Retronauts - Retronauts Micro 92: Raiders of the Lost Ark

Episode Date: July 27, 2018

Jeremy, Chris, and Benj take a wildly disorganized (one might say "postmodern") journey through the original adventure of Indiana Jones... and eventually remember to touch on the games based on the film, too.

This week in Retronauts, it's not the ears, it's the Miles. Hi, everyone and welcome to a retronotts micro episode that once again, welcome to a Retronauts micro episode that once again, focuses on a media property and also some of the related video games. My name is Jeremy Parrish, and I am like a shadow reflection of yourself. And with me this week, we have Ben Jadvich. That's it, nothing pithy. Dark Benj Edwards, Mirror Universe. Okay, that's not even relevant to this week's topic.

Chris, oh, sorry, I spelled it. I'm Chris Sims, and they're digging in the wrong place. You went with a different intro. Didn't want to use my one cuss I've been allotted right here at the top. Okay, I don't want to work blue just yet. Yes, so this week we are talking about Raiders of the Lost Ark, not Indiana Jones franchise in general, but specifically Raiders of the Lost Ark, the movie, and the games based directly on the movies. So this will be like the Star Wars episode we did, which hopefully will have gone up by the time this goes live. If not, then you can look forward to it.

But yeah, we're going to talk about the movie because it's a kind of, what do you call it, a pop culture juggernaut, highly influential, and also very relevant to retronauts because of the way it sort of brings in lots of influences and reprocesses them into sort of a postmodern work. Would you consider Indiana Jones postmodern? No. I don't think I'd consider a postmodern. I would definitely consider it to be a modern sensibilities update on some classic ideas, but I think it's a little too straightforward and honest about itself to be postmodern. You think postmodern requires someone to be not honest? Not dishonest, but I think there's a level of irony that you get with postmodernism.

Yeah, I'd say, yeah, it's earnest portrayal of a sort of campy topic that's from, you know, What do they call that the pulp fiction? Cereals. Cereals, yeah, from the, you know, it's a take on that, right. Interesting. I would argue that there is an element of postmodernism to Raiders of the Lost Ark. I don't even know what that is. Postmodernism is, you know, it's a literary movement that takes...

You think I read? What do you do? I thought, I mean, what are these notes doing in front of you? I just look at the squiggly lines and characters. Yeah, postmodernism, you know, it takes... literary concepts or, you know, works that have come before and deconstructs them and then kind of works to serve as a commentary on them. That's the thing.

I don't think of Raiders as a deconstruction as much as a reconstruction. Like, it's taken elements from Flash Gordon, from Uncle Scrooge comics famously, and then put them together as more of a tribute, but also as a new version of the thing itself, if that makes sense. Okay, that's fair. I am not familiar enough with the original material. material to comment on it. If there's one big flaw with Raiders, I think it's that it doesn't examine its

tropes. Okay, fair enough. Yeah, I think you can certainly make the argument that Raiders of the Lost Ark could have stood to be a little more critical about some of the things that it incorporates. You were talking earlier about, Chris, about some sort of interview with Lucas and Steven Spielberg in which they broke down the plot or something. You said they had some issues with Marion. There's a transcript of them discussing the movie, like breaking the story, in conversation with each other, which is pretty amazing, especially given how great that movie turns out.

They do get to the part about Marion, and that's where all the stuff about Indy, their previous romantic entanglement being when Indy was like 25 and she was 15. Oh. Which is not great. No. And reading that transcript, it is, they just, they're totally fine with it. Like, yeah, that's a good plot point, which it's not. No. It's not how I choose to read that movie.

Yeah, because, you know, that is a story point here. The main character, Indiana Jones, and the lead female character, Marion Ravenwood, clearly have a history behind them, and we'll talk about that. But when it's introduced, like, you find out that it happened 10 years before. So I was like, how old. were they? So I looked with the age of the actor and actresses and Harrison Ford was like 38 at the time of this movie and Karen Allen was 31. So I was like, okay, so he's like 28, 29. She's like 20, 21. That's not ideal, but I can, you know, I can see that, you know, like a college grad, a student assistant,

uh, maybe getting a little too familiar with a college student. That's not good, but it could be worse. But 2515, that's worse. Yeah. I think it's, It's weirder when you see it all written down. It makes a lot of sense, given the conversation that they have when he first shows up, when Indy is clearly a friend of her dad's. But once we see Abner Ravenwood show up in Last Crusade, it makes a lot more sense for a... Wait, he does? Yeah, he's the guy who gives India's hat.

Oh, oh, okay. Who takes the cross of Coronado. Yeah. He is? That's Abner Ravenwood? That's Abner Ravenwood. Because, like, you got a, you had a rough luck or whatever kid, but keep trying. Yeah.

That's Abner Raven's dad. No one explains that in the movie. No one explains that in the movie. How do you know this? I really like Indiana Jones. Wow. Okay. But, I mean, like, when you see, you know, River Phoenix as young and indie, he's like, he's a teenager.

He's like 16, 17. So it would make sense that, like, that is when he would have his relationship with an equally around the same age, Marion. which that's how I choose to read that relationship. But yeah, like, there's not a lot of examination of some of the downsides. There's definitely an age imbalance between the two characters. I did not mean for this podcast to turn into, like, the Indiana Jones pedophilia podcast. Yeah, maybe we just ditch all this.

Yeah. No, but I mean, it is, it does kind of get to, I think, the setting of the film, you know, the fact that it's set in. in like 1930 or something. And, you know, just the things that it's reprocessing and recreating, there were different social mores at the time. Yeah, I think you're applying. People did get married when they were like 12, even as late as, you know, the 30s and 40s. Like, it was just a, it was a different world.

