InfoDroid said:Let's analyze this for a second. All the villains in these Indy movies always finally get what they've been chasing the entire movie. Belloq wanted the Ark, Mola Ram wanted the stones, and Donovan wanted the Grail. Their problem is, they see these things as objects that they can use to their own ends. Their moral character is their ultimate downfall. Indy always outsmarts them because he has respect for Archaeology. He's a skeptic, but he learns his lesson by the end, just in time to avoid disaster. The villains don't.
In every case, the gifts themselves these artifacts bestow are not bad or evil. After all, the Grail restored life to Henry. The Sankara stones brought life back to the village. The Ark...well...the Ark was too holy to even behold. But when they fell into the wrong hands, their "gifts" had disastrous consequences.
The question we should be asking is, how can we continue that pattern with KOTCS? Was it ever mentioned that Spalko was looking for "knowledge"? What is her motivation? What does she want? And how can her ultimate pay off be turned against her? AND how can we communicate all that on-screen in a creative way with the existing material?
Hey InfoDroid,
I like your suggestion that we analyze this. Spalko wanted knowledge I GUESS ... but her expressed desire up to the end was to be able to control others by means of her psychic abilities ... so perhaps the knowledge - the "everything" she wanted to know - was more specifically related to her psychic abilities ... to read minds and influence them from a distance. If this is so, the 'visions' she has that lead to her death might not be grand global scale events, but an overwhelming rush of all the horrible little details in the mind of man. Alternatively, perhaps she gained the knowledge of how to outwardly express her will though her psychic powers but not how to retain her own mental or physical cohesion in the process (all that was her blasted outwards in every direction) ... leading to her bursting apart and turning into tiny bits. So maybe a better death might be to have her literally crack apart Agent Smith style when Neo jumps into him and then bursts him apart at the end of the Matrix. Of course, that would take some CG work, but it would be a death more in keeping with the rest of the series I think ... and better than what little we have now.
Ryan