Indiana Jones = Scooby Doo

[jake_fink]

Funny. I was watching an episode of The New Scooby Doo Mysteries with my three year old and was surprised (okay, not so much) that the last act seemed to have been stolen for reuse by George Lucas and David Koepp in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

In the Scooby episode a giant ruby was returned to it's resting spot allowing a spaceship to toot off into the unknown. Replace the ruby with a crystal skull...

I also believe that the Mutt Jones character is based on Scrappy Doo.

Finally, KotCS should have had more zombies. The Scooby episode had zombies which I found both terrifying and riveting.

 

[Nighthawk]

...And the basket Marian Ravenwood hid in in ROTLA looks like the clay pot the kid at the start of The Thief of Baghdad hid in.

...and the warehouse scene in ROTLA is straight from Citizen Kane.


...and the train scene in KOTCS is straight from The Wild One.


...I could go on and on and on and on....

It should be noted that KOTCS is a mediocre amalgamation of 1950s B-list science fiction movies and Erich von Daniken.


I don't have the exact quote, but Harlan Ellison something like this when Star Wars first came out: "At what point does one stop thinking homage and instead shouts 'Thief!' ?"

NH

 

[hatguy1]

...the last act seemed to have been stolen for reuse by George Lucas and David Koepp in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

With all due respect (Doo respect?), the average Scooby Doo episode had 10X the intellectual credibility than The Kingdom of The Crystal Numbskull. I'm a HUGE Indiana Jones fan, but that has to be the dumbest movie of the 21st century so far....

 

[RobFedoraField]

blasphemy!

but he could make complete crap and people would still go see it. I'd just love to have a 10th of 1% of what he sold star wars for.

 

[hatguy1]

That's my whole point; the IJ series AND it's director/producer and main character actor ALL had so much more potential than the Crystal Numbskull movie delivered as to be nearly blasphemous.

 

[HeyMoe]

I never saw the full Crystal Skull movie. I think I fell asleep about 30 minutes into it - something I never did with the other IJ movies.

 

[Edward]

I actually really liked it... but then I liked what they were doing (moving the aciton to the 50s, and pastiching 50s sci fi genre as the direct equivalent of 30s pulp). I'ts not like it was a Star Wars prequel.

RIP Star Wars, 1977-1997. Dead to me forever.

 

[HeyMoe]

I actually really liked it... but then I liked what they were doing (moving the aciton to the 50s, and pastiching 50s sci fi genre as the direct equivalent of 30s pulp). I'ts not like it was a Star Wars prequel.

RIP Star Wars, 1977-1997. Dead to me forever.

Hell, I will re-rent it this weekend and take another look. Worse case scenario, I fall asleep again LOL

 

[scottyrocks]

To me, Raiders is the one. The rest are beneath it, with CS being down off the charts.

 

[Edward]

To me, Raiders is the one. The rest are beneath it, with CS being down off the charts.

Raiders is my favourite, then Last Crusade. I like Crystall Skull just a little more than Temple. I still have a lot of affection for Temple as it was my first Indy film, but I'm not at all a fan of Hollywood doing the "cute kid" thing, and Crystal Skull scores big over Temple for the lack of that - Mutt is at least adult-aged. He also made much more sense in the plot (as distinct from being a marketing tool, that is) as it explored another sides to Jones. Where we saw him as a son in Last Crusade, seeing him cope with the other end of that relationship, as a father himself, was interesting.

 

[Stearmen]

Indiana Irrelevant

On a recent episode of The Big Bang Theory, Amy Farrah Fowler proved that Harrison Ford's character was irrelevant to the out come of Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Amy explains that with or without Indiana Jones, the Nazi’s would have still found the Ark of the Covenant, taken it to the island, opened it and all of them would have died just the way they did. I remember thinking that when I saw it on it's release. I was never an Indy fan after that.

 

[scottyrocks]

On a recent episode of The Big Bang Theory, Amy Farrah Fowler proved that Harrison Ford's character was irrelevant to the out come of Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Amy explains that with or without Indiana Jones, the Nazi’s would have still found the Ark of the Covenant, taken it to the island, opened it and all of them would have died just the way they did. I remember thinking that when I saw it on it's release. I was never an Indy fan after that.

There was a big discussion of this on COW after I had posted the very same premise stated on the show.

It turns out not to be true. The simplest, and best, explanation was that if Indy had not been there to cause the fiery end of the flying wing, the arc would have been placed on the plane and taken to Berlin before Belloq offered his idea of a private island opening, where it would have been opened in front of Hitler and company, melting their faces off, and eliminating the need for WWII.

So thanks, Indy, for contributing to the necessity of WWII.

 

[Stearmen]

There was a big discussion of this on COW after I had posted the very same premise stated on the show.

It turns out not to be true. The simplest, and best, explanation was that if Indy had not been there to cause the fiery end of the flying wing, the arc would have been placed on the plane and taken to Berlin before Belloq offered his idea of a private island opening, where it would have been opened in front of Hitler and company, melting their faces off, and eliminating the need for WWII.

So thanks, Indy, for contributing to the necessity of WWII.

:roll:

 

[Worf]

With all due respect (Doo respect?), the average Scooby Doo episode had 10X the intellectual credibility than The Kingdom of The Crystal Numbskull. I'm a HUGE Indiana Jones fan, but that has to be the dumbest movie of the 21st century so far....

HA!!!!! :rofl:

" The Kingdom of The Crystal Numbskull"!!!!! Priceless!

Worf

 

[MikeKardec]

Okay, Jeeze ... Indiana Jones. Enormous impact on popular culture with VERY minimal input. My opinion only, but what do we have? A really fun rehash of some really fun stuff in Raiders of the Lost Ark, written by someone who seemed to understand what Pulp Adventure fiction was all about (Who wrote this aspect? Laurence Kasdan, Phillip Kaufman? Someone who didn't come back, that's for sure.). Then we have a great beginning to The Temple of Doom ... BUT it was originally part of the Raiders script. I actually have an early draft where the headpiece to the staff of Ra was in two parts and the jewel in the center had to be acquired in a separate adventure identical to the beginning of TOD. Lastly we have the completely inspired casting of Sean Connery and River Phoenix. BUT THAT'S IT.

Alright, alright, Last Crusade was sort of okay but not up to the standard of Raiders. Temple of Doom and Crystal Skull barely register on my meter. And there were virtually no knock offs worth mentioning, maybe Romancing the Stone or The Mummy. Maybe.

I agree with Harlan Ellison, everything in Raiders was stolen. I'm the son of one of the guys it was stolen from! But dad and I LOVED it. I wish they had gone off and stolen MORE instead of trying to figure out a genre that none of the later film makers seemed willing to study.

But Raiders has taken over our perception of everything it touched ... especially THE HAT. Hats like Indy's fedora were commonly worn from, what, the 1890s until the 1960s? That has got to set a fashion record. But today someone (in the US) sees a fedora and they immediately think Indiana Jones.

Now that's bang for your buck!