And I was saying, like, oh, that's great. It's fine. No, it was actually kind of bad. But that's how things were. So the thing is that it doesn't fit with what makes indie work as a character, which is that he's the kind of a self-effacing every man, even though he's like a hyper-competent. But that wasn't really Lucas's original vision for him. He was supposed to be like this Randy Playboy, you know, like goes to the high life,

spends a lot of money, is very promiscuous with women. There's even a scene that they filmed for the movie. I was reading this book by J.W. Rensler, the making of Indiana Jones or something. It's like in-depth breakdowns of the creation of all the movies. And I read specifically like start to finish how this movie was made. And there's even a scene where I think the girl who has the Love You written on her eyelids in his class

like when Din Holm Elliott's character Marcus Brody comes to Indy's house to say let's go find the ark originally it was filmed with that student like hanging out with Indy after hours in his living room having a drink. So there was

like this kind of idea that I think Lucas George Lucas originally had for Indiana Jones that doesn't come through in the movie. And it's really good that it doesn't because, you know, the Indiana Jones we get on screen is extremely likable and a very empathetic character. But it would be so easy to take that in the wrong direction and make him really despicable. And I think, I think, Yeah, I think this is kind of an example, like we sort of talked about on the Star Wars episode, about how George Lucas has really good ideas, but he really needs other people to come in and say,

you know, George, let's steer this in a different direction and make it a little better. Let's sand off the rough edges. And this was, what, 81? Yes. So, I mean, this, Harrison Ford at this time would have had plenty of experience working with Lucas and adjusting lines. And, you know, I mean, famously he adlibs the, or not adlibs, but like, it was his idea to have Indy shoot the swordsmen. Actually, no. No?

Is that not true? In the book that I was reading, that was not his idea. I always thought it was. I don't know how that's become attributable. did to him. But they actually filmed it both ways. This is another thing they filmed multiple ways. They filmed it both ways with like, you know, the large, I guess they call him Arab in the script. I guess that's what he is. Like the guy, you know, in the black, the black outfit with the red sash and the giant scimitar, he like comes into the marketplace. He's like,

there's going to be a big fight. They actually like filmed the whole fight. And then, you know, they also filmed a very short, abbreviated take where, instead of having a big fight, Andy just pulls out his pistol. He's like, I'm sick of this and shoots the guy. And that's it. And they actually came up with the alternate take on that because Stephen Spielberg was really, really just like everyone was getting heat stroke and they were getting dysentery and they were just miserable working in Tunisia in, you know, like 105 degree, 110 degree weather every single day for weeks on end. and he was like, we just have to get out of here. And so they decided to, you know, really cut that scene and make it just like quick and efficient. And later, they had that edited into the movie. And Lucas was like, you know, this isn't not how I envisioned the scene.

Where's, you know, where's the full fight? And Spielberg was like, it's better this way. And Lucas said, no. So they edited in the full fight. And Spielberg was like, I don't think this is better. And Lucas said, well, I think it is. So they took it to test audiences and test audiences loved when Indy just pulls out the gun and shoots the guy instead of having a big drawn-off fight because coming, you know, in the middle of all these different fights after all these different elaborate scenes that have been so beautifully choreographed and, you know, just like everything is amazing and really tense and very artful to have him just like cut through that like Gordian knot and just shoot the guy instead of going into a whole lot of detail about it. It's really funny.

It's a great scene. that's not Harrison Ford though I always thought that was I had always heard that was Harrison Ford so nobody email me if I'm also wrong about Adamner Ravenwood by the way I mean I'm now I'm thinking that might be like like

but it's it's a very revealing moment for Indy as a character too like that's what makes it work like he's He's good but he's also pragmatic and he's not great like he can't beat that guy in a sword fight

So he's just like whatever he pulls out his pistol and that's it That's the, that's the, like, if you want to talk about it being postmodern, I think that's in the same vein as John McLean, like the original version of John McLean that we see in Diehard. He's good, but not great, as opposed to a James Bond, like, you know, Roger Moore could have defeated that guy. Right. With his hand, well, George Lucas envisioned, okay, we haven't really talked about, like, we just kind of jump straight into this conversation. We're going to be able to do.

I'm going to be able to be. Thank you. Raiders of the Lost Ark is a movie came out in 1981. It had been in development for like six or seven years by that point. Collaboration between George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg. It was George Lucas's idea. The entire vision for Indiana Jones came from George Lucas based out of his love of things that you mentioned, Chris. You know, Republic serials and, you know, Uncle Scrooge comics.

Just, you know, all these, you know, treasure, the Sierra Madre and things like that. It was basically like all the stuff he watched as a kid that he loved and no one was making anymore. And so he was like, I'm going to turn this into a movie. But this was coming directly off of Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back. And he was like, I also don't want to be a director anymore. So he reached out to Steven Spielberg and said, I would love for you to direct this. So all of a sudden you have like the two most successful filmmakers in the world, George Lucas, fresh off of Star Wars, Stephen Spielberg, fresh off of Jaws.

1941 hadn't quite come out yet. They're teaming up. So, wow, that's, like, really exciting. And it took a while for them to get the terms they wanted for this. They wanted, like, total ownership of the characters and the script and the rights and everything, which studios were like, that's not really how we do things. But on the other hand, you have George Lucas and Steven Spielberg coming to you saying, we would like to distribute our movie through your studio.

I think, you know, at some point, someone at Param O's, actually Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Eisener, one of the Eisner's, you know, the guy who went on to take over Disney. Michael Isner. Michael Isner. Okay. Yeah, he finally was, you know, pragmatic and said, this is going to make us a lot of money. So, you know, that's okay. So they came up with terms and they made the movie.

And my favorite anecdote that I discovered in researching this episode is that someone asked George Lucas, why didn't you direct it? And he said, because if I had directed this movie, I never could have watched it. And I think that's a, like, it really speaks to where this movie came from. And it came from a genuine love by George Lucas for a genre. And, you know, the movie changed a lot in Spielberg's hands. And, you know, the producer was Frank Marshall. And the script was treated a couple of different times by different people. I forgot the lady's name. But she was the lady who did a lot of work on Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back and then passed away.

She did the first draft of this. I feel stupid that I totally blanked out of her name too. I know who you're talking about. Yeah. I feel bad. I'm not trying to erase her from history. She was awesome. I could look it up.

Yeah. Anyway, so it's like this amazing collaboration. You have Doug Trimble and Bill Sinkovitz did like... Senekevitz did the concert. concept art for this. It's just like... Jim Sterenko did something. Oh, Jim Sterenko, that's it.

Not Strunk of it. Okay, yes. Yeah, Steranko did that famous shot of Indy with a cigarette in his mouth and his shirt open. He's all like, he's on the cover of a men's adventure magazine. I mean, yeah, his vision of Indy was more like John Hamm after a lot of extensive, you know, muscle building. And that's not what Indiana Jones ended up being.

But a lot of that has to do with the fact that they cast Harrison Ford. which was a last-minute decision because George Lucas was like, well, I've worked with him on Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back, and I don't want to have like a Scorsese-Denero relationship. I don't want him to be like the only guy who's in my movies. But, you know, they cast all, like, they did casting calls and tried to find different people. And they were almost, almost went with Tom Selleck. Yeah, that's what I remember hearing.

