But while Kasdan saw Indy as an archeologist reduced to grave-robbing, Indy doesn’t quite come up to the mercenary depths as Han in A New Hope, a smuggler operating outside an oppressive order. Instead, Indy’s peril is how he could tip into being Belloq, a man whose obsessions render him monomaniacal and sociopathic. That balancing act is something that many have imitated, but few have fully captured. Although Spielberg renders Indy as larger than life from outset, it’s on Ford to keep finding the humanity, and adding modern textures that the classic inspirations would have ignored. We connect to Indy not because he’s invincible or the alter-ego of the mild-mannered college professor, but because we know what it is to be frustrated, confounded and defeated.
As the ’80s rolled on, Indy would become an outlier to the macho action heroes of the era. Guys like Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Van Damme were too big to lose. They were all muscles, and no nonsense. Although Schwarzenegger and Stallone, like Ford, found success in the New Hollywood of the late 1970s, their action personas would rest on being indomitable. The comedy of their adventures could happen around them, observed with a quippy one-liner, but never to them. Meanwhile, Ford, certainly no slouch physically, had Indiana Jones get punched in the face, dragged under a truck and bemoan, “Snakes? Why’d it have to be snakes?” when staring into the Well of Souls.
The tension in Indiana Jones is watching a normal guy pushed to his limit relying on his wits as much as his whip to survive. The character survives past his ’80s peers not because of sequels or even Ford’s continued appeal, but because of his vulnerabilities. The treasure may be what drives Indy, but the film’s willingness to embrace the way he looks foolish or gets knocked around is what makes him, counterintuitively, a winning figure.
Consider when the muscular baddie (Pat Roach) comes out to fight Indy around the plane, and Indy gives him a beleaguered acknowledgement, reluctantly coming down for fisticuffs rather than leaping into the fray. Or when he knocks out a Nazi and steals his uniform only to discover that it’s too small. These indignities never diminish Indiana as much as they reinforce the universal qualities of inconveniences at work. It’s just that for us the copier may be jammed and for Indiana Jones a swordsman wants to duel to the death in the streets of Cairo. Life even imitated art as Ford, suffering from dysentery in reality, shot the swordsman because the work of the elaborate fight wasn’t going to happen when the lead actor was so ill.
