'Why did it have to be snakes?' - the 40th Anniversary 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' thread

Cafe Society
41

The entire headpiece excursion is basically a side-quest to introduce Marion (because Jones needs a sidekick) and to explain why the Nazis hadn’t already found the Well of Souls. Since the map room had a complete layout of the city and the entrance was on top of a prominence apparently in the middle of the dig site (since it overlooks diggings in one direction and leads to an airfield in another) there is really no reason not to have uncovered it even if they didn’t know it was special. Note that the Well was also apparently hermetically sealed (it sucks in air as they are removing the slab) but is full of living snakes and leads through a wall of slave corpses into the next chamber with an exposed external wall.

Like I said, the movie doesn’t make a lick of sense, and Indy’s actions are of no real consequence except that the US Army ends up with the Ark, which they bury in an anonymously labeled crate in a giant warehouse. (No explanation given for why this holy artifact of “unspeakable power” is not examined or any attempt to made to weaponize it even though Jones has presumably reported on its abilities; removing it from play is the smart thing to do but whenever have you seen a government do the smart thing, especially when it comes to potential weapon applications?) But the movie slows down just long enough to let you breathe, and not enough to ponder the improbables. Part of the problem with Temple of Doom—aside from the gross cultural stereotyping, the over-the-top sight gags and unfortunate sophomoric humor, and of course the grating Willie Scott, who is pretty much the complete opposite of Marion in every way—is that the pacing is really off, perhaps in part because a lot of the action sequences were ideas conceived for Raiders but that they couldn’t work into the story or runtime. Those sequences, like the opening Busby Berkeley-turned-Billy Wilder free for all, are great but they don’t make for a very coherent story, which frenetic action sequences and then ground-breaking special effects (and the first PG-13 rating) couldn’t fix. There is a great pulp story to be told there, but it is lost in the mishmash of ideas and images.

Stranger

42

Raiders was part of my childhood growing up. For multiple summers, I would pull out the venerable VHS tape, and watch it while playing with my Legos on the floor. Someone in my family accidentally taped 5 minutes of *The $64,000 Pyramid" over the scene where the old man is deciphering the Headpiece to the Staff of Ra and all it’s prepositions.. I cannot watch the movie anymore without a flashback to horrible 80’s game show fashions and big hair.

But back to the point:
I have been in USG warehouses that contain materials/items for this exact purpose. I cannot walk into some gargantuan warehouses, with the distinct ‘Federal dust ‘n’ must smell’, and not think, “Top Men put stuff in here. Top. Men.”

Toss up between:

  • The scene where Brody and Jones are talking, and Indiana says, “Besides, you know how cautious I am. . .” while casually tossing his revolver into his luggage.
  • The bar fight in Tibet. Gunfire taking down Nazi henchmen; Marion whacking one of 'em with a burning log; Indiana, being choked, asking for ‘Whiskey’, etc. etc.

“You can’t do this to me. . . I’m an American!”

The cinematography of the whole movie. It’s timeless in how it still stands as a classic, and the cinemetography and plot keep it as #1 on Tripler’s Favorite Movie Lists of All-Time.

I’m gonna echo about the relationship between Marion and Indiana Jones. I’ll add in that Alfred Molina didn’t age well after *RotLA."

How Indiana Jones got away with getting into the submarine pen after ‘hitching a ride’ on the U-Boat. How’d he manage to hang onto the sub for so long, presuming it had submerged at some point during the trip. For that matter, how’d they load the crated Ark onto that submarine without uncrating it or jostling the lid off of it?

Hands down, Harrison Ford. I understand Tom Selleck was in the running for being Indiana Jones, but IMHO, the Casting Department made the correct choice.

John Rhys-Davies, as Sallah: the powerful sidekick, that without his help, the whole recovery would have failed despite Jones’ best intents.

I can offer an explanation: some things should be kept so secret, that it’s best to lock it away and never discuss it for intelligence reasons–and I live in this world… The moment you start investigating/talking about something, paperwork is generated, creating a risk of leaks. Sometimes it’s best just to sweep it under the rug, bureaucratically until an infrastructure exists to safely compartmentalize this information.