They really liked him. And he was going to get the job. But when CBS, I think, found out that Paramount and Lucas and Spielberg were interested in him, They were like, well, we've got this contract with him for a TV show, a cop show, Magnum PI, that's just been inactive. If, you know, if he's this hot of property, we should launch this show. So he became locked down with that contract and they had to find someone else. And at the last minute, like, seriously, like a week before they started, you know, putting everything together. They were like, okay, Harrison, how about this?

And he brought a lot of himself and his own sensibilities into the character. And I really feel like that's one of the things that makes Indiana Jones as a character work, especially in this movie, because this is, Harrison Ford at the height of his powers. This is before he was Harrison Ford, Ford, Ford, like the ultimate superstar of screen. This is kind of what put him in that position. So there was still like a little bit of humility to him, I think, and he was still willing to act as opposed to what he did after this, which I feel was basically to tell everyone why he was too good to act in their movies and just kind of be himself. He's one of those guys who kind of, you know, just fell into the same schick. But, you know,

We're like early Han Solo and Deckard and Indiana Jones. I feel like he brought something different to every role, and he wasn't just being himself. But he really does soften Indiana Jones by making him not just like James Bond, where he's always cocksure and self-assured. And while there is that element to him, he's also very fallible. And he screws up, and he gets shot and he gets beaten up. And, you know, at the end, before you go into the big kind of climactic finale, that quote that I threw in at the beginning of the episode. It's not the years, it's the Miles. That's something Harrison Ford did improvise in this movie. And it really kind of gets to the character. Like,

he's fought all these Nazis and he's recovered the arc and he won. But man, it sure took his toll on him. And you don't see that in James Bond. You didn't see that in other characters. They're always just like indestructible heroes. But this was Indiana Jones who did impossible things and came out, you know, won the day. But holy crap, it took a toll. Yeah. I think it's in Raiders. It might be in Last Crusade, but I think it's in Raiders. The first thing we see of Professor Henry Jones is him forgetting how to spell a word. Yes, that's in this one. Yeah, which is brilliant. Because again, he's good, not great. Right. And I love that about him. It's very humanizing. Everything about this does a great job of kind of giving you context and set up. Like, first of all, I love that. the fact that this movie opens with the Paramount logo, you know, the mountain, and then that

fades into an actual mountain, which is actually in Hawaii, but it's supposed to be in the South American jungles. And you don't hear Indiana Jones speak for like the first three or four minutes of the movie. You don't see his face. It's like there's this caravan of people exploring in the wilderness and it, you don't know what's going on. And then you finally kind of get to see him and you're like, oh, he's really tough. But then as that scene goes on and he goes into the temple and like he's figuring out all the traps and predicting things. He still screws up. He thinks he's got it. He thinks he's got this golden idol. He puts the sandbag on there. He's like, yeah, I'm going to trick this ancient trap. But he doesn't. And then it's

just like all downhill from there. Like literally as the boulder is rolling downhill. And then he's running down to the water, trying to escape the natives who are very angry that he has desecrated their temple, which is also not a good thing about this. There's, you know, like I'm sure the Casta and the writers of Black Panther would have some things to say about this movie if you asked them. Yeah, could you make this movie today? It's the question with all your liberal sensibilities. I think you could. You absolutely could.

I don't think, I think, again, I think, look, I have said it on this show before. I think Raiders is a perfect movie. There was a thing going around about a couple weeks ago on Twitter of people saying, like, hey, what's a perfect

movie? Not necessarily the best one, but like everything works. Ghostbusters. Ghostbusters. Absolutely. But for me, like Raiders, as an adventure movie is as close to being perfect as it can be. Everything builds in the right way, all the small character moments. But I think it, in recreating Doc Savage, which is essentially what it's doing, because as much as, you know, Star Wars is Flash Gordon through George Lucas. Indiana Jones is Doc Savage through George Lucas. Steven Spielberg. In recreating that, it recreates a lot of the, of the problems with jungle adventure narratives and, and colonialist stuff. You know, like, there's the, we have Sala, I guess. Well, you know, the thing is, like, it could be okay, I suppose that, you know, he was

delving into an ancient jungle temple to find, you know, a relic to put in a museum to put on display. But then, you know, the hovitos show up and you're like, oh, they're protecting this. So clearly this is not like, you know, part of some ancient forgotten civilization. Like, they're right there. He's stealing their idol from them. It's weird because we see Belloc show up and take it. But we know from the rest of the movie that Belloc is going to sell it. Like he's going to, he's not going to put it in a museum.

He's not going to preserve this piece of history. Belloc might have melted that thing down. We don't know. But we don't get that in that scene. We just see Bellick say, here's your idol. And then Indy has to run away. And it's like understood that this extremely handsome white dude is in the right in this moment in pillaging this poor South American culture. Which extremely handsome white dude are you talking about?

They're both handsome. I would say Harrison Ford. Oh, okay. So rugged handsome as opposed to the British handsome. Yes. Okay. The kind of American handsome. right we like right not that carpenter handsome not that fancy handsome but yeah like i like i

think you could i i think movies have proven that you could do that movie today uh but should you i i think we're in a not that it was necessarily excusable in 1981 but i think we're certainly pop culturally past the point where not examining that stuff does not add anything new to an idea So we haven't really talked about the big idea of the big idea behind Raiders the lost ark, which is the lost ark itself, which is that this takes place in the buildup to World War II.

36? Yeah, it's the mid 30s. So, clearly Hitler and the Nazis are out there doing stuff, but America was not actually at war with them. So this was really playing off of the real world obsession that Adolf Hitler had

with ancient religious artifacts and relics and just the idea of mysticism. And he was obsessed with things like the Spear of Destiny. And I don't know that Hitler actually looked for the Ark of the Covenant, which is the Lost Ark in question. But it's, you know, believable that he might have if he thought, you know, he had a lead on it. Like, hey, here was this incredible relic that was extremely important to, you know, Jewish civilization and was lost and represented, you know, a pact with God. That seems like a good thing to find.

