The Globetrotting Indiana Jones?

There was an interesting subject raised over in the Indy V is in China??? thread. To whit:

Sakis said:

I don't mind Indy V taking place in China as long as it is not confined only there. I'm much into a story that spreads around the globe like Last Crusade did.

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Le Saboteur said:

Where did this misconception begin? Was it the books? The video games? Somebody somewhere started to string together locales that have zero historical relation and this idea that every Indy adventure spans the globe stuck.

Just because Santa Fe!, Lagos!, Bucharest!, Kuala Lumpur! sounds cool, they bear no relation to each other. Any story you hang onto that framework is already contrived and ill-fitting. If the story centers around Chinese history or a Chinese artifact, then the locale is going to need to be fixed to Southeast Asia.

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I think it's a fascinating question. To what extent do we as an audience seem to require an Indy who is going all over the place on his adventures. Let's do some tallying.

Raiders: Peru-American Northeast-Nepal-Egypt-Mediterranean Island-DC
Temple: Shanghai-India
Crusade: American Southwest-Atlantic Ocean-American Northeast-Venice-Austria-Germany-Somewhere in Southeastern Europe-Hatay(Turkey)
Kingdom: American Southwest-American Northeast-Peru-Brazil

So that's 6 locales for Raiders, 2 for Temple, 8 for Crusade, and 4 for Kingdom. (And, please, disagree with me on these numbers, if you like; that's part of the fun.)

Now let's look at the major games.

Fate of Atlantis: American Northeast-Iceland-Tikal-Azores-Algeria-Monte Carlo-Crete-Thera-Atlantis
Desktop Adventures: The American/Mexican Southwest
Infernal Machine: American Southwest-Iraq-Kazakhstan-Philippines-Mexico-Atlantic Ocean-Sudan-Iraq/Aetherium (I'm excluding the bonus level)
Emperor's Tomb: Ceylon-American Northeast-Prague-Istanbul-China
Staff of Kings: Sudan-San Francisco-Panama-Istanbul-Nepal (Are these really the only places it goes to? I need to finish that game)

So that's 9 for Fate of Atlantis, 1 for Desktop Adventures, 8 for Infernal Machine, 5 for Emperor's Tomb, and (apparently) 5 for Staff of Kings.

We can bring the novels into this later, and maybe even the comics.

If we take my numbers as having any level of accuracy - let's say they do for now - the average number of locales in the films is 5. (Obviously, the big complicating factor here is my counting Austria and Germany as separate places, plus the five minutes or so spent in an unknown European nation during the chase sequence.)

For the games, the average is 5.6 locales. If we omit Desktop Adventures, it's 6.75.

The average of both, even if it might be silly to compare the two, is 5.33. Omitting Desktop Adventures, it's 5.875.

Now, a few things. The globe-trotting tendency is possibly easiest to look at in the games. Fate of Atlantis is the best of the bunch, and yet it had the most locales. Still, the graphic adventure is a different form than what we get in the latter three games; the Azores only has one screen worth of material, while Tikal and Iceland have just two each.

Infernal Machine, I would argue, is a considerably stronger game than Emperor's Tomb, especially in terms of its story. It creates actual reasons for Indy to go off to each new locale in the game, and actually offers some unusual choices. Frankly, until typing it out, I didn't realize how esoteric some of the choices are, in light of the fact that the two games after it both see fit to take us to Istanbul. (Istanbul is great, but come up with something else next time.) More than the choices of places, though, it's that the traditional video game plotting of "collecting these things!" actually works in this context, as each environ and each machine part is treated differently enough and with enough depth that it doesn't seem half-done.

Emperor's Tomb, on the other hand, even though more than half of it takes place in China (albeit all over China), feels much more guilty of just sending Indiana Jones to whatever place it feels like and putting a plot coupon there. We <I>never</I> receive any reason why there are parts of the Heart of the Dragon in Ceylon, Prague, and Istanbul, and as a result, these sections of the game, despite being rather strong as far as the gameplay is concerned, have no real reason for being. I haven't finished Staff of Kings, so I'll leave it to others to comment on it.

