When Indiana Jones becomes "Indy" (this kinda goes with my other SPF v. RP post, and it's anothe good long healthy one, much like this sentance; just can't stop, sorry!).

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Posted by Ultraman Tiga from ts003d40.las-nv.concentric.net on December 17, 1999 at 03:19:06:

CHARACTER DEVLOPMENT 101

I'm hearing "naive" this and "innocent" that.

Remember, when we first met Indiana Jones back in Raiders of the Lost Ark - he's a complete bastard. He robs treasures from other cultures (Even his arch-rival had the courtesy to learn their language)! He fools around with young girls ("Love you"-girl, and Marion was only fifteen when he put his purple-headed warrior to her love pudding, thus ruining her life - read the novel for more). Even if he himself doesn't belive it, he IS purporting to the "white man as god" image that was inescapapable in that unenlightened segement of time (you don't need to look further than the Cairo scenes, but thank god the villains are the Nazis, a clever way to mirror the fact that white-men were also the blight of the Earth at the same time - indeed many still are). He hires a bunch of diggers and relaxes calmy with ice-cream in hand while they slave to the mastah and uncover the Well of Souls. Okay, so he didn't have ice cream.

Again, Belloq is the class-act of this film (literally, Indy murders people, and the most evil thing Belloq does is accidentally swallow a fly), and Indy is just another greedy, dirty fightin' gold-digger. Yet, that's the ambiguous nature that made the film so riveting, and why it's best not to call it "Indiana Jones and the...". Indy is merely one of the "Raiders" of the title.

Heaven forbid, indy sprays the S*word in two films! In all three films, there is evidence that Indy has a smeared reputation - ToD: the grave-robber accusation; Raiders: anything with Marion and Belloq and Indy's line about the govt, "What would they want to see ME for?"; Crusade: Donovon hired Henry Sr. before even thinking of going to Indy.

Was Indy always so bad and rotten? No. This is why he's not a punk-ass bastard who deserves to die at the end of the film with all the other goons. It's pretty easy to see where Indy turned sour - when he met Marion, while working with Abner. It's all there in the film and all the various sources.

So of course he's going to be a much better person before these events, and that's the Indy you see in Chapters 1 - 24. Flanery still has the physical mannerisms that make him Indy - the ready-for-anything walk, the sheepish grin, the determined sneer. But if his attifuted seems different, it's because it IS! He has exactly the attitude a=Indy at that age would: younger and more naive, not only of himself, but of the world and everyone around him. This is why i's so dramatit when Mata Hari pegs him dead on, "You're nothing more than a stupid boy prentending he's a man!"

In LC, River's Indy shouts: "That belongs in a museum!" In ToD and Raiders, his notions are nowhere near as noble! Fortune and glory are all that matters.

Kinda makes me wish Lucas would have made a chapter before Raiders to show when his life took a turn to the dark side. But it's easy to see for yourslef (I hope, if you don't have this kind of imagination that Lucas' efforts are wasted on you, and you should leave the forum immediately): Indy goes into a self imposed guilt trip without realising he'd jerkily took advantage of a young girls affections. he can't quite shake, gets a quick remedy out of booze (more than one implication in Raiders that Indy knows his stuff) and god knows what else.

Lastly, in LC, Indy is more fixed, if not perfect. He has gone back to the "museum" theory, lives comfortably as a college proffessor, and is more laid back and prone to think before sending his fists into action. What tamed him? Hopefully, a PART 4 might answer that question.

Sophia Hapgood perhaps? Willie? Or maybe Marion and he had a really long nice talk after meeting up again at the end of Raiders?

Here's hoping Lucas allows that gap to be filled someday.

TIGA


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