Hello and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Matthew Fox myself. I've
been hosting the episodes about Indiana Jones over on Binger's Assemble, and I wanted
to share with you the first of those episodes right here on Superhero Ethics.
You can find all the rest on the Binger's Assemble podcast. And once the
new movie comes out, I and a couple of other people will be talking
about some of the ethical questions that comes up in Superhero Ethics, because no
archaeology might have some ethical questions. But for now, take a listen to
this episode all about Raiders of the Lost Arc, the first Indiana Jones movie.
Hello and welcome to this episode of Binger's Assemble. Yesterday, the inmates
are running the asylum. My Matthew Fox, have taken over because I am
the eighties child of this network and I am taking us back to Raiders of
the Lost Arc Indiana Jones. Friends, We're gonna be covering all of the
Indiana Jones movies in order getting us ready for the new one coming out at
the end of this month. Today it's myself and Will Freeland, the Silver
Dreamer of Twitch Lego fame, talking to you about one of my favorite movies
from my childhood, Raiders Are the Lost Dark? All that more after this
commercial break. We have no control over mate, your host. I'm sure
that they're specific things I'm supposed to say because this is a Binger's Assemble episode.
But like I said, the cats are away, so the mice are
gonna play and we are talking about Raiders in the Lost Dark and we're doing
so with my good friend Will Freeland. Will introduce yourself. I don't think
you've been on a Binger's Assemble episode yet. I have not. This is
my first Bingers cameo periance. Let's see I have do I talk about?
Like? What I do? Is that my? I just keep like a
quick thirty second introduction to yourself. Sure, I'm all over the internet as
Silver Dreamer. You can follow me on Twitch, you can follow me on
Instagram or Twitter, TikTok if you if you're you know, real new age.
But then I also have a podcast called Hype is My Superpower talk about
Marvel comics and go into way too much depth about them. And yeah that's
my internet presence. Yeah, love it, love it. So glad to
hear. And so we do have a couple least. This is a little
bit of a structured podcast. So we're going to start with what we call
the shot and the chaser. The shot is in two minutes. I'm going
to do everything I can to explain the plot of this movie. Some people
may have seen it many many years ago. Some people may have never seen
it. If you've never seen it, I do highly recommend finding it online.
It is definitely available on Amazon, and whether it's available in other places
I will not say for legal reasons, but if you haven't seen it in
many many years and just want to get a quick reminder, here we go.
Here's the plot. So we start by getting introduced to Indiana Jones,
who is an archaeology professor, who goes, oh, whoops, I did
not start the timer. So again, the the inmates are in control.
I should stop making that joke because I have actually been an inmate. Uh
not well not no, that's that's totally the wrong thing to say. I
have gone, you know what we're gonna I'm not look Will is giving me.
I was thinking about it more as the Grippy Socks vacation place, which
I have been into. But no Will, I've not I've been arrested,
but that not gone to prison. So um, well, okay, we're
the key here. I had a misspent youth. Good back in the hockey,
all right, welcome back, skipping all ahead. Matthew Carroll is listening
to this and tearing at his hair, going, what the hell did I
do giving my podcast to these lunatics. But here you go, here is
your shot. So we're introduced to Indiana Jones. We are in South America
and he it is the nineteen thirties, and uh, he is going into
this system of caves looking for an ancient relic. And to get to this
ancient relic, he has to go through tre apps and figure out puzzles.
And it's basically like if it looks like a video game, it kind of
is, but really, more than anything, it is a nineteen thirties cereal.
It's very much a tribute to those nineteen thirties cereals that are parents or
are grandparents. Some of you are really young or your great grandparents may have
watched his kids. Anyway, he gets betrayed by his native guide, who's
played by Alfred Molina. By the way, we'll talk about that kind of
stuff. In a bit, he gets betrayed. There are traps that go
off, he barely escapes, and he runs into this French archaeologist named Oh
God, I can't remember his name now I had it written now, but
it's two minutes I can say it. French archaeologist who steals the thing back
home. He's a professor of archaeology. All the girls love him, and
turns out that people have found out that the Nazis are looking for the Ark
of the Covenant. He has the Covenant of the Ten Commandments, which of
course was to be very powerful in battle. So we go to Egypt.
We first we go to Mongolia and he hooks up with someone who's the daughter
of his mentor, who apparently he was having a relationship with when he and
she was pretty damn young. We'll talk more about that later. Jets off
to Egypt, has all sorts of crazy adventures in Egypt, trying to get
into the tomb as well as to stop the Nazis from getting the arc.