That could be very powerful. But this is another area where I feel like it becomes a little bit postmodern because you have a Jewish actor or Jewish director, sorry. Well, Harrison Ford's mother was Jewish. She's kind of Jewish, too, depending on how you consider it. Sure, yeah. But, I mean, Spielberg is his Jewish heritage definitely informs a lot of his work. And I feel like it informs it a lot here. You have, like I said, a Jewish director directing a movie in which the Nazis,

are trying to steal something very culturally and historically important to, you know, the Jewish religion and the Jewish faith. And so Indiana Jones has to stop him. That's kind of interesting. I think it's awesome. It's a perfect setting that mixes world history and events. And all the, you know, the mystery of World War II, it must have been amazing for the generation of Spielberg and Lucas looking back at their probably their fathers or, you know, whoever in their family fighting in World War II and that kind of thing.

It's just so great. And the Nazis always make such a perfect villain because you can't do them wrong. I've really noticed that reading the news lately. You know, like they can't, you know. I'm talking about traditional Nazis, you know. Let's think back on our Nazi traditions. Yeah, I'm not, you know.

No, I know what you're saying. You know, I'm talking about German, 1940s, 30s, 40s Nazi National Socialist Party. Perfect enemies. Well, and I have to clarify that as just ridiculous. Sorry. I mean, this was a movie made back when it wasn't controversial to punch a Nazi, which apparently now it is. But yeah, this is actually the use of Nazis in this movie kind of makes me like question, not question, but it makes me wonder like what part the Raiders of the Lost Ark series,

You know, the movies that came after it have played in sort of commoditizing violence, like senseless violence in movies. You certainly had a lot of violence in movies before this, but this is one of the first movies I can really think of that I, you know, looking back in history where you just see like the good guy killing all kinds of dudes and beating them up and, you know, causing them to stumble into the propellers of flying wings. When I saw it again recently, actually, I was struck by how. violent it was. I didn't remember that. Maybe I watched TV edits when I was a kid or something, you know? Probably. Because I was like, man, people are dying left and right. TV did not show the Nazi mechanic in the propellers. That blood splatter on the swastika, though, is like one of the dopest cuts. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's cinematic history. It's great. I mean, that's Spielberg right there. This movie is beautifully shot and beautifully edited. And you have, like, one of the things

that I think makes it work so well is you have scenes like, you know, indie and the digging crew, trying to trying to unearth Tannis at sunset in the desert and so it's just like yeah just like their silhouettes

against the sunset in the desert it's just it's such a beautiful movie it's so smartly shot but but again like it really does

sort of trivialize extreme violence against other people and I feel like you know the use of Nazis like they were the bad guys made it easy to do that

because you know before this you had Star Wars where you had stormtroopers being shot up, but those guys could have been robots. They were just wearing armor all the time. You didn't see their faces. But the Nazis, you see their faces. You even have like mid bosses. You have like certain enemies who appear throughout the movie that really pose a huge threat. There's like the cannon fodder and then there's like the bosses. You have the Nazi mechanic. You have almost the large Arab with the sword who gets shot, you know, in one

shot. But he would have been a mid boss. You have the, um, the, uh, the white-haired bald Nazi who drives the truck or, you know, was behind the truck and then fights Indy in the truck. That's actually Harrison Ford's stunt double, by the way, which I thought was really interesting. So that gets kind of into some weird subtext right there. Yeah.

But like these enemies, you know, they never become characters, but they are figures on the screen and they do have some screen time. So you get like a lot of killing. Some of it kind of brutal in a sort of edge of PG, sort

of way. I don't know. It's just, and then, you know, you have like the super gross out stuff at the very end when the wrath of God is like, yo, Nazis, what's up? I really, I think what sets, you know, the mid boss bad guys in this movie apart is that they do have those little touches of personality. Like, the scene where he's boxing against the mechanic is, is great. Because, I mean, I say boxing because the guy could kill Indy, but he wants to fistfight him.

Oh, yeah, yeah. He, like, he sees Indy making a mess of the mechanics on the airfield and is like, he comes out. He takes off his shirt. He's like, I'm a badass. I'm going to make this guy sorry. This guy weirdly wants to have like a fair fight with Indiana Jones. And again, much like the swordsman. He's like, hey, hey, you.

He's even speaking in English, like very accented English. Like, come on. Are you okay? I don't know. But I think, again, you get another scene like with the swordsmen. of indie, or in this case, Marion, actually, changing the rules of the fight. Indy cheats to win, which I like a lot. But get, like, I've got a lot to say, Jared.

That's okay. Getting back to just the idea of the arc, we know, like, we know Belloc's a bad guy because he's working with Nazis. Belak himself is this weird, completely amoral guy. Yeah, he's like the classic, not bounty hunter, but mercenary. Yeah. is the term he uses. It says Indy's going to give a bad name to mercenaries. Yeah.

But I feel like he already did. But his whole interest in the arc, I mean, he calls it, you know, a direct line to God. And I kind of love the act of hubris of thinking specifically the God of the covenant is going to be okay with Nazis, which, you know, they should have thought that one through or should not have. They got what's coming to them. You'd think. Well, lots of people. dumb people have thought lots of dumb things that's realistic i mean this took place in what 36 37 supposedly so when was crystal knocked and things like that like that 38 was 38 was it 38 was

38 was crystal knock so maybe i don't know maybe maybe maybe okay probably shouldn't think too hard about it we shouldn't get too deep into that sort of thing i think one of the things you get from i don't know if this was the production design i mean you might know jeremy you have the book downstairs but the one of the most viscerally upsetting I guess is a good way to put it like things in that movie is at the end when belloc shows up in like the ceremonial robes and everything but it's all covered in swastikas like it's really weird and creepy and very you know like you don't get hellboy without that right yeah so they actually brought in a rabbi to consult on that that part like when belloc is doing the incantation that's actually like a fairly common prayer that he like an actual, you know, Jewish prayer. I don't know Jewish tradition myself, but, yeah, in the making of Indiana Jones, it talks about how they, like, brought in a rabbi just to make sure that everything was, like, I was going to say kosher, but...

Realistic. Yeah, like, not just authentic, but also, like, wouldn't cause tremendous offense. Well, I think, you know, when you explain, hey, right after we see this, they're going to get melted by the power of God. Well, I mean, it's clearly meant to be a... an evil perversion of religion. And that's understandable, like, to me as a kid, even before in, I mean, God, I watched this movie, it's one of the first movies I can remember watching.

