"What kind of corn soldiers are you?" "Colonels."

Kooshmeister

New member
Colonels, colonels, colonels. Why are there so many evil colonels in the Indiana Jones universe? Raiders gives us Colonel Herman Dietrich (plus good guy Colonel Musgrove). In Last Crusade we get Colonel Ernst Vogel. In Crystal Skull, not only do we get Colonel Antonin Dovchenko but also Irina Spalko is a colonel in addition to being a doctor. Then in the comics, novels and games there's colonels comin' outta the darn woodwork...

Colonel Abrecht Von Beck
Colonel Franz Kroeger
Colonel Curt Johan Vogel (Ernst Vogel's brother maybe?)
Colonel Klaus Kerner

There's a couple of majors (Toht and Gobler) and a few other random officers (Captain Mohler and "Lieutenant Belzig" in Raiders), but for the most part, all the main German and Russian officers are colonels. Is this all some astounding cosmic coincidence, or do the various screenwriters and book authors honestly not know of ranks higher than a colonel?
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
I think it's just a general trope of movies and what not that the highest you go go with a military character who you're going to kill off is a colonel, should you be working in a vaguely historical period. Colonels give you the most powerful bang while still avoiding going into the territory of generals.
 

Stoo

Well-known member
emtiem said:
And what rank did Dr Jones himself reach....?
COLONEL!:gun:
Attila the Professor said:
Colonels give you the most powerful bang while still avoiding going into the territory of generals.
Precisely. They also are high enough to be somewhat "in the know" while still being close enough to the action.

More additions for the list:
Colonel Pernod (Congo, January 1917/Oganga, The Giver and Taker of Life)
Colonel Waters (Transylvania, January 1918/The Masks of Evil)
Lt. Colonel Bourchier (Palestine, October 1917/Daredevils of the Desert)
 

Kooshmeister

New member
Lao_Che said:
Debatable ;)

He's an American army colonel and does nothing particularly villainous except renege on the deal he made with Brody, and that was probably only because something as powerful as the Ark should be locked away for eternity, because like Sallah says, man was not meant to find it or meddle with it. Whether Musgrove and Eaton believed in the Ark's powers is beside the point. They came across as being "better safe than sorry" types.

So Musgrove falls under the heading of "good guy" for me. Besides, it was Eaton who was the rude jerk.
 

Lao_Che

Active member
Kooshmeister said:
He's an American army colonel and does nothing particularly villainous except renege on the deal he made with Brody, and that was probably only because something as powerful as the Ark should be locked away for eternity, because like Sallah says, man was not meant to find it or meddle with it. Whether Musgrove and Eaton believed in the Ark's powers is beside the point. They came across as being "better safe than sorry" types.

So Musgrove falls under the heading of "good guy" for me. Besides, it was Eaton who was the rude jerk.

The US government isn't exactly presented in a positive light in Raiders or KotCS: "Bureaucratic fools". Musgrove's not just silently allowing a man he outranks to go back on a deal, he's assisting in the cover up of an object of major religious significance.
 

Kooshmeister

New member
True, but as I said, I think they believed Indy's story and knew what the Ark was capable of. Why else would they renege on their deal? Indy calls them bureaucratic fools and says the "don't know what they've got." I believe the exact opposite. I believe they knew exactly what they had.

I know that words like "coverup" carry some nasty connotations, and that it's easy to perceive people who want to "hide the truth" as being villainous, and the script certainly wants us to side with Indy on the issue, but honestly, regardless of their reasons I think Musgrove and Eaton made the right call.

It's something dangerous and destructive and best kept away from those who might misuse it. Or, anyone, really, considering that just looking at it when it's opened will kill you. Thus any scientists trying to study it would die horrible deaths. So how Marcus expected to "research" it is beyond me.
 
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