Should Indy die on film?

FedoraHead

New member
Sorry if talked about, I did do the search but nothing on the word (die) came up.
How would you as a fan feel to see Indy die? I know we call got to see that old one eye Indy but forget about that. Would it be bad to kill him off? I think I much rather see Indy go out as a hero and not fade away as a old man.
you?
 

Mickiana

Well-known member
That's a good question and I didn't look to see if it has been discussed before. I have wondered this myself and having Indy die or at least appear to die would be a brave step for the makers to do. He is a fallible character and dying takes fallibility to its logical conclusion. A lot would depend on how he dies, whether he succumbs to one of the many pitfalls in an adventure, or a plain old bedridden death in a hospital with tubes coming out of him, or a self sacrifice to save others.

But the character is not ready to die yet. Not by a long chalk. In the last adventure he was only in his late fifties and I can't see why there can't be an Indy5 and Indy6 with Harrison. Eventually, the makers might want to somehow resign his character from adventuring so that the hat could be passed onto a successor, or so his character could be reinvented at a younger age (my preference). Either way, killing off Indiana Jones is an extreme move. At the end of the first trilogy he rode off into the sunset. For an exit from the whole series, I don't feel it would be a high point to lose Indiana Jones to whatever kind of death.

As an attempt at realism, it would be commendable, but how it would be handled by the makers or accepted by the audience would be a difficult thing to predict. Overall, I don't think it will be wanted.
 

Kyle

New member
Harrison Ford will always be Indiana Jones. The role should never be reprised after Harrison is done. That being sad, the logical thing would be to kill him off. And I believe, Indy being Indy, he is not going to die on a hospital bed. Personally, I would love to see him go out with some sort of self sacrifice, saving hundreds (perhaps thousands) of lives.

Indy will always be a legend.

:hat:
 

Crack that whip

New member
FedoraHead said:
Sorry if talked about, I did do the search but nothing on the word (die) came up.
How would you as a fan feel to see Indy die? I know we call got to see that old one eye Indy but forget about that. Would it be bad to kill him off? I think I much rather see Indy go out as a hero and not fade away as a old man.
you?

I can't forget about Old Indy, so no, I personally would prefer that he not be killed off - at least not before the time frame of the old Indy segments from the TV show, and if he were killed off after that (or just shown at all, whether killed off or not) I'd like the portrayal to remain consistent with what was shown in those segments (i.e., wearing the eyepatch and so on). I'd rather not have that element of existing Indy lore completely removed from the canon, even if it's no longer part of the actual show.
 

monkey

Guest
Couldn't disagree more

QUOTE=Kyle]Harrison Ford will always be Indiana Jones. The role should never be reprised after Harrison is done. That being sad, the logical thing would be to kill him off. And I believe, Indy being Indy, he is not going to die on a hospital bed. Personally, I would love to see him go out with some sort of self sacrifice, saving hundreds (perhaps thousands) of lives.

Indy will always be a legend.

:hat:[/QUOTE]

Kyle, I can't disagree more. And in fact, perhaps by a Freudian slip, or more likely just a mis-spelling, your third sentence in your post says it all.

"That being sad"

Yes, it is indeed sad. It is sad that perhaps for the first time in recorded history a fictional character has been tied so closely to a human actor; and because of that, the character has been artificially limited in his fictional endeavors by the age, and limitations of "His" actor.

Too bad.

I still can't believe, after all these years and all these posts and discussions....that there are so many people........who purport to be Indiana Jones fans... who so passionately want to lay him to rest.

It is almost suicidal in a way.

"Don't Fear the Reaper"!

To talk of killing him off just follows logically along with all of the "Harrison Ford IS Indiana Jones" mentality.

Go ahead ..............Kill him off!!

Please do!!

Then maybe people like me can finally start with a clear slate.
 

Exulted Unicron

New member
I don't think they should kill off Indy. As we know that we have Old Indy on screen in the 90s. If anything, I feel that Indy should just simply pass on peacefully, knowing he's lived his life to the full and passed his knowledge on to others
 
Mickiana said:
How about falling into the gears of a Combine Harvester? That's the way a man should go!

Wow you really want to make it difficult for writes to bring him back!:hat:

How should he die? Like Gene Hackman in The Posiedon Adventure, well not exactly but in some sort of sacrifice.

Eh screw it, have him fall into the form of a concrete pillar being poured for a bridge...or shark attack.

Then you can bring him back with a peg leg AND and eye patch!
 

DocWhiskey

Well-known member
I don't really want to see Indy die on film. Mainly because I'd like the YIJC somewhat canon. But I'm sure if Lucas and Speilberg were to do it, it would be something beautiful.
 
To respond to this thread, I think I can hark back to a long held desire for a Garden of Life-related storyline, and my own personal imagination of the ideal ending.

Not Indy's death as such, but, after defeating the enemy and retrieving/neutralising the maguffin (fill in the blanks as appropriate, they never were that important anyway imho), the final choice is whether he takes the one way trip into the Garden or not. Needless to say, he takes up the chance to walk through to the other side - the "greatest adventure yet" motif. Cue huge CGI graphics of the incredible vista beyond, and then the legendary silhouette walking through into a blaze of light into the Great Beyond (aka Garden of Eden, Shang ri La, Mu, Nirvana, etc.).

Raiders (final) march chimes up...
 

