Indiana Jones IV plot holes

[Admiral_Young]

Darabont's script was called "Indiana Jones and the City of Gods" and can be found on the internet with a google search. Basically the premise had Ex-Nazi's chasing after Indy in the early 50's.

 

[EJA]

I thought it was implied the that aliens dimensionally shifted to that spot...it makes the most sense I think. These weren't conventional outer space aliens but aliens from another dimension, who probably use "portals" and such for travel.

The city of Akator existed for thousands of years though, and was built on top of the ship. If the ship went somewhere else, the valley floor would've sunk and destroyed the city.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

It's too generous to say there were holes in the plot. That presupposes that there was a plot. The story doesn't hold together in any way. Saying there are holes in the plot is like saying there are lakes between the Hawaiian Islands. There's just one great big hole with a few isolated fragments of plot scattered within it.

I mean, the first 15-20 minutes of the film seem to be telling one story: Indy gets in trouble at a military base, falls under suspicion due to the rampant paranoia of the McCarthy era, and loses his job. Now, in the original Frank Darabont script, that actually led somewhere. It had relevance to the story that followed. But in the finished film, from the moment Mutt arrives and addresses Indy on the train, none of that is ever mentioned or has any connection to the story that takes up the rest of the film. It's like we're suddenly in a completely unrelated movie.

Sure, in the final minutes, we see that Indy hasn't only gotten his job back but has evidently gotten a promotion, but there's not a single word about how or why that happened. It can't be the result of his crystal-skull investigation; he didn't bring back any evidence, any artifacts, anything except a story nobody would take seriously. He just got a random happy ending because it was the end of the movie. It was completely disconnected from the rest of the film. That's horrifically bad story structure.

And there aren't any real character arcs either. There's the guy who seems to be an ally and then a traitor and then a double agent and then a traitor lying about being a double agent, but it's just random switches to complicate events. Spalko is presented as the main villain, but at the end she seems to be only a seeker of knowledge and her fate appears more like transcendence than destruction. Mutt is resistant to the idea of Indy as his father until he suddenly comes around for no clear reason. Marion, this wonderful character returning to the series after far too long, is almost totally wasted, reduced to nothing more than the love interest, which is an even smaller role here than it was in the original film.

People complain about the aliens, but the use of aliens was the least of this film's problems. A solid script could've integrated that concept effectively. After all, Indiana Jones is about mythology, and UFO beliefs are a modern mythology, a New-Age belief system that from a cultural and psychological standpoint is functionally identical to a religious cult. And the '50s were just when that cult was getting started. So that part could've been managed. The problem is that the script is simply incoherent. Lucas had an excellent script to work from, the Darabont draft. Darabont's version had its flaws, like too many villains, a lack of a standout primary villain, and some action scenes that were too cartoony and overdone; and it lacked the Mutt character that Lucas insisted on having. But those problems could've easily been remedied in revisions. Instead, Lucas threw out that script altogether -- aside from keeping the McCarthyism stuff at the beginning even though it no longer had any meaningful followup -- and what replaced it was simply inadequate. It was just a string of set pieces with nothing really holding them together.

STOP BLOWING HOLES IN MY SHIP!

 

[Admiral_Young]

I never said it was the definitive way of how they got there in the first place, just a possibility. Like you said it's a pretty glaring plot hole isn't it?

 

[EJA]

I think it might've been a bit better if they'd cut out that massive flying saucer rising up from underneath the valley floor at the end.

 

[JarodRussell]

Even the Darabont script would have made for an awful movie.

 

[Silvercrest]

Yeah, in hindsight, it's probably best to just pretend this film never happened.

Technically, none of them ever happened.

Don't be too sure. For decades now, the conspiracy freaks have been whispering about this flying refrigerator...

 

[EJA]

How should they have done it then?

 

[Christopher]

^^^ According to my son, there's a fan theory out there that says everything that happens after the Fridge Ride is Indy -- still trapped in the chill chest -- hallucinating while he slowly succumbs to radiation poisoning.

It very nearly works for me.

Well, except that he would've been instantly killed by the heat and concussive shock of the blast wave. Anything that could hurl a heavy refrigerator that far would do much, much worse to human flesh and bone.

Though I guess it's no worse than the usual absurdities in cinematic depictions of explosions and their effects on people.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

^ Well, you could chalk it all up to having one's life flash before one's eyes in a split second. Instead of reliving the past, Indy lives out a fantasy of one last Great Adventure.