Perhaps the biggest lesson on the table is that they don't need to be globe-trotting adventures. The first two films use their primary locales - Egypt and India - both thoroughly and well. Even Emperor's Tomb does some nice, sustained work on China, despite its total botching of the tomb itself.

And, of course, there are the things that are concealed when we begin counting, such as the fact that the entire latter two-thirds of Fate of Atlantis is in the Mediterranean, and that the majority of Last Crusade is in Europe, no broader an area than Emperor's Tomb covers in its China.

Finally: can we please drop the American Southwest? With four entries, it is the most common locale on the list after the Northeast.

I'm with Sakis...Indy needs to travel. I think there should be one place that it featured without a doubt, but theres too much fun to be had with different cultures/geographic features.

Rocket Surgeon said:

I'm with Sakis...Indy needs to travel. I think there should be one place that it featured without a doubt, but theres too much fun to be had with different cultures/geographic features.

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I agree with you, Rocko.
I find it fun and fascinating to watch Indy travel to different locations around the globe. I like to see different things and places within the span of the adventure.

So say the Raiders fan and the Temple fan.

Nah, I kid. I agree with you, but note the caveat: "there should be one place that it featured without a doubt."

And Le Saboteur's concern is a good one. One line I meant to include in my original post is that the "look how many places he goes!" motif is, like "temple collapse climax!" a trope that Last Crusade seems to have introduced at full strength, later to be codified by the subsequent video games. It's stunning, from this perspective, that Crystal Skull managed to stay solely in the Americas. (Of course, Raiders was originally going to go to Shanghai too, so this is sort of another of those later tendencies that was introduced in the story sessions.)

It's the need for an organic connection of parts. Not only did Infernal Machine actually take some time to explain why each place was included, but it was organic to the mythos in question, that of the Tower of Babel. Last Crusade got that right too; Venice makes a lot of sense as a place for a knight returning from the Holy Land to come through, as does the mentioned but unseen mountains north of Ankara.

I guess I'd like to see Le Saboteur elaborate on which materials are offending, or whether it's mostly "Hey, wouldn't it be cool!" conversations that pop up here. Emperor's Tomb certainly irks me for this reason, and I'm guessing that Staff of Kings will too, once I'm through with it.

It began before Raiders. It was Bond who so often travelled to exotic places, and who played a part in the creation of Indy. Raiders is like a compilation of interlinked episodic mini-films. Several Bonds put together, until Bond himself made multiple trips in a single movie.

GEORGE LUCAS: Or it's James Bond and it takes place in the thirties.

GEORGE LUCAS: I've been trying to move him around the world a little bit to see if we can't get a little Oriental influence into it just for the fun of it. I may have fit it in. The fun thing is, he's a soldier of fortune, so we can move him into any sort of exotic thirties environment we want to.

GEORGE LUCAS: The only reason we're talking about the Orient is that it's exotic. He's going to leave Washington and go to three exotic places. He'll go to the Orient with the crowded streets and dragon ladies. Then we send him to the Himalayas, with the snow. And then we send him to Cairo. Going from the Himalayas to Cairo he would be going over water.

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Attila the Professor said:

So say the Raiders fan and the Temple fan.

Nah, I kid. I agree with you, but note the caveat: "there should be one place that it featured without a doubt."

And Le Saboteur's concern is a good one. One line I meant to include in my original post is that the "look how many places he goes!" motif is, like "temple collapse climax!" a trope that Last Crusade seems to have introduced at full strength, later to be codified by the subsequent video games. It's stunning, from this perspective, that Crystal Skull managed to stay solely in the Americas. (Of course, Raiders was originally going to go to Shanghai too, so this is sort of another of those later tendencies that was introduced in the story sessions.)