He keeps succeeding, but at Bellock that's the name of the French trick yeologists.
He keeps having successes, but then they keep going against him. He
figures out the puzzle. He figures out he finds the arc, but then
they get captured. He threatens to blow up the arc unless he gets the
girl back, but it turns out he's not willing to do that, so
him and the girl get tied up and watch as the Nazis open up the
arc, at which point, basically the wrath of God comes down upon Indiana
comes down upon the Nazis destroys them all, with Indiana Jones not having done
anything to make it happen, and we're done. So that's the shot.
What did I miss? What did you miss? A couple of them plots
that I skipped out on. I mean, there's like nuances, but as
far as the plot is concerned, um oh, I guess the fact that
he was hired by the government to do this, yep um. But other
than no, I think that was pretty solid. Um. You got all
the locations, you got, you highlighted the betrayals. You got Doctor Octopus.
I think I said Mongolia when it's Nepal. For some reason, little
Kidney thought it was Nepal. I thought it was Mongolia. But he is
actually in Nepal that he goes and finds Marian Marian is she's now, you
know, a woman in her late twenties, I think, but the implication
is definitely that she was probably, like she said that was just a child.
I think she was supposed to be like sixteen or seventeen. Uh,
you know, which is fine in you know it's it's I'm going to talk
more about this in a Superhero Ethics episode. I'll just kind of get it
out of the way quickly. There's a lot of ways in this This movie
and some of the others haven't aged that well, in part because they were
trying to echo back to the movies of the thirties. We are white people
going off to explore the quote unquote exotic lands. Was the story you told?
It's not the best. There's a line where he's literally taking an ancient
relic out of where it's supposed to be and says, this belongs in a
museum. It means instead of some collector having it, but the idea that
maybe it should just stay with the people who made it and worship it.
Well, anyway, we'll talk about that more in Superherothics. There there are
some ways in which those things and again, oh, he's just a lovable
scamp who had a relationship with this girl when she was maybe sixteen, maybe
eighteen, we don't know exactly, but clearly she has some feelings for it.
But in true adventure style is Harrison Ford. So by the end she's
kissing him happily and life goes on. So what did you think of this
movie? Overall? Let's see, Okay, for a forty year old movie,
it is amazing how it has lasted, like references and iconic scenes there.
When you think of Indiana Jones and you think of like amazing Indiana Jones
scene, almost all of those things that come to mind are from the first
movie or from this movie. Yeah, and so the influence of this movie
culturally is cannot be understated. But I don't know if I would venture to
say that it's a good movie. Although for a movie, a movie that
came out in nineteen eighty one, for it to be just shy of two
hours long is equally impressive. I actually assumed when I was gonna, when
I pulled it up to watch for this, that it was going to be
like an eighty five ninety minute movie, because it was like all old movies
are super short. But no, this. I mean, this went for
a good minute, and I the like damsel and distressed thing gets old after
about fifteen minutes. But I don't know, it's it's easy too, it's
easy to just say that it's a movie of its time. I mean,
yeah, you know, standards and hum ethics in the nineteen early nineteen eighties
are very different from how they are now in the twenty twenties. And again
we'll talk about them more in the other podcast. Yeah, I have to
say, I and maybe it's because I still approach it with this childlike wonder
because I saw this movie when I was six years old, probably, and
I just thought Indiana Jones was the coolest guy in the universe. And I
was always a Han Solo guy, not a Luke Skywalker guy, which is
probably also part of why I loved it, And just everything from the hat
and the whip to the adventures to you know, this is a ste Even
Spielberg movie. But George Lucas, I think didn't. He wrote the idea
of the stories for most of them, and then an actual writer took over
writing the dialogue, which is a pretty much the best way to do a
George Lucas project. I think most people would agree. And it's funny how
you see, I find myself seeing a lot of the same elements. Like
you call her a damsel in distress, and I think by modern standards she
somewhat is. But she's a heck of a lot more badass and very much
like Princess Leiah in a New Hope. She's much more involved and like she
has a couple of lines that are basically the equivalent of into the Shoot,
into the Garbage, Shoot Flyboy. I think one of my favorite moments of
hers is when they're in the middle of this fight where they're shooting up her
bar and this big keg of beer probably or whiskey maybe has been shot and
there's a stream of it coming out and she's in the middle of like dodging
bullets, and she goes over and like takes a long drink and then get
back to shooting. Man's like, that's a badass character, I thought,
because she did that right after she grabbed something that was on fire, I
thought she was going to torch the guy behind the bar, and then next
time it shows her she just knocks him out, and I was like,
Oh, she was just thirsty Okay, Yeah, it's it's it's a lot
of fun. It's a lot of fun watching it. And we get introduced
to her in a drinking contest where she out drinks you know, large Nepalese
guy. Which it's interesting me how many how much of this movie is set
pieces? You know, we don't get a lot of like cutting back and
forth between things. We have the scene in the bar, and then Indie
in the bar, and then the fight in the bar, and then we
cut to the Nazis and it again. I didn't grow up watching these movies,
but I've I've read a lot about them. I've seen some of them
put together like a YouTube. I think it does a really good job of
recreating that idea of the serialized story, where you know, you go watch
twenty minutes of it every Saturday morning or a half hour of it every Saturday
morning, and that's why you get like a fight scene, uh, you
know, you get like a very interesting, important scene that's all kind of
self contained for about ten or fifteen minutes each time. Yeah. Um,
so I'm not a movie buff, but so like I can't speak to like
other movies of the early eighties and stuff like that. However, Comma um.
