[QUOTE=HubZilla]
In Raiders of the Lost Ark: what if Indy didn’t get the talisman from the girl in Russia?
The Nazis would’ve gotten the talisman
I don’t know about this one. Wasn’t it implied in the movie that the Nazis had to follow Indy in order to find Marion? They knew that he knew where she was…remember the scene on the airplane as the Nazi lowers his magazine and ominously watches Indy get on board?
Actually, if Indy hadn’t gone, it probably would have just taken longer to find her. They knew who they were looking for, considering they knew about her father. It was probably just a matter of time before Dietrich walked into her Bar without Indy’s help…
The talisman, aka the headpiece to the staff of Ra, says that the stick sould be 6 kadams high, but take back one kadam to honor the Hebrew God. Sala says that 6 kadams is about 72 inches. (or six feet) So five kadams is about 5 feet. And the staff is much taller than Indy.
I just wanna hijack briefly (now that we have an Indy thread open) that the “their calculation is wrong because they only have one side of the inscription” + “they only have one side of the inscription because it’s branded on the bad guys palm” are the coolest, cleverest plot point I’ve ever seen in the movies. Bravo to Lucas, Spielberg et al.
Then I have to take away coolness points for the fact the the calculation is split into two sides, in the first place. Who the hell would say “6 kadams…” (“and oh, yeah, minus 1 kadam”)??
I suppose we could retcon it to lack of room on the front side. I suspect the real reason is so they could have Indy find the Ark instead of the Nazis.
BTW, Hubzilla, I believe that Marion was living in Nepal, not Russia.
The reason, of course, being, that no one could simply copy the formula and dig up the Ark without actually having the headpiece.
If Indy hadn’t been around, all the Nazis would have melted, then the lid of the Ark would have slammed back down. Then the Ark would have remained until some hapless shepherd or someone came up there, opened the lid and promptly melted. Repeat ad inifintum. Indy probably saved hundreds of lives.
If Indy hadn’t done his hero-izing, wouldn’t Hitler have had the Ark and some clear indication vis-a-vis melted Nazis that however you use the thing, opening it under those circumstances wasn’t a good idea? Maybe it could have been of use to him (philosophically questionable if not ridiculous, to be sure, but using the movie’s logic) even if Belloq made a melty mess of things with it.
I agree with pravnik. The Nazis would still know where the Ark is, and would probably send another team to recover it. And another. And another. Eventually, they probably would have found some way to harness its powers for evil.
Also, everything else aside, if Indy hadn’t been there to save her, Dietrich would have tortured Marion with hot pokers, and probably killed her, in that Nepalese bar. So that was a good thing.