goodeknight said:Okay, just compare the pictures:
"Irina Spalko - Great Villain??"
Seriously??
Crack that whip said:Mmm... well, perhaps not Great with a capital "G," but certainly a compelling one, at least to me. I find her a stronger, more compelling villain than Walter Donovan, anyway. I'd agree she's not up there alongside Mola Ram or especially Belloq, but in fairness those two set a pretty high standard for villains.
I feel the same, though she was competent with a sword, her threats were of the spoken variety...and there wasn't enough evidence that any of them carried much weight.Henry W Jones said:I don't understand shy they implied she was psychic and never showed it. She's tolerable at best.
Rocket Surgeon said:I feel the same, though she was competent with a sword, her threats were of the spoken variety...and there wasn't enough evidence that any of them carried much weight.
I wondered what would have made her great...first the qualites I saw:
Determined
She definitely had an unstoppable drive to achieve her goal.
Immoral
She was certainly willing to violate accepted moral principles in order to accomplish her goals.
Intelligent
The debate rages, was she intellectually gifted or as mentioned above driven. Simply put: did she work harder or smarter? She certainly did not force Indy to his A-Game.
She did get into a secret US Military Base, problem is, the intelligence to do so is all implied.
Powerful
As mentioned she talked the talk, and had Dovchenko, Soviet resources...again the problem of implied vs illustrated.
As a femme fatale she could have used her charms, (any charm) to influence Indy.
Wounded
As a swordsman/woman, a disfigurement or physical wound would have been excellent and classic. A more fleshed out emotional or psychological wound might have been helpful to.
I'd say she was a few quirks shy of great...
kongisking said:So, I ask this: why does everyone love Rene, but poor Irina is bombarded with hate, or, at best, indifference by so many? She's basically Belloq as a woman.
And that's an interesting twist, to me...
I agree viz you, dahlink.Henry W Jones said:She would have been more a home in a Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon than in a Indy movie.
kongisking said:So, I ask this: why does everyone love Rene, but poor Irina is bombarded with hate, or, at best, indifference by so many? She's basically Belloq as a woman.
And that's an interesting twist, to me...
Henry W Jones said:they implied she was psychic and never showed it.
JediJones said:Mac? The less said, the better.
Spalko has everything. Great bad-ass fighting skills, spooky supernatural powers, intelligent dialogue, motivated by a misguided but patriotic pride in her socialist country as well as scientific theory as opposed to just a quest for artifacts or the desire to kill people, exotic accent and seductive looks. Blanchett along with Freeman give the best performances of the series' villains, showing convincing emotion that goes beyond the printed lines of the screenplay. She's the best thing in Crystal Skull.
Rocket Surgeon said:Just dealing with this first, Belloq was a straight up mercenary. When he does mention the supernatural it's not as a believer.
I thought the same thing at the marathon. Indy picked up on it right away.Rocket Surgeon said:Whatever paranormal expert she might have been, she didn't even recognize Ox's "Auto-Writing"
JediJones said:These are Indiana Jones movies, so you can't expect to really "get to know" the characters. Characterization is written in shorthand in these films. And I thought it was done better with Spalko than with most. I get a really good sense of who she is, such that I can make a good prediction on how she might act if she were thrust into a new situation. That's difficult to do with Elsa. Last Crusade also suffered by using the gimmick of the villain who pretends to be a good guy and then reveals themselves twice. Which Crystal Skull just fell off the cliff trying to do with Mac.
Spalko in fact takes most of the best qualities of the previous villains and puts them in one package, Belloq's intelligence, Mola Ram's mysticism, Dietrich's sense of loyalty, Elsa's seductiveness, Toht's ruthlessness and even the swordfighting skills and hand-to-hand combat skills of the various henchmen and brutes. What a package! To give another point to Skull on its villains, Dovchenko was a great, dead-eyed bruiser who was a worthy successor to Pat Roach's thugs. And I may as well add that the ants were the most effective scary creature since the original film's snakes.
Spalko was a case where we were really properly shown who she was as a character rather than told. I don't think it was that effective to basically have Belloq sit there and describe who he is through dialogue. And the whole "it would take only a nudge to make you like me" conversation didn't really have much weight, because we know so little about who Belloq is and what he's done. All we know is he hired some natives to steal the idol from Indy and then kill Indy, and he was willing to work with the Nazis. It's not like Indy himself is above stealing, at least not when it comes to the Cross of Coronado. We see how Indy was coerced to work with the Russians, so for all we know Belloq was working with the Nazis due to coercion. Belloq suffers as a villain because it's hard to really hate him. He tries to protect Marion for one thing and he never does anything directly violent, although he tries to kill Indy through surrogates. Belloq wasn't really lying when he said it would take only a nudge to make Indy like him. Recast Belloq without the French accent (Tom Selleck?) and it'd be easy to forget that he even was a villain.
Rocket Surgeon said:They walk down the ESP road way too early and she fails right off the bat...Irina listed off her achievements but as a "psychic" she was a joke. There was never any indication, not even coincidentally, that she might have had "powers".
Rocket Surgeon said:Whatever paranormal expert she might have been, she didn't even recognize Ox's "Auto-Writing"
goodeknight said:Completely off topic here, but that makes me wonder -- what was Belloq going to talk to God about?
JediJones said:The point wasn't to have her use the powers directly. Having a character running around reading minds all the time wouldn't be something we'd want to see in an Indiana Jones movie. I like the fact that we never really find out if she really has that power at all or is just delusional.
JediJones said:I don't like villains to come off as "great" or flawless. To me its the heroes that should be admirable, not the villains. If a villain starts looking too brilliant or brave, that's a problem. They should be flawed people who make mistakes or otherwise do things that make them unlikable.