Movies Archives - Tales of Times Forgotten

Indiana Jones Is Actually a Villain

It may come as a surprise to some of my readers, given my interest in ancient history, that I never watched any of the Indiana Jones movies when I was a child. I was, of course, vaguely aware of them. I remember seeing advertisements for the VHS sets at the beginnings of some of the old VHS tapes of Disney films that my sister and I watched when we were growing up. I also remember watching the MythBusters “Indiana Jones Special” at one point. The first time I ever watched any of the actual films, though, was earlier this year.

Thus, even though Raiders of the Lost Ark came out eighteen years before I was born, by the time I actually watched the movie, I was already in college studying ancient history and had already taken multiple courses in real-life archaeology. The film is definitely entertaining if you’re looking for a cheesy, old-school adventure story and I appreciate how it has helped get people excited about archaeology. Unfortunately, it also promotes a lot of racist stereotypes and consistently fails to problematize the atrocious crimes committed by the protagonist.

You see, Indiana Jones is not just a terrible archaeologist; he’s also a despicable human being. He’s a criminal sociopath, a statutory rapist, a grave robber, a murderer, a destroyer of cultural heritage, and an enforcer of European colonialism. The only reason why anyone sees him as the hero is because his adversaries are literally insane Nazis who want to steal an ancient artifact and use it as a superweapon to commit genocide against the vast majority of the human race. Under any other circumstances, he would be the villain.

Why Is Hollywood So Fixated on Cleopatra Anyway?

On 11 October 2020, it was officially announced that Gal Gadot, a white Israeli actress, had been cast to play the Hellenistic Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII Philopator in an upcoming epic period drama titled Cleopatra, which will be directed by Patty Jenkins and scripted by Laeta Kalogridis. This casting predictably set off outrage on social media over the fact that Cleopatra will not be portrayed by a Black actress.

I’ve already written an entire article in which I discuss Cleopatra’s ancestry and her appearance in great detail. In short, her ancestry was almost entirely Greek and her only known ancestor with non-Greek ancestry was her three times great-grandmother Kleopatra I of Syra, who was of mixed Greek, Persian, and Sogdian ancestry. There is one argument that people have tried to make that Cleopatra’s mother may have been a native Egyptian woman, but it is founded on multiple layers of wishful thinking and dubious assumptions and it is far more likely that her mother was Cleopatra V Tryphaina, her father’s only known wife, who was also his sister or his cousin.

In this article, though, I want to answer a different question: Why Cleopatra? Why is it that, out of three thousand some years of ancient Egyptian history, the only Egyptian queen that Hollywood is interested in making movies about is the one who was definitely of European ancestry? It’s clear that a very large section of the general public wants a movie about a native Egyptian queen portrayed by an actress of color. I say that, if that’s what people want, Hollywood should give that to them. Thankfully, there are plenty of native Egyptian queens and goddesses that Hollywood could potentially make movies about.

Hades: Not Such a Bad Guy After All

There is an interesting trope common in films based on Greek mythology in which Hades, the ruler of the Underworld, always seems to be the villain. It is a trope seen in films such as Walt Disney Pictures’ Hercules (1997), Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010), and Wrath of the Titans (2012). It seems that every movie that includes Hades always seems to uniformly portray him as a maniacal, conniving scoundrel, constantly seeking to overthrow Zeus and claim supreme power for himself. The problem with this picture is that it really does not come from the myths themselves.

In ancient times, the Greeks did not think of Hades as being evil. He was neither regarded as some sinister, fast-talking, flamy-haired cartoon villain, nor a fifteen-foot winged fire demon. They did not consider him decidedly malevolent, but rather merely reclusive, coldhearted, and somewhat aloof to the misery of the people residing in his kingdom.