Yes, Indiana Jones is among the most beloved of film franchises, but that doesn't mean
the movies are without their flaws.
We've all rolled our eyes at the scene where Indy survives a nuclear bomb by hiding in
a refrigerator, but here's a rundown of some of the other less obvious but still pretty
dumb things that the Indiana Jones movies ask its viewers to ignore.
When Raiders of the Lost Ark opens, Indiana Jones is unfazed by his colleague's stories
about ancient, mystical powers that could destroy everyone seeking the Ark of the Covenant.
By the end of the movie, once he's experienced a bunch of ghosts with the power to melt Nazis'
faces off, he's forced to accept that there are powers in the world well beyond his understanding.
He even ends the movie by warning the government agents that they don't know what they're dealing
with.
"You don't look very happy."
"Fools.
Bureaucratic fools."
"What'd they say?"
"They don't know what they've got there."
Great character arc, right?
Here's the problem: while it came out three years after Raiders, Temple of Doom is actually
a prequel that takes place a year earlier.
In that movie, Indy saw a man's heart magically ripped from his chest while still beating
and personally turned magic stones white-hot by invoking the name of Shiva.
Despite bearing witness to all that, Indiana Jones is still a skeptic.
In The Last Crusade, he's very quick to dismiss stories about King Arthur and the Holy Grail
as "bedtime stories."
He's even still hanging onto those doubts when Crystal Skull rolls around.
It's one thing to try and ensure your character can be relatable and realistic when he's dealing
with ancient, fantastical mysteries, but for Indy to simply ignore some of the most exciting,
perplexing, and incredibly real moments of his life is just silly.
After thrilling chases, a couple of failed rescue attempts, and outsmarting the bad guys
at every turn throughout Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood are
captured and forced to witness the hellish moment when the bad guys open the Ark.
As the power of the Ark is unleashed Indy tells Marion that they can't look at it, no
matter what happens.
He's right, too: in the midst of a cadre of Nazis being burned alive by the Wrath of God,
the good guys are spared from its wrath.
So how in the world did Indy know not to look at the ark?
Earlier in the film, it's mentioned that the Ark was hidden away due to its immense power
being too much for mankind to handle, but the cheat code of just closing one's eyes
came kind of out of nowhere.
Also, we're not complaining, but it does seem a little weird that nobody else figured out
that they shouldn't look at the blinding light that was melting everyone.
As it turns out, Indy was warned about this in a scene that was cut from the final version
of the movie.
That might be a good way for Indy to know, but the audience sure doesn't.
It might seem like we're picking on Raiders, but in a movie that's otherwise perfect, the
few flaws are really easy to spot.
Take, for instance, Indy's trip on a Nazi sumbarine.
The key word there is "on", not "in."
With the help of a friendly sea captain, Indy stealths his way onto a U-Boat to rescue Marion
and defeat Belloq, jumping atop it just before it goes underwater.
The film then cuts to an island where the villains plan to open the Ark of the Covenant.
So how did our soaking wet Indy survive the trip?
Obviously, he couldn't just cling to the periscope and hold his breath for hundreds of miles,
but from what we see in the movie, and even a deleted scene, that's exactly what happened.
It's just a good thing nobody ever bothered to lower the periscope for the entire trip,
or else we'd have to deal with the explanation that Indy was secretly the lost king of Atlantis
all this time.
When Temple of Doom opens, Indiana Jones is accompanied by a young child named Wan Li,
who Jones refers to as Short Round.
It's later revealed that the young Chinese boy from Shanghai got busted trying to pick
the archeologist's pocket and they eventually became friends.
"You make me poor!
No fun!"
While opinions are split about Short Round, it's undeniable that he provided some comic
relief, and drove the getaway car, pulled stunts as daring as his mentor, and even broke
Indy from a magic mind control trance.
By the end of the film, they both return to the small Indian village as triumphant heroes.
After that...who knows?
The third movie opens with absolutely no mention of Short Round.
There's not even a whisper of him, nor is he mentioned in Raiders of the Lost Ark, which
came after Temple of Doom chronologically.
Short Round is just gone after the credits roll.
Romantic partners like Willie come and go for a rugged and handsome bachelor like Jones.
The young child that he took under his wing and brought thousands of miles from his home
on numerous death-defying adventures?
You'd think they'd at least stay in touch.
We might even be willing to forgive some of Crystal Skull's more egregious sins if Indy's
successor turned out to be Ke Huy Quan instead of Shia LaBeouf.
There's...a lot to be upset about in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but the most important
might just be that it shifts the genre of the franchise in a way that just doesn't work.
There's nothing wrong with a good science fiction story, if that's what you want to
call this movie, but for it to come in the fourth installment of a franchise rooted in
pulpy, fantastical adventure after a nearly 20-year gap just feels jarring and unnecessary.
"I've got a bad feeling about this."
The movie ends with Jones and his cohorts finding a collection of alien skeletons with
one missing head.
After returning the infamous crystal skull, the aliens come to life and vacate Earth in
a flying saucer.
Indiana Jones is a guy who frequently comes across the unknown in his pursuits of ancient
and mysterious artifacts, but Roswell aliens are a very different kind of mysterious, even
if, and especially if, they show up 20 years after he was dealing with Biblical goblets.
They feel out of place in Indy's world of historical legends and supernatural treasures.
In short, never switch your genre in the fourth movie of a series.
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