After Jones is settled back into his university setting, a series of events leads him to Mutt. Now, the first scene where they interact at the diner is great. Jones is authentic and wise. A bit prudish, not letting Mutt steal a beer. Everything is shown to us subtly, brilliantly. This is the type of character building they should have leaned into. But alas following a car chase, the two are whisked off to South America, to rescue Mutt’s mother and Oxley.
Eventually, we are led to the first obligatory spooky cave scene. Here a native is trying to fight with the two. To spook them? Kill them? I don’t know. But at one point Jones tells Mutt to wait at the bottom of the grave. And, we’re left to watch Mutt as the man jumps out of the shadows and attacks. Suddenly, the ghostly figure has a blow gun aimed right at Mutt… But, just in the nick of time, Jones steps in front of the gun, and blows the dart back into his enemies throat.
Questions? Where did Jones go? Why wasn’t he the focal point of the action? Where did he learn those stealth skills? Yes, in the past movies Jones snuck around, but there was a sloppy, realistic sensibility to it. He was confused, yet his brain was thinking. He was making it up as he went along. We felt fear that he might get caught. To cap the scene off, we have Mutt staring up at Jones with awe. “You’re a teacher,” he says. Then Jones replies with the famous trailer line, “Part time.” And, the camera pans up toward him in the same manner as his reveal shot in Raiders. It’s as if the movie is screaming at us, “See!! Look! Look! Indiana is just as great as he ever was.”
Now, one other distinct factor with a Mary Sue: Mary’s don’t need to be rescued by anyone. I will get to that one scene in a bit, but throughout all the other Indiana Jones movies, Jones was rescued a lot. In Raiders, Marion shot a man who was about to shoot him, Sallah stopped him from eating poison and threw him a rope, and even in the end God had to swoop in and rescue him from the Nazis. In Temple, Shorty saved him 3 times, and Willie even got a good licking on a thuggee to rescue his rear. In Crusade, Jones’ father saved him from a plane, a tank, and maybe an automobile… Probably not.
In Crystal Skull, there is only one real scene with a significant rescuing of Indy, the quicksand… I mean… “dry sand pit” rescue. (The motorcycle chase was a dual effort. The Mutt monkey swing rescue--maybe--but still a team effort--and it was dumb. With Marion picking them up in the car, Jones conquered pending conflict.) The “dry sand pit” was terrible, nearly as bad as the monkey swinging. But, this scene was an attempt to make Jones not look like a Mary Sue. Most writers know that creating a perfect character is not good writing. So, even when a writer is creating a Mary Sue, he or she will often throw in some sort of trivial flaw in order to show that a character has a weakness. It rarely factors into the plot. What of the “dry sand pit” scene? How is he rescued? By a snake. But the way it was acted out was way over the top. It was as if the movie was yelling at us, “Hey see that? Jones is afraid of snakes. He’s not a perfect character. He’s no Mary Sue.” Yet, take the scene out (just like the nuking the fridge scene) does it change the story? Sure, Marion told him Mutt was his son, but she would have done that somewhere else. The scene exists just remind us that he is afraid of snakes, and it doesn’t authentically show Jones’ flaws. Or, a man that needs to be rescued from time-to-time.
In Raiders however, we are shown early on that Jones is afraid of snakes. And this circle’s back later. It is significant to the plot. It is a weakness he has to face. When the tomb is opened, he lays on his back and says, “Snakes, Why’d it have to be snakes?” This builds tension. This makes us feel for the character.
Regardless, Jones moves on, and so too will I. Next post… that is. I shall tackle his fight with the big baddy...
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