Deliberate mistake: A branding iron loses its bright orange glow relatively fast when it's out of the fire. When the police enters the room it is still very bright orange even though it has been on the floor for some time.
Angels & Demons (2009)
1 deliberate mistake
Directed by: Ron Howard
Starring: Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Stellan Skarsgard, Ayelet Zurer
Factual error: Contrary to what the movie states, priests can be elected Pope - they are simply elevated to the rank of Bishop before taking the office.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: Him being only a priest was simply an excuse not to elect him. Those who did not want him to be pope were trying to find any reason to keep it from happening.
Any baptized Catholic male can be elected pope, although it has only happened once. Pope John XIX in the 11th century was a layman, ordained after his election.
Robert Langdon: The Illuminati did not become violent until the 17th Century. Their name means 'The Enlightened Ones'. They were physicists, mathematicians, astronomers. In the 1500's they started meeting in secret, because they were concerned about the church's inaccurate teachings. They were dedicated to scientific truth. And the Vatican didn't like that. So the church began to, how did you say it? Oh, hunt them down and kill them.
Trivia: Ron Howard's father, Rance, makes a cameo as one of the Cardinals locked in conclave. (00:32:10)
Question: SPOILER ALERTS! Does anyone know why they changed the final symbol to the keys instead of the one in the book? Also why they left out that the Pope was Ewan McGregor's father?
Chosen answer: In the book, the location of the antimatter bomb is only revealed after the Camerlengo pretends to have a "vision from God" on the steps of the Vatican. By changing the symbol to one that actually provides a clue to the location, it allows Langdon to work out where the bomb is, to actually play some part in proceedings rather than passively stand by until the villain just takes everybody there as part of his plan. As for the Pope being the Camerlengo's biological father, this is a fairly late revelation in the book and requires a substantial amount of exposition, which would only serve to abruptly slow the film to a crawl during the climax. The Camerlengo's motives, his hatred for the church's indulgence of science, are strong enough to explain his actions without the additional detail of his parentage being necessary, thus it could be safely left out to keep the film's momentum going.
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