Indiana Jones and the Classic Movie Connections

[gnarley]

I was watching the movie "The Invisible Agent" on the Invisible Man: Monster Legacy collection DVD set earlier this week, when I noticed that a character played by Peter Lorre was very similiar to Toht from Raiders. The way they spoke, their hairstyles, clothing and the glasses that they wore were almost exact matches. Even a scene early on in the movie reminded me of the scene where Toht confronts Marion in the bar, except there wasn't a shoot out or fire. Lorre's character (who turned out to be Japanese) and his henchmen try to intimidate a character by cutting off his fingers instead of using a hot poker. Otherwise the two scenes were very close. I know Lucas and Spielberg got the look for Indy and inspiration for the horse to truck transfer shot in Raiders from a painting. Does anyone know about any other scenes and/or characters from classic movies that Lucas and Spielberg may have drawn upon for use in the Indy trilogy?

[Miasma]

I can't think of specifics at the moment, but the whole series is clearly derived from old classics. I mean, just look at the whole sacrificial temple in Temple of Doom, and the revolving fireplace in Last Crusade. We've seen those sorts of thing on "Wild Wild West" and similar shows countless times, long before Indy. Lucas just enjoys putting new spins on classic ideas-- look at Star Wars, for example: WWII aerial dogfights when attacking the Death Star, Japanese monster movies with the AT-ATs, pirate ships and plank walking with the sail barge, Ben Hur chariot races with the pod racers, gladiator combat on Geonosis, Frankenstein with the birth of Vader... it's endless! (sorry, I guess I got a bit off topic.)

[gnarley]

I know both the Indy and Star Wars series were influenced by movie serials but it always seemed like minor things. The scenes that I mentioned in my first post also had the same motivations for the characters. Toht wanted the headpiece to the staff of Ra from Marion which belonged to her father, while Lorre's character and his henchmen entered the print shop of the Invisible Agent to get his grandfather's formula for invisibility. Both scenes ended with fights. I never noticed scenes that were this similiar before.

I don't know if you own the Star Wars DVDs yet but the bonus material explains how the opening text scrawls from the movies were inspired by the begining scrawl from the Flash Gordon serials. The overall design of both scrawls are the same (not including wording) except Lucas set his against a starfield. Both of Lucas' movie series always seemed to be very original until I saw that one scene. I always thought Toht was created for Raiders, not borrowed from another film. Lucas isn't the only filmaker to do this, Tarantino did this with Kill Bill, even taking a character from a Japanese series and using it. Robert Rodriguez borrowed a scene from Jason and the Argonauts for Spy Kids 2. It's the scene where one of the Spy Kids fights sword weilding skeletons and it also featured Ray Harryhausen style monsters.

This just made me wonder what distinguishes "inspired by" and "paying homage to" from plagerism. I know that authors get charged with plagerism if they use characters, events or ideas that another author used but why not filmmakers? Did the ask permission and/or pay money to the rights holders to use these scenes and characters?

[cerealkiller182]

i believe they usually pay money to the rights holders/