Don't get me wrong... Pushed to choose, I would pick it as my all-time favorite action/adventure movie. I absolutely love it; The characters were great, not to mention believable... they were not yet the broad (though truly funny) cartoons they eventually became in the sequels. The action was top notch (and aside from the ark's fire, all practical FX and stunts, so it holds up very well to the test of time.) And the adventure itself was truly sprawling and beautifully paced.

No, what makes it odd was the way it treated the lead character. Indiana Jones was a complete loser in that film. Admittedly, the coolest loser ever, but still... even Charlie Brown had to take some pity on the guy. How big of a loser was he? He was such a loser that he spent the climax of the film tied to a pole being completely ignored by the villains. He didn't have a single tiny contribution to their ultimate defeat. His last card (to blow up the ark) was a bluff... it was called, and his role in things was over.

What's more, the ending renders his whole adventure pointless. The Ark could obviously take care of itself... there was never any danger in the Nazi's being able to use it. Indiana's main goal of getting the Ark to a museum was never realized... the prize is taken away from him yet again, lost to a warehouse.

Of course, he does get the girl, and thus his true reward... So that's not too shabby, I admit. Still, it wasn't until I recently rewatched it that I reflected on what a bizarrely anti-climactic role Indy played in his own movie. Yet it still launched him as a hero for the ages. Go figure.

Which put it head and shoulders above many films then and now. The film was a pleasure to watch.


I think you are missing the point.

1. Indy was the lone hero set against a powerful enemy. He manages to survive against impossible odds and still keeps on going. He was never put forward as a superhero.

2. Bear in mind also that some of the inspiration for the film comes from the old serials of the 1930s and 1940s. They were all about insurmountable odds and cliffhangers.

3. At the end of the film he realises the danger they are all in and works out how to survive it, bringing himself and the female lead out unharmed. This is more than the Nazis managed.


But this was not at all obvious to the protagonists. They only found this out the hard way. Are his actions any the less heroic for being proved unnecessary after the fact?


If I recall correctly, he is discussing the ark with an agent and is asying that it is a powerful object and needs to be secured. The "belongs in a museum" fixation actually comes from the third film.

The method of hiding it, of course, is to put it in a huge warehouse in an anonymous box. There are other implications in that scene, but I won't go in to them.


It was a good film with a hero people could relate to. What's to figure?

Merely marveling at a story structure that allows for the hero to make *no difference* in the ultimate outcome and still come across as a great hero.



Indeed.



Not at all. I get all those points.


He was put forward as a vulnerable hero from the start, which is a huge part of his appeal. In doing so, he was defined as the loser between himself and Belloq from the start... one who goes through Herculean efforts only to lose out in the end.


Absolutely.



Indeed. Not dying is always good, especially for sequel potential. Although this is also something of a odd bit of story structure, as one would think setting up some kind of justification for this theory on surviving the wrath of God would be the way to go. Still, much like Indy being completely passive at the end, it's not something that has actually bothered me before or now.



Not at all. I simply remark on it as an odd choice for the writer.



In undertaking the quest in the beginning, he's quite clear that he's doing it so the Museum gets it when the army is done with it. He doesn't believe in any magic powers it has, and keeping the Nazis from conquering the earth with it isn't his goal... that's something for the government and the audience.

With the agent at the end he and Marcus are not arguing that it needs to be secured, they're arguing that it needs to be researched and studied. When he wants to know the names of the people doing so, he's only told that it's "top men". Cut to it being boarded up, ignored and forgotten.



Well, looking online I found a copy of Lawrence Kasdan's script that has a significantly more ambitious ending, where Indy isn't tied to a pole but left to be executed while the others go on to perform the ritual. He escapes, comes and rescues Marion from the aftermath of the Ark's opening (lots of fire, burning fuels, etc.) At which point they steal back the ark and have to escape from an island that is still teaming with surviving Nazis. This more ambitious ending included an elaborate mine car sequence which apparently was recycled in the second film.

I know Spielberg was worried about going over time and over budget with this movie, as he had on his last three projects, and was determined to be frugal with this production. Perhaps the answer to the ending that made it on screen is as simple as that... it was too ambitious as originally written. Whatever the reason, the ending still works, which is both a bit surprising and a testimony to how wrapped up audiences get in the film.