I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 72

Indiana Jones and the Accidental Trailblazer

It’s no surprise that half of the fun of this type of high adventure movie is watching the characters discovering lost civilizations and ancient cities. In world that’s essentially been mapped (save for the Oceans. And Thule) it’s a romantic idea to imagine that there still are mystical peaks and valleys that haven’t yet been seen by modern humanity. It's kind of hard to believe these conceits in modern-age fiction, our world of satellite topography and long-range helicopters has long since killed any notion that there could be a Shangri-la hiding in a mountain range somewhere, even something as basic as Man-Who-Would-Be-Kingistan has been debunked as pure fantasy.

This is why we love adventure films sent in the recent past. The technology and culture is familiar enough that we can easily imagine ourselves there, but the characters’ overall knowledge of the world is less depressingly complete than our own, so their willingness to chase the fantastic can seem admirable, rather than naïvely quixotic. It’s not like this is a recent trend in fiction, either. Even Alan Quatermain was adventuring half a century before his stories were penned.

One of the key elements that make this ‘lost civilization’ storyline so compelling is the way it sidesteps our own history. Always worried about plausibility, the storyteller has to go to extreme lengths to offer an explanation for how these people have gone undiscovered by humanity and untouched by progress. There’s a certain curiosity that the horizon generates in the human mind. Who’s to say what’s just over that next ridge, deeper into the woods, or just behind that mountain range? Why couldn’t it be an ancient city built entirely out of gold?

Intellectually we know that there aren’t any mysteries left, and that, within out own experiences, we’ll never uncover something ancient and mysterious. That’s why it’s so vitally important that this discovery, when presented in adventure fiction, come at some price. If the struggle that the characters must go through in order to find the underground empire isn’t extreme, then where’s the satisfaction in the discovery?

Consider the Well of Souls in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indy has to go to Nepal to track down the key to its discovery, then carefully sneak right under the Nazis’ noses in order to confirm its location. Or the final resting place of the Grail in Last Crusade – it’s established that Sean Connery spent his entire adult life looking for information about its location, and then Indy has to struggle through a setpiece in the Venice sewers to obtain the final clue.

Compare that to Indy and company’s journey to the Valley of the Plastic Prop in this film. First off, just to reiterate, he’s not discovering anything lost to history. John Hurt already did that, but he’s not a whole lot of help just now, what with him being crazy and all. So what does Indy have to do to retrace John Hurt’s steps? Does he have to decode bizarre things the man says? Not really. Find a key to decoding a map that John Hurt makes? Nope.

All he accomplishes is getting kidnapped by the Russians who place him in a convoy, which quickly turns into a chase sequence, as Indy and company find themselves racing through a suspiciously paved jungle. During this chase sequence no one is consulting any maps, or paying any particular attention to the direction they're headed in. One group wants to escape with the skull, and the other wants to stop them. Yet somehow this chase sequence terminates with the characters all arriving at a river approximately five hundred yards from the mysterious city lost to the mists of time.

How did it stay an undiscovered legend for so long? Apparently no one had bothered to walk in a straight line through the jungle before. Fancy that.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 62

Indiana Jones and the Hole-y Plot (Part 4)

Building on the previous article, let's accept, for the sake of argument, that the door used to be open, and then some kind of security system closed it only after the skull was stolen – how did the conquistadores get down to the treasure room in the first place? The only way to open the temple is to let out a huge amount of sand through holes in a rock, which causes a central pillar to descend, which acts as a counterweight moving some outer pillars, which work the mechanism that opens the floor, revealing a staircase that juts out from the wall - for just fifteen seconds. Then the stairs begin sliding back into the wall, but the hole in the roof of the temple doesn’t close again.

So, after the Conquistadores opened the temple with this mechanism, and presumably used some kind of a grappling hook system to get back up again after the stairs had retracted, why did the natives reset it? What possible motivation could the natives have had for doing this? To keep invaders from stealing any further skulls? How could a theoretical invader possibly do that without them already having a skull to open the door? It can’t be to keep outlanders from grabbing all of the antiquities held in the cockpit’s antechamber, because, as isolated kung-fu-monkey-ninjas, they would have no conception of those items’ value.

