When they created the character, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg saw the Indiana Jones series as, broadly speaking, their answer to James Bond. In the late 70s, Spielberg had even badly wanted to direct an actual James Bond movie, but was not considered experienced enough a film maker. (Ironically, he'd probably be unaffordable today.)
Like Bond, the original template for an Indy movie was that it would be a self-contained adventure. The man in the hat would be the constant, but his love interest, prize, allies, enemies and geography would change with each outing.
If you consider only Raiders of the Lost Ark and Temple of Doom, you get an idea of how the series might have gone had the Beards stuck to this pattern. However, they veered away from this, apparently for two reasons:
1) Spielberg was sensitive to the Temple of Doom backlash and reactively sought to make the third film a "return to form."
2) The frequency of the installments was slow and Spielberg was pursuing other genres. Therefore, he and Lucas approached the third film as a finale of what was now by consequence a trilogy, and that certainly colored the approach to the material. There's an effort to make things come full circle and complete a nice little package.
The result is that the films became a little bit more connected, a little bit more parts of a saga, than was probably originally intended. Last Crusade de-mystified and domesticated the character and retroactively turned elements of Raiders into series staples.
A tidy and on-the-nose (he's literally a boyscout) backstory for Indy was invented that explained his accessories, characters were reprised (Marcus and Sallah), Indy was back fighting Nazis in the desert, the artifiact was once more rooted in Christian mythology, etc. Even super-specific stuff like the cut to Indy's college after the prologue and the font of the credits became motifs. Now granted, Bond isn't completely void of mythos and you've got your mainstays like M, Q, Moneypenny etc. but by and large Last Crusade deviated the series significantly enough into a larger saga, and causes it to occupy a middle ground between Bond and something hyper-seralized like say, Lord of the Rings.
You could argue that Indy 4 was a little less concerned than Last Crusade about retreading what came before, but the 50s angle aside I'm not so sure - from Marshall College to the reprise of Marion to the reference to dead characters to the myriad of callbacks, it might be the least independent of any of the installments.
So, to the point of thread: what if that wouldn't have happened, and the series had remained in the direction it was still headed in the early 80s? What sort of adventures might we have seen had Lucas/Spielberg had more confidence and had reliably put out an Indy movie every three years after Raiders? What other antecedents could have been used as influences after Sierra Madre, Casablanca, and Gunga Din? The 30s would have continued to be a rich backstrop for compelling artifacts, villains and mythologies. And of course, the 40s would have allowed us all of Indy's WWII adventures, a super fertile stretch in the character's history that I still hope an animated series could cover some day.
Whatcha got?
Like Bond, the original template for an Indy movie was that it would be a self-contained adventure. The man in the hat would be the constant, but his love interest, prize, allies, enemies and geography would change with each outing.
If you consider only Raiders of the Lost Ark and Temple of Doom, you get an idea of how the series might have gone had the Beards stuck to this pattern. However, they veered away from this, apparently for two reasons:
1) Spielberg was sensitive to the Temple of Doom backlash and reactively sought to make the third film a "return to form."
2) The frequency of the installments was slow and Spielberg was pursuing other genres. Therefore, he and Lucas approached the third film as a finale of what was now by consequence a trilogy, and that certainly colored the approach to the material. There's an effort to make things come full circle and complete a nice little package.
The result is that the films became a little bit more connected, a little bit more parts of a saga, than was probably originally intended. Last Crusade de-mystified and domesticated the character and retroactively turned elements of Raiders into series staples.
A tidy and on-the-nose (he's literally a boyscout) backstory for Indy was invented that explained his accessories, characters were reprised (Marcus and Sallah), Indy was back fighting Nazis in the desert, the artifiact was once more rooted in Christian mythology, etc. Even super-specific stuff like the cut to Indy's college after the prologue and the font of the credits became motifs. Now granted, Bond isn't completely void of mythos and you've got your mainstays like M, Q, Moneypenny etc. but by and large Last Crusade deviated the series significantly enough into a larger saga, and causes it to occupy a middle ground between Bond and something hyper-seralized like say, Lord of the Rings.
You could argue that Indy 4 was a little less concerned than Last Crusade about retreading what came before, but the 50s angle aside I'm not so sure - from Marshall College to the reprise of Marion to the reference to dead characters to the myriad of callbacks, it might be the least independent of any of the installments.
So, to the point of thread: what if that wouldn't have happened, and the series had remained in the direction it was still headed in the early 80s? What sort of adventures might we have seen had Lucas/Spielberg had more confidence and had reliably put out an Indy movie every three years after Raiders? What other antecedents could have been used as influences after Sierra Madre, Casablanca, and Gunga Din? The 30s would have continued to be a rich backstrop for compelling artifacts, villains and mythologies. And of course, the 40s would have allowed us all of Indy's WWII adventures, a super fertile stretch in the character's history that I still hope an animated series could cover some day.
Whatcha got?
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