General Indiana Jones Thread

Tom Hardy's British, Indy's categorization is red, white and blue 'Murican, and so him getting the job would incite the same kind of idiotic frothing fanboy rage that would occur if Matt Damon became James Bond instead of that cold fish in the form of Daniel Craig.

Even though Hardy and Damon could do the respective roles easily, and rather well to boot.

Ehh, there really wasn't a noticeable amount of frothing rage beyond the usual when Superman got played by Henry Cavill.

Fake Americans tend to be more accepted than the reverse. Can't really imagine an American Doctor or Bond.

edited 19th Mar '16 5:30:48 PM by Ekuran

So I wanted to bring back a topic I was trying to discuss earlier about which villain in the movies is the best. What is everyone's personal rankings on the villains?

If we're going by the sets of villains in each film I'd say:

1. Belloq & Toht (Raider of the Lost Ark)

2. Mola Ram (Temple of Doom)

3. Elsa, Vogel, & Donovan (Last Crusade)

4. Irina Spalko and Mac (Kingdom of the Crystal Skull)

I probably put Ram higher than others, but there's just something to be said about an outright monstrous bad guy who rips people's hearts out and forces child slaves to do his bidding that really gets you wanting Indy to take him down.

I love Cate Blanchett as an actress so I feel bad about ranking her character so low. Without the outright threat that Ram had or potential as a shadow archetype to Indy like Belloq and Elsa, she feels wasted by the film.

edited 20th Mar '16 6:37:10 AM by BorneAgain

1. Belloq and Toht (Raiders of the Lost Ark).

2. Elsa, Vogel, and Donovan (The Last Crusade).

3. Irina Spalko and Mac (Kingdom of the Crystal Skull).

4. Mola Ram (Temple of Doom).

Even leaving aside that film's abysmal portrayal of the Hindu religion, he's just almost a cartoon character as far as bad guys go. Not the actor's fault, he does well, more the writing.

I was reading that in the novelization of Temple of Doom, Mola Ram was also brainwashed like everyone else, and he doesn't snap out of it until right before he dies.

Which could have made things a bit more interesting, and made his gruesome death, actually kind of tragic in a way. But perhaps it wouldn't have fit the type of movie that they were going for. As it stands, it's like they went down a checklist of how to make him as EEEVVIIIILLL as they possibly could.

Personally, I would put this as my list of Indiana Jones villains:

1. Rene Belloq

2. Irina Spalko

3. Mola Ram

4. Walter Donovan

Donovan, to me, is just the pettiest and flattest villain out there. His motivation is money, and he's mostly just a smug prick whose death happens rather quickly and they kinda gloss over it (despite how utterly horrifying it was). With Mola Ram, yeah, his whole motivation is "evil cult to take over the world" (and hell, the real life Thuggee were just a group of thieves that invented the word "thug"), but he's got a lot of charisma and presence to him. He's hammy, loud, and actually threatening. Donovan only makes himself threatening with a cheap shot at Indy's dad.

Donovan's motivation was immortality, if I remember correctly. And he doesn't have a ton of problematic racial, religious, cultural, etc stereotyping going on either (yeah, it's hard for me to get past that when talking about TOD in-general, it's REALLY noticeable).

It was immortality and money. Jones Sr. even calls him out on "selling his country out to the Nazis".

I guess the sticking point with me is whether the villain is memorable or not. Belloq is memorable. Mola Ram (for better or worse) is memorable. Spalko is memorable, because come on, Cate Blanchett. Donovan isn't too memorable.

I wouldn't rank Toht very high on the list of villains. He was more cartoonish than genuinely menacing. In fact, all the Nazi bad guys in the entire series were more or less caracatures. And the Soviets in KOTCS were just retreads of the Nazis from previous films.

I think Mola Ram was too far away from actual Hinduism to be considered an actual offensive stereotype. He came off as more of the leader of a made up cult than anything else. I mean, I know we are in the era where we have to be politically correct or else, but come on. Had that story been made in the age of the actual pulps that inspired the Jones saga, then it would have been really un-PC as heck.

Except the cult explicitly talks about Shiva and Kali. Shiva is one of the three big Hindu gods, and he is supposed to be the destroyer god. Kali is his consort. Hell, Sankara is another name for Shiva.

Though I think discussing this with an actual expert on Hinduism might make for a better discussion. Is it alright if I summon a user who knows this stuff?

edited 20th Mar '16 1:24:35 PM by AdricDePsycho

That's like saying any movie that features a made up cult killing people in the name of Yahweh and Jesus through exotic insane rituals is a direct slam on Catholicism or protestants.

It's not completely made up. The Thugee were real, but they were your standard thieves and robbers (hell, the word thug was invented to describe them).

And I'm gonna summon a friend of mine on here who knows a thing or two about Hinduism to help me on this.

edited 20th Mar '16 1:34:57 PM by AdricDePsycho

~Space Wolf

The Thuggee were real, but they were essentially what happens when you breed the historical Assassins wirh the roadside robbers that you'd find in western films. They were never a cult, and 'Thuggee' is the root word for 'thug'.

There are a few problems with their representation as a cult, outside of the fact that they were never one. Firstly, they're depicted like an uncivilized, sacrificial cult (A la, Hollywood Satanism or Mayincatec). No Hindu sect is like this.

Secondly, Kali would not demand sacrifice. She is not malevolent; she's depicted that way to frighten her enemies. The issue probably lies in confusion with the completely-unrelated (and male) demon, also called 'Kali'.

Now what about Shiva?

I just gotta stop to observe how amusing it was Adric calling upon Space Wolf's help, because of the way you just said "I need to call a good friend of mine...", finished the post and then had following post with only his name, almost as if it was meant to represent as a dramatic pause between posts.

And then he shows up.

It's almost like he's a Yu-Gi-Oh card. "I INVOKE SPACE WOLF, THE HINDU KNOWER, IN ATTACK MODE!"

I haven't seen the movie in a couple of years, so you'll have to remind me of his portrayal.

edited 20th Mar '16 5:13:57 PM by SpaceWolf

I don't remember much of Shiva in there other than when Indy and Mola Ram are struggling on the side of the cliff, Indy repeatedly chants "You betrayed Shiva" in English and Hindu, which causes the Sankara stones to start burning a hole in his backpack and send Mola Ram falling into the crocodiles. Also, Sankara is apparently another name for Shiva.

That doesn't seem particularly suspect, so we're probably good on that front.

Say, is it true that in an earlier draft of Raiders, Marion's "I was a child" line was supposed to mean she was literally underage when she slept with Indy? If so, that's among the best cuts that have ever been made to any film ever.

I've heard something about that, yeah. I don't have a source, though.