The writers clearly didn't have a map handy when they wrote the scene where the templars fled Jerusalem be sea and then watched Jerusalem burning from the sea. Jerusalem is 30 miles from the Mediterranean sea and I don't think it has moved very much in 800 years. Amateurish stuff.
shareThat flashback scene was in the very first part of the book "The Last Templar" written by robert khoury (i think his first name was robert)
The mistake was his..that's exacly how he wrote it. I tried reading the book because I like things like this, but to me it was unreadable. Believe it or not, the television production so far is actually better than the read. Khory's story was way too cardboard cut-out. It's tough to read how virtuous and pretty and wonderful a person is in print...it made me really want to gag. But, portraying those characteristics without having to put them into words is much more palatable to me.
To correct Cataclysmmm and in defense of "Raymond Khoury", the mistake was not his. At the very start of his book "The Last Templar" in the prologue you will find that Khoury addresses the city as Acre in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem circa 1291. After that Khoury simply refers to the place as the Holy Land which to my understanding actually meant the kingdom as a whole and not just the city of Jerusalem. In the movie I might have missed them address the city by name since I honestly don't even recall hearing it, but I had assumed it was Acre from reading the book. So any error made would have been by the screen writers converting the book to a movie script and not by Khoury himself.
shareI'll confirm this, I read the book a few weeks ago; its definitely Acre in the book not Jerusalem...
share[deleted]
My husband, a history teacher, pointed that out to me! I was kind of surprised they would make a mistake like that, even the author. I mean, I know it's a movie but it should still resonate with some believability. But, I know that people gave it bad reviews, but I kind of enjoyed it. I thought the story was entertaining, and although the opening scene was totally over the top and completely unbelievable, it was fun to watch!
sharetotally agree. fun sunday night entertainment.
shareThey probably chose Jerusalem because most people don't know where/what Acre is. Whereas Jerusalem's importance is known universally. Not that I am justifying this decision, it's just my guess as to why they would change such a detail.
shareI got a laugh out of that. Acre maybe...Jerusalem nope.
shareAcre was my best guess too. The number of basic mistakes in history are kind of hysterical actually.
shareYep, like the one that Jerusalem was taken by the Muslims in 1291, which was actually the year when Acre, the last Crusader fortress in the Holy Land, fell. Jerusalem was taken by no other than Saladin himself, in 1187, but I guess a century more or less doesn't really matter in today's age of ignorance ...
If this was also in the book, you should keep wondering what the author was thinking about? I mean, the book was published in 2005, you need to do only a basic search in Google, in order to get the facts, if you are so lazy you can't get some history books. I know distorting historical fact is quite common in fiction, for example "The Three Musketeers" also contains a lot of loopholes, but this is a little bit too much. Even "Da Vinci's Code" had fewer loopholes, if we have to compare ...
Well said, Zhivik.
shareMost likely the author was talking about the Siege of Acre which was in 1291. That's where the legend of the Templar's treasure came from.
shareThis part confused me as well. But in a later recap of the events, it was mentioned that the Templars had taken ship at Acre, not Jerusalem. So maybe something got lost in the editing.
shareAs a general reply to this entire thread, the city was Acre in the book, and the writer's name is Raymond Khoury. Acre is indeed on the sea, and has also not moved very much in 800 years.
If anyone read this book or watched this movie as a means to gain all the knowledge they felt they needed about the history of acre, jerusalem, or the crusades, i am truly sorry to disappoint you, but you will find it in the fiction section at the library.
When William Vance explains to Tess about the Templar story he says it was in Jerusalem when describing the Templars battle with the Muslims.
I did a wiki search and learned that the Templars regarded all of the Holy Land as the "Kingdom of Jerusalem". It was their belief that they were defending Christendom's sacred foundation. Thus, they regarded all surrounding towns and cities as the "Kingdom Of Jerusalem". In addition, Tess later explains to Sean that the two Templars left the city and sailed from the port of Acre (in part 2).
The script writer should have had Vance used the term "Kingdom of Jerusalem" instead of "Jerusalem". It would have still been misleading, but it would have been correct.
I can see how people are becoming confused though. I thought the same thing (Jerusalem Sur Mer...?) but when I realized the the fall of Jerusalem was spoken about in the same scene practically as the escape in the Falcon Temple, I understand how people are making the connection but the city where the knights escaped by ship was indeed Acre, not Jerusalem.
share"Amateurish stuff"
Well of course only an amateur would expect a TV movie to fill in the gaps in the general public's education.
Well of course only an amateur would expect a TV movie to fill in the gaps in the general public's education.Please don't forget that the people who wrote the screenplay, produced and directed the mini-series, also were public school graduates. share
Well of course only an amateur would expect a TV movie to fill in the gaps in the general public's education.
Please don't forget that the people who wrote the screenplay, produced and directed the mini-series, also were public school graduates.
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My reference was to the "general public" (i.e. everybody) and not to public school education.
as none of us is a filmmaker or screenwriter, we all amateurs here. That's not the point. but even the most amateurish screenwriter should do some minimum research when dealing with a historical topic such as the templars, considering some knowledge in parts of the audience, if only due to the post Sacrilege medieval mystery hype.
The parts of the Holy Land taken by the Crusaders from 1099 to 1291 and ruled by Christian lords were divided in four independant reigns, from wich Jerusalem was, if the superior, though but one. The others were Edessa, Tripolis and Antioch, and near the end, before Akkon (Acre) was taken back by the Muslims in 1291, 14 different groups of interest shared the power in the remnants of Outremer, wich was the name the whole region was called by the Europeans. So how could the templars, deeply involved in all military, religious, economic and political matters since their orders beginnings in 1119, ignore this and refer to the whole region as to the Kingdom of Jerusalem?
...and there's no desert in Bodrum as it's shown in this "thing"
...and Bodrum is a Turkish city where people speak Turkish instead of Arabic
...and people don't ride camels in Bodrum
I think our "mistake" is to expect some accuracy from garbages like The Last Templar.