Just rewatched Indiana Jones and the last Crusade

[bronnt]

So, remember how Disney made that "Solo" movie to answer questions that nobody ever asked? Like, "Why does Han call Chewbacca Chewie? And where did his blaster come from?"

The first 10 minutes of Last Crusade are a freaking avalanche of that shit, it's so hack. While I love the movie, the young Indy stuff is so bad. Questions that are answered that don't need to be. "Why does Indy hate snakes? Why does he have whip? Where did his hat come from?" I honestly got frustrated by how pandering it was.

I'm sure they thought it was cute to have all of this show up all at once. Watching it, it feels childish and pandering.

[Madner Kami]

It mostly serves to introduce the relationship between Indy and his father, while taking a detour over the "creation of Indiana". It could have been done in a better way, but it's hardly as bad as Solo in that regard. "Solo" is an entire movie about the "creation of Han Solo", while the "creation of Indiana Jones" is a couple of scenes. There's obviously quite a difference.

[Zoinksberg]

Every opening scene of Indiana Jones is a lot of fluff to introduce a larger part of the movie.

Raiders had the entire temple scene that was only to introduce us to Indy and show that he had a rival in Belloq. Nothing before Belloq arrives matters to the rest of the movie except to introduce him.

Temple of Doom has a whole song and dance, literally, just to introduce Willie.

Kingdom introduces the Soviets, and really also re-introduces us to Indy himself after so many years. It also shows us that things will be a bit cartoonish, though I don't know if that was the intent of nuking the fridge.

Crusade might be a campy start, but as Madner said it is to introduce Henry Jones and show their relationship. It's not spread out throughout the film as if that is the reason the film exists, it's just in the introduction scene that is typically extra filler so it doesn't feel out of place. They clearly didn't approach the situation with "let's answer a bunch of burning fan questions", rather "we want to frame the opening when Indy was young so we can introduce his father who has long been out of his life, what's a fun way to do that?"

[Yukaphile]

One thing that always irked me about the Indy movies is how, at least until the Crystal Skull, he was fighting Nazis. Yes, Nazis. And then the Soviets. Wow, how subtle.

[bronnt]

The purpose is to introduce the relationship to Henry, and he's barely in the opening. I'm fine with the "Here's young Indy having an adventure," but it's so frontloaded with references that it does bother me on my recent rewatch.

They establish, hey, here's he fine with snakes. And then, uh-oh, he falls into a crate of snakes and now he hates snakes forever. Then he grabs a whip, because remember, Indy has a whip. Then a bad guy gives him a hat, and he'll wear that hat the rest of his life. It's like it created a template for how to make silly fanwank, and it's got such a weird George Lucas touch to it.

Now obviously, all these movies start with their silly action sequences, but Last Crusade could literally start with Indy in the classroom, then he tells Brody he recovered Coronado's cross, and nothing in the story changes. There's plenty in the main plotline that fleshes out the relationship between Henry and Indiana.

One thing that always irked me about the Indy movies is how, at least until the Crystal Skull, he was fighting Nazis. Yes, Nazis. And then the Soviets. Wow, how subtle.

Well, in Temple of Doom, Nazis are not at all mentioned. It's the Thuggee, a cult of Kali. And the villains are very poorly fleshed out in that film. I can't even tell you the main bad guy's name, but we all remember Belloq from Raiders, and Elsa from Last Crusade. It's a little bit easier for writers to breathe life into characters when they're familiar.

[Yukaphile]

I haven't seen those movies in years. Wasn't pleased they made the Nazi villain a woman in Last Crusade, but in their defense, she seems to not wanna go as far as the men do. And some people still want to insist German women were criminals. Idiots.

