Thematically, what is each Indiana Jones about?

Notice how in each film, the central artifact symbolically shows, whether through itself or what it causes, what the main theme or moral of the story is for each Indy movie.

Raiders: Divine wrath, don't screw with what you shouldn't. Probably the simplest theme and easiest to interpret, unless I'm missing something here? Perhaps someone can offer some much needed enlightenment

Temple: The importance of doing what's right vs. personal gain of "fortune and glory." Takes a bit of thinking to fully grasp the sub-meanings, but otherwise a direct theme that may be presented a bit indirectly

Crusade: Accepting family despite differences and how important it is to stay connected. I love how Henry Sr. chooses without hesitation to just leave the grail and save his son, who matters much more to him

Skull: This is a bit of a tough one. There's a very similar theme of family, but at the same time, there's a definite theme of the true meaning of "treasure." I believe it sort of carries both, but it has a slightly more prominent expression of the latter

So what do you guys think? I'd really like to hear others' analyses of Raiders and its thematic presentation in the hopes that it can be sort of.... what's the word.... expanded, I suppose, in my eyes. Don't get me wrong, I love the film. I just feel it has the simplest/least interesting theme, and it is definitely the least personal, focusing more on adventure in general

 

To me, Crusade is about faith and believing. Indy seems very skeptical about the grail and its powers, but as he goes deeper into the story he meets many people who do believe, many of them to the point of willingly dying for their beliefs. The booby-trap challenges he faces as he nears the grail are all overcome by mimicking the outward signs of faith. He eventually becomes so desperate to save his father that he chooses to place his faith in an ancient religious relic as the only possible option for saving Dad. Indy's reaction to his success always struck me as a kind of bewildered acceptance of his newly discovered faith, which he doesn't yet understand, but can't argue against it after seeing the evidence with his own eyes.

 

In a way, I'd say all four films are about greed, about wanting things for the right and wrong reasons, and Jones' struggle between yearning for "fortune and glory" and doing the right thing. What's interesting about this is, Jones has two jobs; giving knowledge as a teacher, and taking what doesn't belong to him as an archeologist/grave robber, sometimes for selfish reasons, sometimes for selfless ones.

RotLA: Belloq wants the ark for fame, the Nazis want it for power, Marion wants money, and Jones just wants to keep the Ark out of the wrong hands. Belloq's greed for fame and the Nazis' greed for power ends up being their undoing. Marion's greed for money almost got her killed, when she kicked Indy out and the Nazis promptly entered. Jones, on the other hand, is the one who "keeps his eyes shut."

ToD: Here we see a theme of wanting things for the right and wrong reasons. The cult of weird psychos take all three stones, and child slaves. It winds up being their undoing. Willie wants a wonderful life of luxury, and she ends up mixed with the wrong people. Indy initially wants "fortune and glory," but only after he realizes there's something more valuable worth fighting for does he come out on top. Short Round, on the other hand, simply wants a friend, to love and be loved, and his adoration for Indy is ultimately what washes away Jones' greed and apathy and replaces it with righteousness and empathy.

LC: It starts off with the flashback, where young Indy is trying to keep the cross away from the mercenaries. He loses, but then we jump ahead to the "present" and see that in the end, his desire to preserve prevailed over the mercenary desire to profit. Then we start the Holy Grail narrative. When you get down to it, the idea behind yearning for eternal life entails wanting years that don't belong to you. It's usually for the selfish reason that you can't bear to let yourself go, despite death being a natural part of life and a part of what allows the world to progress and change. It places an unnatural value on yourself. The Knight lives eternally, but to do holy work. Donovan drinks from the wrong cup, the gilded cup, because he wants eternal life for all the wrong reasons. Indy chooses the right cup, the humble cup, not because he desires immortality, but because he wants to save a life. Elsa dies because she can't allow the cup to slip through her grasp, because what it represents is too precious to her. In the end, Indy almost suffers the same fate, but his life is saved by his father when he's told to "Let it go," to let go of the desire for that which doesn't belong to us, the things we shouldn't or don't necessarily deserve to have.

