It is probably a feature and not a bug that the plot of every Indiana Jones movie is the same. The titular hero and a villain race to obtain the same rare mystical artifact; after vanquishing said villain, Indy goes home to varying creature comforts (teaching, sexual intercourse).
To get our guy on the road, however, there must be a why. In each of the series’ five installments, Indy’s goals are obvious enough: As an archaeologist of, let’s say, uneven scruples, he seeks the noble pleasure of plundering mankind’s most sacred relics, usually to sell them to a museum far from their nations of origin. Thwarting the forces of evil, who reliably want the artifact for the Wrong Reasons, is decidedly a secondary aim.
Which is to say that time and again, the villain has little interest in Indy’s holy trinity of wealth, fame, and university tenure. No: Each and every Indiana Jones villain wants the artifact because they believe that it will grant them—and the militaries they represent—untold power. The Thuggees (The Temple of Doom), the Soviets (The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), and the Nazis (Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Last Crusade, The Dial of Destiny) all sought military might.
Naturally, this never works out, because the ending of every Indiana Jones movie is also the same: The good guy triumphs and lives to swashbuckle another day. But despite the artifacts’ narrative centering, down to the fact that three are literally the names of their respective films, they are classic MacGuffins, existing less for their substance and more for the chase.
And yet. With this summer’s Dial of Destiny, we’ve now seen five sets of would-be world-crushers put it all on the line in the name of MacGuffin acquisition. With the latest installment’s introduction of the prospect of time travel, the villainy-inclined might find themselves wondering: Could any of the Indy MacGuffins actually have done the trick, perhaps in a savvier supervillain’s hands? And if you had to pick—with your ambitions global and, we will imagine, in the name of friendship, quite a bit nobler than those of the foes Indy has faced—which MacGuffin might serve you best? Is there one MacGuffin to rule them all? Let’s explore, beginning with the worst.
5. The Crystal Skull (Kingdom of the Crystal Skull)
What They Think It Does:
“The legend says that a crystal skull was stolen from Akator in the 15th or 16th century and that whoever returns the skull to the city temple will be given control over its power,” Indy says of a lost Amazonian city at the film’s outset. Asked what that power is, he offers only, “I don’t know, kid. It’s just a story.”
Crystal Skull owns many Indiana Jones superlatives, almost none of them good. On the list is the franchise’s weirdest villain, who appears in the form of Cate Blanchett as Irina Spalko, the emissary of the Soviet Union’s military with an over-the-top Russian accent. Blanchett’s Spalko offers some more specificity about her understanding of the treasure in question. “The skull’s crystal stimulates an undeveloped part of the human brain, opening a psychic channel,” she vays to Vindy. Predicting that many such skulls might be found in Akator—which she says was a place of “supreme beings with technologies and paranormal abilities”—she says, “Whoever finds them will control the greatest natural force the world has ever known: power over the mind of man.” Stalin, she adds, dreamed of creating “a mind weapon” and “a new frontier of psychic warfare.”
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The skull, or skulls, Spalko continues, will offer a particular endgame in the Cold War. “Imagine,” she instructs Indy, “to peer across the world and know the enemy’s secrets. To place our thoughts into the minds of your leaders. Make your teachers teach the true version of history, your soldiers attack on our command. We will be everywhere at once, more powerful than a whisper, invading your dreams, thinking your thoughts for you while you sleep.
“We will change you, Dr. Jones, all of you, from the inside,” she says. “We will turn you into us. And the best part? You won’t even know it’s happening.”
What It Actually Does:
Unclear. In the film’s conclusion, Spalko finally gets her moment with the skulls in Akator. Through Harold Oxley, who OD’d on direct eye contact with the skull and jumbled his brain (again, many superlatives in this one), they are told that the skulls—or rather the “interdimensional beings” the skulls came from—would like to give the group a “big gift.” After Spalko beseeches them for knowledge, she says with delight that she “can see”—and then swiftly overdoes it, covering her eyes and crying, “Enough!” She disintegrates and is sucked into a “pathway to another dimension,” per Oxley. Strictly speaking, I guess this is a mind weapon.
Which is not to say that the skull does nothing. Indy is able to form a brief telepathic connection with a nonverbal Oxley after his own turn with the skull. There probably aren’t many practical uses for this talent outside of a casino floor, but, I don’t know, maybe some small-scale hypnosis of heads of state and nuclear football carriers could come in handy. It’s cheaper than a conventional military, anyway.
Is It Useful for World Domination?
