Hacker News Reader

Comment by JKCalhoun | Hacker News Reader

Just an aside: I was amused when someone pointed out that the plot of "Raiders" would have reached the same climatic end if Indiana Jones were completely removed from the script.

I have noticed too that "This Island Earth" (if you know this old classic sci-fi film) is another such script in which the protagonist could be removed with no change in the outcome.

View on HN

I've come across that as well. However, I'll add that it's a bit like saying that, in a 400m race (running), all the athletes are back where they started and they'd have been there even without going around the track.

It's a film trying to show the adventures of Indiana Jones.

The people he killed along the way might disagree, if they could.

The bad guys may not have ever found the ark without the information on the other side of the amulet.

But they would have had the amulet.

Except he led them to the amulet in the first place.

Indiana Jones a Nazi collaborator? Film at 11.

The Nazis found the amulet independently; at least that was always my interpretation. There was no indication I could find that the Nazi in Tibet followed Jones.

They show him getting on the same plane as Jones. He’s following him.

Yeah. They don't know that Marian has it.

Or don’t know where to find her (or more likely, her father).

I've seen this observation and it did make me chuckle, but it misses the entire point of the film.

It's true that the "big picture events" of Nazis getting their faces melted off would have happened either way, but Raiders isn't about the Nazis. It's about Jones himself and the change he undergoes between the beginning of the film when he is dismissive of the supernatural to the end where he has at least a grudging respect for it (both turning away from the opening of the ark and his subsequent comments indicate this). The Nazis would have been the same, Jones wouldn't have been and Raiders is a movie about Jones.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com