I’m not sure where this got started, but there’s a theory that states that, had Indiana Jones not gotten involved, the events of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” would have played out exactly the same. I personally came across this theory in an episode of “The Big Bang Theory”, a show I always felt paid lip service to “nerd” culture without really examining it closely. As such, this idea concerning the plot of the film fits right in. It’s sounds about right, until you look closely, and then it all unravels.

It is true that there are instances in the first half of the film where Indy’s various efforts seem futile. For example, the film opens with Indy raiding a hidden temple in Peru for a golden fertility idol. After avoiding numerous traps and barely escaping the temple, Jones finds himself confronted by a hostile indigenous tribe. He’s forced to hand over the idol to Belloq, a rival archeologist who has befriended the locals. So the “Indy doesn’t matter” theorists would have you believe that, had the hero not been there, this is one of the instances where nothing changes. Instead of getting the idol by forcing Indy to give it to him, the villain would have gotten it anyway by going inside the temple and getting it himself. I’m not 100% sure Belloq could have avoided all the traps the way Indy did (A third archeologist, Forrestal, who Jones admitted was “very good”, definitely didn’t avoid one of those traps). I am, however, willing to concede the point that Belloq could have gotten the idol (possibly by letting the natives get killed by the traps instead). I am furthur willing to concede that this could be an example of Indy’s presence not really making a difference.

After the incident with the idol, our hero goes to Nepal to look up his old flame, Marion Ravenwood. He’s after the headpiece to the staff of Ra, an artifact Marion happens to be wearing at the time. Marion denies having it with her, and Indy leaves. After he has left, Marion pulls it out from under her blouse, and then goons, led by a sinister Nazi named Toht,  show up to demand it. Indy returns, a fight ensues, and Toht ends up with an impression of the headpiece burned onto his hand. He runs off into the night without the headpiece while Indy and Marion recover it. Later on, the Nazis in Cairo will use the impression branded on Toht’s hand to replicate a headpiece of their own, but theirs is missing information so they end up looking for the Ark in the wrong part of their excavation outside Cairo. Jones, meanwhile, has all the information he needs so he can calculate the correct location of the Ark’s resting place, the Well of Souls.

Indy gets his own crew of diggers and gets into the Well, where, after a bit of trouble, he gets his hands on the Ark. But no sooner has he gotten it out of the Well than Belloq, having noticed a team digging where they shouldn’t be, shows up and grabs it. So, this is another instance where you might think Indy’s presence makes no difference. If he wasn’t in the film, the Nazis would have grabbed the headpiece to the staff of Ra back in Nepal, used it to calculate the correct location of the Well of Souls themselves and gotten possession of the Ark, just like they now have it at this point in the film. So, nothing’s changed, right?

Actually, things have indeed changed. Had Indy not been in Nepal, Thot would have tortured and killed Marion in order to gain possession of the headpiece. So, that’s a change. I’ve heard people say it’s not an important one, but I don’t agree, and neither would Marion. Tell her she’s not important and she’ll slug you in the face. And from what we see of her in the film, she slugs hard!

But if you insist that Indiana Jones’ presence doesn’t change anything too important, thus dismissing Marion’s continued existence, your argument completely falls apart once the two characters escape the Well of Souls. Indy tries to sneak aboard the plane the Nazis plan on flying the Ark out on. After some shenanigans involving guns, gasoline and a huge German mechanic who likes to fight, the plane ends up blowing up. So now, the Nazis can’t fly it out because Jones was there and mucked up their plan.

Now let’s remove the hero from that scene, and Marion too while we’re at it (because at this point, she’s been dead in Nepal for a while, remember?). The plane does not blow up, the Ark gets loaded onto it and off it goes. Where’s it going? I’ll tell you where it’s not going. It’s not going to that hidden Nazi base we see in the film’s final act. That base is a submarine refuelling station. It kinda makes sense that the submarine needed to go there in the film. The U-boat had presumably been called in at the last minute when Indy absconded with the Ark and loaded it onto a freighter. So the sub could have been on the tail end of a patrol or something when Belloq and his allies commandeered it. Once refuelled, it presumably would have continued on to Italy, a country already allied with Germany by 1936, when the film is set.

When I discussed this with a friend, he suggested the plane could have landed on the island and the Ark be opened there, as it is in the film. But there’s a couple of things wrong with that idea. There’s no evidence that the Nazis have an airstrip on that island. The submarine pen looks to have been built in a natural cave, which makes sense. But once the sub arrives, the Nazis have to carry the Ark up a mountain on foot. You’re telling me they couldn’t build a road wide enough to drive a vehicle up but they could build an airstrip? No, that’s bullshit. If Jones hadn’t blown up that plane in Egypt, there was no way it was going to that island. Because it wouldn’t even need to.

The plane is based on a design that the Nazis never actually built, the Arado Ar E.555. It was a bomber that was to have an effective range of 5,000 km. So it could have flown from Cairo to Berlin without needing to refuel. However, its presence in the film is a bit of an anachronism, as the Nazis didn’t come up with the design until 1943, whereas the film is set seven years earlier. Also, the Arado was designed to have jet engines, which Germany hadn’t invented yet in 1936. As the large German mechanic seemed to forget, the plane in the film had propeller engines instead. So you could argue the plane in the film couldn’t have that 5,000 km range, and I would tend to agree. However, the Heinkel He 111, a bomber the Germans were using in 1936, had a range of a little more than 2250 km. So if we assume the bomber in the film had a similar range, it’s not enough to get it to Berlin in one hop, but enough to get it to Rome. From there, the plane could simply refuel and continue on to Berlin.

Now, I am aware that in the film, Belloq argues that they shouldn’t open the Ark in Berlin until they make sure it’s the right Ark beforehand, which is why he opens it on that remote island. However, that discussion happens once the submarine has already reached the island. It’s very much a case of the Frenchman telling the Nazis “Hey, since we’re here anyway, why not open the Ark to make sure we’ve got the right one?” I don’t think the Nazis would be listening to him if that discussion was happening in Rome or Berlin. And even if they do open it before presenting it to Hitler, I think we can agree that opening it in mainland Europe leads to a lot more deaths than just those Nazis we see die in the film.

We could, if we wanted, then extrapolate what happens after the Ark shuts itself again, as it does in the film. It’s still somewhere in either Germany or Italy. Do the Axis use it in the war? Does the war even happen in this timeline? Did Hitler and the German high command get melted by the Ark? Does Belloq even live long enough to argue about where to open it or did the Nazis liquidate him once the plane lifted off?

I, however, have no interest in going down that rabbit hole. My purpose was to prove that Indiana Jones’s presence does indeed affect the events of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and I believe I have conclusively done so. Once that plane blows up, his effect on the plot is undeniable.

• The author would like to thank his friend Mark for proof-reading and editing this essay.