Trivia

Angels & Demons Movie Trivia

Memorable Movie Quotes

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.

Cardinal Strauss: When you write about us, and you will, do so gently.

Cardinal Strauss: Religion is flawed because man is flawed.

Camerlengo Patrick McKenna: Our church is at war. We are under attack from an old enemy. The Illuminati. They have struck us from within and threatening us all with destruction from their new god Science.

The production had to build a scale replica of St. Peter’s Square since Vatican officers banned the movie from being filmed in its grounds.

Although the novel upon which this film is based is set before the events of the novel “The Da Vinci Code”, the film has been written as a sequel to follow after events in The Da Vinci Code.

Naomi Watts was originally cast as Vittoria.

Thure Lindhardt was nearly cast as Silas in The Da Vinci Code (2006). Ron Howard liked his audition so much that he offered him the role of Chartrand in this movie.

Five minutes were cut after the film received an R rating.

Leonardo DiCaprio turned down the role of Camerlengo Patrick McKenna. He declined despite being offered the role personally by Tom Hanks.

Tom Hanks hired David Koepp for rewrites.

During filming in Rome, the crew and equipment were blocking the passage of a bridal party on it’s way to the church for a wedding. Upon discovering this situation, Tom Hanks personally escorted the party through the filming area and rallied the crew to remove the obstacles in the way. After the bride was delivered to the church (on time), her grateful family invited Hanks and director Ron Howard to stay for the wedding ceremony. Unfortunately, Hanks and Howard’s busy filming schedule prevented them from accepting the offer.

The ‘God particle’ referred to in the movie is the Higgs-Boson particle, theorized in 1963-64. The LHC in Geneva is indeed seeking out the nature of this particle, which is claimed to give mass to all matter in the Universe.

Tom Hanks underwent strenuous training for Landon’s introductory scene in the pool.

The papal helicopter is a Bell 222, the type formerly of “Airwolf” (1984) fame.

Goof

Historically, the Illuminati was a post-Enlightenment sect started in Bavaria in 1776 by Adam Weishupt, 200 years after Galileo. All secret societies were banned in Bavaria by Karl Theodor in 1784. Conspiriology abounds with theories about their survival, hence the frequent use of the word “Illuminati” to refer to any sinister conspiratorial group.

The equipment needed to store antimatter, and the quantity produced, is inconsistent with reality. Also, the Large Hadron Collider is not a particularly important instrument in antimatter research, and antimatter research is not an important part of the LHC’s goals. However it is established in dialogue immediately that the antimatter-production experiment is an unauthorized piece of research well outside of the LHC’s actual mission, and that the few researchers “in on it” are creating an exceptional new method for producing large quantities of antimatter. While this is not realistic, it’s deliberate and established in the movie’s fictional world.

Langdon states that, after the death of the Pope and before his successor is chosen, the Camerlengo becomes Head of the Catholic Church. While the Camerlengo does in fact become acting head of state of Vatican City, leadership of the Church is taken up by the College of Cardinals.

The movie falsely states that Priests cannot truly be elected as the Pope. However, they can be elevated to the rank of Bishop, and can therefore take office. Furthermore, every unmarried, male Catholic layman can be elected as the Pope and would then be promoted to the rank of Priest and Bishop consecutively.

When one of the Preferiti is burned in the church, Robert Langdon releases the chain on his left arm, and the cardinal falls into the flames, suspended by his right arm only. However, soon we see him again, behind the Assassin, and he is again suspended by both arms. In fact Langdon never completely released the Cardinal’s arm: we see the chain snag again before Langdon is forced to take cover from the gunfire.

The car the assassin drives, a Volkswagen, makes a beeping sound when he remotely unlocks it. Volkswagens do not make this kind of sound.

In the final scene, the Pope is dressed with vestments in a room with a balcony where he proceeded to face the crowds (presumably the central loggia of St. Peter’s). In reality, the Pope dresses with vestments by himself, in a room in the Sistine Chapel, and the Central Loggia is a fairly far from the Sistine Chapel, and not in the same place as what is shown in the film.

The dove atop the obelisk in Piazza Navona is not flying as shown in the movie but is perched with its wings folded.

The timer on the antimatter bomb shows just over a third full, but the time they said they have left is 7 minutes, and later “a little over 5 minutes”. But when the bomb threat was made, they had about 4 hours before the bomb would explode. According to the timer they would have had only about 15 minutes before the bomb exploded, however this doesn’t add up to the time they used to find the bomb.

Flying the canister into the air will only increase the effect of the explosion. This is why nuclear weapons are designed to air-burst instead of ground-burst, because in the latter case, the earth will absorb much of the energy. A 5kt air-burst would cause much more damage than what is depicted on the screen; in addition to the kinetic shock wave, there would have been a tremendous release of thermal energy and wave of heat that would, at the very least, have given everyone in the scene third-degree burns (if not worse, such as vaporizing them outright). People would have been blinded and things on the ground would have burst into flames. The antimatter device depicted in the film is, effectively, a small nuclear weapon, deriving its energy from mass-energy conversions, just as nuclear weapons do, and it will generate the same explosive effects as a nuclear weapon (since the explosive effect is the result of the amount of energy released and is not tied to the specific nature of the weapon). The explosion depicted is simply too small, even for a weak nuclear device.

The dead pope in the beginning of the movie was “Pius XVI” as we saw the Ring of the Fisherman that was destroyed by Camerlengo McKenna bears his name. At the end of the movie, when Cardinal Baggia was elected the new pope and Vittoria said that he chose the papal name “Luke”, the camera zoomed in to the new Ring of the Fisherman. However it’s clearly shown that the inscription on the ring reads “Pius XVI”. It’s the same ring which belongs to the dead pope that was destroyed in the beginning of the movie.

When Vittoria said that the new pope chose the name Luke, Langdon said that “there has been many (popes who are named) Marks and Johns, but never a Luke.” Of all the 265 popes in Roman Catholic Church, there are indeed 25 popes with the name John, but actually only 1 named Mark, that is Pope Marcus (reigned for just 9 months in 336 AD). The name Luke in Latin is Lucas and Langdon is correct, there has been no pope named Lucas.

Inside the Vatican vault before the power is cut Chartrand struggles to breathe, Langdon suggests that because he is a smoker he cannot handle the lower oxygen levels. In fact smokers have a better tolerance to low oxygen levels than non-smokers.

When Robert Langdon is walking back to his office from the pool with the Vatican representative he refers to the picture as an anagram because it is symmetrical and looks the same ether way up. This is incorrect an anagram is a word, phrase, or name formed by rearranging the letters of another. The correct word should have been ambigram, a design that may be read as the same word or phrase when oriented in two different ways, usually when reflected in a vertical axis or when rotated through 180 degrees.

Box Office Info In USA

Budget $150,000,000

Gross $133,375,846 (USA) (2 August 2009)

Filming Dates: 5 June 2008 – July 2008

Filming Locations

Backlot, Universal Studios – 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City, California, USA (Little Europe)
Biblioteca Angelica, Rome, Lazio, Italy
Hollywood Park Racetrack – 1050 S. Prairie Avenue, Inglewood, California, USA
Los Angeles, California, USA
Piazza Navona, Rome, Lazio, Italy
Piazza del Popolo, Rome, Lazio, Italy
Rome, Lazio, Italy
Royal Palace, Caserta, Campania, Italy
Royce Hall – 340 Royce Drive, UCLA, Westwood, Los Angeles, California, USA
Sony Pictures Studios – 10202 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, California, USA
St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City
The Pantheon, Piazza della Rotonda, Rome, Lazio, Italy
Vatican City

Trivia – Angels & Demons