Indiana Jones And The Red Menace

[seriousfic]

You know, Soviets really just aren't as good a villain for Indy as Nazis. Well, obviously, but more than that. When people think of the Thuggee, they go "wha? Who?" and then when the movie shows them enslaving kids the audience goes "Yeah, kick their ass, Indy!"

But when people think of Communism, they think of the Red Scare, the Crucible, McCarthyism. There's more Dr. Strangelove than Red Dawn in the average American's cinematic landscape. All those movies about beating the dirty Commies seem dated and jingoistic now.

This isn't helped by the fact that Crystal Skull spends a weird amount of time painting the Soviets as sympathetic. The only overtly "bad" thing they do is kill the soldiers at the beginning of the movie, and that's over in ten seconds. The rest of the time, they're drag-racing with cute American teenagers and dancing around campfires.

Sure, it'd be hard to do a history lesson about how the Soviet Union really was a nest of vipers, they could've at least given Indy some quips about bad things the Russians have done. Think that New Teen Titans issue where Wally was a dick to Red Star because, you know, only a Midwestern conservative would take issue with the Soviet Union's bundle of sunshine.

As is, Indy's "I like Ike" rejoinders just make him look like an Establishment stooge. Impressive, considering he actually was working for the government in the first movie.

Of course, that wouldn't help that the entire premise of the movie is fuxxored from the beginning. How many of the fifties sci-fi films that George Lucas was trying to emulate ended with benevolent aliens making nice-nice with the Earthlings? One or two percent? Most of them had bug-eyed monsters that raised an entire generation of kids before the gorehounds came along. I'm talking James Arness as a walking carrot, I'm talking Them!. For Crystal Skulls to be real fifties SF, it would have to end with a really good monster.


This is what Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls is missing.

Oh, and "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skulls" is a much better title. Kingdom is just too long, like "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark." And not just because Indy IS a Raider of the Lost Ark...

Comments

[alcimines.livejournal.com]

It basically boils down to this: Communism was, is, and will probably always remain intellectually respectable. Yeah, as a system, Communism relentlessly kills lots and lots of people and is incredibly inefficient to boot, but its propagandists are always careful to say the right things about economic justice and the equality of man. And since that's what a lot of people want to hear, the ugly details of history just get glossed over.

Oh, well, I suppose everyone is equal in a mass grave. So in a sense, Communism does deliver.

[mymatedave.livejournal.com]

That's the problem with Communism. It works great as an idea, it's just that when it gets put into practice by 'people' that it falls down.

Churchill said it brilliantly, "Western democracy is a terrible, ineffcient system, but it's better than all the rest."

[lurkslikefox.livejournal.com]

Possibly it should be 'Indiana Jones and the other Raiders of the Lost Ark, for he is one also'.