Movies About Treasure Are For Chumps!

I'm done, it's over, no more. I'm officially retiring from the "Treasure Movie" genre. I keep waiting for one of them to surprise me but it keeps coming down to the same routine. I blame Indy, he started this mess. George Lucas rejuvenated the treasure-hunting genre back in the 80s and now it's snowballed into a monster. Tomb Raider, The Mummy, National Fucking Treasure. I'll admit it, a few of those horse-beaten movies might have been entertaining, but after seeing the latest edition of everyone's favorite ophidiophobic, Indiana Jones, I've had it.

No More Leather Jackets: I don't get it, have any of you actually been to the Sahara or the Amazon rainforest? It's not exactly sweater-weather over there. That is, of course, unless you enjoy looking and feeling like a sweaty Robin Williams. I'm just glad they didn't use a leather jacket to cover Angelina's giant knockers.

Ancient People Weren't That Smart: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there has ever been a case where an archaeologist placed a key in a hole and a two-ton rock wall automatically moved. I still sometimes slam my face into the automatic door at Target and you're expecting me to believe that some four-thousand-year-old civilization perfected the science?

WTF is "Power"? In these treasure movies, there almost always exists an artifact that contains some sort of "power". And they'll usually explain it like, "he who returns the artifact to the temple will be able to wield its power." I think people toss that P-word around too much. When you keep using it in useless context like that it starts to lose its meaning. And may I say, we almost never find out what this "power" actually is. Cuz you know what happens when they finally get this power? They die. Every time.

Treasure Movie Writers are Racist: There almost always comes a point in these movies where the heroes come across a band of natives. These indigenous people are uniformly painted up with an affinity towards body piercings and dreadlocks. They always have either spears, bolos, or blow darts--sometimes all three. The reasons for this mindless assault are almost never given; and when they are, it's usually because these brainless, non-white people are "sworn to protect" the artifact, temple, or what have you. Maybe they just don't agree with our foreign policy.

One-Time-Use Temples are Wasteful: Yay! We've defeated the bad guy! Uh, oh, what's going on? There's sand pouring everywhere, the floor is falling out from underneath me into some mysterious void and those inexplicable automatic rock-doors are starting to slide down at just the right speed for me to escape! What's a leather-jacket-wearing adventurer to do? Come on, transparently-racist ancient people! Why would you put all that work into your temple but then have it fall apart as soon as all the good stuff happens? The worst part is that they use these temples to store all their valuables and treasure. I'm glad Public Storage isn't run by ancient Mayans.