To start off, I'll confess that there could have been things more insulting than what we got in Indy and Marion's relationship in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Marion could have been in some sad, unhappy state wherein she needed Indy to save her or something, making him into a sort of hero he decidedly is not. But that's not to say that it wasn't insulting.
Cole said:
They didn't try to make Indy and Marion's first encounter in 'Crystal Skull' anything like their first encounter in 'Raiders'......personally, I think it's funny and entertaining; I suppose it attempts to play up to the fans (like the snake scene), but I find it entertaining and witty nonetheless.
Is it misplaced? That's the question.....certainly with the tone in 'Crystal Skull,' I don't think it's out-of-place as is.
I think it is misplaced with what has come before, because it is the moment in the film wherein real human stakes are turned into an opportunity for an opportunity for easy laughs and nostalgia.
I've long said that Marion's emergence from that tent is when the film starts to take a substantial downturn, but until right now I don't think I quite understood <I>why</I> that was. Here's what it is.
The more tonal, character-based beats earlier in the film are treated with ample seriousness and gravity, despite what their other flaws might be. No, maybe we don't know Mac as well as we might, but their history is fairly well-established by the time he betrays Indy, and Indy's real hurt their shows us what the friendship meant to him. We might not really need the scene that introduces the aborted Indy-under-suspicion plot line, but Ford is suitably offended, as carries through to the scenes with Stanforth. Stanforth is a Marcus stand-in, sure, and the use of the old "Illumination" musical cue was, I think, an unfortunate misappropriation of a powerful bit of music, but I really buy Indy's readiness to leave his entire life behind and take a teaching post in East Germany. There's not much to Indy's interactions with Mutt, but the character humor there works throughout, primarily at the diner and during the chase, because the context is either dialogue or a slightly silly chase sequence. (Silly by virtue of its locale more than the action it contains.) And the material in the tent competes, for my money, with the warehouse, Doomtown, and the ants sequence as the best five minute stretch in the film. Spalko's plans for the skull are credible enough and well-suited both to the Soviets as villains and the mythology we're given, the skull is suitably mysterious and dangerous as Indy is looking at it, and Mac's history with Indy provides an opportunity for both character conflict and organic humor. Hell, even Oxley is sort of sad.
But then Marion is dragged out of her tent, saying a line that I was somehow convinced was a direct repeat of a line from Raiders with "Russkie" put in place of "Nazi." Even so, there's still similar lines in Raiders: "You traitor, get your hands off me" "Don't you touch me" "Get your damn hands off me." Thus, it's hard not to see it as an intentional callback.
There's some good here; for example, Indy has a look of suitable dread when he first sees Marion being dragged out of the tent, despite Marion's smile being either a misstep or a calculated move to please the fans. I also like the "human wreckage" line, and the "You had to go and get yourself kidnapped" "not like you did any better" "Same old, same old" exchange definitely works, once they actually have a gun pointing directly at them. There the tonality works, and the sniping are more asides than overplayed jabs.
Part of the oddness of this scene may be the way that Spalko, Dovchenko, and the other Russians are all turned into set dressing as these domestic squabbles are somehow allowed to play out without interruption. Maybe another piece of the problem is that the suburban lifestyle whose alien nature to Indy is shown so well in the Doom Town sequence is given center stage here with Marion and Mutt's exchange ("I didn't get any phone calls..."?), as it is later with the fencing. (Indy can have a family, but treating Marion as a "fencing mom" is easy humor that isn't rooted in the character, but rather in a type.)
There's too much smiling, frankly, without much edge to it. Marion - or should I say, Karen Allen? - seems far too pleased to be able to say these words to Indy. I'd even be happy with Indy's giddiness were it not accompanied by barely concealed happiness on Marion's part. They don't feel like they're in danger, and there's no way of denying that they are. That's why the exchange ending in "Same old, same old" <I>works</I>, and quite well; it has, like the "I thought we were friends, Mac" exchange, a sense that they are words that need to be said that are being said as succinctly as possible in the midst of a dangerous circumstance.
Cole said:
It'd be immensely difficult to try to have a first encounter that was like the one in 'Raiders'.....the audience has no prior expectations or familiarities with the two in 'Raiders.' That allowed for some interesting allusions to their past in the dialogue, some real tension between the two, and it makes for a great scene.
I don't think the fact that we're going into it without any knowledge determines what the scene can have in it. Sure, that's the condition that most dramatic situations are created in, one in which we don't know the characters previously and their history is only revealed to us as they interact with each other. But Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has something akin to the gift of long-form television, where the fact that we know the characters enhances scenes and grants us a deeper, richer sort of tension. Allusions can be just slid over, as the artists at work can be subtler.
The only sense in which the audience's lack of prior expectations might have helped Raiders is that they had to work harder to establish Indy's key relationships in that film - with Marion, with Belloq, with Marcus, and with Sallah - with excellent writing and subtly rich performances.
Cole said:
We have familiarity in 'Crystal Skull.' The audience is happy and delighted to see Marion return; and that's what I mean when they play up to the fans - they keep it humorous and they make her return enjoyable. It would've been tough to do what they did in 'Raiders.'
And despite the humor (which isn't always such a bad thing, you know), Marion is still spunky as ever matching Indy word for word in their argument; I liked that about the scene.
Her return may be enjoyable, but is it otherwise fulfilling or substantial? You imply that I think humor has no place in this, but there can still be humor in a scene without the performances themselves turning into cartoonish displays of giddiness and confusion on Indy's part and oversold enthusiasm and sarcasm on Marion's. There's humor in all of the most serious exchanges in Raiders, after all! Colonel Musgrove turns ever so subtly into an excited schoolboy when he knows the answer! Belloq notes Indy's poor choice of friends with the monkey! Belloq and Marion's whole scene in the tent is pretty funny, but also rooted in character <I>and</I> context, since it's dependent upon her trying to escape as well as what appears to be legitimate mutual interest between them. Raiders is a master class in integrating all the elements of basic Hollywood storytelling - dramatic relationships, conflicting desires, action, humor, spectacle, superb set-dressing - and it does most of these things all at once, and better than its successor films, in most cases.
It wouldn't have been tough to do what they did in Raiders, if they looked at it as a particular form of quality action filmmaking rather than an attempt to rebottle the same magic formula again by replaying similar pieces of dialogue.
You as well, sir. It's a pleasure.
