DaVinci Code, the Movie
Having now seen the movie, I have to say that Ron Howard is a much better researcher than Dan Brown. Many of Brown's more idiotic blunders were removed, and the movie only perpetuated a few of them. He even has Langdon and Teabing argue about the historical facts instead of Brown's scene where they both pontificate and whipsaw Sophie between them. However they argue about the wrong things. They argue about whether Jesus was married, which, speculative though it is, there is actual evidence for. They fail to argue about the imbecilic notion that Pope Clement V destroyed the Knights Templar, about whether or not the Templars were even destroyed, and about where and when they were killed. And to call the plot (whether the Pope or the French King hatched it) Machiavellian 150 years before the birth of Machiavelli, is somewhat misleading.
I'm getting ahead of myself, because the first thing that must be said is that Ian McKellen is masterful. This dynamic and talented actor, it seems, simply cannot make a bad movie. In X-Men, as Magneto, three times, he was exemplary. Sympathetic and complex. As Gandolph he was dynamic and magical. He is simply one of the era's greatest talents.
Oh, yeah, Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou were very believable and professional, they are competent and talented actors. And of course, we all know Ron Howard is an incredible director, who was somehow able to make even John Nash seem sympathetic.
Howard's research, however was not perfect, and he managed to include some of Brown's more foolish faux pas. Godfrey of Bouillon is not named, but the statement is made that Jerusalem was conquered by a "French king". Because Brown is too stupid to know the difference between a French king and a German duke, does not excuse Howard from doing his own research. As Duke of Lorraine, Godfrey's suzerain was the Holy Roman Emperor, not the French king (who at that time was Philippe II Auguste). In 1099 the French king ruled a little two by four kingdom which included the city of Paris, and not much else. And, nationality aside, Godfrey was never a king. After he conquered Jerusalem, he took the title "Princeps", it wasn't until his brother took that throne after his death that the title of king was adopted, and Baldwin I was the first ever "King of Jerusalem", but not King of France.
Howard also does have the characters refer to the church of 1307 as the "Vatican", even though the curia were in Perugia in 1307, and then Avignon for the next 68 years (1309 to 1377). And he had his Landgon insist that the pentacle is a symbol of Venus, but not of Satanism. In fact it is a symbol of Satanism, just as the swastika is a symbol of Naziism. Symbols are whatever we make them. However nobody has ever made it a symbol of Venus. Except Brown.
Howard also has his nun at Saint-Sulpice claim that the Parisian rose line was the world's first prime meridian. Five minutes with an encyclopedia would have cured the writers of that stupidity. He also perpetuates the falacy that "sangreal" is the "oldest form of the word", but at least he doesn't have Sophie failing to understand French like Brown does. Howard also makes it clear that the Grail they are looking for is Mary Magdalene's sarcophagas, so the ambiguity Brown drags into the quest is not present in the movie. Howard also clearly knows the difference between Dead Sea literature, Nag Hammadi codices, and Grail literature. He doesn't have his Teabing use Elaine Paigels' copyrighted title Gnostic Gospels and then call them "Dead Sea scrolls". In this scene Teabing goes to several ancient codices and looks up actual quotes from specific Gnostic documents in turn. Brown's scene is more reminiscent of vague hand-waving, making it clear that he (Brown) doesn't really have any kind of clue what the actual documents are, let alone what they say. After all, he took all his theological and historical knowledge from Holy Blood, Holy Grail.
Howard's conception of the Church's attacks on women are historically accurate and objective, while Brown's are idiotically phrased, either exagerated or mis-stated time and again. Obviously Howard heard some of the many objections to Brown's historical mis-steps and did the research on his own. There is even a clear reference to the debunking of Plantard's Preurè of Sion. Howard also includes the statement that Mary Magdalene was of "royal descent" without Brown's ridiculous "tribe of Benjamin" geneology. That is ambiguous enough to be possible. Robert Graves, in King Jesus asserts that Jesus' bride must be royal and speculates that she would be of Hasmonean blood, perhaps a hidden cousin who Herod the Great neglected to murder along with the rest of the family.