KotCS: The Soviets want unnatural, literally alien power so they can rule the world. Spalko wants unlimited knowledge for completely selfish reasons that don't invovle the actual betterment of herself or others. Mack just wants money. Mutt wants his mom back, and Indy wants to help this young kid and find his lost friend. Later, he wants to return the skull (a complete inverse of how these films usually go) because he recognizes it's not the kind of thing any human should possess; it doesn't belong to us. The Soviets don't get what they want, Spalko is literally consumed by the knowledge she so desired, Mack's greed for wealth is his undoing, but Mutt gets his mother, his surrogate father, and discovers his real father, and Indy gains a family.

 

While I need to think about the themes for the other films I can certainly comments about KotCS.

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is about Indiana Jones losing everything but then finding a family. The most important line in the entire film is when Charlie tells Indiana "You've seem to reach the point where Life stops giving you things, and starts taking them away." Indy has lost his father, he's lost Marcus, he loses his job, he even loses his country, he's just a man with a suitcase when Mutt comes into his life. Through the adventure of the movie Indy finds a wife, a son, and an old friend, in short a family. For the inter-dimensional beings their treasure was knowledge for Indiana Jones his treasure was family.

 

The Last Crusade has some great thematic material that compares Indy to a crusader.

To start with, he recovers a cross, the symbol of Christianity. Later he jousts on the motorbike, like a medieval joust.

He fights a 'fire-breathing dragon' in the form of the tank.

He takes the 3 trials, thanks to his knowledge of the religion. And he makes the right choice because he knows of the humbleness of Jesus.

He's also set against the Nazis, a personification of evil for him to overcome.

I'm sure there are more links to the comparison that I'm missing.

 

I've since done some reviews here for two out of the four installments, so I'll cheat a bit with the following by re-posting/reiterating my thoughts on thematic content throughout the series. I'll also try to further elaborate as best I can.

RAIDERS

Yeah, it is indeed the simplest in such respects, though I’d like to add just a few thoughts to the Ark of the Covenant premise. Deriving from Old Testament scripture, it deals with ancient Hebrew/Egyptian folklore and depicts God’s power (the presence of the supernatural in general) in its most primal form as a cataclysmic wrath to be feared and respected above all else. Expressing this in terms of historical cinema, Spielberg in many ways fashioned Raiders as his very own sequel-spinoff to DeMille’s FX heavy, spectacle-driven The Ten Commandments. Both films feature photo-optically processed scenes of lightning storms over the deserts of Egypt and cel animated effects. Also, what I find interesting about the Ark is how appropriate a threat it represents in the hands of Hitler’s army as a blitzkrieg weapon of mass destruction. Let me just take this moment to appreciate how thematically ripe Raiders is without any traces of pretention, profundity or self-importance, and how Spielberg expresses this cautionary tale with clever visuals. Take for example the shot during the opening sequence of Indy draining sand from his bag when gauging the right weight for the temple mantle device, and how that image is doubled during the film’s climax where sand from inside the Ark pours from Belloq’s hand. In both instances, misjudgment, even arrogance, brings proportionately grave misfortune.

It's also the first movie where I learned the true value of storytelling through action first. To better grasp this economy, consider the film’s opening sequence and how the Peruvian temple set piece itself can be visualized as a diagram and broken into two halves: Indy entering and Indy exiting. The first half methodically illustrates the pulp adventurer as traditionally molded from those who came before him. Note how he is slowly, heroically revealed throughout the opening credits frame by frame; his physical prowess displayed when disarming a would-be traitor using a whip; his macho indifference to giant spiders; his skills used to navigate booby-trapped passages. His confidence, bravery, determination, it’s all there. However, the great twist about the character is that he’s equally human and flawed, as illustrated by the second half of the set piece–specifically at the golden idol turning point, which all but literally reverses the sequence and thus mirrors Indy’s dignified stature with his more comical afflictions.

Simply put, Indy screws up. The temple collapses around him, he runs for it, gets double-crossed, fumbles an attempted pit jump and barely escapes a giant pinball with witless frenzy more than anything else, only to then be caught with his pants down by Belloq. By the time we see him fleeing over a hill from a horde of Hovitos, the guy has lost all his impossible cool and is reduced to a mere bumbling grave-robber, only to then be mocked for his unbecoming fear of snakes. In the first 15 minutes Indiana Jones is defined, completely, without any need for lame monologues or tedious scripted character development, and is ready to engage the larger, main story with audiences fully attuned to his nature. It’s clean.

