This struck me the other day whilst reading Paul Tatara’s pre-emptive strike on the new Indiana Jones film:

The great thing about Raiders Of The Lost Ark and Last Crusade is that Indy’s adventures are completely inconsequential - he’s a thorn in the bad guys side, but ultimately he has no effect on the turn of events. If you remove him from his own films, they’d still end the same: lots of melted Nazis.

So there.