It's the need for an organic connection of parts. Not only did Infernal Machine actually take some time to explain why each place was included, but it was organic to the mythos in question, that of the Tower of Babel. Last Crusade got that right too; Venice makes a lot of sense as a place for a knight returning from the Holy Land to come through, as does the mentioned but unseen mountains north of Ankara.

I guess I'd like to see Le Saboteur elaborate on which materials are offending, or whether it's mostly "Hey, wouldn't it be cool!" conversations that pop up here. Emperor's Tomb certainly irks me for this reason, and I'm guessing that Staff of Kings will too, once I'm through with it.

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I agree with you that Emperor's Tomb did the globe trotting thing in a silly way. They never give a reason why places like Ceylon, Prague and Istanbul would contain pieces to an ancient Chinese artifact at a time when China would have no contact with any of those other parts of the world. Raiders and Crusade feature the most "globetrotting" but all of the locals fit into the story nicely. I never played Infernal Machine but it does seem like some of the locals would be hard to tie in with Mesopotamia. Many of the places such as Mexico and the Philippines had no contact with Mesopotamia at that time. I know unlike Emperor's Tomb they tried to explain why but it still seems a little silly.

I know you haven't finished Staff of Kings yet but that game is by far the worst offender. Not only does it feature artifacts in places they wouldn't be but it also moves entire cultures to new countries. Having the Mayan civilization featured in Panama is just terrible. Why not just feature that part of the story in another Central American country where the Mayan civilization actually existed? Nothing about the story demands that it be Panama, such as the Panama Canal playing a roll in the story or something like that.

Attila the Professor said:

We can bring the novels into this later

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I summed up the McCoy books here. The perpetual motion in Secret of the Sphinx got a little absurd, in my opinion.

Lintong village, China. Hike to Mount Hua, Shaanxi Province, China. Car to Luchow, China. Freighter, lifeboat, junk to Lazarus Island off China. Plane to Calcutta, India. Train to Indus River, Pakistan. Plane to Tigris River, Iraq. Motorcycle to Lalesh, Iraq. Motorcycle to Cairo, Egypt. Car to Giza, Egypt. Car to Cairo, Egypt. Plane to Princeton, New Jersey. Plane to British Honduras. Plane to Princeton, New Jersey.

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Le Saboteur said:

Sakis said:

I'm much into a story that spreads around the globe like Last Crusade did.

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Emphasis added. Where did this misconception begin? Was it the books? The video games? Somebody somewhere started to string together locales that have zero historical relation and this idea that every Indy adventure spans the globe stuck.

Just because Santa Fe!, Lagos!, Bucharest!, Kuala Lumpur! sounds cool, they bear no relation to each other. Any story you hang onto that framework is already contrived and ill-fitting. If the story centers around Chinese history or a Chinese artifact, then the locale is going to need to be fixed to Southeast Asia.

Click to expand...

Globe-trotting was the initial concept of Indiana Jones. Remember that in the original Raiders script Indy had to go after the Headpiece to the Staff of Ra which was broken in two pieces? Remember the General Hok story that was cut down to budgetary constrains? (Maybe they could use it this time.) After that Indy went to Nepal and then to Egypt.

The same pattern was followed in Last Crusade, before Indy went to Hatay for the Grail he went to Venice for Sir Richard's shield and then to Germany for the Grail Diary. Where is the relation in both cases?

Indy is an archaeologist and he has to follow his leads to discover his artifacts, that's the beauty of it, the search around the world. Two of the films in the franchise that had this element were hailed by audiences while the other two that lacked this element have been considered as the weaker in the chain. Coincidence? I don't think so.

Sakis said:

Globe-trotting was the initial concept of Indiana Jones. Remember that in the original Raiders script Indy had to go after the Headpiece to the Staff of Ra which was broken in two pieces? Remember the General Hok story that was cut down to budgetary constrains? (Maybe they could use it this time.) After that Indy went to Nepal and then to Egypt.

