7 Unnecessarily Complicated Movie Plots That Had Simple Solutions

3. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

The Complicated Plot: Indiana Jones, the world's foremost archaeological badass, is hired by the United States government to retrieve the Ark of the Convenant before - you guessed it - the Nazis. His mission leads him across the globe, but mostly to Cairo, Egypt, where he battles against his nemesis, Belloq, for control of the incredibly powerful artefact. Much of the movie involves Indy actually trying to find where the Ark is concealed, which can only be done by transcribing runes and getting up really early in the morning. It's difficult to find, is what I'm saying. The Ark changes hands a whole bunch of times, and it's a real headache for everyone involved. The Incredibly Simple Solution: Indy refuses to work for the government and continues his day job at the University. Seriously. In fact, Indy's involvement in this whole debacle makes matters entirely worse, in the sense that his partaking directly prevents the Ark of the Convenant from murdering Adolf Hitler. Remember, Hitler wanted to open the Ark personally - it was supposed to be developed directly to him. By way of Indy's meddling, Belloq changed his plans so that the Ark was opened beforehand. Not just that, but in his attempts to find the Ark before the Nazis, he leads them right to it. Fact is, they might not have even dug it up in the first place had he not decided to try and find it about ten yards from where the enemy was digging. Just imagine if Indy had been struck with a nasty bout of the flu on the weekend he was supposed to fly out to Nepal to meet Marion. The simplest solution was, ultimately, for our beloved hero to stay in bed. To make matters even worse (and I pointed out in this extract from a previous article), Indy might also have been responsible for some things you might have never imagined possible:

"Indy€™s actions here 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."