Hence where the confusion lies. I believe even more confusion comes from “that is the boundary and the price, of immortality.” I imagine they didn’t think too much of the plot out for the ending, since it was the final indy at the time.
I hereby dub this The Goldfinger Effect, to wit: the protagonist strives throughout the entire story to acquire the McGuffin or to prevent the Forces of Evil from using it to further their neferious ends, only to discover that all efforts are for naught and if he’d just stayed home and watch television the same overall goal would have been accomplished. Note that Raiders of the Lost Ark also falls under this category; the Nazis would have been vaporized if they opened it regardless and indeed, without Indy’s intervention, it’s likely the Ark would still be safely entombed in the Well of Souls.
And I vote a big fat no on Indy 4. Indy is a product of the 30’s/40’s pulp comics and serial cliffhangers. Even setting aside Ford’s age and Spielberg’s spotty record a 60’s-era Indiana Jones just doesn’t bear consideration. It sounds more like a bad SNL skit than a serious pitch for a movie.
Stranger
Why is this the Goldfinger effect? If Bond had stayed home, Goldfinger would have successfully destroyed Fort Knox, n’est-ce pas?
I loved the “adventure” version of the PC game “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” It had a heck of a lot of in-jokes and such packed into it, but the ones at the end…
After playing through the ending once (destroyed temple, lost grail, lost that German woman) I played through it again, and found out that you could use your whip to retrieve the grail from the fissure! I gave it back to the knight, who was suitably grateful.
The next time, I found out that if you were fast enough, you could get the grail from Elsa and the temple would remain undamaged! After I gave the cup back to the knight, he took it back into the inner temple, commenting, “You should’ve seen the mess the LAST guy left…”
Hell yes that was a great game. My favourite ending was the one where everyone survived.
“He was named after the dog!”
Elsa: “So? I was named after the cat.”
Marcus: “And I was named after the goldfish.”
All leave.
I never made it to the end of The Last Crusade, I became pre-occupied with the next one: The Fate of Atlantis. Of course, none of them beat The Emperor’s Tomb (The latest).
I wish Lucas Arts would stop focussing on star wars games and make a new Indy game.
Nah. Throughout the entire film, Bond does not one thing that stops or even delays Goldfinger’s plan; to the contrary, he alerts Goldfinger to the fact that he’s being investigated, he gets both of the Masterson sisters killed, and he crashes his expensive (goverment provided) sports car into a wall. His attempts to alert CIA authorities to the plans are all failures, and it’s only through dumb luck that he ends up killing both Goldfinger and his nearly indestructable henchman Oddjob. Heck, he doesn’t even disarm the bomb when the has full, uncontested access to it.
The only single success he could claim is converting the lesbian Pussy Galore to liking men and convincing her to betray her employer, and has been well-established by recent studies, sexual orientation is a strongly innate trait that isn’t easily modified. I highly suspect that Ms. Galore already had plans to betray her employer and merely used Bond’s appearance on the scene to give legitimacy to her turncoat actions; indeed, given that Leiter and the CIA seemed manifestly prepared to deal with the Goldfinger menace suggests that they were already well prepared and informed, and one wonders if Galore wasn’t really a CIA infiltration agent who displayed aggression toward Bond merely to enhance her cover story.
Bond was a patsy, plain and simple. If there’d been any real threat from Goldfinger’s neferious plans, M would have deployed 008, who “follows orders, not instincts.” Bond is just the magician’s assistant.
Stranger
No commentaries. Spielberg doesn’t seem to like them, so you won’t find any on one of his movies. A great shame, as I think he’d be fascinating to listen to.
I think that any new injuries that happen after you leave the temple will kill you. You may just not be prone to illness and you age slower.
They’d have trouble retconning that to the one-eyed 93-year-old Indiana that introduced and closed every Young Indiana Jones episode.
The knight was waiting there to challenge the next claimant for the Grail to single combat. It’d be kind of a bum deal if the Grail gave him immortality, instant-wound healing, and all that on top.
O’ course, it also gave him the ability to speak modern English…
One of the lesser known ‘gifts’ of the Holy Grail is that it gives you free cable.
Unfortunately, the ancient texts are unclear on whether or not this includes HBO.
I wish they’d do another pulp era Indiana Jones. They don’t need Harrison Ford. How about Brendan Fraser?
Howzabout: Indiana Jones and the Lost Continence.
That’s pretty debatable. Somebody else playing Indy just isn’t right. Go ahead and give Brendon Frasier more Indy-like roles, but don’t call him or anybody else Indiana Jones.
That’d be as bad as, say, somebody other than Peter Sellers playing Insp. Jacques Clouseau.
It wouldn’t be quite that bad. But no one would ever thing of remaking those movies.
Bite thy tongue, evil fiend! Let not the Hollywood hacksters hear of your heretical musings lest they defile the hallowed halls of cinema with such villany! Leave no token of the lie thy soul hath spoken!
Oh! I’m late; too late! You abominable bastards! You did it! You finally did it!
The horror! The horror!
Stranger
They would, however, consider making a prequel. 
Y’know, about ten years ago, I read an interview with Harrison Ford (I think it was in Parade magazine), where the interviewer asked him about the possibility of another Indy movie. He said that there wasn’t a chance, unless the title was Indiana Jones and the Comfy Chair.