1. Indiana Jones - Raiders of the Lost Ark
Indiana Jones is arguably the greatest action movie hero ever convinced.
Raiders of the Lost Ark, his debut adventure, is known worldwide as "the best movie ever." An archeology professor who moonlights as an adventurer of epic proportions,
Raiders pits Indy against the slime of humanity, the Nazis, as they try to uncover the location of the Ark of the Covenant, which, according to Indy's rival, Belloq, doubles as a "radio for speaking to God." Indy, with the help of his friend Sallah, eventually discovers the location of the Ark, though it's stolen by the Nazis, who decide to open it (against Hitler's orders) on an island off the coast of, uh, somewhere. This proves to be a seriously bad idea, as the Ark actually contains the spirit of a tricky ghost woman who unleashes bolts of death lightning on everybody except for Indy and his old flame, Marion, who survive these events by closing their eyes. But consider for a moment the possibility that, for one reason or another, Indiana Jones decided not to go and visit Marion on that specific day and get tangled up in this specific adventure. He just, like, couldn't be bothered or something, or had mid-term papers to grade. Despite the events that led up to the Ark being opened would have changed to a fair degree, the outcome would have been exactly the same. That is, the Ark would have been found and opened and lighting fired out. Okay, so, Indy wasn't exactly necessary, right? But how did he make things
worse? It's simple: all his meddling made Belloq nervous, who
changed his plan according to Indy's frequent interjections. That meant taking the Ark to an abandoned island and opening it there instead of sticking with the original mission. Which, by the way, happened to involve taking the Ark
directly to Hilter in Berlin. We know this 'cause Indy blows up the plane they planned on using to fly it there in that awesome scene. Which means that, yes, Indiana Jones stopped a chain of events which would have culminated with landing a God-bomb directly into Hitler's lap. Seriously. Hits wanted to open that thing
personally. Some of the clever among you might say, "Oh, but Indy had to get involved, otherwise Marion would've probably been killed." That's technically true, but this article is about heroes would made things worse: the death of Marion would certainly have been justifiable if it had eventually led to the death of Adolf Hitler. Hell, even Marion would probably agree with that one. Perhaps even more horrifically, Indy's actions also mean that he's (brace yourself) indirectly responsible for World War II and the holocaust, because grading mid-term papers that weekend would've meant that most of the Third Reich would've ended up as lighting bolt fodder. By trying to stop the end of the world, he actually made it about a zillion times worse, and got around 60 million people killed as a result. Oops? Thing is, both
Last Crusade and
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull are built around stories with conclusions that don't change whether Indy goes along for the ride or not.
Temple is the only movie where he directly prevents something bad from happening by getting involved. And that's the one where he cares the least, 'cause the man's still in his "fortune and glory" persona back then. Talk about priorities, Dr. Jones.
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