How The Big Bang Theory Ruined Indiana Jones For Everyone

Raiders of the Lost Ark So why was Amy right? Well, despite all of the pomp and circumstance surrounding pretty much everything that Indy does in the first movie, he's not actually the super cool adventurer guy we all used to think he was. In the interest of making what would usually be classed as a pedantic and overly obsessive (to the point of wearing heavy-knit, highly-patterned sweaters all year round) profession cool, Indy is pretty much the worst archeologist in the history of the profession. He's a grave-robber, smashing artefacts and desecrating tombs at will, and he has zero concern for any native attempting to protect their cultural and ancestral heritage - because, clearly anyone with a swarthy skin-tone and a thick accent should immediately be classified as a villain. Naturally, some will say that the ends justify the means, but they don't when it comes to Indy. None of his spoils justify what he manages to do to sacred, often untouched ground - aside perhaps from his discovery that all notions of religion (or at least Christianity) are based entirely in truth, and that ghosts exist (which both seem to have been forgotten by the start of Crystal Skull.) But as Amy so adroitly points out, in Raiders, Indy achieves precisely nothing, even if he does do it rather spectacularly. Had he not interfered, the Nazis would still have been vanquished by their natural enemy - God - as they would have simply found the Ark, opened it, and had their faces melted off. The only time Indy comes close to making any kind of impact is when he discovers the correct place for the head-piece and subsequently finds the Well Of Souls, but even then the Nazis suddenly appear within minutes, having presumably recalculated and discovered their initial error (without spending too long actually looking for the Well Of Souls presumably, since it would only be a few inches under the surface after a couple of thousand years.) Would anything have turned out differently if Indy hadn't even showed up at all? The Nazis would definitely have found the head-piece, and taken it from Marion, who was a hopeless, but high-functioning alcoholic, adn they would have opened it - probably on the island where they planned to test its powers, as opposed to under Hitler's nose, unfortunately. So, Indy wasted his time - but he did do two things that changed history, both for the worse...
Contributor
Contributor

WhatCulture's former COO, veteran writer and editor.