The same pattern was followed in Last Crusade, before Indy went to Hatay for the Grail he went to Venice for Sir Richard's shield and then to Germany for the Grail Diary. Where is the relation in both cases?

Indy is an archaeologist and he has to follow his leads to discover his artifacts, that's the beauty of it, the search around the world. Two of the films in the franchise that had this element were hailed by audiences while the other two that lacked this element have been considered as the weaker in the chain. Coincidence? I don't think so.

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I don't think it's the number of countries involved as much as getting Indy away from his college. Even getting him down into the US south west at the start of KOTCS is a long journey in European terms.

Lucas' original intention was to show the "exotic", but that's subjective depending where in the world the audience is.

As you mention, China was the leftover location from Raiders, so it becomes the first point of Indy's journey in TOD.

TOD and KOTCS are different kinds of stories to ROTLA and TLC, in that there was no mystery involved in the location of the artifact. They didn't require globetrotting. I think it worked fine in TOD, but was much more forced in KOTCS.

Hence, I think in general terms Indy works better when he's following a trail of clues. China is an enormous country, so such a trail could take place just within its own borders. (Just as a similar Hitchcockian styled story could take place with the borders of USA).

Montana Smith said:

Hence, I think in general terms Indy works better when he's following a trail of clues. China is an enormous country, so such a trail could take place just within its own borders. (Just as a similar Hitchcockian styled story could take place with the borders of USA).

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The trail of clues is great, otherwise that's what we got in Skull...the first half was North America, the second half South America...and it was boring.

Like going to a Chinese Restaurant and just eating white rice...

We didn't see Indy travel to San Fransisce, but the sequence, however short was a nice addition. I wan to see him in some more exotic locales, I want to be taken to unexpected places on the map, I want a hamberger, no a cheese burger...

We knew Indy was going to Cario, but Indy planted that simple thought with the line: "I think I know where to start."

Even in the 50's travel takes time and there are so many place Indy hasn't gone...time to get back to it, embrace it.

Rocket Surgeon said:

The trail of clues is great, otherwise that's what we got in Skull...the first half was North America, the second half South America...and it was boring.

Like going to a Chinese Restaurant and just eating white rice...

We didn't see Indy travel to San Fransisce, but the sequence, however short was a nice addition. I wan to see him in some more exotic locales, I want to be taken to unexpected places on the map, I want a hamberger, no a cheese burger...

We knew Indy was going to Cario, but Indy planted that simple thought with the line: "I think I know where to start."

Even in the 50's travel takes time and there are so many place Indy hasn't gone...time to get back to it, embrace it.

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And there were still places with head hunters and cannibals - people still not discovered by the outside world. Indiana Jones and the Cannibal Holocaust.

Rocket Surgeon said:

The trail of clues is great, otherwise that's what we got in Skull...the first half was North America, the second half South America...and it was boring.

Like going to a Chinese Restaurant and just eating white rice...

We didn't see Indy travel to San Fransisce, but the sequence, however short was a nice addition. I wan to see him in some more exotic locales, I want to be taken to unexpected places on the map, I want a hamberger, no a cheese burger...

We knew Indy was going to Cario, but Indy planted that simple thought with the line: "I think I know where to start."

Even in the 50's travel takes time and there are so many place Indy hasn't gone...time to get back to it, embrace it.

Click to expand...

Attila the Professor said:

I think it's a fascinating question. To what extent do we as an audience seem to require an Indy who is going all over the place on his adventures? Let's do some tallying.

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I a.) just noticed this thread, b.) am not surprised that it went virtually nowhere, and c.) am surprised that Attila thought enough of anything I've said to start a thread.

Given the lateness of the hour, I'll attempt to brief. The movies generally got it right; despite all of the hand wringing, all of the bits left on the proverbial cutting room floor were left out for a reason. This includes the sequence in General Hok's stronghold. Had it been shot and included, I don't believe we'd be speaking about Raiders in the same tone today. No, probably not.

