Indiana Jones And The Case Of The Disappearing Guns And American Flag

Someone in the CHUD message boards compared the American and International version of the movie trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Agent of Chaos discovered that a bunch of russian soldiers with guns had been removed from the American version. Check out the photo above. I'm pretty sure that this change was probably the result of an MPAA request.

Someone on AICN also noticed that the American Flag is mysteriously missing from the international version of the trailer. It always seemed a bit odd and out of place to me in the American trailer. I don't think a movie blog is the place to explore why the American Flag and U.S. patriotism has become taboo in the shadow of the Iraq war (we'll let the political blogs explore that, as that is not at issue here). The fact of the matter is that Indiana Jones has never been used a symbol of America Patriotism. The use of the flag in the trailer feels extremely out of place. Friends of mine brought up this point and I've played devil's advocate, saying that the American Flag was probably used in the film to establish the location. But truth is, it feels way out of place in the trailer. And if the international version proves anything (other than Ray Winstone has Computer Generated pants) it is that the shot was not needed (at least in the teaser).