I got to think­ing about “Indi­ana Jones and the King­dom of the Crys­tal Skull” recently, because I do things like that. I think there’s an inter­est­ing les­son here in how to lose an audi­ence, if you think you’re doing okay. The fourth Indi­ana Jones movies was panned by crit­ics and fan­boys alike, even though lots of peo­ple in charge of spend­ing lots of money thought they were sit­ting on another golden install­ment of the beloved fran­chise? Why didn’t it work?

Oh, and there are — obvi­ously — spoil­ers here for the movie. I shouldn’t have to say this, because if you know who I am and you’re read­ing this blog, you’ve either seen KotCS or you made a very delib­er­ate deci­sion not to. Either way, you’ve been warned any­way. For the record, I liked the movie, prob­a­bly because I saw past what most peo­ple com­plain about and accepted it for what they were try­ing to do. But let’s look at three key ele­ments of the film, why they should have worked, and why audi­ences didn’t buy them.

Stunt: Nuk­ing the fridge

Why it should have worked: Because audi­ences in this fran­chise have bought it before. Not this par­tic­u­lar stunt, but con­sider this. If you love the orig­i­nal movies and thought KotCS was a trav­esty, that means you already accepted Indy, a civil­ian lounge singer and a ten year old boy jump­ing out of a crash­ing plane with­out para­chutes, land­ing on the top of a moun­tain in a rub­ber inflat­able raft, slalom­ing down the moun­tain with­out injury, going off a cliff, falling again, this time into white water river rapids, rid­ing through those all with­out drown­ing or Indy los­ing his hat, before wash­ing up on the river­bank just as the waters calm to find an Indian shaman who would like to speak to them about some miss­ing magic rocks. You bought that, but Indy rid­ing out a nuclear test in a solid steel, lead-​lined box is too much to believe?

Why audi­ences didn’t buy it: Because it was a nuke. Those of us who grew up in the Cold War, or even had par­ents who grew up in the Cold War, have come to asso­ciate nukes with instant vapor­ized death. Even though we know this was a test, and there­fore prob­a­bly not at full weaponized strength, even though we’ve seen pic­tures of the rub­ble at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, prov­ing that there is rub­ble, ie. stuff that didn’t get vapor­ized, after a nuclear blast, even though we know the fridge was lead lined and Indy could have escaped with only mild radi­a­tion expo­sure — which we saw him get treated for — it’s still a frig­gin’ nuke.

Les­son learned: Just because some­thing in your story is pos­si­ble, that doesn’t mean it’s plausible.

Stunt: Aliens

Why it should have worked: KotCS is set in the early 1950s, when Roswell and UFO hys­te­ria was just start­ing to build in a big way, so aliens and alien arti­facts were com­pletely appro­pri­ate weird­ness for Indi­ana Jones to find his way into. The arti­facts in ques­tion were in South Amer­ica, where leg­ends and spec­u­la­tion about “ancient astro­nauts” who helped the Mayans, Aztecs and Incas build their civ­i­liza­tions go back decades, well into Indy’s time.

And frankly, you had no prob­lem believ­ing Mola Ram could reach into that guy’s heart, show it to him, and the guy con­tinue liv­ing until he burned up. You had no prob­lem with the Lost Ark of the Covenant melt­ing all those Nazis. And you had no prob­lem with Indi­ana Jones not only find­ing the Holy Grail — an achieve­ment missed by both cru­sad­ing knights and Monty Python, unless you believe the French — but also using it to heal a mor­tal wound to Sean Connery.

Why audi­ences didn’t buy it: Because even though aliens were appro­pri­ate to the time and place of the story, they weren’t appro­pri­ate to the char­ac­ter. We have no prob­lems deal­ing with Indi­ana Jones fight­ing off spooky magic and reli­gious stuff, but we asso­ciate aliens with sci­ence fic­tion and high tech­nol­ogy. Some char­ac­ters can get away with genre bend­ing, but the more estab­lished you become in some­thing, the more rigid the walls around your char­ac­ters. If Tom Clancy wrote a novel where his high tech mil­i­tary folks encoun­tered Love­craft­ian Elder Gods, it would fail just as big.

Les­son learned: Know your genre and where the bound­aries are. This was a big one for me, as one of the biggest changes I’m mak­ing to the Between Heaven and Hell books this time around is estab­lish­ing right up in Rev­e­la­tion that the immor­tals are immor­tal because of the nan­otech­nol­ogy in their blood, along with a few adap­ta­tions to their DNA. In short, I’m estab­lish­ing the story as sci­ence fic­tion right up front, so when we end up in space fight­ing dinosaurs by book four, it’s not as much of a leap.

Stunt: Old Indy

Why it should have worked: Well, we were okay with an older Sean Con­nery in Last Cru­sade, right? This was sup­posed to be a pass­ing of the torch from Indy to his son, played by Shia Lebouf, con­sid­ered by many to the the next gen­er­a­tion Har­ri­son Ford anyway.

Why audi­ences didn’t buy it: In Last Cru­sade, Con­nery did com­par­a­tively lit­tle actual fight­ing. We knew he was capa­ble of it, at least those of us who remem­ber his James Bond, but Henry Jones acted more as an advi­sor and sound­ing board for his son. But this didn’t work in KotCS. Instead of an older Indi­ana Jones guid­ing and groom­ing young Mutt as his suc­ces­sor, Indy kept doing what Indy does. And that’s take a beat­ing, which means for much of the movie, we got treated to the uncom­fort­able expe­ri­ence of watch­ing a man in his 60s get beat up.

In MMO terms, Indi­ana Jones is a tank. His pur­pose is to take dam­age, not deal it. Think about it. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, for all of Indy’s brav­ery and copi­ous dam­age absorp­tion, what did he really accom­plish? He failed at every sin­gle point of the story, and the only dif­fer­ence he ulti­mately made was that the Ark ended up buried in some gov­ern­ment ware­house rather than buried in the desert sands. He didn’t really stop the Nazi’s at all. They stopped them­selves by open­ing the Ark prematurely.

And so in KotCS, when Indy con­tin­ues to fail with style rather than let­ting Mutt take the brunt of it and teach him the fam­ily busi­ness, the audi­ence had the same “who are you try­ing to kid” reac­tion that we get when we see a gray haired quar­ter­back take the field rather than know when to hang it up. Yeah, you know who I’m talk­ing about.

Les­son learned: Think not about your char­ac­ters, but how they’ll be per­ceived. Sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief is a frag­ile thing, and once your audi­ence has a “oh, for cryin’ out loud” moment, it’s very hard to get them back. Think about your story before hand and make sure you’re coax­ing the audi­ence into play­ing along, rather than dic­tat­ing to them how it’s gonna be.