Indiana Jones/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


These things about Indiana Jones are subjective - not everyone will agree with all of them.

For the Atari 2600 game Raiders of the Lost Ark, see here.

  • Alas, Poor Villain: Dr. Elsa Schneider. Both Indy and his father in-movie are sorry about her fate.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Indy a true-blue hero? Is he a Blood Knight trying to break out of the humdrum existence of a university professor? Or is he a underdeveloped manchild trying to live out the adolescent fantasies of youth with a "secret identity"?
    • Most likely all three.
    • A good number of fans take Marcus Brody's deterioration in competence and death before the start of the fourth movie as evidence that he had a condition (say, Alzheimer's) chipping away at his cognitive abilities.
  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: If there's one thing just about every fan agrees on, it's that bringing back Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood was awesome.
  • Angst? What Angst?: In The Last Crusade, Elsa is severely traumatized, screaming her head off, as Donovan dies right in front of her eyes, from something she delibarately did to him no less, and yet in the next scene she acts as if nothing happened.
  • Awesome Music: The iconic theme song, of course. Five movies and over four decades, it has never gotten old.
  • Broken Base:
    • Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. Some people say it is total crap, others say it was fun but not up to Indiana Jones standards, some liked the acting and characters but not the writing, some liked it all except for the Gainax Ending, Shia LaBeouf blames himself and his monkey-swinging Tarzan act, and then there are those that hold it as being better than Temple of Doom but not up to the standards of the "Nazi" movies. Really, it isn't broken so much as shattered into thousands of pieces.
    • Temple of Doom gets this, too. It mostly comes down to whether Kate Capshaw was too annoying for the movie to be enjoyable.
      • It also comes down to whether the Gorn was too much.
  • Complete Monster:
    • What with kidnapping countless Indian children, working them both literally and figuratively to death, and eventually brainwashing them into the cult of Kali, Mola Ram is easily the most evil villain in the series. A series where most of the villains are Nazis.
    • Donovan from The Last Crusade has no hesitation to send many "volunteers" the death traps in order to get the Holy Grail or shooting Henry Sr to convince Indy to get the Holy Grail for him.
    • And Toht from Raiders.
  • Contested Sequel: Crystal Skull. Temple of Doom, on a lesser extent.
  • Critical Dissonance: A different case than usual: Critics generally gave Crystal Skull good to great reviews, while the fans were the ones that hated it.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: The John Williams theme is now the adventure theme.
  • Damsel Scrappy: Willie Scott, natch. After a Badass boisterous Bottle Fairy like Marion, it's hard for some fans to accept that not every woman's cut out for the adventure shtick.
  • Deconstructive Parody: Temple of Doom showed accompanying Indy on his adventures can be fatal to normal folks.
  • Draco In A Leather Dress - Irina Spalko is one of the rare female examples. In her defense, she does have some genuine Anti-Villain-ish character traits but not enough to fully qualify for the Trope.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Henry Jones Sr.
    • For many a little Asian boy in the 1980s, Short Round was the ONLY positive and heroic Asian role model he could relate to.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Irina Spalko.
    • Elsa from The Last Crusade. Holy hell, that woman was gorgeous.
  • First Installment Wins: Of all the Indiana Jones works, Raiders of the Lost Ark is the one whose actual plot you're most likely to remember.
    • Unless it's The Last Crusade, because of the quest for the Grail and Sean Connery as Henry Jones Sr. But having said that, Crusade is the most well-remembered of the sequels largely because of its faithfulness in tone to the original.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: From Raiders: There's a big snake in the plane!
  • Memetic Mutation:
  • Memetic Outfit: The fedora.
  • Mood Whiplash: Most of the scenes that aren't horrifying are amusing.
  • Non Sequitur Scene: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has Mutt swinging with hundreds of CGI monkeys. Also counts as Narm.
  • The Scrappy: Willie, Short Round, and Mutt.
  • Ships That Pass in the Night - Elsa and Henry Sr. canonically have this relationship, with Henry Sr. using this exact phrase to describe it.
  • Special Effect Failure: Prevented by, of all people, the MPAA in Raiders. The model of Belloq's head which explodes during the film's climax can be seen in the behind-the-scenes footage of the DVD, and was laughably unconvincing. However, the MPAA objected to the blood and brain fragments that could be seen after the explosion, and so the film makers obscured the sequence by superimposing flames over the footage... which had the side-effect of covering up the model's deficiencies and making the scene look pretty convincing!
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: According to some people, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull had plenty of this.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: That bridge in The Last Crusade, the leap of faith. You don't even see it until the camera pans and throws it off kilter!
  • What Do You Mean It's for Kids?: Temple of Doom, along with Gremlins, which was produced by Spielberg, were dark enough to lead to the creation of the PG-13 rating.
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  1. ↑ played by Darrell Hammond
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