Two things that stood out to me about this movie are the like the
use of the camera, Like there's there's so many scenes of like the camera
behind a screen h and showing characters where where like their eye is highlighted or
their face is the only thing that's lit up. Um and just like using
using sets to highlight this, that and the other, or using shadow,
Like when Indie first gets to the bar, he's his for whatever reason,
there's a light source behind him and his iconic hat silhouette is plastered up on
the wall in front of Marion, and that's that's how he enters the scene.
And like, so they do a lot of that. I don't know
if this is unique to this movie or if that's just what they were doing
in movies at the time. That's why I like, I'm like, I'm
not a movie buff, but it seemed like it was new. It felt
new, even though I'm watching it forty years later. Yeah, and I'm
guessing, I'm guessing some of that is the trope, you know, like
aning out of Jones. For example, the first time we see him,
the first thing we kind of hear of him is the crack of the whip
and see you know, his face come out of the shadow and talking him
out that scene where that scene where it's his shadow over Marion as he kind
of walks back into her bar. That felt the most like, Okay,
you're you're doing storytelling now through the shadow, because that's very much about how
he has cast this shadow over her life. And she talks about how she
went all the way across the world to get away from him and now she
can't even get away from him. The reason he's gone to her is because
her father, who was this other great archaeologist, he had found this amulet
that would they basically had carvings on it. That the whole idea is that
if they could find this secret city that was em buried by the sand,
this amulet with as followed the specific instructions that are on it, and go
to this specific place that's being excavated, it'll tell you where exactly the arc
is. Because at the end of the day, this is really about archaeology.
It's all about, you know, trying to figure out where to dig
to find this element, and the Nazis are just digging everywhere, and our
heroes are trying to both kind of subvert them and also do what they can
to you know, find it themselves. Right. Another thing that stood out
was the sound design of like the punches. There's so much base in every
single strike. It was, Yeah, it's a lot of fun to listen
to. It felt to me like the equivalent of the Batman sixty six or
like a comic book where you could it was like you could hear pow and
just like every time a body hits, every time a body hits the floor.
And there was one scream that like, there are a couple of times
yeah that I don't know that name, but that maybe yet let me explain
to you what I mean. There was like a couple of times people fall
over railings or people fall a long distance, and the scream they give sounds
exactly like what happens when an Imperial soldier screams as he falls. Ian raiders
not raiders of the Jedi, recurring to the Jedi. Yeah that's yeah,
that's the Wilhelm scream. Though it's like it's it's a industry staple at this
point, and it was the first one to do it was that stormtrooper in
like New Hope or whatever, and it just got dubbed as the Wilhelm Scream,
and it is everywhere it's in. I think it gets used in every
single Star Wars media and then it shows up in other movies and TV shows
and whenever it pops up, I always pointed out to my wife and she's
like, yeah, yeah, I get it. It's but it's it's so
iconic and it really stands out so like the one in Lost Arc it's just
this guy falling off of one vehicle onto another. Yeah, Like it's so
extreme of just wow. And I gotta say, also, the music this
isn't John Williams, I think is mostly remembered for Star Wars, and there's
a lot of similarities to this in Star Wars, but he also did these
movies. He did Superman, and it's just like I think you could.
I think there's an argument you made that. Again, it sounds a little
dated, but in this setting it just works so well. It just captures
the spookiness, the fear when they're surrounded by the snakes or they think they're
going to be trapped, and then there's the epic moments of the dad.