This rather gaping plot hole grows out of the fact that the audience is never privy to anything approaching a motivation for the natives of the lost valley. Do they want the skull back? If so, why didn’t they grab it? Do they not want it back? If not, why did they docilely let a group of guys carrying the skull climb their pyramid? You can’t tell me their religion didn’t allow them to touch the skull, because they didn’t seem to have a problem burying along with the Conquistadores.

Traps and doors that needed to be reset were commonplace in the other Indiana Jones films, but at least there some sense of purpose could be ascribed to the people who maintained them. The thuggee wanted to ensure that the secret passageway into their underground lair was well-guarded, so they made a crush room. Obviously they’d want to use that passage themselves at some point, so there was also a simple reversing lever. Likewise the Hovitos’ traps would only be effective at keeping people away from their idol – a clear motive – if they were hidden in the walls, so it makes sense that they would sneak in and reset them every time someone wound up stabbed by some light-triggered skewers.

As for the zombie kung-fu monkeymen, because it’s never clear what they want, their actions can never make sense. The fact that those actions are internally inconsistent is just awful icing on a shoddy cake.

I hate Indiana Jones: Day 66

Day 66: Indiana Jones and the Ancient Architects

Today I want to look into the motivation, or rather the lack thereof, that went into the building of the actual temple of the crystal skull.

Yes it seems that when the uncharacterized and ill-defined natives that inhabit the Valley decided to build a place of worship for the aliens who so impressed the them, they build it directly on top of the thing they were trying to worship. This seems a little puzzling to me. I mean I can't speak for the natives here, I'm obviously not a shirtless South American trying to figure out how to invent religion before starting with something simple, like pants, but it seems like if I was going to build a temple to celebrate and honor a thing, wouldn’t it make more sense to build the temple next to, or around the thing?

When the Aztecs wanted to build a temple to worship the sun they didn't dig a really deep hole in the ground and hold their ceremonies wearing blindfolds during eclipses. They built their pyramid as high as their knowledge of construction techniques would allow them, and then had ceremonies at noon so the thing they were worshiping would be directly above their altars – making them literally as near to the sun as they could possibly get.

Heck, even the meteor that’s so key to the Muslim faith is right there in the middle of the city. Sure, there’s a dome built over it, but so long as you’re Muslim you can walk right in and look at the thing.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 61

Indiana Jones and the Hole-y Plot (Part 3)

There are certain types of plot holes that originate from laziness or lack of attention, plot holes that generate from desperate writers needing to twist and yes sometimes even alter reality itself in order to get all the pieces of their story where they need them to be. Then there are plot holes like today’s mistake, the kind that originate from the filmmakers’ complete lack of imagination. Either an inability to or disinterest in thinking through the ramifications of the situations they've created. This time we're speaking specifically about the time that Indiana Jones was actually in the spaceship of the crystal skeletons.

After Indiana Jones’ long quest to find the valley of the decrepit pyramid (not actually a long quest - look for that in day 72: Indiana Jones and the accidental trailblazer), he finds himself in the treasure room where he offers evidence that he doesn't actually know what an archaeologist is. It's around this time that Indiana Jones discovers concrete proof of what the audience has known for literally two and half hours, namely that suddenly he’s living in a sci-fi adventure movie rather than a mystical one. Where does this prove come from? He opens a big stone door, and behind it is the cockpit of an alien spaceship.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 60

Day 60: Indiana Jones and the Hole-y Plot (Part 2)

In the last entry, I questioned the Commies' decision to bring Harrison Ford along to find a box that a simple manifest could have more efficiently led them to. Today I'm going to go one degree further, and ask an even bigger question: Why on earth did the Commies think they needed the alien corpse in the first place?