TEMPLE OF DOOM

First I must stress the film’s overall absurd comedy and how it is given bipolar contrast with macabre horror to such a degree that tests the limits of its own genius, mirroring the Busby Berkeley opening musical number not only with past influences but moreover in-house with the Thuggee human sacrificing ritual as twin grand spectacles. Temple of Doom is in my opinion truly underrated concerning its skillfully controlled chaos, narratively constructed from start to finish as one great big Rube Goldberg contraption, with a succession of geographical events linked through motion and where the causality is figuratively, if not literally, severed at the end by a fed-up Indy cutting through the rope bridge. Note how this narrative map of chain reactions is slyly referenced through the storied mythos of Shiva (..."who made you fall from sky.") and the three-leveled Sankara stones; Pankot Palace itself descending three levels deeper into hell.

The film also rings clear in its thematic definitions. Where the Ark of the Covenant was intended as Hitler’s potential WMD, the lowly Mayapore village, sucked dry of its water and crops, depicts a different kind of ground zero, as the Sankara stones can either replenish or diminish life itself, depending on whose hands they fall into. Mola Ram and his Thuggee intending to threaten the world over with crippling infertility makes a weird kind of sense considering the film’s 1935 time frame, where the plains of North America were knee-deep in the suffrage its historical Dust Bowl. But the stones are also pivotal for Indy’s character arc. In the end, when answering the village shaman, "Yes, I understand its power now," such an acknowledgment is laced with double meaning: the power to course-correct his own moral compass.

This sequel took a lot of critical shots, among other things, for its depiction of child abuse. Yet I'll argue that these elements tap into a psychological level, not unlike Golden Age Disney, insofar that kid viewers are immediately compelled by such dire straits. The central conflict here is in fact about kids and the dehumanization via their abuse. The image of a dying, brown skinned child scrambling into his village and into Indy’s arms evokes the despair of third-world poverty. Conversely, even the boy Maharajah of opulent wealth and power is revealed to be a brainwashed captive of the Thuggee, one acting with murderous intent when he blindly slashes a knife into Short Round—kids perverted by adults to become brutal themselves. And while grim is the depiction of village slave children under Mola Ram’s cruelty, also consider how the buddy relationship between Indy and Short Round is momentarily flipped on its head for the very worst.

Where prepubescent audiences are that their most vulnerable concerns the subconscious fear of being beaten by their own parents. Follow that up with father-figure Indy rendered possessed by the Black Sleep of Kali; in my youth, nothing in this film wounded me more than the scene where he backhands Short Round then smiles-and-half-laughs with crazed delight. Bad guy’s ripping out hearts is one thing, but Indy turning so violently against his littlest fans is the stuff of nightmares. Honestly, those scenes always affected me more viscerally than Vader shattering Luke with the truth of his identity. Yet, I always saw this as an engaging viewing experience, rather than one meant to be harmful or malicious. After all, the good guys win, and the moment where a grateful Indy crowns little Short Round with his Yankees ball cap before hugging him singlehandedly justifies all the horror leading up to it.

LAST CRUSADE

The intro sequence goes on to perfect the idea of our returning protagonist with an origin story that embodies the very essence of vintage Americana, crafting his first-time exploit from the pages (and cover) of a Boys' Life magazine. How fitting that Indy's first wonder tale resembles the humble adventures aimed towards, and enjoyed by, youth readers of the 1910s. And though the story soon shifts to a later time period, this motif remains imbedded within the character, one born from America’s turnover era when the Wild West became the Settled West, but where stretches of the frontier still harbored treasures and dangerous men; where a boy riding horseback up alongside a circus train plays like a stunt from some forgotten Tom Mix silent Western.

Encapsulating the fading generation of the late 1800s is the head leader of the robbers, simply credited as 'Fedora', who passes his very namesake onto young Indy, thereby passing the cowboy-gunfighter hero torch onto a lowly youth of the new age, one chosen for his daring, audacity and adventurous spirit. It is here where team Lucasberg imbued Indiana Jones with a deeply rooted sense of American lore, so much so that while trailing the likes of Superman and Batman by some 40 years, the character nonetheless feels as old as the century itself and as traditional as baseball and apple pie. This is one-half of the reason why the film largely forgoes the darkness of its predecessors, so as to evoke both the Western feel with its Utah desert opening credits and the more innocent wholesomeness of Indy’s pre-World War origins.