You know, it looks like everyone's gonna work out. Yeah, Yeah,
just the use of horns and how flexible just the brass section of an orchestra
can be is amazing. So it actually reminds me, like I know that
some of these movies this is I think back in the Silent era, but
like there would be times where people would show these movies with an orchestra actually
there to play it live, to play the music live, which is kind
of awesome. So let's talk about a couple of the characters. Where'd you
think of Indiana Jones himself? By the way, I do want to say
this movie is now often referred to as Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the
Lost Arc. That is false. The name of this movie is Raiders the
Stark, but Indiana Jones is the Starkey's we were talking about what do you
think of Indy? Um, It's felt it felt like they knew what they
wanted in well, okay, they knew there's they knew that they wanted Indy
to be an iconic character, but I don't know if they truly figured out
yet, like what part of his character did they want to lean into,
Like was he going to be the amazing Um? I don't want to say
Tube Rater because that's another license. But like the the the Amazing Explorer that
that uh is able to U put two and two together and solve the puzzles
or is he going to be um the ladies man, uh suave, laid
back, But then at the same time, he's also awkward about it,
like, yeah, it was, it's it's fun, and it's it's a
great I think it's a great first look. I think there's I think there's
enough about him that people obviously want more. And forty years later they're still
making Indiana Jones movies. But it it's so strange because the first his like
introduction scene is super serious until he gets until he's running away and you have
just his like start the play, start the play, and he's like and
dust is eternally falling off his jacket. And then he has like, I
hate snakes, which becomes just the most quotable Indiana Jones quote ever. And
then you're like, oh, so he's not action hero, he's he's kind
of funny. Yeah, I don't know, it was I don't personally identify
with them, but I think he's a fun watch. I hear you're saying,
I think he's it is interesting how they're trying to do a couple of
things with him, and I my understanding is it's very much in the idea
of you know, in the nineteenth century you had all these stories in the
British press about these great explorers who are both in theory, like you know,
very academic men, great archaeologists and studies of culture. But who would
go into you know, And again I'm using the phrase that be used in
irony very much intended. I'm using the phrase that would be used then,
you know, the darkest heart of Africa or the depths of the Jungles,
you know, and they would have all these adventures, and they would be
chased by wild animals and by natives and all these things. And so I
think this, this mythology came out of the like adventurer scholar, you know,
who somehow had time to learn eight different language is and sword fighting and
whip using and Indiana is as I understand it, one half that. But
also when this all started, Spielberg wanted to make a James Bond movie,
Like that was his original idea. It was a be kind of the international
man of mystery who was jet setting all around the world and so him and
Lucas came together and kind of put those two ideas and that's what they got.
And I feel like you're right. It works. In later movies,
I think they settle more into him being primarily that adventurer person who also was
very scholarly and somehow always knows the local language no matter what it is.
But it's and the ladies man part is funny too, because he again gives
me such han solo vibes. It's very much that same scoundrel with a secret
heart of gold, although in this word we don't really ever see the secret
heart of gold as much except that you know, he utterly hates Nazis,
which is I think maybe kind of show like, Yeah, if you want
to have like the absolute worst villain to whom we can justify anything being done
because they're literal Nazis trying to steal something. Yeah, I tell you what
we're saying. I think they kind of I'll do the whole you know,
I've done the whole thing. Yeah, And so I think these movies,
in a later movie, they're not fighting against Nazis, and frankly, I
think that's kind of the problem. Is like the Nazis were just the best
villains. And again for the nineteen thirties kind of serial stuff, this idea
of like this one American who's off by himself doing everything he can to stop
the Nazis is just really fun. I as you said, I did some
more research and talk to some people. Even by the archaeological ethic standards of
the nineteen thirties, this person would have some major problems. You're supposed to
at least have some pretense of how you're getting things done. But again that's
the official and we know that wasn't always the case. So maybe you would
be completely within the bonds of how they did things. Who knows. Yeah,
it felt like a director discretion that when the Nazis had the ARC boxed
up in the plane, the ARC just decided to burn the Nazi label and
that's it. Yeah, it felt really out of place. Yeah, it's
it's the ARC Star and New assert itself. All right, So yeah,
let's talk about that. That's kind of I'm a guffin of the whole thing.
And uh, what do you think of how that story played out?
Um? So conceptually, big picture, I love um, I always I
get sucked in when you take religious myth or um story. I don't want
to be completely disrespectful, but when he takes story and translated into how the
real world works. Uh, and so to have you know, the mcguffin
being the Arc and the Covenant and then so uh INDI's explanation, it's just
like, yeah, this is its story, it's you know, it's religious.
