Ok, here are some of the ideas that have shown up:
-No Indy IV
-Indy dies doing any old thing (whipping across a gap)
-Indy dies saving the world
-Indy dies trying to save himself
-Indy saves the world w/o death
-Indy goes up in a blaze of glory (nuclear explosion or something)
-Indy dies saving his friends
-Indy retires
-Indy takes a new profession (no more adventures)
-the world has changed, Indy sees he doesn't fit in anymore (like how some Westerns ended - the frontier's been tamed, pardner)
-Indy whips the camera
-Indy walks off into sunset
-Indy rides off into sunset by himself
-Indy with the rest of the cast riding into sunset (like LC)
-Indy gets married to Marion, Willie, or Sophia
-Indy gets married to an old flame, introduced just for the film
-Indy gets married to a new character just for the film
-Pass down the hat & the whip
-Some other character could die (Marcus, Henry, or Sallah)
-Losing an eye (to account for the eyepatch)
-Indy continues to have adventures
-Indy dies and comes back to life (fulfilling the hero requirement of going to the underworld and returning)
-Redemption
-Indy becomes like Marcus, maybe taking his job as curator of the museum ("5 years ago I would have gone after it myself")
-"to be continued"
-more sequels with HF
-a series with other actors
-Randy_Flagg's idea with Indy shooting up the neighborhood, upset over the violence, having shot Marion, Willie, and Short Round, Marcus talks to him, Indy slumps to the floor and cries, and the police apprehend the crazed former adventurer (which, even though it was a joke, actually has a strange appeal to me)
-Or, in other words, Indy goes crazy
-Indy goes crazy and must pay for it
-Make it a prequel
-Make a 2-part film
-Sappy, happy ending (won't work)
-Indy/museum gets to keep the artifact
-Indy has a kid
-Indy gets rid of the fedora and somebody finds it years later
-Something after the credits
-Open ended - Indy may have died, may not have, the viewer makes their own decision
-Indy goes off on another adventure
-Indy decides to be a "normal" archaeologist going on digs minus the adventure
-Indy resigns to teaching archaeology
-Indy becomes dean of Barnett
-Indy heads the archaeology department at Barnett
-Indy does some T.E. Lawrence thing and gives up his persona, and joins the army or something
-Indy fails to recover an artifact and the museum director shoots him
-Indy considers retiring but then decides to keep on adventuring (yeah, yeah, I know its not a word)
-Indy sees good & evil aren't black & white anymore, and retires from public life (remember the guy in the one "find a weapon" house in Desktop Adventures, who was an old friend of Henry - something like that)
-Indy goes into business - "Indy's Cafe Americaine" (sp.?)
-Indy must pay for being a grave robber
-Indy sells his life story to Hollywood [forgive me, I've been working on this post so long I think I'll sell it to Hollywood]
-Shane - Indy is wounded and rides into sunset
-High Noon - Indy sees the world doesn't want/like/appreciate him anyore, so he drops the fedora/whip/whatever and turns and leaves
-Similar to the eyepatch, Indy loses his hand or something
-Indy does the exact same thing as Fedora at the end of the Young Indy sequence (only passing on version I like, actually)
-the new evil doesn't believe in mystical artifacts, so Indy has no place in the world
-he's found everything there is to find, so Indy has no place in the world
-the gear is put away in a box, and Indy buries it, or puts it in his attic, or drops it into the ocean, or burns it, or whatever
-Indy finds immortality, and has infinite adventures
-Indy's soul is corrupted, and is killed
-Indy's soul is corrupted, and becomes a villain (the nudge to make him like Belloq)
-Indy looks at the sunset/night sky, and you see him in silhouette
-Indy starts a new adventure, outside a cave, says "I love this part", and walks into the darkness
-Field of Dreams - Indy walks into a cave, and disappears
-A prequel that ends where ToD begins
-Indy has a heart attack after a big fight scene
-We see old Jones telling his grandchildren stories
-We see old Jones telling anybody stories
-Citizen Kane - ends with an older Jones dying, and than we see what advventure he's last words had to do with
Good God {Yes, that's just what the Hebrews thought}, that was a long list - took about an hour to go through the Indy IV ending threads - and no one else was at the Raven...
So anyway, I personally feel (to make a generalization out of the 68 or so options on the list) there are only 2 things that can happen - Indy retires, or Indy dies - that I would be happy with - it should have finality, it should have closure, it should fit the hero/legend mold, which leads me to my next post in this thread...
[Edited by Attila the Professor on 11-07-2002 at 08:08 pm]