Two things I always noticed but just recently connected ...
In Raiders, Indy reaches under the rapidly closing stone door to grab his whip just before it shuts.
In TOD, Indy does the same thing, but this time he reaches for his
hat under the stone door....so this is a rehash of the same gag.
I guess I never connected the two gags before because in the Raiders version, it never struck me as humorous. The whip is a legitimate survival tool, and it's more reasonable that he would have risked his arm to get it back. But the hat....well, it's just a hat ... so the TOD version is more slapstick to me
One can view the Fedora as a comic reflection of Indy. As the hat goes, so goes Indy:
- Indy survives or escapes all manner of situations in a completely implausible manner...no broken bones, torn tendons, etc...not even after the truck chase in Raiders. Heck, Ford even injured himself more than once just
pretending to do some of these scenes, notably the TOD back injury which necessitated revamping the shoot schedules
- The hat, simliarly, should have been torn to shreds and unusuable years ago.
- The one situation when we are closest to believing Indy might have finally bought the farm, the hat blows off his head...our subconscious says: "wow, his hat's gone...does that mean he really went over the cliff"
- Then, after we discover he has leaped off the tank at the last second...again, implausibly...a serendipitous gust of wind blows the hat right back to him.
Hat survives another day :: Indy survives another day