Mickiana

Well-known member
What about a plain ol' Ascension into Heaven? That way he keeps all his Indygear on, although they will have to alter his jacket for the wings. Will Heaven contract out for that job and get Wested or Tony Novak to make the necessary cuts? Can you use a whip in Heaven?:whip:
 

Col. Detritch

New member
I don't ever want to see Indy die on screen... ever!
He should be, as he is, a mortal man but with an immortal presence. The eternal adventure, the hero who we know will eventually die but we’ll never see it! Like James Bond- he’s mortal but he’s lived for what, over 50 years since Dr No and even longer since the novels and hasn't aged or died. Indy however does age but still shouldn't die.(y)

If he were to die however as it's already been said he should go down in a blaze of glory. I like to make literacy references so I’m gonna suggest he should die like Sherlock Holmes apparently did in The Final Problem. Fighting it out with a mortal foe over some sort of precarious precipice (like the waterfall in The Final Problem), the enemy has the artifact in hand and has the power to kill millions. Indy, losing the eternal struggle realises that the only way to defeat this dangerous foe is to sacrifice himself. He dives into the villain and he and the adversary plummet to their deaths over the edge as Indy’s helpless friends watch in horror and slight pride at their friends demise. Then this leaves the end slightly more open for Indy to return as Sherlock did (may I add due to massive fan upheaval) in The Adventure of the Empty House.:hat:

Fina-01.jpg
 

Violet

Moderator Emeritus
Montana Smith said:
Indy could always fall into a bottomless plot hole...

I had to take a second read of your post just to make sure that wasn't a spelling mistake. Lol!

I agree with monkey. And with the way, I fell into fandom for the character and the series, was not coz Harrison Ford was playing Indy, it was because of the character and the adventures he went on. The majority of my earliest memories of Indy, weren't not Harrison Ford, but of Sean Patrick Flanery and yes, even George Hall (Old Indy). Old Indy will always have a place in my canon even if it ain't official. It's official to me.

I'll even look at it from the fans-that-say-Indy-= - Harrison- point of view. If you kill him off, you don't kill off the idea of a re-boot. You would be more likely to encourage it that way because there's this great character with BO pull in potential, even at a base adventure/action movie level that wouldn't need development and because of HF's version being killed off, it leaves room for someone else to take over more conveniently. Sadly, the way you would stop a reboot is by having a film really really terrible and have him pass the fedora to Mutt. That would be the true deathstrike to Indy and the possibility of a re-boot.

I certainly wouldn't mind the idea proposed by StwongBwidge though. It's poignant and it's quite a visual way to end it the way the Sunset at LC was both poignant and very visual.
 

lairdo

Member
I certainly don't want Indy to die before he is "old indy" since I want to believe the TV show is canon. I am not sure I even want to know how he lost an eye. I'll just leave it unanswered.

I am ok if Indy dies as an old man on screen, and I think even better if he does it heroically. And not some silly "let's go on one more adventure" bad idea. But something where he pushes a kid out of the way of a speeding car or something selfless (and more creative than that).

I think this is a good topic though and welcome more like it.
 

inky_skin

Active member
I don't believe we should ever see Indy die on film. Last Crusade was essentially the perfect coda to his adventures in that it released the character to go off, in his prime, to enjoy more adventures beyond the end of the trilogy. I think there was more potential in that than actually drawing a line under his life with a celluloid death.

For a long time I was wary of Crystal Skull, not because of the writing, but because I was against seeing one of my heroes age and the implications that had for my own mortality (I'm no spring chicken). However, I then read "Aging Heroes and the Concept of Phronesis"* by Ernest Hemingway and my opinion began to change. Provided Indy V (if it reaches fruition) features the character as a mentor, imparting wisdom gained from experience (much like Henry Sr in Last Crusade), I can accept him getting old - but no dying please !

*Phronesis = an understanding of the ways of the world, an acute sensitivity to a critical logic of human existence that can be attained only through extensive experience and suffering.
 

Montana Smith

Active member
inky_skin said:
*Phronesis = an understanding of the ways of the world, an acute sensitivity to a critical logic of human existence that can be attained only through extensive experience and suffering.

...or prolonged exposure to The Raven.

To see Indy die on screen would be hard, yet there's a case for heroes (even anti-heroes ;) ) dying whilst they're still an active force in the world, rather than seeing them fade away into a feeble old age.
 

inky_skin

Active member
Didn't Ford want Han Solo dead before the end of Return of the Jedi (thinking his 'sacrifice' would give greater weight to the drama) ? So he's already indicated that he's open to offing his iconic characters in the right situation...
 

Crack that whip

New member
inky_skin said:
Didn't Ford want Han Solo dead before the end of Return of the Jedi (thinking his 'sacrifice' would give greater weight to the drama) ? So he's already indicated that he's open to offing his iconic characters in the right situation...

Indeed, though I think it also had something to do with Harrison feeling Han had no real future, dramatically speaking - that he had taken the character as far as he could/would go, and that there wasn't anything interesting left for Han to do except perhaps die. With Indy, on the other hand, Harrison seems to have always seen potential for further adventures, more to explore dramatically, more room for character growth and development, etc.

This always stuck out in my head because for a little while it was pretty much the exact opposite of what I thought - I thought that with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, we'd already seen the full extent of the character development workable with Indy, while I'd long anticipated seeing a future for Han in the then-oft-discussed Star Wars episodes VII, VIII and IX. Then along came The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, which opened my eyes to just how much fresh, unexplored territory there was for the Indiana Jones character, and I began to see what I think Harrison might have been thinking of.

Of course, it could just be a case of an actor being most interested in a franchise that's centered around him to the fullest extent possible, but that doesn't really strike me as Harrison's bag. He seldom returns to any role; of the many characters he's portrayed over his career, there are only four he's done more than once (three of them created by George Lucas, incidentally). I think he really is simply interested in exploring new ground, and sees untapped potential in Indy that, for him, isn't as strongly present with Han (or other characters he's done).
 
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