Did I miss something? (in Last Crusade)

Montana Smith said:

It's apparent throughout the four movies that the creators didn't intend to do much research on history and geography. They took some bare facts, and some half-remembered facts, and they put them on paper and never looked back.

Indy exists in one of those Back to the Future pasts. Someone like Marty McFly's been back there and tinkered with a few things, and it's changed the passage of history. In some cases technology advanced faster in Indy's timeline - the MP40, for example, was four years' ahead of schedule; at Pankot the Hindus started eating meat; for some reason Nepal decided not to ban foreigners; and the borders of Hatay extended further into Syria (well Jordan's Petra even appeared inside their border )

Willie gave the game away in TOD when she sang, "Anything Goes." (!)

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Yeah - it all has to be taken with a huge pinch of salt. One of my biggest bugbears is the portrayal of Cairo in Raiders. Cairo was a large developed city in the 1930's and not some little market village as we see it on screen. I also don't really like the use of Petra in TLC as it assumes one doesn't know it's an actual genuine locale/structure. The arrival at the Grail temple always drew me out of the movie (more so when the movie was first released).

Darth Vile said:

Yeah - it all has to be taken with a huge pinch of salt. One of my biggest bugbears is the portrayal of Cairo in Raiders. Cairo was a large developed city in the 1930's and not some little market village as we see it on screen. I also don't really like the use of Petra in TLC as it assumes one doesn't know it's an actual genuine locale/structure. The arrival at the Grail temple always drew me out of the movie (more so when the movie was first released).

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I totally understand that. Certain elements used to bug me as well. It may be true to say that having too much knowledge of history and geography puts a dampner on enjoying films like these.

If we're blissfully ignorant (and I in know way mean that in a patronizing manner, as there's always something that we don't know!), we might enjoy the movies without being aware of niggling discrepancies. Petra appeared in one of the Sinbads, and that bothered me. It was too well-known a location to be passed off as the resting site of the Grail in TLC.

Once you come ready loaded with certain facts, I found the only cure was to distance the two worlds, and let Indy's occupy another place. It also helps with some of the more extreme cliffhangers!

Unless of course the facade of the grail temple was the remnant of a previously undiscovered Nabatean temple..

Maybe Indy was thinking "Interesting, the similarities to Nabatean funereal architecture is remarkable"

Which makes sense really, I've always puzzled how the brothers managed to carve that massive facade by themselves, or indeed why they'd bother considering it was supposed to be a secret.. also.. those two lions inside, a bit... well, crap aren't they? Almost like they'd been completed by a different architect.. in fact the entire interior (apart from the stunningly designed 'cross this seal and it'll self destruct' booby trap) is a bit poor really. Aesthetically anyway, when seen next to the glories of Petra's mysterious Northern twin..

So maybe they made use of an already extant temple, enlarged it, hollowed out the mountain a bit, put a stone scrabble board over one of the bottomless chasms, a painstakingly painted bridge over the other...

What makes it further mind bending is T.E. Lawrence, Indy's inspiration, fought something of a battle at Petra.. In Indy's universe does Petra look different? Does it exist?

But back to the republic of Hatay bits and bobs, if it had ever been a Turkish possession (as opposed to Ottaman) which it was not, then we could make some sense of the Latin text used in the train station, Ataturk was already well along in his plans to rid Turkey of most Asian cultural trimmings. Maybe because its a train station? Perhaps the other side of the sign says Iskenderun in Arabic.. then again, if its still called Alexandretta...

Ah, I see, the whole arabic is Al-iskandarun, as Lance pointed out, the same thing.. took me awhile to see the Alexander in the iskenderun.. so.. yeah.. the sign in the train station should say Alexandretta with al iskandarun on the back in arabic text... which makes the whole Iskenderun thing sound a bit dim of Indy... And me actually, as I appear to be treading waters of type..

As to there being a museum, I don't know, it didn't look like it, it seemed quite small really, bit run down, we stopped only to let passengers on and of then continued on to Antioch where we were to make the border crossing into Syria