hang on lady, we go for a ride!
I don't really like the Indiana Jones movies all that much. Part of this is that they really struggle to maintain my attention. (I can state this pretty authoritatively, as they have been coming on cable TV over the last several weeks, and I have tried to watch each of them, with varying degrees of success.) But part of it is also that I don't get the calculus of the Indiana Jones Universe, in a way that I find extremely frustrating.

Let us spell out some of its features:

* there is a Biblical relic that, when opened, melts people's faces.
* there are magical stones that glow when near each other, and which (somehow) allow priests of Kali to reach into people's chests and pull out their hearts, which somehow burst into flame when the (still-living after several minutes) heartless victim is lowered into a fire
* there is a different Biblical relic that grants immortality to people who drink from it and also heals wounds

The first and third seem to imply that either there is some sort of truth to the Bible, or else that there is some non-Biblical source of actual magic the realization of which inspired Bible stories. The second seems to favor the latter explanation, as the Thuggees don't fit really well into a Jesus-y world.

So let's just say that in the Indiana Jones universe, there is some sort of magic. From what we are shown, we are forced to conclude that this magic manifests itself only in the rarest circumstances, all of which Indiana Jones just happens to be present for. And what effect does this magic have on the world? None.

The reason (good) Sci-Fi and Fantasy stories are interesting is that they use technology and/or magic as a launching point to explore "how is this new magical world different from the world we live in, and what does that say about human nature?"

You have heard me, I'm sure, rant about the abysmal economics of the Harry Potter universe, which utterly fails to address the tension between scarcity and magic. (e.g. the Weasleys can perform the most fantastic magical spells but are still so "poor" that Ron has to wear ratty secondhand robes.)

Consider this, then, my analogous rant about the paucity of imagination poured into the Indiana Jones universe, whose use of magic is so poorly thought out that their world is for all practical purposes identical to ours, except for infrequent appearances of extremely powerful magic that never seem to have any societal consequences.

Now, if in the fourth movie (which I am seeing on Friday as part of a work event) they happen to address the question of "how has the world changed drastically on account of having had an immortality-providing cup for the last 20 years?" then I will maybe reconsider my position. But I am pretty sure they won't.