Uh. Use and what the tool was and then how it gets interpreted
to history. Uh. And then the hands that it changed and all of
its placements and stuff. That's a lot of fun. And yeah, so
going and getting the arc. What I guess doesn't make sense to me is
that the arc was used as what carried the Ten Commandments, but it's also
a turret or a tesla coil. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Um. But that's fine. It's it's it's it's it's weird, but
it's fine. And there, I mean, we can't blame the writers this
movie. That's just straight from the Bible. Like the idea that this the
arc held the Covenant, but that as you said, they were the ones
that were broken, and there's various different mythologies about it. But this idea
that the the Israelites carried with them as a weapon of war, and that
when God's wrath was brought down. And yet, to me as a biblical
scholar, like because a part of me that wants to tear my hair out,
but I'm always because but it's always it. It's it's fun to me
when you know, most of the scholarship, even by the nineteen thirties,
but especially today, has really moved away from kind of literal interpretations of many
of these stories and fact actually, the archaeological record has proven that the many
stories are very much definitely not not true, but our myth. And again
I'm a person of faith. They're very powerful myths. But I kind of
love when like, like a lot of Marvel movies or a lot of other
supernatural movies that are very much not Christian movies. They're what they wind up
taking Christian mythology or in Jewish mythology very much as literal, you know,
and so like in Supernatural that's a bad example, but a lot of other
things, the angels and Lucifer are exactly as they are told in like early
Christian writings and stuff like that. And so we've never had a movie where
the angel looks like an actual biblical angel because it's horrifying and like raise and
many arms and many wings and that kind of thing. But yeah, so
there's a part of me that could rolls my eyes a bit at that,
but it is really fun. And I do you know, if God's vengeance
is ever going to come down and smite people, it's going to be the
Nazis. So I do kind of like that part even if And well,
here this gets into one of the great questions that's raised about this movie.
It has been posited by a number of people that if Indiana Jones never travels
to Egypt, one or two things happens. Either A the Nazis just never
find it, So basically the same ending, except a couple of Nazis don't
wind up dead, or B the Nazis find it, they open it,
and everybody does. Is Andyetta Jones necessary in any way for this story?
Oh man, that's amazing, right, Okay, yes, damn, I'm
trying to justify it, like I'm going through like the story points. I
was like, well, you know, if Indy wasn't there, then they
would have only then they would have gotten both sides of the Ambulet to tell
them exactly how tall to make the staff. But that means they just get
to the arc faster, which just means they die faster. But I guess
the one hiccup that is not that big of a hiccup is Um, the
the Nazi general Um that that Bellack is working with, Um plans to use
it for him for himself and not even get it to Hitler. Right,
So and he dies anyway, so yeah, and maybe he's not needed there,
right But I think at one point they blow up a plane and I
think it like Bellack, who's the French archeologist, and he's kind of a
fun character because he clearly doesn't like the Nazis. They're just sponsoring him.
He's doing this all for the glory. Uh, and he tries to romance
Mary in some very interesting scenes. Um. But like there's a plane there
to fly the arc directly to Berlin. Yeah, so I think it's possible
that if Indy doesn't interfere, it gets taken right to Berlin and possibly a
lot of German high command, maybe even Hitler himself get killed. So Andy
might have made everything worse. Yeah, how dare you again? I love
the movie. I just think this is kind of a fun, ridiculous thing
to point out that, like, there's a lot of great adventures that happened,
and you can who you know, you can what if in all sorts
of ways, but there is one. It's kind of the equivalent of the
Darth jar Jar kind of ideas. You know, you know, there's a
way to view the movie in which nothing Indiana Jones does in any way significant.
That's so oh my gosh, oh that's so right, because oh no,
yeah, because oh man, like I'm sorry, I broke your brain,
because and that's kind of the thing. And I feel like because of
that, you know, movie writers have learned and so so they make it
so the mcguffin has to be turned against the bad guy is to kill them,
and that's how the hero interferes. But the hero was tied up for
this and just let it happen. I mean, I think it's just one
of the only times I'm perfectly happy to see a quite literal D S X
machina, Like that's exactly what happens. Yeah, yeah, wow, interesting,
right dang well maybe okay, maybe gonna be the Temple of Doom will
be more interfery yet because I haven't seen he definitely plays a very big role
in the plot. Don't worry about that. And we're I'm really excited for
that one because Ashley and Bill, the hosts of Actually in Bill's Terror Theater,
are going to talk to me about that because that's basically like this is
half adventure movie, half kind of scholarly research movie. That's half adventure movie
half horror movie. So we're gonna have a conversation about that one. Um
let's kind of do We talked for a little bit and we're gonna kind of
go into our last two sections bottom bottom shelf and top shelf. So bottom
shelf, what are some of the things that that didn't really work for you
about the movie or that you didn't love? And I'll start with I love
the idea of it and I love and it's at six years old, watching
the Faces of the Nazis' melt off was pretty damn awesome, and even probably
at twelve and eighteen, and I think for it's time, those effects were
great. Those effects have not aged well like that was like I think all
this stuff with the spirits flying around that has aged amazingly. But the scenes
of them all dying was a little silly. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's definitely a product of its time. But it's it looks it still looks
not terrible. Yeah, I'll give them that. And I guess they probably
had to make it look kind of a bit over the top and silly because
or else it's just horrific to right, So yeah that is the best.