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 59

Day 59: Indiana Jones and the Hole-y Plot (Part 1)

It's time for a special week here at the Castle, as I'll be nitpicking even more intensely and obsessively than I normally do. What subject could possibly deserve this kind of cruel hypercriticism? Why, the plot holes, of course! The many, many plot holes.

We'll start with one of the bigger ones, since it's actually the plot hole that kicks off the film. Namely: Why did the Commies kidnap Indiana Jones and bring him to Area 51?

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 58

Day 58: Indiana Jones and the Reason They Invented Seatbelts

Many people point to the atomic fridge as a dealbreaker in the film, and have no doubt, it is a remarkably retarded turn of events, but it's not the point at which the film completely lost touch with the relatably realistic action of the previous films. How could it be, when the filmmakers had already thrown out all pretense of obeying the laws of physics in a prior scene?

Just a few minutes earlier, Indiana Jones is racing around the Ark warehouse, being chased by commies. Racing down a row of crates in an army truck, going somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty miles an hour, he sees Cate Blanchett's car racing towards him at a similar speed. Fully aware that an impact at this speed would lead to a disastrous result, Harrison Ford climbs out onto the hood of the truck and uses his whip to swing out of danger (one of three whip uses in the film!). Naturally, the three vehicles (Indy's truck, the jeep following, and Blanchett's car) all slam into each other at once.

And then everyone's fine. Despite the complete lack of seatbelts, no one is ejected from their suddenly-stopped vehicle. Neither are any spines snapped or heads dashed open. No, everyone is able to crawl out of the wreck fundamentally undamaged.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 57

Day 57: Indiana Jones and the Magical Waterspout

In adventure films, it's not uncommon to see the hero wind up in some kind of an evil fortress or ancient temple. If that happens, you can expect, to a 90% degree of certainty that at the end of said hero's association with said locale, the locale will wind up self-destructing. Usually due in no small part to the actions of the hero.

Examples of this can be found in each of the previous Indiana Jones films. Harrison Ford causes the Hovitos' sacred cave to collapse by triggering a trap, then Mola Ram dropped a ridiculously, comically, insanely large canister of water next to a train tunnel, flooding it to an absurd extents. Even in Last Crusade, when Elsa attempts to take the Grail out of the temple, the whole place shakes a little.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 56

Day 56: Indiana Jones and the Scary Reds

In yesterday's entry, I mentioned the way the film utterly wasted the impact of Anti-Communist paranoia on Indiana Jones' adventures. Today I'm going to address something even bigger - the film's complete failure to have anything to say about the entire issue of the 50s communist witch hunt. Right at the outset, it seems like a deep vein of relevant messages are about to be mined. Then no such thing proceeds to happen.

In fact, other than Indiana Jones being run out of his job for his shady connections, there's nary a comment to be found on the subject of one of the darkest social periods of America's 20th century. Heck, one action sequence even runs through an anti-communist rally without even a sideways glanced at the kind of fervor that held America's better angels hostage.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 55

Day 55: Indiana Jones and the Failure to Raise the Stakes

When it comes to The Crystal Valley's failures, and mistakes, it seems like they're split almost evenly between things that they did incredibly poorly, and things that they just entirely neglected to do. Today's entry falls squarely into that second category.

After escaping from the atomic explosion using his ability to be terribly written, Harrison Ford finds himself in an even worse predicament - he's suspected of being in collusion with the Russians by the US Government!

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 54

Day 54: Indiana Jones and the One Tin Soldier

I'm sure everyone reading this is familiar with the term 'MacGuffin', but just in case, I'm going to offer a quick lesson. Everyone in the know, feel free to skip the next paragraph.

