The Sun-Herald

The Tribal Mind: Devices and Desires

To discuss whether Australians are too dumb to function in modern life, go to Who We Are

by David Dale
HERE'S another reason why Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull won't sell as many tickets as Raiders of the Lost Ark, and doesn't deserve to: its MacGuffin is rubbish.

Two weeks ago this column predicted that IJ4's box office would fall short of the $34 million necessary to match the performance of IJ1, because it fails to meet the requirements of the archetypal hero's journey (click here to read that column).

Some readers have kindly pointed out that my prediction is looking pretty shaky, because in its first three weeks, IJ4 has made $24.4m (while Iron Man, a much better blockbuster, took six weeks to reach $19.3m). But I stand by my prediction (in fact I think Sex and The City may end up beating IJ4, after making $11.3m in its first week), because I have identified another fatal flaw: the central plot-moving device produces an ending which looks derivative of Lara Croft (1 and 2), National Treasure (1 and 2), and 100 other pseudo-mystical potboilers. In other words, the MacGuffin is a cliche.

The master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, created the term for an item that makes people run around. The MacGuffin can be anything the characters want, seek, steal, hide, suddenly remember, mysteriously commune with and are willing to sell their souls for. Hitchcock said examples of such motivators would be jewels, test tubes, machines, maps, formulas ... "the device, the gimmick if you will, or the papers the spies are after ... The only thing that really matters is that in the picture, the plans, documents or secrets must seem to be of vital importance to the characters.''

The mightiest MacGuffins of movie history:
The one ring in Lord of the Rings
The letters of transit in Casablanca
The statue in The Maltese Falcon
Rosebud in Citizen Kane
The colt from Old Regret in The Man From Snowy River
The Heart of the Ocean in Titanic
The gem in Romancing The Stone
The cryptex in The Da Vinci Code
The philosopher's stone in the first Harry Potter
The list in Mission: Impossible
The golden glow in Pulp Fiction
The tiny galaxy in Men in Black
The key, the compass and the heart in Pirates of the Caribbean
The weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
The monoliths in 2001: A Space Odyssey
The Fedex package in Cast Away
The Allspark in Transformers
The alethiometer in The Golden Compass.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, George Lucas said Indiana Jones movies need a strong MacGuffin: "The Ark of the Covenant was perfect. The Shankara Stones were way too esoteric. The Holy Grail was sort of feeble but, at the same time, we put the father in there to cover for it. I mean, the whole reason it became a dad movie was because I was scared to hell that there wasn't enough power behind the Holy Grail to carry a movie.''

Lucas said it took him another 15 years to think of a MacGuffin for IJ4, and initially Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg rejected it. "I said, Well, look, I can't think of another MacGuffin. This works. I won't do it unless we can have that MacGuffin. Without the MacGuffin, I will not go near this thing.''

Many of the two million Australians who have now paid to see Lucas's fourth MacGuffin will be wishing Ford and Spielberg had stuck to their guns.

To suggest other great McGuffins, go to Comments

David Dale is the author of Who We Are -- A snapshot of Australia today (Allen and Unwin). To discuss Australian attitudes, go to http://blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare.