The turning point from idealistic Indy to rogue

Raiders90

Well-known member
A common complaint about the YIJC is that "Indy doesn't change from the idealistic kid to the rogue we see in the films" in the YIJC.

I believe, for one, we do see some evolution, the beginning of it. The YIJC cut off in 1920. The films pick up in 1935. A full fifteen years difference.

We know that in 1926, Indy had three major events happen:

1) He got married
2) His wife died
3) He had the turbulent affair with Marion, which cost him his close friendship with Abner, who was a father figure and mentor.

People say "Indy should've changed due to his War experiences." But I believe it was the events of 1926 that fully changed him, and I'll use my own personal experience to tell you why.

My mother was suffering from a terminal illness for years, by last summer she was dying and only a last minute operation saved her life. Thoroughout her decade long illness and the final end of it, where she was confused and unaware of herself a good deal of time, I didn't change. Nor did I change despite emotional and physical abuse, or other traumatic events.

Last year, I met and fell in love with a girl. We got engaged. We had a deep, soul binding connection, so intense it was beautiful. Despite having numerous women before her, many loves, I feel she and I are each other's soul mates. I understand her like no other, and we click amazingly well. But it was the classic case of the right couple meeting at the wrong time in our lives. For many reasons, I pushed her away, and I lost her last month. Given the way it ended, it could be forever, or it could be where we meet again in another ten years when we're ready for it, like Marion. That loss has changed me utterly, more than any other event in my life. It's changed my point of view on women, on relationships (where before I was Mr. Lover Boy, now I'm much more cold and casual about it all), on the future, on the idea of fate, even questioning the idea of God. It's transformed me utterly into a much more detached, much less emotional and mushy person.

Love alone did that. Heartbreak alone. Not traumatic life or death events. Not personal injury or scary happenings. Just pure heartbreak.

Maybe, in Indy's case, it was the same. As the films show us, Marion was Indy's "one". Perhaps the intensity of their affair, it's highly bitter and likely nasty end, combined with the death of his wife just months before, is what finally broke him and turned him into the Indy of the films.
 

kongisking

Active member
Raiders112390 said:
Maybe, in Indy's case, it was the same. As the films show us, Marion was Indy's "one". Perhaps the intensity of their affair, it's highly bitter and likely nasty end, combined with the death of his wife just months before, is what finally broke him and turned him into the Indy of the films.

It really is a sobering fact of life, how a single event can be enough to irrevocably break a person. And I do feel audiences often take for granted that fact, and unfairly find instances of it in fiction too unrealistic....when human beings are very emotionally fragile creatures. We really don't need much to shatter us forever. My sympathies for the broken heart, man. We all suffer it eventually...

I view Indy's arc throughout the whole franchise as one of 'regaining humanity': You go from Indy as idealistic kid; becomes disillusioned by both the Great War and the Marion debacle; Temple of Doom is him regaining some semblance of honor; Raiders is Indy still coming out of that phase and so still has some darkness left in him; Last Crusade, he's almost totally out of the woods and has regained his original motivation for collecting artifacts; and finally, Crystal Skull is the grand climax of his journey, finally reconciling with Marion, discovering a son, and he does what a proper husband/father should do: devotes himself to them for the rest of his life.

People may whine and moan about Indy becoming castrated by the sequels, but its really a well-done redemption story for the dude, if you think about it this way.
 

jsarino

New member
Great thoughts from both of you. :) You're right, Raiders112390, being in love and losing love can change you...so I totally understand what you're going through now.

I knew two people, one was an acquaintance, the other a friend. Both took their own lives due to losing their love...the pain was too much to bear. Not long after that, I fell in love with a woman who I thought was "the one", or my soulmate. I've dated a variety of girls/women along the way, but even before I dated this one, there was a special chemistry about us, an aura if you will (a number of random people have told us this), when we were together. We had everything that you could have in a relationship, and it was hard to keep us apart. But like many relationships, things went south, and she cheated on me. We broke up, but I didn't fully let her go, and oddly enough, neither did she. I became "the other guy" when she wasn't happy with her new beau. This dragged on for several months until one day, he finds out about us and proposed to her almost immediately. She says yes, and after she tells me, it was then that my heart really broke apart. I told her at that point that whatever chance we would be back together is gone for good. It was hard for me to say it, but I wanted to make clear that she can't go back to me anymore, and I needed to make the first steps of moving on.

