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10 Top Questions After Seeing Indiana Jones

Courtesy of Paramount


Now that many of our readers have a chance to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, we can finally talk about it openly. Sure, like Conan O’Brien, we liked the ants, and we’ve already made clear that we thought Shia LaBeouf was better than we expected. But we had plenty of questions about the movie, too — moments that confused us, angered us, or made us wonder if we or George Lucas had gone totally crazy. (And we say that as the Vulture editor who liked the movie.) After the jump, our ten most pressing (and spoilery) questions about the movie that’s likely to break every box-office record ever this weekend. Maybe Spielberg will stop by and answer some! Probably not, though.

1. How exactly — after watching the Ark of the Covenant melt a squadron of Nazis, and drinking from the Holy Grail — does Indy remain so skeptical about everything? At this point, wouldn’t he just shrug and be like, “Sure, aliens, city of gold, why not?”

2. What exactly is the tensile strength of that snake Shia used to haul Indy and Marian out of the sand pit? Is it enough to, as Indy suggests earlier, lift a car? We sort of think no.

3. Is it considered appropriate to sing the recently-unearthed lyrics to John Williams’s theme song during the movie?

Courtesy of Gizmodo; lyrics courtesy Alex Balk

4. What happened to the cheesy payoff we expected for that line, early in the movie, in which Indy tells Mutt that bites from big scorpions are nothing to worry about, but if you get bit by a little scorpion, “Don’t keep it to yourself”? We expected a scene near the climax where Mutt needs to choose between leaping into a pit full of big scorpions and a pit full of little ones. Did that get cut out of this draft?

5. Whose decision was it to dramatically re-enact the genocide of South American native peoples, when the Commies machine-gunned all those ancient Incan warriors? That was a nice touch.

6. Okay, in that scene where Shia LaBeouf swings more than a mile through the jungle on vines alongside hundreds of pompadoured monkeys — where were the Ewoks?

7. If the Crystal Skull can get our gang out of scrape after scrape — from killer red ants to scary, slingshot-wielding Incan warriors — would it work in the real world too? Could Indy just wave the skull at a cop who pulls him over? Could we use it to get into Momofuku Ko?

8. That CGI prairie dog whose quizzical look is the punch-line to the scene where Indy survives the nuclear blast in a refrigerator — he dies of radiation sickness an hour later, right?

9. How come alien crystal magnetism only works when you’re looking at it?

10. Was knowledge their treasure? Or was it that their treasure was knowledge?

What did you think? What questions did Indy’s close encounters leave you with? Let us know in the comments!

Earlier: In Defense of Shia LaBeouf As the Next Indy
Vulture Watches the Next Three Indy Movies

Related: David Edelstein on Indiana Jones

10 Top Questions After Seeing Indiana Jones