It’s a Living (Or, Traps Don’t Set Themselves)

Let me lay out the scene for you: you’re Henry “Indiana” Jones, Jr. You’ve just killed and/or maimed dozens of Nazis. You’ve traveled three continents and a half-dozen countries. You’ve discovered ancient tombs, flew on a passenger dirigible (why is that no longer a mode of transportation anymore?) and punched a tank off a cliff. While you were at it, you got Hitler’s autograph and you and your father ran a train on a hawt blonde chick. How do you cap it all off?

You find and quaff from the Holy Grail, of course.

However, it’s not as easy at it sounds. You’ve got to traipse through tunnels, avoid traps that have killed those who came before you, and pray to Jebus. All of a sudden, you encounter some kind of weird hopscotch diagram on the rocky ground, covered with strange letters from an ancient language. If you don’t tread on the proper squares, you will plummet to a spiky doom. After a few suspenseful missteps, causing portions of the floor to fall, you arrive safely on the other end and continue your quest. Never to think about that hopscotch court again.

 But hold up. Let’s rewind a little here. We’re not entirely sure who created these traps. Maybe they were ancient aliens, or time-travelers or Omni Consumer Products. There’s no way to know. But the real question is:  who maintains the upkeep on these damn traps? Clearly somebody has to hang around the secret resting place of the Holy Grail to rebuild the ground every time somebody messes up and takes a swan dive into the abyss. Some unlucky soul has to oil the decapitating saw blades and rearrange the dead bodies into positions that induce dread in the next person who tries their luck overcoming the traps. And what about the “Leap of Faith”?*

Does this guy, (let’s call him Bob) does Bob live in the cave, or nearby? How’d he get this job?

Ancient Art Vandelay: Hey Bob, we’re almost done building this huge temple made entirely out of heavy ass rocks over a bunch of bottomless pits, (not sure how we managed that one) but we need your help to finish the project. We have two tasks, are you up for it?

Ancient Bob: Sure. What do I have to do?

Ancient Art Vandelay: Firstly, we need you to go out and find about two hundred random ass cups. I’m talking all sizes and shapes. Ordinate and hella cheap. Any material: wood, glass, clay, plastic. Doesn’t matter. Then bring those cups back and set them all over the damn place in this one cavern here. The more random and meaningless the spots, the better.

Ancient Bob: Umm, okay. I don’t understand it, but anything for the cause, I guess. What’s the second task?

Ancient Art Vandelay: It’s no biggie, trust me, it’s not. But you’d be doing us a big favor. I’m gonna need to make you immortal and kinda have you sweep up around here for the rest of eternity. Ok?

Ancient Bob:…

Ancient Art Vandelay: It’ll look really good on your next employee review. Believe me.

That’d be ghastly! But it doesn’t just end there. Over the course of three and a half movies, Indy encounters a large assortment of one-time-use traps, riddles, mazes and thingamajigs. Imagine the army of poor chumps who have to constantly reset these things. Not only is that completely round boulder in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” a masterpiece of engineering, so is whatever method they use to push the damn thing back up the ramp each time some jerk comes bumbling through the place. Same goes for the room with all the poisonous needles, (that poison doesn’t reapply itself every few weeks) and the part of the cave where the ground literally separates. And that’s just for a ten-minute sequence. Throw in the rest of the movies and you’ve got an entire Union of Trap Workers (Local 249). God knows what would happen if they all went on strike!

Which brings me to my last point/pointless question. Why did these civilizations who had the ability to build devices centuries before anybody else, even die out in the first place? Forget the fact that all these groups of people came up with the same idea of building stupid ruses, pitfalls, gambits and artifices (I got tired of writing trap) independently of each other, why did none of them focus on stuff like medicine or agriculture? If you were electing a new pharaoh or Grand Pubbah, would you vote for the guy who promises to devote more time into developing this new “wheel” thingy, or the guy with spittle flying from his mouth promising to commit all resources, including turning you into a slave, to bury the “wheel” in a cave two miles deep, guarded by scorpions and rotating saw blades until the end of time, because it is clearly the work of the devil and should belong to nobody?

I believe UTW Local 249 already knows the answer to that.

 

*This is a total sidebar, but think about it. It’s the only trap where the single way to fail is to not be suicidal. What would stop somebody who has already beaten the first two traps from leaving and coming back with equipment to make a bridge across the chasm that leads directly to the grail?