Thoughts On The Indiana Jones Trilogy

• Raiders is way better than you remember.
• Temple is far worse.
• Crusade is a hoot.
• There was no fourth film.
• The hero of the Indiana Jones movies is not Indiana Jones; it’s John Williams.
• You’re singing it now, aren’t you?
• Bum-ba-BUM-BAAAA!
• Although, if we’re completely honest, the Indy score is not all that far from the Star Wars score.
• I think the main themes are even in the same key.
• “We need more brass.”
• “John, we’ve already got every trumpeter, trombonist, and tuba player in England in the studio.”
• “JOHN WILLIAMS NEEDS MORE BRASS.”
• Let’s get this out of the way and then make our way through the flicks: whips do not work that way.
• Everything Indiana Jones taught you about whips was a lie.
• First off: most archaeologists do not carry them.
• Second: they do not automatically adjust length according to the necessities of the scene.
• Third: if they’re wrapped tightly enough around a providentially-located pipe or support beam that you can swing across a chasm, then you can’t unwrap the sucker by shimmying your wrist.
• Fourth: any honest reading of the Second Amendment says that you can open-carry your bullwhip into Old Navy, and use it to fetch clothing from the high shelves.
• Okay, enough about whips.
• We did the whip.
• We did not do the nae-nae.
• So: Raiders of the Lost Ark is a poorly named masterpiece of action and fun and hats and punching and Karen Allen’s adorableness.
• No one raids the ark.
• It gets dug up, stolen, stolen again, opened, and then hidden in a warehouse.
• No raiding whatsoever.
• Also: no Raiders.
• It would have been nice to see a cameo from Ken “The Snake” Stabler, but it didn’t happen.
• Would Indy be afraid of Ken “The Snake” Stabler?
• TotD: Asking The Important Questions.
• One of the reason’s the first one’s the best one is because it has the best female lead: Karen Allen gets the badass intro out-drinking foreigners in Nepal, and a very fetching pair of red wide-legged trousers in the Cairo section, and she yelps “JONES!” in the most pleasingly hoarse manner.
• Other than that, she’s just as much a damsel-in-distress as Kate Capshaw in the second one.
• Allison Doody, the blonde in the third flick, is not a damsel-in-distress.
• She is a Nazi, though.
• If those are your two options, go with D-I-D.
• Which brings us to Nazis.
• There’s a billion reasons that Temple of Doom sucks, but first on the list: no Nazis.
• Indiana Jones punches Nazis.
• He doesn’t have Twitter debates about whether punching Nazis just emboldens the Nazis, or the morality of the act, or slippery slopes, or any of that college bullshit.
• Indy sees a Nazi?
• Indy punches a Nazi.
• Unless she is a hot blonde Nazi with big Teutonic titties.
• Then, he fucks the Nazi.
• In Indy’s defense:
  • He did not know she was a Nazi when he fucked her.
  • She was really hot
• In Temple, you will recall, Indiana Jones fights Scary Brown People.
• It’s like someone made an action movie out of Orientalism by Edward Said.
• Not that Mola Ram and the Thugee weren’t just the worst.
• What with the stealing of children and hearts.
• But Indiana Jones had a kid sidekick, so can we really claim that one culture is better or worse than the other?
• A half-hour into Temple, I was rooting for the elephant to attack Screaming Woman and Accent Kid.
• Just knock both of them to the ground and step on their chests until they died.
• And then Indy goes on with the adventure, maybe meeting a hot Indian lady–whoever the 1985 version of Aishwarya Rai was–and she doesn’t shriek constantly and isn’t a 60-pound human being whose roundhouse kicks send enormous men flying backwards.
• I will suspend my disbelief, but I can’t levitate the motherfucker.
• Magic rocks?
• Fine.
• Short Round can knock a grown man unconscious with one flying kick?
• No.
• Stop that.
• Don’t fucking do that.
• Temple also has the most special effects shots, and they are all incredibly janky and adorable.