Like, even before I knew anything about World War II, like, you can tell it's wrong. Yeah. Which is really cool. Yeah, like, there's something bad happening here. Even if you don't know the history behind Nazis and Judaism, like, you still know, this isn't, this isn't right. Like, there's something bad happening here. But, you know, actually knowing all that stuff, again, I think.

feel like that that must have been something that Spielberg brought to this is just the idea of this this this perversion this this obscenity happening um like this this piece of important religious lore being unearthed and then being perverted like this like that really just kind of you know again it makes the violence so much easier to go down because yeah they got their faces literally melted off like candles but you know that's what they get for messing with God this way. Because, I mean, because we, it's established in the film, like, historically, we know what they would have done with it. In the film itself, we know what they're going to do with it. It's going to, you know, they're going to use it to lead their armies to victory. And, you know, 40 years later, we know that's a bad idea. As to the commodification of the violence, one of the weirdest things about the Indiana Jones franchise, I think, is a couple of years ago, not a couple years ago, maybe like 10 years ago. they made indie action figures. Hasbro was making them.

And they were, I loved them because they were three and three quarter scale, which meant they were the size of G.I.J. They were articulated like G.I. Joe's in a lot of ways, too. You could have Indie riding in the All-Striker with snake eyes, which I absolutely did. I mean, I watched that movie. I'm sure of it when I was a kid.

But they do this in, they do this in the Lego games, too. But they did it on the action figures. They don't call the Nazis Nazis. They call them like enemy soul. soldier, presumably because Hasbro was like, hey, what if we don't put the word Nazi on these toys we're going to send to Walmart? But when you remove that and you remove all those trappings, like, I remember the back of the card bio for like the Nazi soldier, the enemy

soldier was something about like how, you know, he's serving his home, you know, he's far from his homeland, serving in the heat of the desert. And I was like, you're making that sound a little too noble and a little too relatable. That's a problem, guys. But they do the same thing in the Lego games where they're enemy soldier, enemy, whatever. I think that's one of the reasons Temple of Doom doesn't sit so well is because you don't have, like, clearly evil people. I mean, yeah, they're bad guys, but it's like, aren't we kind of intruding on their place?

Like, isn't this their temple that we're intruding into? Like, kind of get back into the whole jungle adventure thing. Whereas with Nazis, they're the ones who are invading. They're the ones who are trying to exploit other peoples. So, yeah, it's totally fine to kill them by the droves. But when you're going in and, like, killing thuggy guards, I mean, they're not up to anything good, but still, like, uh... Temple of Doom also really goes hard at the, uh, look at this weird other culture stuff, like, especially in the beginning, uh, that's not great. Well, this isn't the Temple of Doob podcast.

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We've barely talked about it. Don't get me. Yeah. It's just one. wasn't quite what I've envisioned for the podcast. I mean, you know. You want to start over? No.

Just talk about how good it is when he throws that Nazi into the propeller. I talked about how great Indiana Jones is himself. And I really feel like a big part of what makes Indiana Jones great is the people he's cast opposite, especially Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood, who is every bit as tough as he is. She is not like, she's a damsel in distress sometimes, as the plot requires. but she also is more than capable of holding her own in most circumstances. And, you know, she becomes a damsel in distress when she's, like, held up by the entire Nazi army and cast down into a pit full of snakes. Yeah, okay, well, that's kind of a disadvantage.

But, you know, like, on her own, she holds her own. Like, you are introduced to her in the midst of a drinking contest against this huge guy who cannot hold as liquor as well as she can. Like, she's badass. Yeah, and she gets up and does like a full scene in that and saves Indy when the big, you know, asking for a whiskey scene. Marion does function as a damsel in distress in that movie, but she's also a damsel who's going to stab belloc in the neck with a steak knife, which helps a lot. I think she's a really great character. Yeah, I think she's really modern in that sense, especially compared to like the lady in Temple of Doom, Kate Kepshaw. At least God.

Yeah, that's not a... Let's not talk about Timbuk. But I'm just saying as a comparison, this is a really wonderfully rounded three-dimensional female character in a movie, in my opinion. No, she's great. She works, and the movie needed someone like her because she is basically like the woman who could have been Indiana Jones. I know that Spielberg is like, I'd be okay with having Indiana Joan. No, that's not... Let's not do that.

let's not do that um but yeah like she is in her own way every bit as tough as he is and she doesn't have the same experiences as he does but she's you know survived in nepal she runs a bar she like you know chases out these big scary dudes she can drink them under the table she's she's tough and you know she's very pragmatic and she's very resourceful like in the uh you know the marketplace scene she's not a fighter but when she is thrust into this conflict and all she has at hand is a frying pan that she grabs off a stall, she's still able to defend herself pretty well. I'm really...

It's not her fault that she's betrayed by a monkey. I know exactly why, but it's still really surprising to me that Karen Allen didn't get like action movie parts after this. She's really good in this movie and really compelling is that kind of character.

Yeah, I don't think Hollywood was ready for that kind of woman yet, like with the, you know, raspy cigarette voice. That's what I'm saying. She's very pretty and she's got the cute freckles, but then she's also like flinty. She's tough. She's a modern, a very modern character by our standards today. But, yeah, ahead of our time at that time.

I mean, yeah, you know, what kind of movies did, what kind of female roles did we see in the 80s? Stuff like, you know, characters or actresses like Molly Ringwald and Phoebe Kates, you know, softer, softer characters. Yeah. So I think, yeah. The closest I can think of would have been like Linda Hamilton. Right.

In Terminator. But even she isn't really that. tough in Terminator. She becomes tough later. Like Terminator 2, you're like, look at those shoulders. She could kill a man just by like flicking him with her finger. Yeah, it's just with as successful

as this movie was and as imitated as this movie was. Like, adventure movies of this kind were having a big resurgence in like the late 70s and early 80s. Like honestly, kind of starting with Conan,

you know, that kind of big period piece and set piece after set piece movie, I'm really surprised there weren't more, there wasn't one about, about a Karen Allen type, as opposed to, you know, the barbarian movies about women that we got, which are not good, unfortunately. What? Red Sonia? Not good?