The diversion to Nepal and The Raven was well focused. It set up Marion's character and established her relationship with Indy in just a few minutes. In short, it was integral to the story. The General Hok sequence was a diversion; exotic hokum simply for the sake of... well, flavor. (Que sabor!) Yes, it would look cool but I have yet to hear a convincing argument of why an Asiatic warlord would be in possession of a [sic] Pharonic artifact instead of, say, Le Louvre, the British Museum, or the Smithsonian. Or the Vatican for that matter.

The wheels start to come off, however, with the oddly admired Last Crusade. Venice is a natural fit since it was both a stopping off and starting point for Crusaders on their way to and from the Holy Land, but Austria-Germany is an odd choice. To what ends does it serve aside from an excuse for the pummeling of cartoon Nazis? Not much.



The logical continuation of the story lies in the above image. The Fez is a solid giveaway, but when combined with the impressive mustache I can only surmise that the cultists are/were Ottoman Turks. Given the historical enmity between Venice and then Constantinople, the logical extension of the narrative would be a trip to the Golden Horn. Couple that with the fact that the city served as the center of Christendom (and gave rise to the Eastern Orthodox Church) it isn't hard to imagine that a clue to the resting place of the Grail is somewhere within the city limits. And if the idea is showing off the 'exotic' then it should be pointed out that Constantinople is far more exotic than Berlin.

In short, Donovan kidnaps Henry Sr., nabs the grail diary, and hightails it to Constantinople. Indy is forced to work with the cultists to track down dear old dad, hilarity ensues, then everybody is off to Hatay and the Valley of the Crescent Moon.

That's where everything needlessly started to go wrong. It's continued through the games, books, and comics in a far more glaring fashion. The idea has even crept into the latter-day examples of the genre.

Le Saboteur said:

The wheels start to come off, however, with the oddly admired Last Crusade. Venice is a natural fit since it was both a stopping off and starting point for Crusaders on their way to and from the Holy Land, but Austria-Germany is an odd choice. To what ends does it serve aside from an excuse for the pummeling of cartoon Nazis? Not much.

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It exists to give us a bona fide Nazi fortress, in the tradition of Where Eagles Dare.

The Jungle Jim swing from the window is an indicator that Lucas and Spielberg wanted to fit in a castle. They could have placed it within Italy, but then it would be a Fascist castle and not a Nazi one. (Odd, now that I think of it but there were no Black Shirts visible on the streets of Venice in that pulp tale).

And they were going to go to Berlin anyway, so a castle on the Austro-German border was a step in the right direction. It also injects variety of location - just as snowy Nepal was a counter-balance to dusty Egypt.

Castles made an appearance in the chapterplays as elaborate set-pieces leftover from horror productions - as with the European castle plonked into Africa in Jungle Jim (1937), which was also used in the 1936 Flash Gordon.

The following shot of Castle Brunwald is indicative of that heritage, since Indy could just as well be driving to Castle Frankenstein:



Schloss Burresheim is just as impressive in real life:

Le Saboteur said:

Given the lateness of the hour, I'll attempt to brief. The movies generally got it right; despite all of the hand wringing, all of the bits left on the proverbial cutting room floor were left out for a reason. This includes the sequence in General Hok's stronghold. Had it been shot and included, I don't believe we'd be speaking about Raiders in the same tone today. No, probably not.

The diversion to Nepal and The Raven was well focused. It set up Marion's character and established her relationship with Indy in just a few minutes. In short, it was integral to the story. The General Hok sequence was a diversion; exotic hokum simply for the sake of... well, flavor. (Que sabor!) Yes, it would look cool but I have yet to hear a convincing argument of why an Asiatic warlord would be in possession of a [sic] Pharonic artifact instead of, say, Le Louvre, the British Museum, or the Smithsonian. Or the Vatican for that matter.