What are you? What are some of your bottom shelf moments? But um
so, Egyptian mythology is my second favorite mythology. Um And uh, this
is the only time I've seen a statue of a Nubis where he's like act
open mouth attacking the air right as a statue. That's the statue that they
find right when they open up the cave of the arc and where Salah the
um the Arab guide who once again is played by oh white guy John R.
Davies. Uh so it pulls back in fear. Yeah, um so,
just from a personal bias standpoint, I did I don't like that design
of a NuBus of a Nubis statue. Um But yeah, honestly, surprisingly,
not a whole lot of bottom shelf stuff for me. Like it's it's
just kind of it's just a fun ride. Yeah, including the Disneyland ride.
Yeah, for sure, for sure. I think there's as I said,
there's some things that just haven't aged well in terms of the Rachel stuff
and the gender stuff. But but that's just yeah. I think you just
if you can just put that aside and go, you know what, this
is a fun movie of its time and still love it. Um. I
don't think if there was anything else bottom shelfy to me, I didn't think
that the So somehow Indiana got to this place in South America where he goes
looking for this statue and now this guy is waiting with a plane to fly
him out. So I think this guy probably flew him in. So how
did he not notice the snake in the plane? That? Like, it
gives us a great moment of like, oh my god, there's a snake
in the plane. Oh my god, did this inspire snakes on the plane?
I hadn't even thought of that. No, no, not, how
dare you? It isn't. But anyway, yeah, I thought that moment
was a little silly, but overall, yeah, there's so much good here.
Um. I'll start it with one of my top shelf then, sorry,
I do I do have one other bottom show for it. In that
chase scene, there's a guy, one of the natives, shoots a boat,
shoots his arrow just up like like Indie runs down and this and this
guy is one of the first of the natives on the scene and he just
goes ah and just shoots this arrow terribly and just does this rainbow arc to
the far left. It makes no sense, but like again the movie of
the Times, it's fine, but like, yeah, that's one of those
things where I'm just like, oh, you could have tried a little harder,
buddy, right, right, Look, they they went and designed all
these great traps at least, so that was pretty awesome. Yeah. So
one of my favorite moments, and I always forget about it how I watch
it and I'm like, this is so good is when our main German antagonist
hare Mocked, who got introduced in this like incredibly spooky way again walking out
of the shadows, very spooky music, and he's just very much like German
interrogator scary man. And later he comes into the tent where m Maryon is
tied up and he pulls out of his I think Indies also, but maybe
to be her much. No, it's her and bellock, and he pulls
out of his jacket. He hands his jacket his henchman pulls out what looks
kind of like almost like a thin version of nun Chucks. It's like these
like two metal rods with chains in between them, and he holds it up
kind of threateningly, and then he folds it once or twice, and it's
a hanger, like with him at hanger so that someone can hang up his
cape. And I'm like, that is the most evil, evil, evil
move I have ever seen. Viraled, So I mentally spiraled after that because
who does that? But then because like so it's it's a it's like a
three it's like a three piece. Uh, looks like a weapon. But
then I just spile into like if you have an entire closet full of these
hangars, and then what kind of house do you have where you have all
these tools of potential torture and or b DSM whips like just in the whole
house, but they're all dual purpose and they're all just household pieces just around
the entire house. I just I lost it. That was amazing. I
thought it was so good and again an interesting callback, and granted this is
far beyond where Lucas was. But maybe there's a callback, or maybe it's
just a fun trope. It's been played in other places. But there's a
scene in the Last Jedi where all of a sudden you cut to this like
large metal thing that's moving and steam is coming out of it and it's dark
behind it. You don't know, it's just like some spaceship. Is there
some torture weapon and it's just an iron being used to iron the Imperial Soldiers
uniforms. And I was like that these two moments are spiritually connected. I'm
sure there eight other moments that formed the chain, but it was beautiful.