Even when I did this, she still tried to seek me out for a number of years. Part of her conversation was her frustration with him, and she felt constricted with him. Eventually, she stopped trying to find me and I changed my number. A couple of years later I met someone else (I wasn't even looking, and she wasn't even in the same country...that's for another story :)), got married, and then raised a family. Once in awhile, as I write this now, I wonder how she's doing. I hope she's doing OK.

The point in my rambling is that don't let what happened with you pull you in. Yes, it's hard to move on, and yes, you will question everything from relationships to spirituality and everything in between. But know that you are a better man than this, and you will pull through...don't give up! What I like about the Indiana Jones films is not just the adventures, but his arc from the innocence of his youth, the Great War and relationships that changed him, and him coming full circle in the end.
 

Montana Smith

Active member
What is this, Colonel Jones' Lonely Hearts Club?

kongisking said:
...becomes disillusioned by both the Great War

That would be an ideal source for Indy's change of attitude, but there's no evidence for it in the TV series.

Though I don't take the TV series as evidence of anything about Indy's character. Can't see that show as anything more than a vehicle for edutainment with Indy as the tour guide.

Removing the YIJC completely from the canon makes it possible to assign the Great War as one of the factors that changed idealistic River Phoenix into thieving rogue Harrison Ford.

Yet there's a much simpler answer: George Lucas' desire to redeem his characters. The 'rogue as hero', otherwise labelled the 'popular anti-hero', is a character that seemed to disturb Lucas' sensibilities as he grew older (and more responsible?)

Or it's just Indy's love life.

tumblr_inline_mi59tuxQCp1qz4rgp.jpg
 

kongisking

Active member
Montana Smith said:
What is this, Colonel Jones' Lonely Hearts Club?

That would be an ideal source for Indy's change of attitude, but there's no evidence for it in the TV series.

Or it's just Indy's love life.

tumblr_inline_mi59tuxQCp1qz4rgp.jpg

Well, you kind of completely miss the point of the entire thread, Smiffy, that sometimes it takes just one especially devastating personal event to be the straw that breaks the camel's back. But then again, we all know you're vehemently adverse to the idea of Indiana Jones having franchise-wise character development, so...:rolleyes:
 

Montana Smith

Active member
kongisking said:
Well, you kind of completely miss the point of the entire thread, Smiffy, that sometimes it takes just one especially devastating personal event to be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

The point of this thread is to read into the character something that Lucas could not possibly have overtly intended. Nothing wrong with flights of fantasy, of course.


kongisking said:
But then again, we all know you're vehemently adverse to the idea of Indiana Jones having franchise-wise character development, so...:rolleyes:

You invent something that suits your interpretation, yet does not exist. Then dodge the lack of evidence for the Great War being a cause for Indy's disillusionment.

Indy has a character that develops over four films. The TV series is too random to be taken as a part of that development.

How does Kafka's Prague fit into the equation? Or the Halloween Dracula tale? Kafka's Prague is more allegorical (literally absurd to illustrate a specific point). Dracula is more like the writers taking a break from history to give the children a break.

And Indy opened a chain of burger restaurants? Nobody thought to send me the memo?
 
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kongisking

Active member
Montana Smith said:
The point of this thread is to read into the character something that Lucas could not possibly have overtly intended. Nothing wrong with flights of fantasy, of course.

Of course he didn't intend it at first. That's how series' work most of the time: making up crap as you go. I'm talking about a retrospective interpretation of the whole Indiana Jones series that reconciles the issues and makes a cohesive 'story' out of it all. Nothing wrong with that, and of course its not what Lucas planned. But its a very nice way to look at it.

Montana Smith said:
You invent something that suits your interpretation, yet does not exist. Then dodge the lack of evidence for the Great War being a cause for Indy's disillusionment.

I don't care if the show did or didn't properly explore or confirm Indy being made more cynical and selfish by the war. Again: I'm using Indy's presence in the war to aid the theory that, though the show didn't linger on it, I could understand those experiences shaking Indy somehow. War messes people up, Smiffy, you'd be inhuman to not be affected somehow by fighting in a conflict like that.

Then the Marion affair occurs...and it shatters him like an Etruscan vase. This is all interpreting certain elements to help form a proper 'arc' for Indy, to fix and reconcile the inconsistencies. I think you're taking my speculations too literally, is the problem.

Was it the quip about 'some people not appreciating his arc'? I admit, it was in reference to you, but it was meant to be kind of in good-natured jest. That said, I still think you're unfair to dislike the concept of Indy having any arc, as you've stated you would have preferred Indy be kept in perpetually anti-hero, roguish-treasure-hunter-mode because that's supposedly the character's appeal and should not be compromised.

