Darth Vile said:
Not sure I agree. As I see it, the biggest potential consequence (as fitting for an Indy movie and his character) is that he losses his job and his academic reputation is sullied. I’m not sure what other consequences would be appropriate. Imprisonment perhaps? Possibly – but that would take the movie down a different road completely. My simplistic reading of that plot/story strand, was simply that the Feds forced his dismissal from his teaching post. Without any family (or so he thinks), he feels dysfunctional and has nothing left to stay around for.
I don't know what consequences the movie could have cooked up, but they might have started with: anything. If the FBI really did think Indy was in cahoots with the Russians, taking away his job would hardly be where they'd stop. Why not have the Feds keep an eye on him somehow, like maybe by having an agent tailing him and Mutt in Peru? (What does Indy do, after all, but meet up with the Commies again?) Or maybe Mac could have turned out, in a final revelation, to have been working for the government all along, and informing Indy that he would be cleared? (At least that alternative fate for Mac would have been in service to the story and not just have just felt like a lame ripoff of Elsa's demise.)
Now, you could argue that such developments would have made for unnecessary additions to the plot, and maybe I don't disagree, but the thing is you don't introduce something with the weight that the interrogation scene does and not follow through with it. Simply showing Indy getting fired would have satisfied all of main ideas the movie ultimately was trying to. The fact that the interrogation scene has that "punch" that James points out it feel like it was setting up more of a purpose than it ultimately did. Either fulfill the promise implicit with the scene, or lose it altogether.
Darth Vile said:
But isn’t an Indiana Jones movie “episodic” by it's nature? The movies always start with the last reel of the previous adventure. So when I state that KOTCS has a "good flow", I mean within context of how an Indy movie works. I do understand what you mean when you reference the cemetery scene… but I think that’s comparable to Venice – Austria – Berlin (TLC), or even US – Nepal – Cairo (ROTLA). Besides, there has to be an opportunity in the movie to show the map and the red line…
True, an Indiana Jones movie is by nature more episodic than most, but Indy4 takes the concept to new heights. I don't agree with the examples you cite from the previous movies, which leads me to believe you don't really understand what I mean. Indy knows where The Raven is Nepal to meet Marion, and where the Cairo marketplace is. Why does he know where Chaucilla Cemetery is, and how did he and Mutt get there? I don't consider these details unnecessary or not worth showing. They're in a foreign land, being tracked by the Soviets, and are headed to a destination that isn't exactly a hop skip and a jump from the market. Give us even a few seconds of showing their journey rather than cutting straight to the CGI helicopter shot just to show us how cool it is that you can cut from the scratch outline to the identical structure of the actual cemetery from overhead.
At the end of the prison cell scene, Indy has Mutt sweep the floor and uncover a sort of schematic of Chaucilla Cemetery that Ox had somehow etched into the floor. Indy explains by telling Mutt that the scratches represent the cemetery where Orellana was buried to which Mutt responds, "I thought you said Orellana disappeared and no one found his grave?" to which Indy shoots back, "Well, it looks like Harold Oxley did."
That last line is delivered like it's supposed to have some kind of impact, or serve as a "Aha!" moment, but instead it's just confusing, with the audience thinking... "Uh, you didn't really answer Mutt's question." Not only were we not given a clear idea of how Indy can recognize the cemetery based on the scratchings, we also don't see how he can put two and two together that it being the resting place of the conquistadors is what Ox was trying to tell him. Yes, in retrospect I can easily buy the fact that Indy, being an archaeologist, would easily recognize the distinctive layout of Chauchilla, and I can also accept that the missing information was probably in a segment of Oxley's riddle that we're never made privy to. The problem is that this is not the sort of thing we should only be able to figure out during the car ride home. We're simply not given enough information and the movie loses us, not because it's being clever, but because simply of bad writing.
More infuriating than the fact that this little lead-in to the graveyard didn't work was the fact that if it
was handled correctly, it would have made for a great little detective bit. The movie sets up a mystery that a bunch of Spaniards were buried in an Indian cemetery for inexplicable reasons, and then at the end of the graveyard scene we learn why. The thing is, the mystery is not properly set up in the first place. In Indy's crypt speech we essentially learn the setup and the explanation for the burial mystery at the same time, defeating the whole point. Overall, the bit in the cell just struck me as a scene that was like "Yeah, just go with this, even if it doesn't make any sense."
That contributes to the sequence's irritating "episodic" feel more than anything. Since the movie doesn't bother to let us in on what's going on, we're left with watching characters hopping to a bunch of faraway locations without really caring why. We knew exactly why Indy had to go from Nepal to Cairo, and from Venice to Brunwald. We're not involved with Indy and Mutt's quest because we're not sure what the hell it even is.
Darth Vile said:
It’s certainly one of the wordier expositional scenes. And as much as I enjoy that whole segment, if I were looking to trim a couple of minutes of exposition from KOTCS, it would have been there (to be replaced with some form of booby trap). And again as a comparison, I would compare that particular scene to the catacombs (TLC) i.e. largely perfunctory, but interesting nonetheless.
Again, I really don't agree with your "mirror scenes" from the other movies. When Indy and Elsa reached Sir Richard's Tomb, it didn't turn out that he was buried with the tablet behind his head, which was found and taken oh and then brought back and also the knights were buried there and not somewhere else because they killed each other off on the way back to their homeland but you see these other people found them and buried them in their own cemetery but you see they didn't take the loot because that wasn't important anditreallymakessenseifyouthinkaboutit.
I don't think that "perfunctory" even begins to describe the cemetery scene as a whole, but, well, let's save that.