Useless Movie Trivia For

Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade


Memorable Quotes

Fedora: You lost today, kid. But that doesn't mean you have to like it.

Indiana Jones: Nazis. I hate these guys.

Grail Knight: But choose wisely, for while the true Grail will bring you life, the false Grail will take it from you.

Trivia

Harrison Ford nominated River Phoenix to play him as a teenager. When describing how he prepared for playing the role, Phoenix explained that he didn't really base his portrayal on the Indiana Jones character, but on Harrison Ford. So he observed Ford out of character before acting his part.

Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones) and Pat Roach (Gestapo) are the only actors to appear in all three films in the original trilogy. Roach played Giant Sherpa/First Mechanic in Raiders of the Lost Ark' and Chief Guard in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

First Indiana Jones movie to receive a PG-13 rating by the MPAA. Although Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was instrumental in the development of the PG-13 rating, the MPAA only gave it a PG-rating.

When George Lucas met with Steven Spielberg to discuss a third Indiana Jones movie, he wanted to have it set in a haunted mansion. Spielberg had just finished Poltergeist and decided that he wanted to do something different. Lucas then came up with the idea of the Holy Grail and Spielberg added the idea of a father/son sub-story.

When shooting in Venice, they were allowed to have complete control of the Grand Canal from 7am to 1pm for one day.

Most of the uniforms worn by the Nazis in the Berlin book burning scene are authentic WW2 uniforms and not costumes. A cache of old uniforms was found in Germany and obtained by costume designer Anthony Powell to be used in the film.

The production had two tanks for the tank chase scene; one of them was made of aluminum. The whole chase took about 10 days to film, instead of the projected two days.

The temple right at the end of the movie exists, but not in Alexandretta. It is in Petra, in Jordan. However, there is no inside to it - the doorway that can be seen on screen is huge, eight or nine people shoulder to shoulder can easily walk through it. It leads to a huge empty square room carved from the top down over two stories high. Similarly, they would be unable to get "lost" down the valley as the valley stretches for about a mile or so, and there is no other route but out. The filming at Petra was visited by Queen Noor and her children.

In the movie the grail is located in the Republic of Hatay near the city of Alexandretta. There actually was a Republic of Hatay from 1938 to 1939, after the region was granted independence from French Syria and before it became a province of Turkey. The capital of Hatay was Alexandretta before 1939 when the city's name was changed to Iskenderun and the capital moved to Antioch. An early title indicates the movie's action takes place in 1938.

Watching Indiana wrestle with a Nazi, the soldier at the periscope tells his teammates, in German, "The Americans! They fight like girls!"

Indy's trademark hat, jacket, and whip currently reside in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. These items remained on display during filming of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, as they used numerous duplicates for their prop costumes.

According to the address on the package he received from Italy, Indy teaches at Barnett College.

When Dr Jones Sr. scares the "seagulls" to fly up and stop the plane, they are in fact pigeons, and not seagulls, as seagulls are not trainable. If you look closely you can also see that there are a number of 'cut out' seagulls in the sand, which do not move as the others do.

During the Castle Brunwald rescue, Dr. Jones Sr. expresses dismay at Indy inadvertently bringing the diary into enemy hands saying that he "should have mailed it to The Marx Brothers". Harpo Marx revealed in his autobiography that he once really had to smuggle a journal of important documents out of Russia to keep them from falling into enemy hands.

Henry Jones senior was, according to backstory material written but not presented in the film, born in the 1860s, and was a Scottish university professor before emigrating to Utah, where Indy was born. He was roughly 75 years old in 1938. Sean Connery was only 58 at the time of filming (and only 12 years older than Harrison Ford), hence the beard and general "old man" attire his character wears. Indy impersonating a Scottish lord at Castle Brunwald was a nod to this unspoken backstory.

Two thousand rats were bred for the production (they had to be bred specially as ordinary rats would have been riddled with disease).

In the beginning of the film when Harrison Ford is teaching his class, he says, "...If it's truth you're interested in, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall." This is a reference to Ford's own professor (Ford was in fact a Philosophy major), Dr. William E. Tyree, at Ripon College, Ripon, WI.

Harrison Ford and Sean Connery passed up three subsequent opportunities to work together. Connery accepted a role in The Hunt for Red October, while Ford declined the role of Jack Ryan, which went to Alec Baldwin instead. Ford later took over the role in Patriot Games. Ford and Connery both declined the roles of Alan Grant and John Hammond, respectively, in Spielberg's Jurassic Park. Connery declined to return to the role of Henry Jones in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

St. Barnaba Church in Venice is an ordinary church. The huge indoor library shown, was filmed elsewhere.

After fleeing Castle Grunwald and eluding the Nazi soldiers on motorcycles, Indy and his father come to a fork in the road with a sign indicating left (North) to Berlin and right (South) to Venice. A third city is barely visible on that same sign, pointing at the direction the Joneses just came from, and it indicates the road to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, which hosted the 1936 Winter Olympics.