Yeah. No, I love random scenes like that because what makes me what
I think of conceptually is in the Avengers, but not Marvel Avengers though.
Like there's like an old British TV show that they made a movie out of
in the late nineties or mid nineties. Sean Connery is the bad guy and
he walks and when they first walk up to him, when they first meet
him, he walks up all menacingly and then there's a pause and he says
tea and he goes and gets things some tea and it's it's that it's the
what is the phrase? And I'm trying to think of decorum like false decorum.
Yeah, just like the bait and switch of menacing, menacing, menacing.
Oh, super super laid back and peaceful, yeah, but with that
note of evil. Another one of my favorite top shelf moments I don't hear
some of yours, is again about hair mocked. In that battle in the
bar, the amulet gets thrown into the fire and that's what they're all fighting
over, and he reaches to grab the amulet, but of course it's metal
and it's been in the fire and so it's red hot. And all you
see is him like hold it up for a few seconds, screaming, drop
it, run outside and shove his hand into the snow. And then later
we have this mystery, how do the Nazis know where to dig if they
don't have that amulet? And we find that the amulet basically was burned into
this guy's hand, and the plot twist is that they but that the other
side of the amulet has more information that they don't have, and so that's
why they're digging in the wrong place. And I just thought that was such
a great little like it's an adventure movie, and there's fight scenes, but
it's also we are having fun with archaeology and mysteries and things, right,
And it wasn't it wasn't explicitly shown like the revelation of the scar forming and
and all this stuff is just it just down the line. The Nazis have
been up to stuff. This is what happened. Moving on. Yeah,
like it's it's not it's a it's a key plot point for the Nazis,
but not for the story that we're telling. Yeah, it's winds his hand
up to say the Nazi salute that. Yeah, when it happens. Yeah,
what are you what are your top shelf moments? Oh, top shelf
moments? Uh? Well, just the open The introduction to Indie is a
lot of fun when he gets to the idol, like uh, how he
approaches traps, which you don't really see much of later in the movie because
it's moving the story along instead of introducing Indie, but like how he looks
at a room and how he dissects it and figures out, okay, well
don't touch the light or um oh, clearly there's pressure plates, Like why
is it just sitting there? Something's off, like that's a lot of um,
a lot of fun and I love puzzle solvers like that. UM.
Another, he's very much a rogue in that way. I mean both like
the traditional definition of the word in terms of how he treats people and being
kind of a naar duell but also like a D and E rogue. You
know, he spots traps. He he has with him, that bag of
sand he can use because he figures out that it's the weight and so he
tries to like have the exact moment. Yeah. Perfect, we referenced it
earlier. But the spirits going through it's got haunted mansion vibes of that,
like of the animation spirit, but it's an actor like super imposed on top
of the regular screen. M that's it's it's a fun it looks good,
it looks spooky, looks eerie. I really like that. Another favorite of
mine. And you may not know this story some of our listeners may have
heard already, but the I think the single greatest thing that's ever come from
a hangover. So in the original script, India is supposed to face down
that swordsman and have an epic sword fight with him, and the Hollywood legend
goes, and I believe this is accurate. It certainly I've always heard it,
but who knows, we'll get some other real story later. Is that
Harrison Forde showed up hungover or in some versions still a little drunk and really
didn't want to do this big sword fight, and he said, Stephen,
how about if I just shoot the guy? And it was like that would
be really funny, and so that's why. And so that wonderful scene of
the sword guy going like whoa and then he just kind of like shrugging and
shooting him was not filmed, was not scripted in the slide. That's amazing
Harrison's improvisation on script I love that. And just again in the nineteen thirties
Adventure Vibe, something about the red lines on the map as they travel.