On one hand: Spalko’s description of the mind weapon is a tremendous pitch for world domination. The end of war! No bombs, just people agreeing—with you! Possibly, you know, against their will and to things or ideas that are not good for them, but if global conquest is your goal, this would be an attractive option.
On the other hand: This is very much so not what the skull did.
Score: 1/10
4. The Antikythera (The Dial of Destiny)
What They Think It Does:
Archimedes, the Greek mathematician, likely inspired a real thing called the Antikythera. That thing is not this thing, “an ancient hunk of gears,” in the words of our favorite archaeologist, that obsessed Basil Shaw, an old fellow adventurer of Indy’s. Shaw’s daughter, played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, turns up in search of answers.
The Antikythera, Indy says, was built by Archimedes to predict the movements of the stars. “But then he stumbled upon a method to predict even larger disturbances. Your father thought this thing could predict fissures in time.”
That feature is of particular interest to Jurgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), who is intent on using the device to travel from 1969 to 1939 via an upcoming fissure, whose coordinates the Antikythera can predict. “He will not be king or emperor or führer,” Voller says of the wielder of the Antikythera. “He will be God.”
What It Actually Does:
Time travel plots tend to cause problems, opening up infinite paradoxes and possibilities. Dial of Destiny keeps them somewhat limited, with the portal apparently destined from the start to bring the group not to 1939, but to 212 B.C. in the midst of the siege of Syracuse. It’s a fun set piece—and a pretty garbage tool for a villain with their sights set on modernity.
Is It Useful for World Domination?
It’s hard to beat time travel in the abstract—Voller was right about that—but a bridge to 212 B.C. is of limited use. Maybe you can bring Archimedes back into the future and employ him as your secret lair’s chief inventor—but then, of course, you collide with a time travel paradox, since you still need him in the past to invent the Antikythera to make time travel feasible in the first place. No one needs this headache.
Score: 2/10
3. Sivalinga and the Sankara Stones (The Temple of Doom)
What They Think It Does:
The Temple of Doom sees Indy literally crash-land in an Indian village, where he learns that a sacred stone called the Sivalinga was stolen along with all of the villagers’ children. The Sivalinga appears to have a cosmic association with good fortune, at least according to the locals; without it, the village’s water dried up, and all the farmers’ crops and animals died.
Later, Indy deduces that the Sivalinga is one of five Sankara Stones, which mythically were bestowed upon mankind by a Hindu god to assist in the fight against evil. A bloodthirsty cult called the Thuggee is hell-bent on gathering the complete set. “Soon, we will have all the five Sankara Stones, and the Thuggees will be all-powerful,” says high priest Mola Ram.
What It Actually Does:
I have a question, and I am not saying Steven Spielberg personally owes me and the broader cinematic world an answer, but I am also not saying that I do not think he does. What in Dr. Brody’s name do the Sankara Stones actually do?
On its own, the Sivalinga seems like it conveys good fortune—hence the parade of calamities in its absence. “Yes, I understand its power now,” Indy tells love interest Willie at the film’s conclusion, when he returns the stone to the village it was taken from. “You could have kept it,” she replies. “Then it would’ve given you your fortune and glory.” Does that mean that the stone grants fortune and glory, or that if Indy sold it off in the U.S. as a priceless artifact, it would have brought him fame and wealth? It seems like it’s the former, if perennial mysticism skeptic Indy says it has power.
As for the Sankara Stones as a group: Indy tells Mola Ram that he betrayed Shiva, causing the stones to turn red-hot and sending Mola Ram tumbling to a crocodile-infested river below.
Is It Useful for World Domination?
“Stone that gets hot sometimes” is not moving the needle.
Mola Ram and the Thuggees never find the final two stones, so we don’t see how the cosmic fight against evil might have gone. Would the Thuggees—or your own personal band of mercenaries—truly have become all-powerful with them in hand? … Maybe?
Score: 4/10
2. The Ark of the Covenant (Raiders of the Lost Ark)
What They Think It Does:
Ostensibly, the Ark is both an all-powerful weapon and a superb defense. “The Bible speaks of the Ark leveling mountains and laying waste to entire regions,” says Marcus Brody, Indy’s frequent professorial conduit of quests. “An army which carries the Ark before it is invincible.”
As usual, Indy, a person who has seen an incredible amount of magic up close, haughtily pooh-poohs the prospect of the Ark’s powers: “lightning, fire, power of God or something.”
“I don’t believe in magic, a lot of superstitious hocus-pocus,” he tells Brody. “You’re talking about the bogeyman.”
