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| “ | Indiana Jones: You. Jürgen Voller: Have we met? Indiana Jones: My memory's a little fuzzy, are you still a Nazi? |
„ |
| ~ Indiana Jones crossing paths with Dr. Jürgen Voller again. |
| “ | Hitler made mistakes. And with this, I will correct them. | „ |
| ~ Jürgen Voller's most famous quote while he shows plans for the Dial of Destiny. |
Doctor Jürgen Voller, later known under the cover identity of Professor Schmidt, is the main antagonist of the 2023 action-adventure film Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the fifth and final installment of the Indiana Jones film series and Indiana Jones's second archenemy.
He is an ex-Nazi Party scientist recruited by NASA to assist in the Apollo program after the conclusion of World War II. Although he publicly presents himself as a "changed man", Voller secretly desires to obtain the Antikythera mechanism, or Dial of Destiny, so he can alter the course of history. He plans to travel back to August of 1939 and overthrow Adolf Hitler so he can help Germany win World War II.
He was portrayed by Mads Mikkelsen, who also played Randall Boggs in the Danish dub of Monsters, Inc., Le Chiffre in Casino Royale and David Prentiss in Chaos Walking.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
- He served the Nazis by designing the V-1 flying bombs for them and still subscribes to Nazi ideology after the war, which already makes him a heinous person to begin with.
- He does point out that he believes that Adolf Hitler committed some mistakes, but not because of genuine standards, instead because he had his own ideas about Nazism. He is also shown to be racist, as he is hostile towards a black bellhop who was attending to his needs at the hotel where he was staying.
- Participated in Colonel Weber's loot, retrieving what he believes to be the Lance of Longinus before realizing that it's a fake.
- Faced Indiana Jones and his friend Basil Shaw aboard a German train during the loot as they took the Dial of Destiny from him, threatening to shoot them to take the Dial back, under the pretext that it was his.
- While he does defect to the United States and contributes to the NASA Apollo program, it's not out of any goodwill or loyalty but rather to serve as a cover for his continued search for the Dial of Destiny.
- He intimidates a kind African-American bellhop who brings him his breakfast likely because of his ethnicity, asking him about his home country and taunting him that America didn't win World War II but Hitler lost it, making this one of the few explicit examples of racism in the franchise.
- He sends Agent Mason of the CIA and his henchmen, Klaber and Hauke, after Jones and Basil's daughter Helena to prevent them from completing or selling the Dial of Destiny.
- This leads to Klaber and Hauke killing members of Hunter College's staff, leading Indy to be incriminated by the authorities of killing them presumably due to his forced retirement and the death of his son Mutt Williams in the Vietnam War, forcing Indy to leave the country to avoid unfair imprisonment. Even by the end of the film, there are zero indications that Indy has managed to clean up his name or not (though his everyday activities during the Bookend segments of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles suggest that he did eventually prove his innocence somehow).
- Tries to find the Dial of Destiny himself so he can rewrite reality to his whim, wishing to restore Nazi Germany's glory in accordance to his opinions about Hitler's flaws, even crashing on Helena's auction for the Dial's piece she has.
- Escapes in his own Mercedes-Benz through Morocco's streets, forcing Indy, Basil's daughter Helena, and Teddy Kumar to use tuk-tuks to chase him and endanger most of the city's inhabitants walking the streets, causing three civilians to get killed.
- Once called out by Mason for his actions and told that the President of the United States is disowning him, Voller orders Klaber and Hauke to kill all of the helicopter's crew, Mason included, to go back after Indy and his friends, defiantly revealing his true allegiances to Mason as she dies.
- He kills all of Renaldo's crew and then shoots Renaldo dead twice when Indy declines to help him, even though Renaldo was merely armed with a cane and didn't pose a serious threat, killing him just to "motivate" Indy to help.
- He bribes Helena with some diamonds to help him decipher how the Dial of Destiny works. Although one cay say that this proves he has some honor, this becomes moot given how Voller's later plans indirectly confirm how moot paying Helena would have become, plus Indy highly doubted Voller would leave them go, especially as Helena was insulting his intelligence.
- He kidnaps Teddy Kumar, Helena's child sidekick, to use him as a hostage for Indy and Helena to guide him to Archimedes' Tomb.
- As Indy and Helena bypass the tomb's obstacles, Voller and his men follow them, but Teddy makes a scene that culminates with him and Hauke falling into a river. He tells his men to leave both there, resulting in Teddy escaping and Hauke dying horribly by drowning.
- He shoots Indy and forces him to come with him, cruelly telling him that if he doesn't surrender, he will kill Helena and Teddy, mockingly remarking that he has already lost his son in the Vietnam War and that his wife Marion Ravenwood no longer wishes to see him, which does nothing but further sinking Indy's moral to the point he depresses himself during the film's climax.
- He takes Indy prisoner aboard his plane, revealing his plans to actually time travel back to August of 1939 and kill Hitler before he could invade Poland and start World War II. However it's not because of him wishing to make something good for the world, but instead to have himself appointed as leader of the Third Reich and lead Germany to victory in World War II, which would have caused even more deaths and destruction than in the original timeline.
- He initially ignores Indy's warning that his plan won't work as Archimedes didn't know about the continental drift, only getting concerned when it's too late to change course before celebrating his success until realizing that Indy's right and the Dial was rigged to only take its users through a time fissure back to the Siege of Syracuse in 212 BC.
- He lets Klaber and his men shoot at the Roman and Greek ships during the Siege of Syracuse as he harshly orders his pilots fly back into the time fissure that brought them there.
- This is in spite that by causing chaos there, they could possibly cause some type of time paradox, though they seemingly don't get anyone killed, as instead the Romans and Greeks use their harpoons to shoot Voller's plane down, killing him and all his Nazis before they could do any more harm. Even if they didn't do any extreme damages, Voller's plane caused mass hysteria during the battle, as all Romans and Greeks present there assumed it was a dragon, heavily implying that the superstition around dragons and the potential fear towards them was born thanks to Voller's time-meddling plans.
- He tries to force Indy in his final moments into giving him the parachute he is going to use to escape with Helena to ensure he survives and they both die, prompting Helena to shoot him to ensure he relents.
- While the Indiana Jones franchise has incredibly high heinous standards, Voller's attempt to warp reality and restart World War II differently and with him as leader are unique enough for him to stand out.
Trivia[]
- Like most of the villains he has played throughout his career, Mads Mikkelsen expressed his beliefs that Jürgen Voller, then unnamed, is a "misunderstood person", which is how Mikkelsen sees all his villains. Due to his status as Pure Evil, however, whatever misunderstanding Voller may have had was undoubtedly gone a long time ago.
- Even shortly before the film's premiere, Mikkelsen hinted at Voller's true nature by saying that while he found common ground with Voller's goals of using the Dial of Destiny to correct some of Adolf Hitler's mistakes, he would replace Voller's goals with personal ones because he can't identify with Voller's Nazi beliefs, adding that while maybe Voller's disagreements with Hitler could have made his plans better than Hitler's, him lone deciding everything isn't a good solution.
External Links[]
- Jürgen Voller on the Villains Wiki
- Jürgen Voller on the Indiana Jones Wiki
- Jürgen Voller on the Disney Wiki
- Jürgen Voller on the Hate Sink Wiki
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 Pure Evils
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Mola Ram |
Nur-Ab-Sal |
Masashi Kyojo |
Mattias Targo |
General Makimura |
Jürgen Voller |
Klaber | ||
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