Both Howard and McKellen are way too intelligent to call Baigent, Lincoln, Leigh, Picknett or Prince historians; or to refer to their speculative UFO-style conspiracy books as histories. In fact Howard is astute enough in one scene to compare the Priory of Sion story to UFO stories. Howard also tries to correct Brown's obvious faux pas about Jesus referring to the Holy Grail in the gospels by inserting an explaination that the Grail cup is really the womb of Jesus' wife and that is what Jesus referred to in the gospels. Howard downplays the "miraculous" memory of Sophie, a mathematician, remembering the Fibonacci sequence. In Howard's scene there is no stress about remembering the numbers in the right order, the tension is created by having to determine whether or not Sauniere scrambled them up.
Still he has the bank manager of a reputable Swiss bank try to rob his account holders, but Howard recognized the lack of motivation and supplies one. Howard is not stupid enough to have them arrive at the bank in a stolen cab. Howard also corrects the idiotic sequence where Sophie, a French national, doesn't recognize a fleur-de lis or an equal-armed (Swiss) cross. The movie does perpetuate the fallacy that the "V" and chevron are the "earliest" symbols for man and woman. And he does have Langdon say that "in those days 'companion' litteraly meant spouse" when the context makes it clear that what is intended is "companion figuratively meant spouse" not literally. But he doesn't perpetuate the linguistic idiocy of calling a Coptic document "Aramaic", like Brown does. Howard does not have his characters spout inanities about what is pagan or Christian, especially "round" churches. He only has Sophie exhibit an emotional reaction to the gargoyles and green men carved in the Temple Church and murmer "This church is wrong".
The movie also makes the mistake of the GPS tracking dot, but I will forgive that as a sci-fi type technology innovation. Brown is trying to make it current technology, but in a movie you expect to see special effects.
While Howard's movie essentially corrects all of Brown's stupid historical blunders (with the exception of those I have named here) by either correcting them or deleting them, Brown's plot failures are spectacularly corrected. I have already mentioned the idiotic scenes like arriving at the bank in the stolen cab, after asking the cab driver where that address is. But where Brown creates his mystery by having people suddenly change sides for no reason, Howard knows enough about mysteries to create believable motivation for his characters.
The bank manager suddenly switches sides and tries to rob them because he has been watching the "keystone" and waiting 20 years for somebody to show up so he can rob it. He's a grail seeker himself who uses the bank job to keep track of the keystone. The cop (Captain Fache) changes sides because he discovers Bishop Manuel Aringarosa has deceived him and used him. Teabing is the bad guy all along, and seems to switches sides with the comment that he was startled to have Langdon and Sophie show up at his house asking for help and so he strung them along.
But there is no telegraphing of the ending by showing the listening equipment where Teabing monitored both the Church and the Police. In the book there is no rhyme or reason to Teabing being now on one side then now on the other. At least Howard has sense enough to explain Teabing's actions, including his motivation for murdering Sophie's grandfather (the Priory failed their own purpose by not exposing the truth and bringing down the church).
Brown has Aringarosa being wishy-washy about what he's doing, going along with Teabing, but never letting himself know that Silas is used for murder. At least Howard's Aringarosa is a proper villain, intending murder from the beginning.
In the book, Sophie's proposed motive for not talking to her grandfather is because she saw him having sex. Preposterous! Howard has enough sense to provide a believable motive for the argument when young Sophie tries to find out about her parents and Sauniere yells at her for it.
In the movie, Brown's literary offences have been rectified, most of his idiotic historical blunders have been corrected, and his inane plotting has been deleted or or new plot elements introduced to correct the foolish scenes. The movie was thoroughly enjoyable and, as always, Ian McKellen was dynamic and believable. Clearly Ron Howard has a much better idea of how to make a believable mystery than Dan Brown does.