Or something.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I don't mind that the beginning of the movie had no connection with the main story; that's been the structure of the movies all along. My biggest problem is that the ending didn't make a lot of sense; we can chalk it up to just one of those unexplainable mysteries, but I would have preferred something more coherent. And I would have preferred regular space aliens over interdimensional aliens. But I still enjoyed the movie.

 

[BDJ]

Indy IV was such a complete and utter failure that when I left the movie theater I actually asked the manager for my money or my time back. Preferably both! I wanted to load up all my friends into a pickup truck, drive to the homes of Lucas and Spielberg and whip their hineys! I mean...really! We kept hearing that they were working hard on a script that they could all agree on and we got that tripe? After War of the Worlds, the prequel trilogy and Indy IV, I've totally lost any respect for the abilities of Lucas and Spielberg to do competent sci-fi and fantasy. Especially Lucas. Oh My God!! Man is he just crap or what??? I'm afraid to waste any more time and money toward any flick that hack tries to slap together. I'm going to sleep now.....

 

[davejames]

I mean, the first 15-20 minutes of the film seem to be telling one story: Indy gets in trouble at a military base, falls under suspicion due to the rampant paranoia of the McCarthy era, and loses his job.

You know, it's a shame they didn't just make the movie about those adventures during the War they refer to (and how exactly Indy earned all those medals). Now THAT sounded like it would have been a good movie.

Or at least a helluva a lot better than the one we got.

 

[JarodRussell]

The opening scene in the hangar should have been the ending.

 

[Christopher]

I don't mind that the beginning of the movie had no connection with the main story; that's been the structure of the movies all along.

If they'd ended it with Indy climbing out of the fridge, then I'd agree with you. The standard structure established in the first and third films was that we first see Indy on an in medias res adventure, then that's resolved, then we see him at the university getting back to his normal life, and from there he's drawn into the main plot of the film. By that structure, the McCarthyism stuff should've been setup for the main adventure.

And simply from a perspective of fundamental storytelling structure, you don't put your hero in a crisis, then ignore that crisis to tell a totally unrelated story, then end the film revealing that the crisis has been resolved with no explanation whatsoever. That's just bad writing, period. The Feds investigating Indy and taking away his job had no relevance to the opening adventure and no relevance to the subsequent adventure; it was an interlude that could've been cut altogether without any impact on the film. It was a fragment left over from the Darabont script and stripped of its context and purpose. If they weren't going to do anything with it, they shouldn't have included it at all.

And not only is that bad storytelling, but it's a horrible way to treat something as serious and important as McCarthyism. The film looks like it's going to make a statement about that kind of injustice and fearmongering (a theme which had a renewed timeliness during the Bush years when the film was made), and then it just completely ignores it.

You know, it's a shame they didn't just make the movie about those adventures during the War they refer to (and how exactly Indy earned all those medals). Now THAT sounded like it would have been a good movie.

Yeah, but they would've had to make it in the early '90s. The Harrison Ford of 2008 couldn't pass for a man under 45.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I don't mind that the beginning of the movie had no connection with the main story; that's been the structure of the movies all along.

If they'd ended it with Indy climbing out of the fridge, then I'd agree with you. The standard structure established in the first and third films was that we first see Indy on an in medias res adventure, then that's resolved, then we see him at the university getting back to his normal life, and from there he's drawn into the main plot of the film. By that structure, the McCarthyism stuff should've been setup for the main adventure.

Hmm. Could be. I know I wasn't bothered by this at the time, but it's been a while since I've seen it; I'd have to rewatch it with these thoughts in mind.

 

[EJA]

It's reading threads like this that make me seriously wonder if Indy IV should be decanonised. I've completely lost any respect I had for the film. As I said, if the parts near the end in Akator had been better thought out, I could maybe accept it a bit more.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

It's reading threads like this that make me seriously wonder if Indy IV should be decanonised. I've completely lost any respect I had for the film. As I said, if the parts near the end in Akator had been better thought out, I could maybe accept it a bit more.

It's a movie. You may enjoy it or not, and of course you may debate it, but it doesn't need a "canon", and it doesn't need your respect.

I enjoyed it.

 

[EJA]

Sorry, but it's just too nonsensical.

 

[barnaclelapse]

I just enjoyed the damn movie. I have to confess that I'm not really worried about a whole hell of a lot with something like an Indiana Jones movie. That's just me. It was a ridiculous, enjoyable adventure, certainly not perfect but still just about everything I was hoping for in a fourth installment, and Harrison Ford was in more than adequate shape to play the character again.

Of all the complaints people had about the film the notion of Ford being "too old" is the most ridiculous to me.

I had a good time watching it, and I think it's too bad that some people didn't.