Lucas’ mythmaking and Spielberg’s familial sentiment not only meet each other halfway but further commune as thematic gears cranking together in tandem. Widely recognized by now is the Holy Grail as a symbol for the search for Indy’s father. I’d like to address just how cleverly Spielberg crescendos this theme visually during the leap from the Lion’s head. Intercut with Indy’s hand-over-heart hesitation is a close-up of Henry Sr. whispering from afar, "You must believe, boy. You must believe," for it is this very crosscutting, illustrating the belief in his own father, that gives Indy the strength to step into nothingness. The following moment reveals a stone bridge obscured by a simple optical illusion, thus driving the theme home: it wasn’t divine power that carried Indy across but something real, something concrete, that was there all along–family, love, the bond between father and son. Ans where all three of the other installments end with grand spectacles, I always appreciated the more subdued premise of Indy encountering a decrepit knight; still fantastic by definition, but equally humbled and measured with even a touch of goofiness. Likewise, the Grail itself defines humility in its ordinary appearance, recognized among an assortment of glittering chalices only by a thinking man. When Indy brings it to his father the latter’s reaction is that of subtle curiosity -- a sort of, "Huh, there it is." -- instead of overwhelming awe.

CRYSTAL SKULL

Going out on a limb, I propose that this is the most thematically interesting of the series; at the very least, it champions the most thematically clever opening sequence. Within the first 15 minutes conceptual imagery abounds to such a degree that prefaces the remaining story with clear definition, but without spoiling the viewer’s interpretation. Off-camera during the opening credits, Indy remains unseen until we reach the Hangar 51 base, which is revealed to be the warehouse from Raiders. This connection with the first film achieves far more than mere fan service; it displays the brilliance of Lucas’pop-myth alchemy. Indy now seen exploring a place of 20th century American folklore doubles as the first of two "kingdoms", wherein lies hoarded treasures, and as a place rooted in the legend of his own life (i.e. the Ark of the Covenant).

As such, the familiarity of the warehouse is analogous of Indy himself as a leftover from a past era, thereby allowing the film to segue from the previous three adventures to its current 1957 timeframe. Spielberg even visualizes this transition with the rocket-car sequence, which figuratively acts as a time machine that propels Indy into the future; notice that from this point he stumbles into an idyllic 1950s neighborhood setting appearing roughed-up, disheveled, confused and, above all, out of place. Indy is now an anachronism.

This marks what is by far the most eerily surrealistic moment throughout the whole franchise: Indy -- still uniformly brown in his 1930s attire and typically at-home exploring exotic temples of the past -- now ironically lost amidst this strange modernity of suburban America; a world of pastel primaries and fake people frozen in both time and a bizarre state of happiness. After bursting into a house lifelessly inhabited by the then propagandized "nuclear family", Indy’s immediate reaction is to step away in bewilderment, for the very concept is new to him, something of which he has never been a part. Yet, by film’s end, he will have amassed a family of his own, albeit in a rather motley crew form. Aforesaid anachronism apexes with a series seminal image of Indy dwarfed by the mushroom cloud of a (not-so) distant atomic blast. It’s an image that speaks volumes.

A major complaint against Crystal Skull is that Indy’s pursuit for its titular treasure proves inconsequential, in that the Russians eventually score the MacGuffin regardless and make their way to the source of its power. Yet, this rap fails to recognize that basically the same thing happens in both Raiders and Last Crusade. There is a critical distinction to be examined here, and hopefully appreciated. Indiana Jones is not Superman, or even 007. Heroism brings him to the rescue of friends and family (a village’s worth of slave children, at most) and is likewise the result of internal moral choices, but he never "saves the day", so to speak. He never saves the world or mankind from annihilation. Such was never really the idea behind the character, and certainly never the appeal. To this extent, Indy is just another adventurer along for the ride whose ultimate storytelling purpose is not to thwart the villains, per se, but to understand and in turn respect the greater forces to which the villains succumb by their own arrogance. Indy and Spalko both seek to return the crystal skull to Akator, but each for different reasons.

