Something Old, Something New
There are a lot of outrageous moments in the new Indiana Jones film, but nothing more unbelievable than when Indy, in 1957, says "same old same old."
But I hear they cut some worse anachronisms in editing. For instance, when Indy's on the nuclear testing sight he says "dat's da bomb," when he meets Mutt he asks "who's your daddy?," when he first spies Marion he goes "schwing!" and when he sees all the ancient artifacts he exclaims "check out the dope bling-bling, dawg."
posted by LAGuy @ 12:39 AM
3 Comments:
Are these deliberate anachronisms or just lack of knowledge/interest in era- appropriate language
My favorites in this area are from war scenes depicting more ancient battles- In "Braveheart," the commander of the English forces tells his underling to "Take out their archers" at the Battle of Stirling Bridge (or maybe it was Falkirk)
Likewise in Richard Burton's "Alexander The Great" before a climactic battle scene one of his lieutenants uses the contraction "gonna" - as in something like ""We're gonna defeat the mighty foe" (I forgot the exact line and the cheap DVD I bought recently doesn't have the scene I remember so well). Of course since in neither historical event were the actual participants speaking English, or modern English, I'm not sure these are actual anachronisms (like in Indiana Jones) but they did stand out and sort of crush the verisimilitude.
I was a little startled when Indy called Marion his "beeyotch".
But my favorite movie for anachronisms is Richard Donner's "Ladyhawke". The movie, set in medieval Europe, features howlers like "...I'm still a young man, you know. I've got prospects!"
Someone once told me there's a movie where a general starts an address to his troops with "Men of the Middle Ages..." Alas, I didn't catch the title.
But really these examples aren't the same, since, as NEG notes, if they were speaking in the language of the time, we wouldn't understand them.
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