaiting info on the V-1 project. They're supposed to be heading for a date shortly before Germany invaded Poland. The V-1 project started in early 1942, and it wasn't named the "V-1" until June 1944.

Factual error: Basil Shaw is British, but the dates in his notes about the Antikythera are all written in American format (MM-DD-YY), as opposed to DD-MM-YY.

wizard_of_gore

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny mistake picture

Factual error: Indy wakes up and has a bottle of Vicodin Es next to him, which was not introduced in the US until 1978, 9 years after the movie is set.

Sacha

Factual error: The night before Indy dives on the Roman wreck, his co-star describes the plan. An initial 70ft drop, followed by a further 300ft descent to the sea floor. Essentially, if you breathe compressed air to equalise your lungs to the surrounding pressure, then you cannot ascend to the surface rapidly from that depth. Breathing normal air, you can suffer from oxygen toxicity at around 56m. Due to the partial pressure law, at 370ft/112m, you would need a heliox mix (10% oxygen) from a second tank to survive. (01:21:00 - 01:22:08)

Other mistake: As the divers prepare to descend to the Roman shipwreck, none of their buoyancy aid inflation valves are connected to an air intake. This makes the rapid inflation, which happens on their ascent back to the surface, impossible. (01:15:15 - 01:15:50)

Revealing mistake: Throughout the dive boat interior scene - after they dive on the wreck - various hanging items are swinging around randomly to give the impression the boat is rocking on the water. However, none of the key light shadows - from the exterior sunlight - move at all, indicating the boat is entirely static in a studio.

Other mistake: Towards the start of the film, at the end of the train crash on the viaduct, time seems distorted. By the time it's taken Indy to wade out of the river and walk up its bank, magically a troop of British soldiers appear from nowhere, having entirely and instantly overrun a train full of Nazis? (02:16:01 - 02:16:35)

Continuity mistake: After the Roman shipwreck, the Spanish flag on the dive boat goes from flapping vividly in the wind in one shot to then hanging limp in the next. This discrepancy is throughout all of the exterior dive boat scenes. This likely shows which clips were filmed on location and which were filmed in a studio. (01:09:40)

Factual error: The Siege of Syracuse occurred in 212 BC, during the Second Punic War, when Rome was still a republic. Some of the equipment the Romans are using in the movie, however, particularly their swords and helmets, are replicas of weapons dating to the later Imperial era.

Daniel4646

Factual error: The German SS soldiers salute superior officers with "Sieg Heil!", which means, "Hail Victory." The proper salute would have been "Heil Hitler!", which was required for all branches of the German armed forces after the July 20th, 1944 bomb plot against Hitler.

Scott215

Factual error: Shaunette Renée Wilson's (Agent Mason's) costume isn't right for 1969. That specific type of colored leather jacket, eyeglass shape, and long collared blouse in that style of geometric print didn't start being worn that way until the early 1970s.

Continuity mistake: The license plate's number of Indy's Tuk Tuk changes from 4717 to 1132 in a few shots during the Tuk Tuk Chase.

Big Game

Continuity mistake: While Indy is fighting Colonel Weber on the roof of the train, Basil is pointing a pistol at them, and his grip on the pistol changes from a two-handed grip to a wrist-stabilizing grip as the shots change.

Scott215

Continuity mistake: At the start of the film, towards the end of the steam train roof battle, as Indy jumps from the train (200+ feet into the rocky shallow looking part of a river), it's still fairly dark in the early hours of the morning. As he surfaces seconds later, it's considerably brighter. Then, as he walks up the river bank, morning is well broken into much brighter light. Assuming the scene is set around March/April 1945, sunrise in the Alps is unlikely to occur so rapidly. (02:16:01 - 02:16:35)

Other mistake: When the divers ascend from the Roman shipwreck, an odd sort of heat-seeking mini-torpedo or poison homing dart projectile is fired down from the surface. Any idea what this is supposed to be? The henchmen on the boat appear to be wielding a knife, a Luger, and a (wrong for the period) 1986 micro Uzi. (01:10:20)

Indiana Jones: I've believed in magic a few times in my life. I've seen things... things I can't explain. I've come to believe it's not so much what you believe... it's how hard you believe it.

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Trivia: This is the first movie in the Indiana Jones series not directed by Steven Spielberg, nor with a story written by George Lucas.

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Question: Maybe I missed some dialogue, but why exactly did Voller think the fissure they were flying towards would take him to his desired date in 1939? I get that the dial detects fissures in time, but why would he think that particular fissure was the one he needed to travel through?

Phaneron

Answer: There is a bit of dialogue en route to the airport when Voller sets the instrument that says, "the first hand sets the destination," as in the time you want to travel back to. This would make the device completely absurd in principle if true (that's why I wanted to mark it as a plot hole/stupidity). Since it's supposed not to open portals but just detect them, it can't be that there are infinite portals for every moment in time you can choose to go back to (and they even close). The sky, while vast, is not infinite. We then find out that it is a trick since it is set to actually bring you to just one destination, but they don't know it yet.

Sammo

Answer: We're supposed to accept that the dials are pointing to the rift in the sky, which is what makes this plot decision so ridiculous. There's no common reference point (magnetism wouldn't be discovered until and used in compasses for another 2,000 years), and the dial is 2-dimensional. Thus, you could turn your body 90 degrees and aim it down, and there's no indication from the movie that the dial would in any way turn to face the previous rift.

I think, technically, the fact that there's no common reference point is addressed when Voller mentions that the coordinates given are 'Alexandrine coordinates'... which I think might be another anachronism since all I can think it means is the ones used by Ptolemy in his Geography, which was hundreds of years after Archimedes' time. The dial is 2-dimensional, but there are 3 hands. It can be argued that when all 3 align, it does show that the direction you are headed is definitely correct, including the height you are pointing at. I definitely think it's entirely implausible, but the way the unknown mechanism works, attuned to something that does not exist such as time rifts, is kind of a lesser problem. Even if it is supposed to work by some mathematical principle, and then acts as some dowser rod.

Sammo

Not true. The Chinese were using compasses around 200 BC, and Vikings are believed to have had them as well.

Answer: As they approach the rift, all three of the dial's hands are suddenly pointing towards it. If that is no clear indicator, then what is?

Daniel4646

The dial pointing towards it only indicates that they are heading towards the fissure. How does that give Voller any certainty that this is the exact fissure he needs to travel through in order to reach his desired destination, especially considering it ended up not being the one he needed? Were there coordinates in Basil's diary that indicated where the exact fissure would open? I only recall the date of August 20 (?), 1939 being written down.

Phaneron

Only the time is written in the diary (the date you mention is next to August 20, 1969, which would be then supposedly when the finale of the movie takes place). For the coordinates, you need to have the device, which, apparently, allows you also to input with firsthand your desired destination. Voller couldn't know that to concoct his plan, though, since he did not have the diaries at the beginning of the movie.

Sammo

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