Fake Review: The Davinci Code (movie version)
Dan Brown has never been in a bank. He's heard many tales and legends of the mighty heroes of banking, but he's never actually been in one.
I know this, because his banks are fantastic places of wonder where managers will smuggle out favored customers, cooly tricking the police out of searching the vehicle. Dan Brown knows that when banks look closed, in the middle of the night, all it takes is the right key to reveal a full staff and lush wood panelling. In his bank, one mistake entering your PIN permanently locks out the safe deposit box (Does the bank just keep it in the vault forever? Or can you enter the wrong PIN and then just check the dumpster the next day?). Switzerland, home of so many banks, has no extradition treaty with France. And the Knights Templar, pioneers of banking, lead a magical existence wholly divorced from reality.
Tom Hanks gives a capsule history of the Templars. It's amazing. Here's what I remember:
1. A French king conquers Jerusalem
2. The Templars are founded to help him
3. The Pope gives the Templars "ultimate power."
4. But they become too powerful, so...
5. The Pope issues secret orders to be opened and executed simultaneously ordering the arrest and execution of the Templars for devil worship.
6. All the Templars are killed.
Let me go back over that...
1. Godfrey de Bouillon was neither French nor at any time a king.
2. No, they were founded 19 years after the capture of Jerusalem.
3. Is it also true that the Templars were mammals?
4. Well, I guess. Really "The king of France owed them money and didn't want to pay it" is more accurate. I'm also not sure in the scriptwriter's world why it took 200 years from the time they received absolute power from the Pope for them to become too powerful.
5. Nope. Orders were given by Philip the Fair for arrest and trial in France, then by the Pope for arrest and trial elsewhere. They were for heresy, not for devil worship.
6. No again. Killed or confessed in France, tried and acquitted in parts of Germany and several Mediterranean countries, renamed and rechartered into the orders of Christ and Montesa in Portugal and Spain respectively, absorbed into the Hospitallers in many places, and in Scotland, wholly unprosecuted.
Pope: Dismantle the order.
Robert the Bruce: Why?
Pope: Do it or I'll excommunicate you.
RtB: Not again! Whatever shall I do? I am ex-ex-communicated! Doomed to double-Hell! [Vader]Noooooo![/Vader]
I know this, because his banks are fantastic places of wonder where managers will smuggle out favored customers, cooly tricking the police out of searching the vehicle. Dan Brown knows that when banks look closed, in the middle of the night, all it takes is the right key to reveal a full staff and lush wood panelling. In his bank, one mistake entering your PIN permanently locks out the safe deposit box (Does the bank just keep it in the vault forever? Or can you enter the wrong PIN and then just check the dumpster the next day?). Switzerland, home of so many banks, has no extradition treaty with France. And the Knights Templar, pioneers of banking, lead a magical existence wholly divorced from reality.
Tom Hanks gives a capsule history of the Templars. It's amazing. Here's what I remember:
1. A French king conquers Jerusalem
2. The Templars are founded to help him
3. The Pope gives the Templars "ultimate power."
4. But they become too powerful, so...
5. The Pope issues secret orders to be opened and executed simultaneously ordering the arrest and execution of the Templars for devil worship.
6. All the Templars are killed.
Let me go back over that...
1. Godfrey de Bouillon was neither French nor at any time a king.
2. No, they were founded 19 years after the capture of Jerusalem.
3. Is it also true that the Templars were mammals?
4. Well, I guess. Really "The king of France owed them money and didn't want to pay it" is more accurate. I'm also not sure in the scriptwriter's world why it took 200 years from the time they received absolute power from the Pope for them to become too powerful.
5. Nope. Orders were given by Philip the Fair for arrest and trial in France, then by the Pope for arrest and trial elsewhere. They were for heresy, not for devil worship.
6. No again. Killed or confessed in France, tried and acquitted in parts of Germany and several Mediterranean countries, renamed and rechartered into the orders of Christ and Montesa in Portugal and Spain respectively, absorbed into the Hospitallers in many places, and in Scotland, wholly unprosecuted.
Pope: Dismantle the order.
Robert the Bruce: Why?
Pope: Do it or I'll excommunicate you.
RtB: Not again! Whatever shall I do? I am ex-ex-communicated! Doomed to double-Hell! [Vader]Noooooo![/Vader]