What It Actually Does:
There are simply not enough movies in which Nazis melt.
René Belloq, a French archaeologist working with the Nazis, opens the Ark with a Jewish ritual (much to the Nazis’ chagrin). Then: electric shocks, smoke, humanoid spirits flying around the room, a beam of light from the sky, and a fireball that, yes, makes puddles out of the bad guys. Indy and Marion—our hero’s once and future lady love—are spared, as they both closed their eyes during most of the Ark’s immolation.
Is It Useful for World Domination?
There are two possibilities here. One is that the Ark of the Covenant’s sacred ties to Moses and the Ten Commandments meant that God himself took umbrage at the Nazis’ attempt to use it—presumably having judged them unworthy of its power. If so, anyone who fits the category of “less bad than the Nazis” has a shot at leveling mountains and leading an invincible army.
The other possibility is … not that. Why were the Nazis, but not Indy and Marion, incinerated by the Ark? Maybe the Ark had a more specific complaint: eye contact. If Belloq and Co. had snapped their eyes shut too, might they also have been spared? At the film’s onset, Indy whips out an image of an ancient etching that shows a beam of light much like the one that appears at the film’s climax, which suggests it is possible to use the Ark against one’s enemies, even if the Nazis didn’t manage to figure out the specific mechanics. So let’s call it a finicky weapon of mass destruction—useful, if you’re of the conquering persuasion and have worked out the rules.
Score: 5/10
1. The Holy Grail (The Last Crusade)
What They Think It Does:
The Last Crusade features Sean Connery as Indy’s dad, who grumbles a stern warning about the Nazis’ pursuit of the Grail after his son once again dismisses the possibility of mysticism. “The quest for the Grail is not archaeology,” he says. “It’s a race against evil. If it is captured by the Nazis, the armies of darkness will march all over the face of the Earth.”
And yet: What exactly the Grail is supposed to do to enable this is unclear. A wise villain might do more research; The Last Crusade’s, of course, did not.
What It Actually Does:
Indy got pretty close to the truth during his search; he found an ancient sandstone tablet describing the Grail and translated the inscription, which said, “… who drinks the water I shall give him, says the Lord, will have a spring inside him welling up for eternal life.” That, it turns out, is precisely what it does, as Indy discovers in the Temple of the Sun, located in a hidden cave that we’re told is in Turkey (albeit filmed at Petra in Jordan). There, he finds the last person to make his way to the Holy Grail: a geriatric knight, whom the chamber’s waters—when consumed via the no-fuss wooden Grail, which sits among a smorgasbord of glitzier decoys—had kept alive for hundreds of years.
There’s a catch, of course: The Grail can’t pass beyond the seal at the temple’s entrance, so whoever accepts its gift must remain in the cave for eternity. And based on the knight’s appearance, it clearly doesn’t stop imbibers from aging, even if it spares them its conclusion.
The Grail has one other notable property: If the waters are poured from the cup onto an injury, it will heal instantly. Papa Jones takes a bullet in the cave and is seemingly at death’s door; Indy pours the Grail’s contents onto the wound, which vanishes in seconds as his father is apparently restored to perfect health.
Is It Useful for World Domination?
There are some uncertainties with the granting of immortality: Is the power conferred only to the person who most recently drank from the Grail, or could a whole group of people—say, your family and friends—gather ’round and kick off eternity together? That’s a more interesting prospect than facing forever solo in a cave with nothing but a cup collection to keep you company, but based on the knight’s excitement upon Indy’s arrival and his eagerness to pass the baton, it seems like it might be a one-person deal. Not very useful for conquering, particularly if you have to stay in a cave, slowly accruing back pain but never dying.
Still, the Grail has some fringe benefits with its healing potential. With all due respect to Connery, a one-off gunshot victim every millennium or so is leaving a lot on the table. A better use would be to build a hospital atop the temple complex. If the magic can’t travel, let the huddled masses come to you. Now whoever’s in charge—so, Turkey—has control of the only magical hospital in the world. While not so good for trauma cases unless you, like Connery, have the good (?) fortune of being shot on site, one can hypothesize that the restorative powers would extend to all manner of dreadful ailments and diseases. “Please come to my nation’s hospital, where a little drizzle will rid you of literally whatever ails you” is a pretty strong pitch on the soft power front; the Saudi Public Investment Fund is small potatoes compared to the Magic Shower That Instantaneously Cures Cancer. Maybe you don’t take over the world, but you’ve won a seat at just about any table a power-hungry clout hunter could dream up. Conquest for the modern world.
Score: 7/10