It helps you ground me. Yeah, I love that. I love a
good map, And it felt very just the fact that they stop in various
places, reminding you that, like, these aren't jet planes, they're not
flying thousands of miles without stopping. Yeah, And it just helps really ground
you and exactly where you are. And I just love it. I love
those montages for sure. Conceptually from a story storytelling standpoint is really weird to
say, especially on her recording, but like, there's the wonder. The
wonder part of me is thankful that Hitler was so into the occult for some
reason, and because it just leads to stories like this, and like it
gets used in Marvel stories in anime all the time and TV shows just this
side fact that Hitler was so into the occult and being able to play off
of that and do a pseudoscience fiction story where what are some of the findings
that Hitler would have done and how do we stop that as the good guys
and the anti Nazi like and that that always plays off in just the most
interesting story time ways. You could have Red Skull be the one leading this
expedition very much that exact same, and the thing is that it's based in
truth Hitler did. Except yeah, and people argue over whether he really believed
in the occult or whether he was just like, look, I'll take anything
I can get, But there definitely were Nazi teams out exploring the world trying
to find these ancient relics, and so yeah, the idea that he's looking
for the test Act or the Ark of the Covenant or in a later movie
The Holy Grail or whatever it is. There's his oracal basis for that that's
not completely ridiculous. Yeah, And because of that, like it's not even
it's not even a storytelling trope that like, hey, let's make Hitler a
little more interesting and make him into a cult. It's literally he was into
the occult he was doing. He was he cared to some degree about help,
you know, whatever he could use to win the war, which he
didn't rut. And so like, I'm I'm thankful from a story consuming perspective
that he was so into that because it is it has inspired so many different
plot points like this. And it's also interesting because you know, again,
I think many of us today think of World War Two is something that happened,
you know, centuries and centuries and centuries ago. We're coming up on
years we're stolen only about eighty years away from it when this movie came out
forty years ago. This movie came out only thirty six years after World War
Two ended. So like a lot of people who went to see this movie,
are you know, who took their kids to the movie or their grandkids
in this movie, like lived through World War two and maybe as kids,
maybe even as soldiers or things like that. And it's in a way there's
an nostalgia there of I remember fondly at the time when Nazis were so clearly
awful, evil that we just punched them on screen and cheered instead of like
watching them march in our streets, you know, and like what they've always
been with us to something. There's always been neo Nazis. But I don't
want to get all the politics of it. But it's another fun part of
the movie, is this fun nostalgia of like, yeah, I remember when
like the one thing we all agreed on is we should all punch Nazis.
Nazis are terrible. There's a lot of great stuff that'll come up about um
Indiana Jones's Antifa, which I really love, you know, because he's one
a bunch of Nazi. But that's a whole other story as well. Matt
Carroll again is mad that I'm getting too political, so we'll pull back from
any other last thoughts from you on the top shelf. It's it's honestly,
it's a fun movie. It's it is old and there are parts that did
not age well, whether it's themes or graphics, but it's still not a
bad movie and it's absolutely worth watching. Yeah, I think it's it's really
fun. I think it's really fun, especially because part of why I do
talk every now and then a little bit about the like archaeological ethics, is
that we know from a trip Well there's a quick spoiler for a trailer for
the newest Indiana Jones movie that's coming out, so if you don't want to
hear it, skip ahead sixty seconds. But we know in that movie that
his god daughter questions him on this, and it's like, how can you
just be stealing these things from people? So I think one of the things
that's most interesting to see about the new movie is how the writers know that
that some parts haven't aged well, and they've they've aged them up, and
I'm really and so it's fun to go back and see this and like,
yeah, this movie wouldn't get made today, and that's probably a good thing,
but damn, it's still a lot of fun. I think that's,
you know, kind of where I come down on them. All Right,
well, well, thank you so much. We're gonna have a rotating group
of people through through the rest of these movies as I said, Bill and
Ashley are coming with the next one. Matt Carroll himself will be back to
talk about Crystal Skull of the fourth movie. So will Though. For people
who I haven't heard you before, where can they find you? Shine me
on Twitch, Silver Dreamer there, Twitter if you want my random musings and
ramblings, Instagrams, I want to look into my real life and Hype is
my superpower podcast. If you want to hear me talk to add nauseum about
Marvel Comics definitely, and of course um this is uh A And of course
this podcast is part of Binger's Assemble, which is part of the Stranded Panda
podcast network. There we've got amazing podcasts on the MCU, on Star Trek,
on all sorts of different awesome properties. If you go to Stranded Panda
dot com you'll find all the information about that and all that will be in
the show notes. And I myself and Matthew the Ethical Panda. If you
go to the Ethical Panda dot com you'll find my two podcasts, Superhero Ethics
and Star Wars Universe Podcasts, and which will Matt Carol, Jeff Randal.
Actually all of them have been guests at various points in time, so I'm
half of myself and Will and everybody at Stranded Panda and everybody in the Binger's
Assemble family. Thank you so much for tuning in. Be sure to tune
into all of our episodes on the Indiana Jones Movies coming soon. We have
spoken by Binger's assymbol is a Stranded Panda podcast. For all of our podcasts
and other geeky creative projects, go to stranded panda dot com.