[MissKittyFantastico]

I feel like the difference between Last Crusade and Solo, in how they handle their references, is most of what we 'learn' about Indy is things that kind of stand out already. He's not just afraid of snakes like you and me (well, I'm Australian, so I'm required to not be afraid of them, even though ours are the size of 747s and can shoot fire out their arse, but you get what I mean), he's a badass who'll face down and beat up ten men twice his size and doesn't even flinch at spiders the size of your hand, but he shits himself when he sees it's snakes. That's not what you'd expect based on how fearless he is to everything else. Likewise the whip - who even uses a whip? - and the hat, which he'd rather risk his arm getting crushed than leave behind. (The scar's pretty insignificant, to be sure - anyone living Indy's life would have a fine collection - but it takes all of two seconds to show, it's basically a throwaway gag, so it doesn't demand a lot of justification.) The whole nature of Indy, the teaching academic who goes charging around like a daredevil in his spare time, begs the question "Who is this guy?" Raiders gets by perfectly well without really answering that question much, but it's there to be asked.

Whereas Solo, I don't know much about the EU, but I never felt like there was anything unusual about Han Solo when we met him - okay the Falcon's the best ship ever (allegedly; granted it's capable, but it sure does break down a lot) but honestly, there might have been guys just like Han in the next five booths in the cantina. I don't remember anything standing out about his blaster, how he treated it or how effective it was, anything to suggest it meant anything to him besides 'I'm armed', and Chewie's an obvious abbreviated nickname (again, Australian - if his name had been 'Chew' we'd call him Chewie anyway). Nothing in ANH seemed to suggest there was anything special about him, before he happened to be looking for a fare on the same day Luke and Ben rolled into town, and wound up growing into a hero subsequently - Han may seem an exciting type to us, since he's a smuggler with a spaceship who blasts people who mess with him (without waiting for them to shoot first, thanks), but in the context of the Star Wars galaxy, especially in a pesthole like Mos Eisley, he's clearly dime a dozen. Basically, Last Crusade went back to finally show us Indy's origin story, but ANH was Han's origin story.

[Zoinksberg]

I haven't seen those movies in years. Wasn't pleased they made the Nazi villain a woman in Last Crusade, but in their defense, she seems to not wanna go as far as the men do. And some people still want to insist German women were criminals. Idiots.

#1: Magda Goebbels.

#2: Is it possible for you to not steer every conversation towards your inexplicable need to go to bat for -insert thing- or demonize -insert other thing-? This is a conversation about a movie and comparing it to another movie, not Nazis and misogyny. There was zero reason to bring either up and doing so is frankly trollish behavior.

Appreciate it, thanks.

[bronnt]

I haven't seen those movies in years. Wasn't pleased they made the Nazi villain a woman in Last Crusade, but in their defense, she seems to not wanna go as far as the men do. And some people still want to insist German women were criminals. Idiots.

Not sure what this is-are you trying to imply that there weren't Nazi women who were also villainous? History certainly tells us there were. If you're talking about the average German female civilian, probably not, but there still were even some of those who were directly complicit in, say, exposing Jewish families who went into hiding.

Ilsa Koch, for example, was a civilian woman whose husband commanded concentration camps. She ordered certain prisoners killed so she could skin them and keep their tattoos. This was a real person.

Or how about Irma Grese, an SS guard at Auschwitz. Convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death after the war.

[bronnt]

. He's not just afraid of snakes like you and me (well, I'm Australian, so I'm required to not be afraid of them, even though ours are the size of 747s and can shoot fire out their arse, but you get what I mean), he's a badass who'll face down and beat up ten men twice his size and doesn't even flinch at spiders the size of your hand, but he shits himself when he sees it's snakes.

Except that's not really what the evidence shows. The whole snake thing is set up and then paid off within Raiders. The snake shows up at the start: "Relax, Indy, it's just my pet snake," and then they open the Chamber of Secrets and it's literally crawling with snakes. "Snakes....why did it have to be snakes."

And he's clearly not deathly afraid of them since he went into the pit of snakes in order to retrieve the Ark. He just doesn't like them, even though he's pretty chill about spiders and death pits. It wasn't the sort of thing that needed to be established unless you're just trying to bash your audience over the head with the familiar.

Indy reaching back to grab his hat underneath a falling stone door is just a gag. It's fun, silly, and might incite some laughs from the audience (back when this was fresh). It certainly wasn't an indication that the hat was super special-even though it IS an awesome hat. The hat doesn't need an origin story.