Initially used by Alfred Hitchcock, the 'MacGuffin' is the thing in a film that people want, but that has no real importance to the plot, beyond getting it moving. The quintessential MacGuffin is the money in Psycho. Stealing it sends Janet Leigh on the road to her doom, and chasing after her (and the money) gets Arboghast killed and finally leads to Norman Bates being captured. The money itself plays no role in the film beyond a motivator to bring characters into conflict with one another. In the years since its introduction, the definition of 'MacGuffin' has been stretched to include any object of desire in a film, whether it is practically used in the plot or not. Strict MacGuffins, like the tape in Escape from New York and the briefcase in Ronin now share the term with broader MacGuffins like the disc in Escape From LA, or the valuable shotgun in Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

The Indiana Jones franchise has always featured the second variety of MacGuffin, as the objects in question, be they stones, grails, or arki, always play a key, practical role in the film's climax. Likewise, this film's MacGuffin, the Crystal Skull, is a valuable tool for the vast majority of the movie's running time. It cows natives, repels ants, and even raises an alien from the dead. The briefcase from Pulp Fiction, this is certainly not.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 53

Day 53: Indiana Jones and the (far too) Lucky Escape (Part 3)

Today's entry covers yet another example of Indiana Jones' unbelievably convenient luck when it comes to finding his way to safety in even the direst of circumstances. This particular example comes from a sequence that I haven't mentioned as of yet in this series, the motorcycle chase around and through Barnett College, where Harrison Ford teaches when he's not off battling natives and punching Nazis.

I'll cover the details of the chase another day, for now I'll just recap the situation - Harrison Ford is hanging onto the back of Shia Laboeuf's bike as they ride through city streets and college gardens. The chase ends as Shia tricks the commies into ramming into the statue of Denholm Elliot, beheading it and sending the copper dome into one of the Commies' laps. Then the chase ends, and the scene cuts to Harrison Ford's house, as he and Shia go to look a few things up in books (the cornerstone of action filmmaking: always cut directly from a chase scene to a research scene!)

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 52

Day 52: Indiana Jones and the Useless Whip

Indiana Jones isn't a gimmick character, nor does he only have one note. That is to say, he's not a whip-themed character, and I would never suggest that the films go out of their way to find things for him to whip, because doing so would likely only lead to awkwardness.

That being said, I think it's fair to say that everyone who pays to see an Indiana Jones movie expects to see him using the whip a few times. It doesn't have to be throughout the film, and it doesn't have to be constant, but nonetheless, it's something we expect him to get around to doing at some point. Like James Bond and his Martinis, the audience wants to see Indy cleverly swinging or grabbing things with a whip at opportune moments.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 51

Day 51: Indiana Jones and the Useless Motorcycle

When one looks at all of the terrible payoffs that Indiana Jones and Crystal Kingdom offered, it's easy to miss the big setup that lacked a payoff of any kind. Of course, I speak of Shia Laboeuf's motorcycle.

The character Mutt Williams is introduced riding his motorcycle. This is because the entire visual of the character, no, the entire conception of the character, really only makes sense when associated with motorcycles. Take him away from them, and he starts to look a little silly. Just look at Fonzie. Riding into Arnold's? Great. Strapping on waterskis? Cliche-definingly awful.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 50

Day 50: Indiana Jones and the Freudian Interpretation

Today's problem isn't a very large one, but it is indicative of the kind of tone that the film was going for. My real problem is with that overall tone, and therefore these little details really irk me, since each once contributes in its own awful way to to the disastrous overall picture that is Indiana Jones and the Pyramid of the Plastic Head.

This particular scene occurs when Cate Blanchett arrives inside the Area 51 warehouse. Now, for the entire film up until this point Cate Blanchett has had a sword clipped to her belt. The average viewer might find this decision puzzling. After all, why on earth would someone would wear a sword in the middle of the desert during a secret military operation? It's not like she's in America to fight dragons, pirates, or Zorros. Any of those might have improved the film, but sadly, it wasn't to be. Add to this the fact that she spends a good portion of the scene climbing into and out of vehicles, and the sword becomes a ridiculous choice.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 49

Day 49: Indiana Jones and the Lack of Scope

The film Raiders of the Lost Ark contains two images that I feel people associate with it more than any other. I'm not talking about action scenes, or fun exploding heads, or even glamour shots of Harrison Ford posing for promotional purposes. I'm speaking specifically about single frames that everyone takes away from the movie and identify with it more than any other image. The first, and it's no coincidence that this is the frame that you see more often than on any other when people want to show something from Raiders of the Lost Ark, is Indiana Jones crouched in front of the gold idol preparing to switch it for a bag of sand.


