Indiana Jones was a product of its time. His ideals of putting the...
Isaac Young@HariSel57511397
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Dec 17, 2024
~2 min read
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Indiana Jones was a product of its time. His ideals of putting the whole of human history in a museum could only spring up in liberal fantasy.
But history has not ended. The past is still alive, and these symbols move among us just as they did thousands of years ago.
But history has not ended. The past is still alive, and these symbols move among us just as they did thousands of years ago.
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The brilliance of Indiana Jones has always been the acknowledgement that the past has real power, and this creates a contradictory tug and pull as Indiana regularly encounters the supernatural, only to see it stuffed away at the final moment.
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What’s the first movie’s answer to finding a “Conduit to God”? Shove it in a warehouse and hope science can rationalize it later. Ironically, the Nazis were more correct in their thinking, even though they got splattered. How long can something like that be locked away?
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Indiana Jones can’t possibly answer that question because that would destroy his secular premises. It would destroy the entire world. What does his universe look like if he brought back the Holy Grail?
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But this tragically also leaves Indiana as a man constantly grasping for something real, but never attaining it. He never gets the treasure. It slips away from his fingers every single time. The numinous is lost, and he returns to ever skeptical mindset, learning nothing.
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But as much as we like this game of cat and mouse, the adventure can’t go on forever. Indiana eventually gets old—as everyone does. The world he inhabits grows old. The magic isn’t quite there anymore. The contact with the numinous fading.
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And then it finally gets to the point where it’s not fun anymore. Everything’s rotted. Indiana’s quest ends not with the bang but a whimper. The final treasure (the audience) slipped from his fingers like treasure always did. And we pretend this incarnation doesn’t even exist.
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I don’t think people can bring back Indiana Jones, even if we want them to. We can’t go back to that innocent world of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The characters and plot are of 2024, not 1981.
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Only way out is through. We need to discover how to tell good new stories in 2024, not try to rehash the past. And in order to do that, we have to answer the questions Indiana Jones couldn’t.
We need to be the ones to retrieve the proverbial Holy Grail. That’s the only way out.
We need to be the ones to retrieve the proverbial Holy Grail. That’s the only way out.