I honestly do love the film’s final act. Many may laugh, but there is some intellectual substance to it, or at least geeky food for thought. Resonant is the idea that Indy’s lifelong archeological quest is shared by travelers from another dimension; that these travelers themselves exist multi-dimensionally as one; that a spellbound Splako, with her collectivist agenda, observes this state of existence as a "hive mind". The climactic moment where Indy, alone (the rest of the gang running for cover), witnesses the saucer’s departure mirror-opposites the image of him standing before an A-bomb mushroom cloud, and thus exalts him as a 'man of the century'–as someone who has lived the extraordinary. That’s part of what makes Indiana Jones so cool.

 

This is brilliant.

As is this. Good stuff.

 

Raiders = God's wrath

Doom = Skepticism

Crusade = Faith and family tested

Crystal Skull = Living in a world that's left you behind

 

The themes in all of them are about losing the McGuffin, but gaining something far more valuable instead

Raiders - he ultimately loses the Ark, but has a reconciliation with Marion
TOD - he loses the fortune and glory when he drops the two Sankara Stones, but saves the villlage and the children
TLC - he loses the Grail, but finally makes peace with his father
KOTCS - he doesn't gain any gold, knowledge or power, but finds his son, and has a second reconciliation with Marion

 

Well said. Concise.

 

So, every time I see these movies something new occurs to me, and here's what it was this time with the child slavery in Temple of Doom:

Abusive child labor practices were a huge political issue, during this time period, in Indy's own United States. I thought their abolition was a recent invention which had occurred in Indy's lifetime, but checking Wikipedia, it wasn't even recent; it was ongoing. At the federal level, the first laws restricting child labor were signed under Woodrow Wilson; attempts to go further in the 1920s were stalled by laissez-faire governments; the issue would finally come back in the New Deal years as part of the whole activist spirit of the times, but the Fair Labor Standards Act which did the most to regulate child labor wasn't passed until 1938, after the events in Temple of Doom.

So this isn't some Thuggee practice that Indy is just discovering. Children working under terrible conditions was a major controversy that Indy would've read about in the papers and heard activists shouting about in the streets in his own everyday life, and probably would've formed his own opinions about it (easy to guess on which side) long ago. The fact that Mola Ram is actually kidnapping them is just cranking it up to eleven. I imagine that when he saw the mines, there was a part of Indy that went "what, this again? F$(# that noise. I can't fix the entire world, but I can sure as hell do something about this place and I think I'm about to."

 

A common theme running through all the Indy movies is the fate of power-mad fanatics, who simply assume that God is on their side, finally coming face to face with him only to find out that they should've been a lot more careful what they wished for. Indy calls on Shivah during the fight with Mola Ram, supposedly a Hindu priest, and Mola Ram gets PWN'd; the Nazis go looking for the Biblical God twice, only to find out that God thinks they're a bunch of turds.

Spalko's not religious, but there's a similar thing going on with her and the aliens. Being a hive mind (as she sees it at least), they represent the kind of perfect collective existence that humanity can never reach, but that totalitarian governments with their obsession for stamping out diversity and uniformizing everything are always striving towards. To her, the alien species must look like nirvana. And that perfect collectivist utopia... wants nothing to do with her, and rejects her as unworthy. It was a very nice way to continue the old "be careful what you wish for" theme, adjusted for a new decade and new villains.

 

I've always seen The Last Crusade as about letting go. Letting go of past grievances, letting go of the fruitless search for the grail, letting go of so many things. In the beginning, Indiana Jones is chasing an artifact as a young person. We see him suddenly years later, a grown man, still fixated by this artifact. He can't let go. Look at his father. His father chased his whole life for the grail and gave up everything, and for what? He couldn't let go. And we see the cost when it comes to enemies that can't let go.

I think the moment at the end when Indiana's father gently tells him to "Let it go" when he can almost reach the grail is one of the most moving moments in cinema for me. Although Raiders is the better film, it's stuff like this that makes Crusade my favorite. It's also unsurprising Lucas would make this a theme of Last Crusade -- following his divorce from Marsha in 1983, a consistent theme of both the Star Wars prequels and Crusade seems to be the importance of letting go. And Lucas has illuminated as much in interviews regarding the subject. I think it's a lesson and a topic near and dear to his heart.

I know many people have their own views of films, and that's fine, but to me, The Last Crusade is mostly clearly about the theme of letting go, and the costs of not doing so. It's a great film for it.