That kind of thing annoys me, as an aspiring writer who cannot stand stagnation in series, with no growth or development or whatnot. It hamstrings creativity and making truly layered characters. The greatest enemy to fiction right now is Status Quo. Just one reason I completely dismiss fidelity to comic books, because comics are obsessed with keeping things stagnant while 'pretending' to progress with cheap deaths that are retconned three issues later...

Like it or not...but Indiana Jones, as a character, has grown and changed in characterization as the series went on. By the end of KOTCS...he's become a responsible husband and father, and I may be cynical in a lot of areas, but its really goddamn nice to see a character get a happy ending and become a better person every now and then.
 

jsarino

New member
kongisking said:
Like it or not...but Indiana Jones, as a character, has grown and changed in characterization as the series went on. By the end of KOTCS...he's become a responsible husband and father, and I may be cynical in a lot of areas, but its really goddamn nice to see a character get a happy ending and become a better person every now and then.

People may rag about KOTCS 'till they get blue in the face, but like you, I like the ending. It may seem anticlimactic after what happened for the bulk of the movie, but it was a nice coda to have him get married with Marion, and his new-found son Mutt watching on.
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
kongisking said:
I don't care if the show did or didn't properly explore or confirm Indy being made more cynical and selfish by the war. Again: I'm using Indy's presence in the war to aid the theory that, though the show didn't linger on it, I could understand those experiences shaking Indy somehow. War messes people up, Smiffy, you'd be inhuman to not be affected somehow by fighting in a conflict like that.

Montana's point, I believe, is that the post-war installments of Young Indy, particular the comedy-heavy American ones, don't show an Indy who is particular disillusioned or, especially, mercenary. Indeed, he gives up a treasure hunt in favor of studying serious archaeology, contrary to the position we see him take in 1935.
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Attila the Professor said:
Montana's point, I believe, is that the post-war installments of Young Indy, particular the comedy-heavy American ones, don't show an Indy who is particular disillusioned or, especially, mercenary. Indeed, he gives up a treasure hunt in favor of studying serious archaeology, contrary to the position we see him take in 1935.

Yes, exactly my point.

kongisking said:
War messes people up, Smiffy, you'd be inhuman to not be affected somehow by fighting in a conflict like that.

It doesn't mess everyone up. Some people volunteer and thrive on the danger and the very fight itself. Such as Indy, who was reckless by nature. He wasn't 'messed up' to prevent him from becoming a Colonel and serving in the Second World War with the OSS.

kongisking said:
Like it or not...but Indiana Jones, as a character, has grown and changed in characterization as the series went on. By the end of KOTCS...he's become a responsible husband and father, and I may be cynical in a lot of areas, but its really goddamn nice to see a character get a happy ending and become a better person every now and then.

And having gone through another war he wasn't particularly messed up in KOTCS either. On the contrary he was that "better person" getting his happy endings.

kongisking said:
Was it the quip about 'some people not appreciating his arc'? I admit, it was in reference to you, but it was meant to be kind of in good-natured jest. That said, I still think you're unfair to dislike the concept of Indy having any arc, as you've stated you would have preferred Indy be kept in perpetually anti-hero, roguish-treasure-hunter-mode because that's supposedly the character's appeal and should not be compromised.

People change and lapse throughout life. Not everything is a perfect 'arc'. Indy experiences a personal revelation in India, but it doesn't prevent him from going back to his old ways the following year.

The "roguish treasure-hunter" is the character Lucas created to re-interpret stories from an earlier time. The more conventionally positive (or heroic) Indy is the character Lucas created to employ in his TV series. I don't see them as one and the same. The series is parabolic in nature.

kongisking said:
That kind of thing annoys me, as an aspiring writer who cannot stand stagnation in series, with no growth or development or whatnot. It hamstrings creativity and making truly layered characters. The greatest enemy to fiction right now is Status Quo.

You are so desperate for a fifth film, yet it's the "growth" and "development" of Indy's character by the fourth one that largely "hamstrings" the likelihood of the fifth one. Sure, there could be some National Treasure type story, but it's not in the spirit or the style that the character was invented for. And, by this time, Indy would be such a changed and reformed character that what's the point of employing him again? Anyone could fill that role, and they needn't be called 'Indiana Jones'. They could also be younger which would permit them to get involved first hand with the chaos that normally ensues in these stories.

KOTCS was the end. You wanted an arc and Lucas gave you one. He'd already ended Indy's story in 1989 with the riding off into the sunset motif upon finding connection and peace with his father, and realizing that the prize had a value greater than that of prestige or money.
 
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