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I quite agree. The Shanghai sequence is wholly unnecessary, and demonstrates the worst exotifying tendencies displayed in the Raiders story transcripts. (Just as the mine car sequence in the earlier script suggests they learned plotting somewhere during the making of the film.)

Le Saboteur said:

The wheels start to come off, however, with the oddly admired Last Crusade. Venice is a natural fit since it was both a stopping off and starting point for Crusaders on their way to and from the Holy Land, but Austria-Germany is an odd choice. To what ends does it serve aside from an excuse for the pummeling of cartoon Nazis? Not much.

The logical continuation of the story lies in the above image. The Fez is a solid giveaway, but when combined with the impressive mustache I can only surmise that the cultists are/were Ottoman Turks. Given the historical enmity between Venice and then Constantinople, the logical extension of the narrative would be a trip to the Golden Horn. Couple that with the fact that the city served as the center of Christendom (and gave rise to the Eastern Orthodox Church) it isn't hard to imagine that a clue to the resting place of the Grail is somewhere within the city limits. And if the idea is showing off the 'exotic' then it should be pointed out that Constantinople is far more exotic than Berlin.

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I like the Constantinople idea, but Montana is right...

Montana Smith said:

...that Lucas and Spielberg wanted to fit in a castle.

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Apart from his evidence, earlier scripts featured a castle even more heavily. We get Brunwald for much the same reason we get waterfalls (boo!) and an atomic bomb (yay!) in Crystal Skull.

Apart from that, it also gives them slightly more reason to play around with chivalric notions, I suppose.

Le Saboteur said:

That's where everything needlessly started to go wrong. It's continued through the games, books, and comics in a far more glaring fashion. The idea has even crept into the latter-day examples of the genre.

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Yeah. And as I said above, some do it in ways that thoughtfully recognize the need of a video game to stretch its narrative into episodes that can build to their own climax, as in Infernal Machine, while others, like Emperor's Tomb, don't even attempt an explanation. I suspect you're thinking of Tomb of the Gods as far as needless globetrotting goes in comics, and I surely quite agree.

Attila the Professor said:

We get Brunwald for much the same reason we get waterfalls (boo!) and an atomic bomb (yay!) in Crystal Skull.

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We're on the same page there, too.

If I may, I think "Temple of Doom" kinda proves that you can have only a handful for it to still be an adventure . . .

A true Indy film starts in one place, and leads him to a totally different adventure in another.

More locations are great, they're more interesting to me if the first one is completely unrelated to the main plot.

The "adventures never end" if you will.

HJTHX1138 said:

A true Indy film starts in one place, and leads him to a totally different adventure in another.

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However much I like the Boy Scout prologue to Crusade, Temple was a good example of the types of callbacks or formula they should have stuck with... i.e. a seperate piece.

Rocket Surgeon said:

However much I like the Boy Scout prologue to Crusade, Temple was a good example of the types of callbacks or formula they should have stuck with... i.e. a seperate piece.

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Each prologue has served a different pupose.

ROTLA introduced Indy as a corruption of the geeky classroom idealist. He's like the policeman who becomes a catburglar when his shift is over.

TOD's prologue brought together the characters who would continue with the main adventure.

TLC was a homegrown location, because it was a local Scout trip. Lucas and Spielberg couldn't globetrot too far, but they could pay homage to John Ford again (i.e. Yakima Canutt's stuntwork in Stagecoach), in the form of the landscape. Though I read that it was filmed not in Monument Valley but in Arches National Park.



Double O Arch:



Balance Rock:



The location of the Cross of Coronado:



KOTCS' beginning was a re-introduction which lead into the adventure. The potsherds were from Mexico, and the prologue back over the American border. It was indicative of Indy's recent quieter form of living. He looked to have retired his alter-ego and gone back to being a real field archaeologist.

Montana Smith said:

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The rock in the center standing erect made me do a double-take...