The second image is the one that closes the film: is a matte painting of the storage facility (which Crystal Skull identifies as "Area 51") where the Ark of the covenant is being housed. It's a captivating image that slyly suggests the futility of all Indy's death defying feats while at the same time leaving the audience with the slightly unsettling question of what other items of occult significance the government has stacked up in the facility.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 48

Day 48: Indiana Jones and the Midnight Rocket Train

Today we go back to the beginning of the film and look at a sequence that is among the worst edited in recent memory. And by worst, I don't mean that it contains myriad continuity errors or is over cut to the point of incoherence like a Paul Greengrass Bourne movie, no I'm talking about bizarre editing creating huge lapses in time.

As the film opens it's noon or fairly close to it. We can determine this because the groundhog that pops its head up during the opening has almost no visible shadow. To give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt we're going to assume that it's after noon here, somewhere in the vicinity of one o'clock. The main reason I'm giving this benefit of the doubt is that I don't have the necessary information I would need to nitpick any further, such as in which direction the driveway to Area 51 runs. Somehow I doubt googlemaps would be much help on this one.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 47

Day 47: Indiana Jones and the Deja Kung Fu

As I've mentioned in a previous entry, the Zombie Monkey Kung Fu Indians weren't a great idea. That being said, I'm sure they would have been more bearable had they not been so bafflingly repetitive. There's a simple rule to go by if you're going to put something odd, or stupid, or cheap in a movie: If it absolutely has to be there, get it onscreen, get it out of the way quickly, and then move on. And whatever you do, if it was ridiculous the first time, don't bring it back. Heck, even things that were absolutely wonderful the first time in a film can find themselves giving off a stink of increativity the second time around.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 46

Day 46: Indiana Jones and the Shamed Name

Today's entry is a pretty obvious problem that I'm sure nearly everyone who saw the film in the theatre noticed. Beyond its obviousness, though, it's deceptively important, and I feel the mistake being made says much more about the filmmakers attitude towards the character than they intended it to. What I talking about? The film's steadfast refusal to refer to its main character by the name "Indiana Jones".

This one was so unexpected and completely out of left field that I almost thought I was hearing things. Or rather not hearing things. Somehow every time a character goes to talk to Indiana Jones they referred to him up by his proper birth name: "Henry Jones Jr". His friends call him that. His enemies call him that. Letters address him as that. Even the government calls him that. Why? That's not his name.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 45

Day 45: Indiana Jones and the Absence of a Good Henchman

When talking about the Indiana Jones franchise the villains tend to get a lot of attention and rightfully so. The first film's 1-2 punch of Belloq and Toht makes for one of the greatest villain combinations of all time, and while Mola Ram doesn't get a lot of screen time in Temple of Doom, it doesn't stop him from being memorably menacing. By comparison, the lack of any quality or even noteworthy villains in Last Crusade is yet another strike that film has against it. As wonderful as those central villains are, though, in praising them we can wind up overlooking the smaller characters that made the film's action sequences so compelling: the henchmen.

Specifically I'm speaking of the three henchmen played by one actor across two films. The actor/stuntman's name is Pat Roach, and he was former British wrestler who cut an imposing figure and could sell a punch like nobody's business. In Raiders of the Lost Ark he portrayed both the giant sherpa who wrestles with Indiana Jones in Marion's bar and the Nazi mechanic who has an unfortunate run in with the flying wing's propeller. He returned for Temple of Doom to don offensive brownface once more as the giant thugee guard who forces Indiana Jones to drink blood and enter the thugee black sleep.