Romantic

Character Role Analysis

Marion Ravenwood

Foil or romantic interest? Often, those two roles are separate. The romantic interest is the person the hero or heroine can smooch over the final credits, while the foil keeps them on their toes with witty banter and occasionally frustrating mischief.

In the case of Raiders, the plucky, hard-drinking Marion Ravenwood fills both roles. She's more foil than romance: The steamy part of her relationship with Indy fell by the wayside a long time ago, hurting her so badly that she opened a bar in the Himalayas to get over it. Except that Raiders doesn't quite let go of the notion that maybe the lip-locking isn't a thing of the past after all.

There's a bit of flirting in her banter. "How come you haven't found some nice girl to settle down with, raises eight or nine kids like your friend Sallah?" she teases at one point. And when they get aboard Katanga's ship she makes a heartfelt attempt at seduction before Indy collapses from sheer exhaustion. "We never seem to get a break, do we?" she says wistfully as he falls asleep. So we can't say she's not at least partly in the romantic interest camp. Indeed, romance comes closer than we might think given their past history together, and sticks around for far longer than it might.