 

Raiders: Judaism

Temple: Hiduism

Crusade: Christianity

Kingdom: Interdimensional Freaks.

 

Kingdom: Scientology

 

rota - belief
tod - sacrifice
tlc - illumination
kotcs - knowledge

 

I thought the whole point about Crystal Skull was blind vs. true patriotism in times of political witch hunts and paranoia, forgiveness and true love... I mean twu luv. (Thank you Princess Bride for that last part.)

 

I think there's a certain, if not definite, streak of that running through the film, yes.

 

I'm rewatching the films right now, and something occurred to me that I hadn't truly registered/processed before, which is that while Raiders and Temple are straight-up action-adventure serials, Last Crusade and Crystal Skull both follow the theme of reconnection across generations, with Indy going on a similar character journey in both, first with his father in Last Crusade and then with his son in Crystal Skull.

 

Crusade for me has always reminded me of the old myth of Icarus and Daedalus. Daedalus' expert craftsmanship enabled him to build fantastic wax wings with which he and he son Icarus could use to escape the labyrinth imprisoning them. As they ascended into the sky, there was a moment Icarus forgot he was mortal and flew too close to the sun to revel in its power and heat, and he thought he could grasp it. At that moment he was reminded of his finite, mortal nature when the sun's rays melted his wax wings and threw him back down to earth killing him.

I see Indy's dad as Daedalus and Indy as Icarus. We see Indy's dad teaching indy ancient Greek, (which I find fitting, but doesn't fit the storyline or archeological locations of the movie) and many other disciplines of the ancient world. These things his father taught him, the "wax wings" his father bestowed upon him are what allow Indy to follow the trail of clues ancients have left, leading him through the various "mazes" of archeology and mystery to various treasures and discoveries..

But in crusade, Indy was reaching for something he could not grasp, something that would have reminded him of his finite, mortal nature. Something that would have finally melted his wax wings and thrown him below to his death. The Grail, which embodies immortality, or man's ultimate and unachievable desire of defeating death. His father was able to remind him at that last moment, "Dont reach beyond your grasp"...that its not man's place to live forever, but to appreciate the time and family their afforded. So Indy let go before he was burned, and escaped the fate of Icarus.

The same theme and moral played itself out in the history and fall of the Templar knights...."Dont reach beyond your grasp". they traveled half way around the world for the Grail and its mysteries, only to lose the Grail forever and suffer the entire order being eradicated from existence.

Immortality, divinity, these things were never meant for mortal men. Be appreciative of your own nature, and once in a while you may get to fly for a bit, but not forever...

And I do think Lucas/Spielberg picked Greek for Henry to teach young Indiana in the beginning instead of Latin (Latin, which actually for the history of the Templar Knights would have been more fitting) for a reason. And as another interesting factoid.. the Island the Greeks believe Icarus to have fallen onto, plunging to his death, which also happens to be shaped like a wing, was inhabited and controlled by the Knights Templar and Knights Hospitallers (knights of st john) for a good 300 years. So the Greeks from the island today are descendents of those Knights or a mix containing that old blood.

 

Interesting thoughts, Ord Sorrell. Now I'm thinking Indy 5 should have Knights Templar in it.

 

I don't think Lucas had Icarus in mind when making the movie, I just saw the "theme" or "moral story" of Icarus in the movie...

as far as the new one sheesh...I havent read about it at all ... have no idea what it would be about... They seem to have touched on most of the main legends/religions/historical cultures.. They've done the egypt/old testament thing with the first, india/Vedic/mysticism thing with the third, New testament/Christianity thing with the 3rd... and Sumerian/pre-columbian South American thing with the 4th...

What's left? Ancient Chinese, Greek, Japanese... African (although Egypt counts as African) ...Maybe something at the poles? I wouldnt mind see Indy tackle some fuedel japan legend.. maybe the suicide forest heh (I think actually they are making or made a movie about that)...who knows.. I'm sure it will be great

 

All of them: Having a good time and a chance for Lucas to do those old adventure movie series that he love as big budget movies.

 

Super late response to this, but

It is still a religion - only thing is, it is not from our heroes' perspective and not a majorly represented worldwide belief

"No, God's head does not look like that."
"Depends on who your god is"

 

Yes but good or bad religion is still a lot of things to a lot of people.