Red Sonia is probably the best one of its type. She chops off so many heads. It's really fun. But yeah, I like Marion a lot. Yeah. So one of the, we'll wrap up talking about the movie, but one of the reasons I think this movie has become so influential. in other films and also in video games

is because the movie is basically just a it is basically just a string of set pieces that is action sequence after action sequence. You start out in the jungle and then you cut, get some context, end up in Nepal, all of a sudden you're in Cairo. They're in Cairo for like three minutes

before they're attacked in the marketplace. And then that, you know, ends up with Marion presumed dead. So Indy goes to a bar and drinks for a little while. Indy getting depressed is a really good scene. That happens so early in the movie. really startling. It's like you have barely known these characters and all of a sudden he's just like

getting completely wasted and ready to kill himself or ready to you know die attacking belloc but then you know that's just like kind of the setup because then you have let's see what's after that the there's a little bit of kind of slow down time where they

figure out where this the arc is. Got to take back one cadon. Right. But yeah once they get all of that and they actually find the arc then it's you know the snake pit and then it's the air strip and then it's the chase from the airstrip and then it's uh the boat and the uh the nazi sub base that's cool boat captain who we know nothing about captain katinga yeah caputanga except he's awesome i love that character this is it feels like a true epic i also thought that when i was

watching it's so exciting and fun adventure but it takes place over the course of aside from the intro it's like over the course of three days basically yeah but they go so many places on the map. It's a little line, right? Yeah, it is, it is a, it's quite a journey. And, like, at every scene, or in every location, there is at least one great action scene. And even, you know, even in the quieter moments, there's still stuff happening, like indie, you know, sneaking into the

sub-base on the, the conning tower, and then trying to find a uniform. Oh, the uniform seems great. Yeah, just like beating up random guys and stealing their clothes. The bit with the mirror, where. Marion uppercuts him with the mirror and it cuts to the wide shot of the ship and he's screaming in the deep...

Yeah. No, it's like... There's a lot of comedy in this movie. So it's action, it's tense. Like it's, you know, there had never been action scenes like this before. And there were all kinds of like practical stunts, such as Indy being dragged by a whip behind a truck along a dirt road, which they actually, you know, had like a guy out there doing that.

They were, you know, they threaded the camera to go, you know, twice as fast when it is played back, but still, like, it's lots of practical effects. And, yeah, it just, like, there's always something happening and always something of interest. And, again, it's beautifully shot. It's not just action. It's beautifully rendered, extremely well-staged action, great stunts, great effects. Some of the miniatures are a little, eh, okay, whatever. But still, like, you know, the flying wing and things like that, there's, you know, real explosions happening in the background.

It's crazy. Again, not to keep harping on it, but, like, Temple of Doom is very soundstagey. Like, it's very sets. And Raiders never feels like that. It's set pieces. It's, you know, it's, but it feels like they're at the places they're supposed to be at. Yeah, I mean, they filmed in the desert. And that's one of the reasons I think they didn't do that with Temple of Doom because everyone got really sick.

Yeah. Do you know that the final canyon where he's threatening to blow the arc up, that actually is filmed in the same canyon where the Jawa's catch R2D2? I saw a photo of it in that book, and it's like from a reverse angle, and all of a sudden you're like, oh, that's the Jawa Canyon. That's crazy. So there's like actual crossover between universes. If Indy had been there long, long ago, he would have met a Jawa. You know about Chibok and be in the Sasquash the Indiana Jones finds, right? I did not know that.

There's a real quickly, there's a dark horse comic that was, I think it was Star Wars Tales that did, like, in and out of continuity Star Wars stories. And one of them, Han and Chui, go through a super warp or whatever and ended up crashing the falcon on Earth. And Indy comes looking for the Sasquatch 100 years later, and it's Chewbacca. Wow. Interesting.

Well, you know, there is the connection there that Indiana was the name of George Lucas's dog, and Indiana, the dog, is what inspired the look of Chewbacca. So there is some crossover. Anyway, so we've got to be able to be. Anyway, so we've talked to. a lot about the movie, and it was very disorganized, and I apologize for that, but I hope it was interesting. We are going to talk very briefly about the games based on Raiders of the Lost

Arc, because there are a few of them, not just Indiana Jones movies, but specifically about Raiders of the Lost Ark. Actually, let's go backward. Let's start with Lego Indiana Jones, the original adventures. I like that game. Okay, you talk about it, because I cannot get into any of the Lego games. They're all the same, and they're all uninteresting to be. They are all the same. I don't like him. I don't like him. The, the first. The, the first thing. The, the fun comes from, like, seeing how they're going to recreate different bits and pieces of the movie. Not to, no pun intended on that one, but like, uh, bits and Lego pieces. I think the, the indie one was one of the last ones that didn't have, uh, voice acting.

So everything was like, really big pantomime style for all the set pieces. And obviously they're for, they're for babies. So, uh, a Nazi gets chopped to his component Lego pieces. Right. instead of blood splattering on the swastika. But I think that those are fun. And I think one of the reasons that they're fun is that they assume that you are conversant in the movie enough to know what's happening. Because, you know, they were making games based on Star Wars and Indiana Jones so they could get away with that.

And seeing how they present those things in this weird, you know, sideways universe of toys for children was, I think, really interesting. Fair enough. Plus, they had the good sense to break out the first three Indiana Jones movies into their own game instead of lumping any additional Indiana Jones content that I do not acknowledge the existence of into there. Are you talking about the Marvel comic series? Yeah, the Marvel comic series and the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Right. You know, there's an episode of Young Indiana Jones Chronicles that has Harrison Ford on it?

There is. Yeah, as an adult. That's crazy. And I think that Harrison Ford is almost as old as the guy who played Old and New. Or one item, indeed. Yeah, so if they actually do go through with Indy 5, which supposedly they're going to do, I guess we'll see him lose his eye. Or maybe they'll just like, I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know. I have mixed feelings about that. I wish they had made a lot more while he was young. Yeah, it would have been great. I think the Lego games are fun. Okay. Yeah. You know what's not fun is Indiana Jones grazed adventurers for Super NES.

Yep. It's a, yeah, I played that for the first time. today, getting ready for this podcast. And I was expecting something along the lines of Super Star Wars, like really hard, but visually stunning and, you know, sounded perfect and, you know, like a great bit of fan service. It's not. It's actually, like, it's got some major jank to it.

I think Star Wars, Super Star Wars is hard, but fair. It's just, you take skill and to get through it. But that, the Indiana Jones game, I was just playing it too a little while ago. Where are you now? Yeah. What a coincidence. Yeah. It's weird.

I was also just playing it a little while ago. Was it all on the same TV set? It might have been. BBM, whatever. Anyway, so this thing, whatever you call this game, Chronicles. Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures. Yeah, it just seemed unfair, the parts I've played. This game's trash.