Tripler
Indiana Jones does not need a moustache.

43

I haven’t anything to add to this thread that hasn’t been said already except for this point: besides the U-Boot thing, there’s another very big plot hole: how could the Germans pull off a big archaeological campaign with the help of the Wehrmacht and SS, even maintaining an air base, in the British-controlled Egypt of the thirties?

(I’m aware that my only contribution is a dig against the movie, but actually I love it like everybody else here and I agree with those who said that it doesn’t make a lick of sense while being the most entertaining film ever done, so my point is simply academic.)

44

I don’t get where the whole “Indy had no bearing on the plot” comes from, he literally blows up the Nazi flying wing which mission was to fly the Ark directly to Berlin, thus eventually forcing them to take the Ark via U-Boat which then has to stop at a refueling base, and then they do the ceremony, they all die but since they’re on an island on the Mediterranean coast Indy is able to easily just pack up the Ark and escape once all the Nazis are dead. If Indy wasn’t there even if all the Nazis died the Ark is still in Germany somewhere and the Nazis now have all the time in the world to experiment with it, it’s not like they were lacking human guinea pigs to test the Ark on.

Also the Big Bang Theory writers try to mission creep by claiming Indy failed by not bringing the Ark back to a Museum for study, but the entire point of the film is to prevent the Nazis from acquiring the Ark. Indy prevents the Nazis from getting the Ark and gives it to the US Government, his role is done. It’s like saying Luke Skywalker fails at the end of A New Hope because he didn’t also kill Darth Vader.

45

But if they flew the ark directly to Berlin on the flying wing, would they then have performed the ceremony with Hitler and the rest of the Nazi brass in attendance (and thereby destroyed by the wrath of God)? Perhaps not, as I doubt Hitler would have participated in a Jewish ceremony.

46

The side-quest introduces Marion, and it also gives us a chance to see Indy outsmarting the Nazis. They’d have dug up all of Tanis and gotten the Ark eventually, but by getting the headpiece and staff, and using them, we see that Indy is clever as well as daring. While the Nazis are using brute force, Indy is using his brain and gets a (temporary) victory by finding the Ark first. So it’s good storytelling, and fits the character, even if it wouldn’t have changed the outcome in the long run.

I always got the impression that storing the Ark in warehouse was just government bureaucracy and inertia. When the feds took the Ark, it’s possible that Indy didn’t tell them what happened when the Nazis opened it. But even if he did, that report would have been written down, and passed up the chain, being downplayed and disbelieved at every level, until the Ark became just one more piece of government property to be ignored until someone can be bothered to look into it.

For all the logical gaps in Raiders, the opening of Temple of Doom is worse. Willie is singing in a nightclub, but then the camera moves into the dragon decoration on stage, and then there’s a dance sequence shot on a soundstage. What are the patrons in the club watching while all those women are dancing backstage?

47

Yeah the Nazi officers aren’t going to just open the Ark up directly in front of Hitler, both in case Indy somehow put a bomb in there but also much like in the film, what happens if you open the Ark and it’s a bunch of dust? The whole point of the ceremony was to ensure it was actually worth a damn.

The counterpoint to this for me is if the Ark was in Germany and the ceremony happened, they all die. Then the clean-up crew shows up, finds everybody mysteriously gone, and eventually puts 2 and 2 together. What happens then if Hitler as a “good will gesture” gives the Ark to the Smithsonian who then have a big gala with President Roosevelt in attendance? Or even if they decided to just fill up entire arena with Jews, tell them they’re going to see an actual Jewish religious ceremony, then open the Ark? The Ark needed to not be in Nazi hands period.

48

My “Unanswerable Question” is more filmmaking related but during the flying wing fight scene, Indy knocks out a mechanic before the big burly mechanic shows up. There’s the fight, and during all of the fuel lines get broken and start flooding the area with gasoline. So the mechanic is shown still knocked out on the ground but the moment the gas reaches him he wakes up and runs away in terror.