For the scene at the Nazi rally in Berlin (where Indy confronts Elsa and steals back the diary), Steven Spielberg had all the extras who did the "Sieg Heil" arm salute also put their other arms behind their backs and cross their fingers.

River Phoenix becomes the first actor to portray Indiana Jones as a teenager. He was later offered the chance to portray young Indy in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, but turned it down, since he didn't want to return to television.

The tank that Indy fights is a replica of a British/American Mark VIII, manufactured in 1918. Its armament consisted of two six-pound guns and seven machine guns; only 107 were produced due to the end of the war. The tank shown in the film has a turret replacing the large cupola for the commander/driver, and no machine guns; it is also much faster than the real Mk VIII's.

Indy's true name is finally revealed in this movie: Henry Jones, Jr. In the previous two films (and in this film, up until the final minute), he has only been referred to as "Indiana Jones" and variations thereof. ("Dr. Jones", "Indy", etc.) The name Indiana came from a dog in both the movie and real life: George Lucas' Alaskan malamute dog who lived in the 1970s. A dog of this breed is seen in the film when young Indy (River Phoenix) returns home with the cross in his hand.

The gun used to shoot the Sean Connery character is a Walther PPK, the same model as Connery's James Bond gun.

Goofs

The initial scenes of the movie are shot in Arches National Park (which is, as is stated, in Utah), and the troop dismounts at Double Arch. Indy takes the Cross of Coronado from a cave near that arch. However, there was no train line for miles in any direction at the time of the story. The railroad line present in the area today was built during the 1950s to serve a uranium processing mill at Moab. The nearest railroad at the time of the story is 40 miles to the north

Throughout the movie, many characters are seen utilizing firearms that were not in use at the time the film is set in. For instance, inside the castle, Indy and the guards make heavy use of MP-40 submachine guns, which were not introduced until 1940. The P-38 pistol is also used quite frequently, particularly by the Germans in the desert, and would have just been entering service in 1938. It is much more probable that the troops would have been using P.08 Luger pistols.

When Indiana Jones first sees the tablet, he identifies it as an Early Latin text from the mid 12th Century. The text is not Early Latin, but rather Late Latin. Early Latin refers to Latin before the Golden Age of Cicero and Caesar. In the 12th Century, people used only Medieval Latin.

In the airport lounge, two people are reading German newspapers dated 1918, twenty years out of date

After swimming under petrol in the catacombs, Jones surfaces completely dry, except his wet hair, which makes wet spots on his clothes.

Indy's face is almost black from dirt and grime when the tank's gun is grinding dirt onto him from the wall, yet after he climbs up from the side of the cliff to join the others his face is hardly dirty at all.

When the tank falls off the cliff and hits the ground below, the turret falls off, revealing a flat surface underneath on the chassis model - there's no way for the occupants to climb out from the body of the tank through the turret, as we see them do several times previously.

During the library scene where the large X is on the floor, Indy climbs a spiral stair case to get a better look at the floor. When he's at the top, the book case behind him is clearly made up of book spines glued to a black background.

During the tank fight there are several shots from behind the tank as it is moving. The tracks left in the dirt are from standard tires, not the steel tanks treads that they should be.

While in the catacombs, burning pieces of Indiana's torch fall into the "petroleum", but it doesn't ignite until someone throws in a match.

Box Office Info In USA

Budget: $48,000,000

Gross $197,171,806

Filming Dates: May 16, 1988 to September 30, 1988

Filming Locations

Administration Building, Treasure Island, San Francisco Bay, California, USA (Tempelhof Airport Berlin exterior)
Alamosa, Colorado, USA
Amarillo, Texas, USA
(the four riding into the sunset at the end)
Arches National Park, Moab, Utah, USA
Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England, UK
Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, England, UK
Campo San Barnaba, Venice, Veneto, Italy
Cannon Elstree Studios, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, England, UK (studio)
Cortez, Colorado, USA
Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, Chama, New Mexico, USA
Desierto de Tabernas, Almería, Andalucía, Spain
Germany
Guadix, Granada, Andalucía, Spain
Moab, Utah, USA
North Weald, Essex, England, UK
Pagosa Springs, Colorado, USA
Parque Natural de Cabo de Gata-Níjar, Almería, Andalucía, Spain
Petra, Jordan
Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, England, UK
Royal Horticultural Halls & Conference Centre, Vincent Square, Westminster, London, England, UK (interior: Tempelhof Airport Berlin)
Schloss Bürresheim, Mayen, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany (Castle Brunwald)
South Park Avenue, Arches National Park, Moab, Utah, USA (opening scenes with boy scouts)
Stowe School, Buckingham, Buckinghamshire, England, UK (Nazi rally)
Tabernas, Almería, Andalucía, Spain
Tilbury Docks, Essex, England, UK (speedboat chase scenes)
Tilbury, Essex, England, UK
Venice, Veneto, Italy
Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England, UK