|
Nope, sorry. Ghoulish Delight Johnson is right.
There's zero point in obtaining the Holy Grail if your immortality depends on baby-sitting it all alone in a dark cave inside Petra ... for the rest of time.
Also, as he noted after the screening ... Ho-Hum on the Maguffin being something that confers no tangible benefit on the Nazis, while the Lost Ark would purportedly have allowed them to conquer every army on earth via leveling mountains and laying waste to entire regions ... if it were not for the innate revenge motive of the God of the Hebrews to exact upon the Nazis ... also missing from the more ho-hum Grail of Christ.
Also ho-humming about the quest for the Grail is that the prize is not gained till the end of the movie. It's so much better in Raiders when finding the Maguffin is not nearly the climax of the film ... but getting it stolen back and forth makes the last third an exciting game of the "Raiders" of the Lost Ark, and not simply a story of Indiana Jones.
mousepod insisted Raiders is just as much walking from room-to-room for a new setpiece as Temple of Doom ... to which I reply, Balderdash.
Stereotypical as it may be (and I daresay that's the point), having the Ark captured, stolen, re-captured, re-stolen is all great story stuff relating to the stated goal, and not simply stuff that happens as Indy walks into the next room of the same big building.
Some may say it doesn't make a difference if the action is related to the Maguffin or not, but I disagree. Just as I find the later Bourne films greatly lacking without the opening "gimmick" of Jason's amnesia (not to mention a love story you care about), Temple of Doom is lacking for (among too many other things) the action not really relating to the Maguffin (and certainly not having a love story you care about)
|