General Indiana Jones Thread

Thig is, though, this is Indiana Jones. You'd have to work the super-natural/extraordinary in somehow.

Makes me wonder if Kali should be the one to smite him.

Yeah, Temple of Doom had a lot wrong with it. But even in that shitshow of a movie Indy doesn't cross the line into colonial entitlement (though he is tempted) and returns Sivalinga to its people.

And apparently aliens was too far. Haha. Probably too much into the realm of Sci-Fi certainly.

There was a lot of potential with time travel. Too bad they didn't have the attempt to use the device come into play sooner. Then again, because it was a fixed point, outcome would've been the same either way.

Kali didn't smite Mola Ram, but the Sivalanga Sankara Stone (a gift of Shiva) did.

It's also a recurring thing that the villains in the movies are always undone by the artifacts they seek to exploit.

• Raiders of the Lost Ark had the Ark burning and blowing up the Nazis and Belloq.

• Temple of Doom had the Sankara Stone burn Mola Ram causing him to fall to his death.

• Last Crusade had the false Grail aging Donovan to death and taking the true Grail out of its resting place dooms Elsa.

• The Crystal Skull of Akator and the knowledge of the alien overloads Spalko's brain killing her.

• I did not watch Dial of Destiny but I imagine something similar happened in that movie too.

Edited by M84 on Jan 25th 2024 at 10:09:07 PM

The Antikythera is rigged to always go back to Archimedes' time, and the whole Time Travel mechanic is Stable Time Loop, meaning that Voller was predestined to die in a plane crash (mistaken for a dragon) with his watch being stolen by Archimedes who used it to get inspiration for the Antikythera's inner mechanics.

Yeah, that's consistent with the trend of artifacts backfiring on villains.

Heck, this trend is even seen in the non-movie media like the videogame Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.

Fun fact: the backstory of said game detailed in the comics reveals that the Atlanteans' "gods" who gave them their tech were aliens. Meaning Crystal Skull was not the first Indiana Jones work to use aliens instead of magic.

Edited by M84 on Jan 25th 2024 at 10:21:02 PM

Frankly, I'm not sure HOW Crystal Skyll could've been rewritten to not be about aliens at this point. Haha.

Crystal Skulls in real life were modern forgery. So really, them being aliens makes perfect sense.

Honestly, the real problem with Crystal Skull wasn't aliens or replacing Nazis with Communists. It was Shia Lebouf.

Even back then I and plenty of other people could tell he was shitty.

Y'know, I don't think the upcoming Xbox game has been brought up in the thread yet (EDIT: I double-checked, it was but it got buried quickly), so here's the gameplay reveal from a week ago:

Definitely looks neat. It's by the Wolfenstein people, so we have devs already experienced in Nazi-punchin'. I'm split on the vocal performance of Indy, though, there are points where he reasonably sounds like Harrison Ford and points where I'm like "yeah, that's Troy Baker".

Edited by lbssb on Jan 25th 2024 at 1:48:57 PM

Okay no, back then people hated him because he was in a few bad movies and made for a good internet punching bag.

It's only *NOW* that people hate him for being an abusive shitbag. But back then, it was mostly hot air.

I also wouldn't even call him the biggest problem with Crystal Skull when there's several writing issues after the first act that make it such a mess.

Edited by Diana1969 on Jan 25th 2024 at 12:52:41 PM

Not to say Shia Labeouf was terrible, he wasn't. The character wasn't the best written and we needed more time to develop him along with the relationship.

He was on fire at the time. Coming off the heels of both Disturbia and Transformers 2007 which each came out the year before, it made sense that some had confidence in him going in—even though he probably didn't live up to the hype. If they bring the character back and reveal he's alive, I wonder if they'd recast or not.

Edited by futuremoviewriter on Jan 25th 2024 at 11:10:39 AM

I mostly remember the hate being from people who were pissed that Mutt was seemingly set up to be Indy's "successor", mixed with general hate for Lebeouf because he was in the Transformers movies and a lot of people from there got hated on.

Opinions were turning towards defending Mutt's character and trying to give Lebeouf some credit as an actor...and then he got outted as an abusive shitbag and he's even more hated than ever.

Internet geeks hated him in Transformers even then.

He seemed to have a very contrasting vibe to Indy and it was hard to take him seriously as his son.

A lot of people also wanted Chris Pratt or Pine in the role.

Nobody knew who Chris Pratt was at the time. Parks and Rec hadn't even started airing.

I stand corrected.

I must have conflated him for the latter Indy rumors.

Not that I've touched Dial of Destiny on what it did to Mutt, but over the idea of giving Indy a successor, is it really a sin for Indiana Jones fans to have Indy replaced, especially if said successor is his biological son?

I mean what makes Indiana Jones awesome isn't his heritage.

It's his pulpy mixture of scholar and rogue.

Nathan and Lara are Indy's successors.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jan 26th 2024 at 9:16:41 AM

I don't mind Shia in the film, but they would have been better off just saying he was Indy's kid early on since almost everybody saw that coming.

And Indy 4 was never not going to involve aliens; the only reason it wasn't an out-and-out 50s style invasion film was because Spielberg got scared off by Independence Day. Even stuff like the ants, the rocket car, and the fridge go back to that version. There was a waterfall plunge as well, but the version in the movie come from the Frank Darabont script, where he basically copied word for word a scene from the Captain Blood remake script he co-wrote with Chuck Russell in 1994.

Also it's funny how Lucas basically pilfered the fridge idea from the first draft of Back to the Future.

I didn't know that until "He's your son". Isn't that good foreshadowing: you let people in on your plot twist with a good amount of clues then let loose the plot twist at the end of the 2nd act?

Edited by HallowHawk on Jan 26th 2024 at 10:25:37 AM

The Reveal was pretty funny though.

Indy: "He's a good kid. Lay off of him about finishing school."

Marion: "He's your son."

Indy, after a few moments of processing that: "WHY THE HELL DIDN'T YOU MAKE HIM FINISH SCHOOL?!"

I think if they'd had the reveal sooner and had Marion in the story sooner, they could've had more meat to the story. It wasn't exactly a bad idea to build the rapport between Indy and Mutt prior to the discovery that they were father and son. Also while there were people who didn't like Shia LaBeouf in the first Transformers movie, I don't think the resentment set in until the second one which most people didn't even like unlike the prior film (and having loved the first one at the time, I was extremely disappointed myself). It could've been his role as Mutt where it first started too since it was sandwiched in-between.

Again if they pulled on the He's Just Hiding theory and had a new actor as Henry Jones III, would it help? It seemed the actor more so played into what people didn't like about the character—or at least aggravated it it seems.

As an observation, Lucas Film seems to avoid recasting if possible, given how Leia died with Carrie Fisher and the Indy films didn’t have any major recasts (not even beginning to cover Gina Carano and Horatio Sanz’ characters just disappearing from The Mandalorian.). And given Shia La Beouf was on the outs with Spielberg for calling Crystal Skull a disappointment, it all lines up.

I feel like this is a case where they could make an exception personally.

Think Harrison Ford would agree to a cameo on the Short Round show? I would hope so. Would love to see that.