• Green screens behind the mine carts during the big chase, and cheesy matte paintings for the palace, and animated explosions.
• Whereas Raiders and Crusade go mostly old-school for the action sequences: if the script says “INDY GETS DRAGGED BEHIND TRUCK,” then the crew got a rope and a stunt double.
• Go back and watch the truck sequence from the first one again.
• I’ll wait.
• Oh, fine, I’ll do your homework for you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1ZyHNmb1yU

• There’s one effects shot in the whole sequence: the jeep plummeting over the side of the cliff; otherwise, it’s just stunt men, editing, John Williams’ music, and Harrison Ford’s smirk.
• Imagine this scene in a movie from 2018.
• Indy would be leaping from car to car in a shimmery, weightless, digital frenzy; cars would be somersaulting  all over the place; way more product placement.
• (True, there technically was product placement in the Raiders scene, but it was historically accurate: the Nazis did drive Mercedes trucks. It’s not like in certain franchises I could name where American government agencies are driving Acuras for some reason.)
• Y’know what?
• Go back and watch that shit again.
• But this time keep this in mind: it works not because of the stunts or the excitement, but because of the storytelling.
• The sequence is a mini three-act structure.
• ONE: Indy is presented with a problem. (The Ark is being transported out of town in surrounded by Nazis.)
• TWO: Indy begins to succeed in his mission, but then suffers a massive and life-threatening reversal. (He throws the driver and navigator out of the cab, takes the wheel, drives off his enemies, BUT the Level Boss throws him out of the cab and under the truck, where he nearly gets run over and is then dragged behind the truck in a very unpleasant manner.)
• THREE: Indy wins the day. (Learning from his past mistakes, he does not throw the Level Boss out of the cab, instead throwing him under it just as he had been.)
• Another thing to imagine about this movie being made in 2018: how furious would the internet be if John Rhys-Davies got cast as an Egyptian guy?
• I do, though, respect the man for not even attempting an Egyptian accent, instead using his native “Classically Trained English Actor” accent.
• You know the one I’m talking about.
• It’s loud and plummy.
• The vowels are full, and the consonants are precise.
• It’s a real good accent to do a death scene in.
• Anyway, he’s in Crusade, too; him and Denholm Elliot get to play the comic relief to Harrison Ford and Sean Connery’s double act.
• Speaking of which, neither Harrison Ford nor Sean Connery can act.
• Not one little bit.
• They’re spectacular movie stars.
• But terrible actors.
• For those disagreeing with me about Harrison Ford’s lack of thespianic skills: go watch Regarding Henry.
• I fucking dare you.
• He plays a rich dick who gets shot in the head; turns him developmentally disabled.
• Which–and I am not a doctor, so I can’t be sure–is not how it works.
• My friends and I might have referred to this movie as Retarding Henry when it came out.
• We were little assholes.
• But, seriously: you know how embarrassing it is when good actors pretend to be mentally challenged?
• Your Sean Penns, etc.?
• It’s so much worse when Harrison Ford does it.
• As for Sean Connery: I don’t think he ever even tried to act.
• Give Harrison Ford credit for attempting something outside his comfort zone; Sean Connery never played anything but himself, or himself in a toupee.
• “I show up to shet, shay the words in the shcript, and shlap my shpouse. That’s the Sean Connery way.”
• But: Nazis!
• Aliens are good villains, and Commies were good for a while, and terrorists or evil businessmen are fun.
• But Nazis are the best.
• You can punch ’em, you can shoot ’em, you can stuff ’em in a sack.
• You can kick ’em, you can stab ’em, you can stretch ’em on a rack.
• Nazis!
• And, wow, does Indy kill his way through the Wehrmacht.
• He throws them off cliffs, and pushes them into propellers, and runs them over with trucks, and burns quite a few to death in a castle.
• There is also face-melting, but Indy is not directly responsible for that.
• So, Enthusiasts: what have we learned?
  • It’s always okay to kill Nazis.
  • Karen Allen should have been a much bigger star.
• Go with God.