Blog # 21: Gender Roles

In both the movies of Indiana Jones: The Raiders of the Lost Ark and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. The characters hunt for an ancient relic. Gender roles in the movies differ greatly. In Indiana Jones, the man, Dr. Jones rescues the woman and kills the bad guys. In contrast, Lara Croft, the woman, Ms. Croft saves the man and destroys the bad guys. The movies did have one similar view of gender roles, only men can be titled as the “bad guys.”
In most movies, men carry the characteristic as the good guy who defeats all the bad guys by blowing their heads off and saving the day. In Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Lara is titled as the good guy and saving all the people as she possibly can by killing off all the bad guys. She uses sniper rifles to protect herself, others, and the old Seeing Eye triangle. In contrast to Indiana Jones: The Raiders of the Lost Ark, Dr. Jones uses his own stability to save people and kill the bad guys. He doesn’t necessarily need to use the sniper rifles to protect himself and the relic like Ms. Croft did.
Dr. Jones is trying to get the ark for school purposes while the Nazis’ are trying to get the ark because of its’ supernatural powers. Lara wanted the triangle because he father wanted it and she needed to keep it away from the bad guys. The “bad-guys” wanted the “item” for the wrong reasons. The girls in the movies were very different. Marion who was a character in the Indiana Jones movie owned a bar but was pretty dependable on Dr. Jones. Lara Croft was very independent and could hold her own.
I personally enjoyed watching Lara Croft: Tomb Raider better because it held more action and I was able to follow the story better than Indiana Jones: The Raiders of the Lost Ark. I thought Tomb Raider had a better storyline.