Over on an Indiana Jones thread is the comment that the new movie ought to be set in 1955, given the age of Harrison Ford.
So since Indy fought the Nazis, why couldn’t he fight the Commies? The idea was thought absurd by at least on poster. Why is that?
In the Great Scheme of Things, are not ‘The Commies’ (over all time and as a group) as nasty as the Nazis? Why not. I note one of the (Die Hard?) movies was forced to use Apartheid South African diplomats as the Bad Guys. Why not use nasty Chinese diplomats? Or evil Soviet ones?
Are there many movies with Commies as the enemy? Do you find the idea somehow lacking? Why?
Quite a few James Bond movies, innumerable Vietnam and other Cold War movies.
Yes. First, it’s overdone. So are Nazis, but they’re just too tempting for guilt free fictional massacres. Second, somehow the Communists, at least for me ( perception more than reality, no doubt ), never reached the over-the-top level of evil the Nazis did. The Communists were generally motivated by ideology, while the Nazis sort of had the feel of being evil for evils sake, almost. Malice and fanaticism, and as a group, not a few extreme individuals. Third, too many of the craziest, nastiest Communists, the ones that deserve to stand with the Nazis in the pantheon of humanity’s hobgoblins - were Asian, and that brings race issues into it. Stupid, but true.
Finally, we all had the chance to see Communism wear itself down from a fiery, genocidal crusading ideology, to a grey failing bureaucratic economic disaster. Since it was destroyed, our memories of Nazism are frozen at it’s full flower of malignant craziness.
This is grossly simplistic. The majority of the people in Germany in the time leading up to the war and even during it (and this includes a lot of people in the military) didn’t know the full extent of the regime’s actions. Sure, they didn’t do a great deal to protest when the dirty smelly Jews conveniently disappeared, or question why they were suddenly getting a lot of cheap produce coming out of Poland from a place called Aushcwitz, but to suggest that the German people suddenly decided as a whole “Hey, I know, let’s be evil and kill people for absolutely no reason whatsoever” is ridiculous. I know you’re not actually saying that’s what happened, but it is intimated by your comment.
The Soviet communists were indeed motivated by idelology, but the reality of that ideology (people disappearing suddenly, no ability to speak freely, a blatantly hypocritical govnerment that was driving the country into the ground whilst saying it was the greatest on earth) was evident to a lot more people and far more directly than the Nazi regime. People knew that the government was killing (sometimes almost arbitrarily) its own people, yet no-one felt able to even say so let alone do anything about it. Whilst all of this was originally based on a logical and rational premise an ideology (namely Marxism) what it ended up becoming as Stalinst communism was almost entirely different. I don’t see how that makes what happened (and in some cases still happens in modern communist regimes) better than what happened under the Nazis.
At least the Germans recognise what they did was terrible and have publicly vowed to never be complicit in anything like that again (unlike the Russians who still seem to be lamenting the fall of the “great” Soviet Union).
During the time the earlier James Bond movies were being made the money earned internationally was much less important. If you look at the grosses for From Russia with Love you see that the non-US gross was around 40% of the total. For Die Another Day the non-US grosses were 70% of the total, more than 1.5 times the US grosses. Film makers are not going to antagonize a large market, even if is’t more historically accurate.
Hell, remember D2:The Mighty Ducks ? They had to pick out tiny Iceland to be the bad guys. I guess Iceland has the lowest box office of the ice hockey playing world.
The evil Icelanders? Well, it is easier to imagine them living in a secret hollowed-out base in a volcano.
I would maintain the if Indiana Jones were to be set in 1955, the default enemy would be evil agents of the US government. Yet, in 1955 there were plenty of really nasty Commies to choose from.
Not to be argumentative (but), it seems that shadowy agents of the CIA are more often the villain than are Commies.
Stalin is dead. Khrushchev is in a death match with Beria for succession. Zhukov is in internal exile. An Orthodox smuggles a message to the West in his crucifix it is asking for American help.
The CIA calls on Doctor Jones (who is on a dig in Turkey at the time) to infiltrate the Soviet Union, discover the secret artifact Beria has snatched for himself that will give Khrushchev the mojo he needs to drag the secret policeman to one of his own cells.
Jones is sent into the unnamed Eastern European Nation the Mission Impossible guys are always in. He has to save the crown jewels, the symbol of the nation. On his way he encounters an unexploded USAF bomb in a sewer, a pack of liberal American commies who fail to see what is in front of them, and a future Pope.
…looking for Noah’s Ark, which is accidentally dislodged from its perch in a glacier on Mt. Ararat. Ark, Jones, and wise cracking Turkish urchin are all sent careening down the side of the mountain and across the Soviet border, and the adventure is begun!
The climax of which is Jones “pushing the button” that causes global warming so the glacier will melt and people will know the truth. And you thought it was because people were using their cars too much.
Too political. While the Commies make a nice replacement for the role of “evil empire” the Nazis filled, Bosda is right, they simply don’t have the occult implications the Nazis did.
Outside of a comment about book burning in “The Last Crusade”, Indy never bothered with Nazi ideology or strategy. They were simply racing to a magic doodad. The commies never did that type of stuff.
Me, I’d have Indy racing an equally ancient escaped Nazi war criminal (and his henchmen) for Atlantis or something in the South American jungles. You’d get nice symmetry in the “your time is past” themes.
Indy seeks the lost Spirit Banner of Ghenghis Khan, which the Stalinists “disappeared” from the shrine where it was kept in Mongolia to deprive the tribes of a rallying symbol. Now in the 50s, we’re at the peak of high hostility between the Reds and the West (just after the Korean War and the death of Stalin) so he enters Central Asia clandestinely through Tibet, this being just before the Red Chinese bring the hammer down there as well. In the ensuing adventures, he discovers that the Soviets are seriously working on developing missile technology in bases in CA and Siberia and the chase is on. While at it, he springs a notable Mongolian archaeologist who’s in the Gulag, who leads him to the Spirit Banner. On their way back, they get commissioned by the Dalai Lama to help get priceless scriptures and artifacts out of Lhasa, achieving escape through the Himalyas thanks to the mystical powers of the artifacts, but the Spirit Banner is lost again. Upon returning to the USA Jones reveals what he has learned about the missile research and, ironically, has to hear the ex-Nazi rocket scientists thank him for proving they should be developing our own missiles… end of Red Menace arc… then in an epilog, as he apologizes to the Mongolian for losing the Banner again, the man tells him: At 700 years old this was probably a copy anyway; Ghenghis had his body and his genuine artifacts buried in a secret location so that there would be no temptation to perform magic with them; the Mongols were great not because of a Spirit Banner but because they kept the spirit of greatness in themselves, and they fell when they grew soft and weak; and so do all nations. Where are the kingdoms that had the Ark? Where are those who had the Grail? Magical objects may perform miracles on the spot, but they do not change history. Roll Credits.
You don’t even need “ChiComs” on-screen, just have NKVD/KGB types chasing Indy through Central Asia.
What say you, Chicago Reader, do we go 50/50 on selling this one to Spielberg?
Push it to the early 60s, and we do have a communist country with occult connotations–Cuba. So Indy can fight voodoo curses, zombies, and witch doctors in steamy, sensous Cuba all the while saving the world from Commies.
By the way the above is highly recommended to anyone that would be interested in a melange of historical novel, fantasy and John Le Carre-style spy thriller.