It's hard. Yeah, it's weird because, you know, it is a Lucas-based game for Super NES, and coming on the heels of Super Star Wars and that trilogy, you kind of go into it expecting, like, this is going to be amazing. But all the reviews at the time said, wow, this game is hot garbage. So I avoided it. And now, you know, going back, I understand why they said that, because it's not made by the same people who made Super Star Wars. I don't know if Super Star Wars was Internal Lucas or just like an uncredited studio, but this Indiana Jones was Factor 5. And I associate Factor 5 with good quality stuff. They made, you know, the Turrican games. They made the rogue squadron shooters and, you know, rogue leader or whatever.

like some really great cutting edge visuals games on GameCube that still look amazing This is not one of those It's poor animation Poor controls Everything is like really really hard And not in a fun way

It's like Indy's whip takes two hits To kill a piranha And you can't kill rats and spiders And enemies that are along the ground Because they're too low And for whatever reason Indy can't actually Hit the ground That's unfair

That's frustrating just spring up out of nowhere. Yeah, I don't like that kind of stuff. There are areas of ground that will crumble under your feet before you can cross over them, but they're really hard to distinguish from the rest of the ground. The gun sucks. Yeah, like, it's just, everything is bad. So this game is from like 94, 95, Super NES.

It just, yeah, like, it should have been the amazing follow-up, the amazing indie follow-up to the Super Star Wars trilogy, but it's not. That's exactly what I was experiencing. Because I heard about this game in Nintendo Power, I'm sure, which never met a game they didn't like. And I remember playing it when I was younger and being so hyped for it. Because I thought the Super Star Wars games were really good and fun. And I loved Indy. So getting into this one was, I probably had the same experience playing it the first time as I did playing it today, where I took about a half hour to get through the first two levels and then just stopped.

it's it's bad it's here's you know what makes raiders worse is if indies whipping the hovitos to death on his way into the temple yeah he's not just stealing their idol he's also killing them killing them yeah that's that's that's a bad one buddy it's not a good game and i am very disappointed in it one thing that i think is kind of interesting is that it breaks out all three movies maybe the reason it's it's kind of mediocre is because it is all three of the original Indiana Jones movies to that point. And you only can play Raiders when you first start up the game. You have to get a code to be able to play the other movies.

And you have to beat Raiders in order to play the others. So that's kind of a steep challenge, sort of high demand. But it does have a lot of content per game. There's like 12 stages per game or per movie. And, you know, each one, Well, most of them have their own look. Like, Cairo is day and night, so it's pretty much the same thing with a pallet cycle. But Nepal is, like, outdoors on a mountainside because, you know, of course, Indy spends a lot of time killing wolves and birds and stuff in the movies.

Extended cut. And then you're fighting through the Raven, the bar that Marion owns, which is much larger than I remember it being in the movie. There are no Nazis, but there are a lot of rats and burning barrels coming out. So turn into a Castlevania. There is an element of Castlevania to it in that Indy starts out with just fists. and has to get a whip by like hitting chandeliers or candelabras or whatever

You remember that scene where he finds the whip in the Havino Stimple? Of course. I was going to say if only the makers of this game had an extremely well-designed game about a main character who had a whip that was perhaps influenced

by Indiana Jones. Like you even do the Super Castlevania for with swinging thing but the controls are stiff and terrible. It's bad. I should have just called up Konami. I'm like, what you got? what you got for whip for whip guys

Anyway, so I've only ever played the Raiders of the Lost Ark portion of the Avengers of Indiana Jones, greatest Avengers, whatever. But it's just not fun. I was going to say, what if the other two are really awesome? I bet they're not. But the other two do have vehicular sequences, which Raiders of the Lost Ark does not, which is really weird because there are some very memorable vehicular parts. Like a whole scene about taking a truck from Nazis.

Wow, that might have made an interesting. video game level, but no, the first vehicular level in the game is when Indy's plane crashes in the mountains and you're controlling the life raft trying to dodge trees and jump over chasms in the mountains. I think I need to get some game genie on this just so I'm going to see it. You can just get a password from... Really? Okay. Yeah, from Game Facts or something. It's probably not worth it. This is a big disappointment. I was actually kind of looking forward to playing this game when I sat down to play it today.

and practice for this podcast, but bad news. I mean, like I said, you know, Super Star Wars is pretty unfair, but I still enjoy playing it to a certain degree. This just does not have any spark to it. And then finally, the last of the games we're going to talk about, actually the first of the Raiders of the Lost Ark games, the first of any games based on Indiana Jones, is Howard Scott Warshaw's Raiders of the Lost Ark for Atari 2,600, which, like the other Howard Scott Warshaw slash Steven Spielberg Collaboration,

which like the other Howard Scott Warshaw slash Steven Spielberg Collaboration ET, is a very ambitious game that punches way above its weight class and ends up being this sort of abstract, what the hell is going on experience. A lot of Atari 2,600 games are like that, though. Anything that's not just a basic shooter or something. We talked about Sword Quest and that series, and there's a lot of that here, too. I grew up watching my brother play this game a lot and in fact it was one of his favorite Atari 2,600 games and his friend, they would sort of play at co-op in the sense that the second controller was used to control the inventory, like select which item you were using, and they would play it together and then they'd get me to help choose it and it felt cool that it was something you could play together even though it's not designed per se as a two-player game or anything.

So let's walk that back. This is an Atari 2,600 game with an inventory. It has an economy. It has like, you have to find gold bars and trade them to look to buy stuff. This is a really ambitious Atari 2,600 game. It makes no sense unless someone sits down and explains it to you. Like, I tried playing it on an analog NT and was like, what am I doing? So I sat down and watched a YouTube video that was annotated, and it kind of makes sense.

now, but I'm like, how would anyone have known this stuff? Like, you have to stand in a very, like, over a basket to make something appear for like 30 seconds or something. And then you have to, like, go to the well of souls and stand there until the sun comes up. And then you will see the exact pixel where you will find the arc if you go back to the cliffs. It's like, wow, this is a very cryptic game. Well, I think that my brother's friend, who's named Chris, by the way, and Jeremy is my brother. Interesting, okay. Just circling through history here.

