Darth Vile said:
The whole ?daughter? thing seems quite twee to me. I?m not sure what mileage that dynamic would have in it (unless they went the ?True Grit? route).
That criticism probably comes from the canon-is-everything crowd, who all remember that Old Indy had a daughter in the bookend scenes of the Young Indy show. While I think better work could have been done with a daughter (it's a little less trite, a little less played out, a little more surprising), it's not a huge problem for me. Indy can certainly still have a daughter later in his life (although he's already pushin' 60 in KotCS. He better get to work makin' that baby.)
at least the ?Indy turning into his father? idea is worthy of exploration (which I agree was not realised to nearly enough of it?s potential).
This is one thing I just couldn't disagree with more. I've seen it said by just about everyone who likes Mutt and the Mutt/Indy relationship (which seems to be the basic dividing line between those who liked KotCS and those who didn't), including (naturally) Lucas and Spielberg and probably McCallum and probably even Ford. (Interestingly, I think I read that Shia thought Indy should have had a daughter. He's a smart man, that Shia. Still don't like any of his acting.)
But I just find that argument all kinds of illogical. It doesn't make SENSE for Indy to turn into his father. The reason it fell so flat to so many of us is that it was just a weird dynamic. Henry Jones, Sr. became the man he was in Last Crusade by being that same man for all of his life. He was immersed in his work, but he was no globetrotting adventurer. He was a globetrotting lecturer, a globetrotting researcher. That's why he was still very much a researcher in Last Crusade. He'd never been anything else.
Why would Indiana turn into his father? Indiana, who lived probably the most exciting life that is even possible to live--a life probably more exciting and exhilarating than the life of Jesus (even if you take the New Testament completely literally)--has no reason at all to become a stuffy, doddering old curmudgeon. Indiana Jones does not grow up to be one of those "damn kids with their loud rockityroll music and the rassin frassin" guys who mows his lawn every other day.
sandiegojones said:
They gave Indy a son to show how we become like our fathers as we get older no matter how hard we try not to.
The thing is...we don't. At least, not all of us. Probably not even most of us. My dad certainly has a few characteristics of his father, but not very many. He's a different man. And my oldest brother, the closest in the family to reaching the "real adult" stage of life, is not turning out much like our father. All three of us brothers have our similarities to the man, but my older brother is a poet and an editor at McSweeney's. I'm a social worker and a comedian. My younger brother is in film school. Meanwhile, my dad's been a union lawyer literally his entire professional life. We don't all turn into our fathers. And it's not even because we don't want to. I wouldn't mind turning into my father at all--he's a great man and I respect him intensely. But I just am not him. And Indiana Jones is not Henry Jones, Sr.
Another frustrating aspect of the Mutt/Indy relationship: at the outset of their working relationship, Indy doesn't know that Mutt is his boy. Mutt's just another kid. Yet he treats him
much differently than he treated, say, Short Round. As far as Indy knows, Mutt is just another youthful sidekick. Indy never met a sidekick he didn't like. He included Short Round, and Short Round become an integral part of the Indiana Jones Team (or duo, what-have-you.) But for some reason Indy treats Mutt like he's a syphilitic punk rocker brandishing his schwanz?
Finally, once Indy
did discover that Mutt was his son, why did he keep him at arm's length for so long. Yes, he wanted to protect the boy, and he did acknowledge that the boy was his (kind of too quickly, actually), but he didn't really try to open up any sort of relationship with him until much later. He didn't try to talk to the kid about it. Indy, at least as I see him, is very self-aware. The depth with which he was able to speak about his daddy issue in Last Crusade isn't something you generally see. He strikes me as the kind of person who, upon discovering that he had a teenaged son he'd never known, would make every immediate effort to reach out to the son, and to connect with him, to give the son the father he deserved, and the father that Indy himself hadn't had until he was almost 40.
sandiegojones said:
Like it or not, Harrison Ford is a lot older and having Mutt in the film made sense as a way to get Marion back into the series
The Darabont draft had Marion in it. And it didn't have Mutt in it.
Also, Shia just isn't that good of an actor, and if he would have been cut from the film, it would have been leaner and meaner. Indy also could have had more to do. Indy's son or not, a sidekick is a sidekick, and this was billed as an Indiana Jones movie, not "The Jones Family!" It seems like everything great about that old Raiders story conference transcript has been lost on the older versions of Spielberg and Lucas. You don't just put in whatever you want. You have to make a
good movie. Imagine if they'd made Raiders the way they clearly made Kingdom: we would have had a dogfight, and a mine cart chase scene, and an exploding island, and all manner of stuff that just didn't belong in that particular film.
Basically, someone needs to take George and Steven aside and do what Rick Rubin did for Metallica: put them back in the mindset they were in when they first started making this stuff, and get them to make a movie for an audience that is not already invested in them, is not going to buy whatever they sell on blind faith, and needs proof that a film is worth paying for. That concept produced the best Metallica album in over 20 years. It could produce a very lean, mean, excellent Indiana Jones 5. (And Star Wars 7-9, based on the Zahn trilogy. Just sayin'.)
You've been a wonderful audience, I'm outta here! I'm gonna go watch Indy 4 again for the first time since I saw it in theaters. Maybe Mutt isn't as bad as I remember.
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