I’m curious what the point of showing the mechanic escaping is. The kill the big burly mechanic, kill off the entire German force guarding the air field (the 8 guys in the truck Marian shoots), and the pilot is left knocked out in the cockpit and (presumably) dies when the entire flying wing explodes. But why is the mechanic given screen-time to show that he’s a-okay?

49

The mechanic is not a ‘bad guy’, he is incidental to the fight. Therefore, the camera follows him to show that an ‘innocent’ was not hurt by Indy.

50

Maybe that was a means of showing how fast the spilled fuel was spreading, and where. We know that Indy knocked the mechanic out near the airplane. When the flowing fuel wakes him up, it increases the tension because we know the plane is doomed as soon as the spilling fuel reaches the burning truck.

51

That too, but I always took it to show that Indy only is a threat to those who are an immediate threat to him. Shots of incidental people escaping harm so that only ‘bad guys’ end up being killed by the protagonist is, of course, a Hollywood staple.

52

“Raiders of the Lost Ark” is one of the extremely few “modern” movies you could show to audiences of the time period it depicts, who would get just as much a blast out of it as we did.

53

Jack, it’s a great movie, but I don’t think it solved the Enigma of Time Travel.

54

It’s a real film, Jack.

55

Forget it Jake. It’s Chinatown.

Oh, sorry.

56

Just re-watched it. One thing which I noticed (and probably did before, and I’m sure others have), the boulder comes down a ramp, but there is a big gap in it. If Indy went INTO the cave, the boulder would have gone over/past him and he could have followed it (not sure if it stopped at the entrance, I guess it could have blocked the exit)
“Asps, very dangerous – you go first”

Brian

57

That is precisely why he was running. Not to stop from being crushed, but to prevent getting trapped.

58

Of course, he could have just climbed up the vertical shaft above the pit he had to jump over, snuck around Belloq and the Hovitos tribesmen, and been home in time for a celebratory dinner.

Henry ‘Indiana’ Jones is a terrible archeologist, and not even a very good tomb raider. Like Han Solo, he’s more lucky than smart, but boy is he lucky.

Stranger

59

No one seems to have mentioned it yet, so I will.

The first three Indiana Jones movies all appear to have been influenced by the Donald Duck/Uncle Scrooge stories of Carl Barks. In particular, each of the movies seems to draw imagery from the same story – “The Prize of Pizarro” from Uncle Scrooge number 26 (June 1959). I noticed this when I first saw the first movie, and after that I looked for instances in the other films. For the next few I saw them (although they pretty much stopped with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. That long a hiatus between films must’ve dampened Lucas and Spielberg’s enthusiasm).

But we get a lot of booby traps and suchlike

– The giant stone ball rolling down at our hero(es)
–The fiendish sharp-bladed device that threatens to decapitate our hero(es) , except that they’re too short (“Only the penitent duck will pass”)
-The Canyon of the Leap for Life ("We’ll step across it, asserts Donald. Indiana actually does)
–The opponents of Our Heroes release a huge amount of water while the heroes are in a Loooong tunnel, and they have to outrace the water, just reaching the entrance in time to zip to the side as the water rushes out in a tunnel-shaped column behind them
– The endless climbing through rocky deserts

You can see several of the panels here – Duck Comics Revue: "The Prize of Pizarro"

Other Barks adventures seem folded into the Indiana Jones mix “The Seven Cities of Gold” features an incredibly elaborate booby trap that, after many hundreds of years, still works. “The Ghost of the Grotto” features an apparently centuries old knight in armor guarding a treasure. And so on.

Lucas, at least, was a long-time Barks fan, and even wrote the introduction to one volume of his collected works. It’s rather ironic that the Ducktales movie, with its Indiana Jones-like story and imagery, came out after the Indiana Jones movies and rode on its coattails, considering that the Barks stories (many of them adapted for the Ducktales TV series) were the inspiration for Indy.

60

Wow. That’s the first I’ve read of that idea.