He was a subscriber of Electronic Games Magazine at that time, and I think they must have had tips on how to play this game, because I don't know how they would have figured it out, but they did complete it. I mean, they would beat the game and sit down, and it felt like an epic adventure, and this is before we had Zelda and stuff like that. Yeah, I think this is a game where

if you knew all the steps to take and all the things you were expected to do, you could finish it pretty easily. It's just like figuring that out, it's so, so abstract and so cryptic. And there's like weird things, you know, like an Arab Sheikh who will steal your stuff if you touch him because he's insulted that you touched him or something. I don't remember that

from the movie, but okay. Yeah. So, yeah, like there's a lot of extrapolation here and like a really great idea, I think, inside of Howard Scott Warshaw's head that just, you know, the limited capacity of the 2,600 couldn't translate into a proper video game experience. Did he, did he ever make video games after the 2600? Not that I know of. I feel like, he's kind of active on Twitter now, you could ask him. Yeah, I feel like he's someone who would have been much more comfortable, like, during the NES or Sega Genesis era. He became a psychologist. Oh, okay. Because, you know, finally, you know, video game technology caught up to his ideas, but by that point, I guess he'd moved on. Yeah, I think he,

I remember there was an interview with him in that Atari documentary about when they dug up the cartridges or something. I think they interviewed him, and he's talking about how Atari was the greatest thing that ever happened to him. And when it shut down, it was really a big bummer for him and sort of made him disenchanted about the whole industry. And I think he just moved on to something different. That's what I think. I would certainly believe it. Yeah. So, but this game in its context, I can, I'm, I actually remember playing this in the, you know, in the early 80s. And we even played it in the mid 80s and early 90s when we get our 2600. And we had a really high respect for this game. I remember thinking that we thought this was one of the best games on the 2600. There's something about it at the time, even though by modern standards is really cryptic. Well, it's like super ambitious. I mean, I will certainly give it the fact that it was really like, you know, an NES or PC.

late 80s style experience It's a true adventure. That was a rare thing on that console without a doubt. So I don't know that there's ever really been

a great game based on Raiders of the Lost Ark although apparently this one was pretty good in its context. But there have been great Raiders or Indiana Jones-based games.

Did I say that right? Nothing based on Raiders of the Lost Ark that was specifically that was amazing but some great Indiana Jones movies games. God. Yeah.

Yeah, and there's one that's not based on the movie, which is the best. The best one, Fate of Atlantis, was never a movie, and it's awesome. Yep, and we will talk about that someday. Okay, cool. We will definitely do a non-canon Indiana Jones video game podcast because there are some really good ones. The Infernal Machine was also pretty good for N64. Yeah, wasn't that on the Xbox as well? I don't believe so.

You're thinking of there's a different one that came along a little bit later. the Infernal Machine was like 2000 and was very much in the Tomb Raider style, which is fine because Tomb Raider was very much in Indiana Jones style. So it all worked out. It's funny how they all build, you know. But yeah, the direct adaptations of the film, not so great, even if that one did mean well. Last Crusade graphic adventure was pretty good. Right, but that's not this film.

Yeah. That's what we're saying. Karen Allen would have been a really good reboot Laura Croft. I agree in the early 80s Marion's big adventure Yeah that would have been cool Like a post-2013

Larcroft If we could get 1981 Karen Allen To 2013 I'm sure There's technology to do that If they made movies Back then like they do it today

They would have done that Like a thousand movies Based on the same property Kind of thing Yes All right So anyway That's been an hour

Of talking about Raiders of the Lost Ark And I feel like It was extremely all over the place but it was staring directly at me as you say that that's just because you're sitting across

for me I'm just gazing rapturously at you because you brought so much of this conversation it was it was I who have failed to keep everything corralled that's my fault yeah you guys had a lot to say about this film yeah you didn't what's up because I couldn't get a word in edgewise

next time you gotta like wave your hand I don't have any postmodern analysis of this film or whatever. I just like the rollicking action adventure it is. Well, that's also relevant because it's a damn good rollicking action adventure. But it's also, I think, pretty interesting to think about. There's some meaty substance to it, some subtext. Culturally analyze it by today's social standards like you guys were doing, then, yeah, you can get into all kinds of weird analysis of this.

I don't think it's weird. I think it's, you know... Complex. Yeah. Not weird. But I mean, I think that's important to be able to say like, hey, so here's all these things we've taken for granted, but why don't we ask about them? Why don't we think about them?

Yeah. And there's also a question of like, who are we as people who do we consume this? I mean, Chris is 20% Indiana Jones. He just admitted it. He watched it a thousand times. He's 80% Batman. What did these movies teach us about the moral of punching people and whatever? Putting people into propellers.

I mean, I've done that at least three times. See, that's Europe. You've got to feel up on me. I thought it was okay. Yeah. That's all right. All right. Anyway, so this was a retronauts.

Are we calling this a micro? I guess so. Sure. Retronauts micro. Really long retronauts micro. Retronauts macro. Yeah. I have been Jeremy Parrish,

and I have been all over the map, just like Indiana Jones, this episode. You can find me on the internet at GameSpite on Twitter and at retronauts.com. Retronauts, of course, is available on your favorite podcast applications and a podcast one, and we are supported through Patreon,

patreon.com slash retronauts. That keeps the lights on and the electricity for me to record these podcasts. So please consider subscribing. You'll get cool stuff if you do, I promise. Anyway, you guys, pimp yourselves. I'm Benj Edwards. You can find more of my work at Benjedwards.com

or vintagecomputing. and I'm on Twitter at Benj Edwards. I'm Chris Sims, and you can find out about me by going to T-H-E-I-S-B.com. I do a bunch of stuff. I write comic books. I write columns online, and I do a bunch podcasts. I just launched a new one. It's called ApocryPals.

It's about me and my friend Benito reading the Bible. It's a good time, so you should listen to it. If you're reading the Bible that's not apocryphal, though. We're also going to – somebody asked why we called it that. We're going to read the Apocrypha as well. You should be the canon kids. No, okay. No, we're going to, like, we're going to, I think the plan is to do alternate between New Testament, Old Testament, and Apocrypha.

Okay. I'd listen to the Apocrypha episodes. I don't really know that much about the Apocrypha. Well, if you want to hear about Simon Megas coming back, episode three is going to be a good one. It sounds Kanata cool. Oh, boy. Anyway, this has been retro not. Retronaut.

And we'll be back on Monday with an episode that will be less disjointed than this. Swear to God. And one of these days, we'll do some more Indiana Jones stuff, including some talk about good news. What if every time you want to be able to be a lot of the same. What if every time you went out, you could cash in. Now with the Capital One's saver card, you earn 4% cash. back on dining and entertainment. Like learning more about each other on your first date.

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The Mueller Report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House if special counsel rober. Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand, that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral.

Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect. last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear, knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.