| “ | Listen? To you? I have beaten you, Herr Professor. What I do, I do for the glory of Germany. And there's nothing you can do to stop me. Your lap dog, Indiana Jones, is dead. And I have THIS! | „ |
| ~ Magnus Völler justifying his actions to Professor Charles Kingston, his former mentor. |
Magnus Völler is the main antagonist of the 2009 action-adventure video game Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings, the fourth original Indiana Jones video game.
He is a German archaeologist who used to be a colleague of the American archaeologist Indiana Jones back during their days studying together in Professor Charles Kingston's class at the University of Chicago before being expelled in disgrace. In the years leading up to World War II, Völler joins the Nazi Party and decides to look after the Staff of Kings for Adolf Hitler. He is one of Indy's fiercest rivals in his archaeology career, after René Belloq.
He was voiced by the late Adrian Schiller, who also played Mr. Gryle in Going Postal and Monsieur D'Arque in the live-action Beauty and the Beast remake.
History[]
Background[]
Magnus Völler was a German archaeologist who, around the late 1910s or early 1920s, attended the University of Chicago at the United States of America. There, Magnus studied under Professor Charles Kingston and was classmates with the American archaeologist Indiana Jones, though Kingston didn't like Völler's allegiances, as he secretly had deals in the antiquity black market. In 1922, Völler and Jones assisted their teacher on a dig in Panama to look after the Jade Sphere, but Völler opted to sneak into a Mayan temple despite Kingston's warnings to not do so due to the booby traps present there. There, Völler found the Sphere, but set off a rolling boulder trap, forcing Indy to save him upon finding him.
Despite Indy going after him, Völler didn't thank him for interfering with his plans and came to hate him. Eventually, after repeated reprimands, Völler was expelled and kicked out from the University of Chicago, after which he opted to return to Germany. Around this time, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party rose to prominence, so Völler started making some errands for Hitler before being recruited into the Nazi ranks. Wishing to attain more recognition, Völler came up with finding the Staff of Moses, which Moses used to open the Read Sea, to gain the Führer's approval. Somehow, the British Intelligence became aware of Völler's plans, sending Agent Maggie O'Malley to stop Magnus from acquiring the Staff.
Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings[]
In 1939, Magnus Völler comes across Indiana Jones in an ancient Nubian temple of the deserts of Sudan, where Indy had sneaked in, while looking after the Staff of Moses accompanied by with several Nazi commandos. Völler finds Indy once Indy retrieves the Gold Ram's Head (not a nod to Mola Ram) and he blows up the temple's entrance with the assistance of another Nazi soldier to get it. With his soldier holding Indy at gunpoint, Völler demands Indy to give him the Gold Ram's Head, but Indy throws the artifact to the soldier, nearly knocking him into a pit, leading Völler to save his minion to avoid losing the artifact while Indy escapes and brings down some wood scaffolding installed by the Nazis to trap Völler and his soldier there for a while, allowing Indy to escape from the other Nazis and flee Sudan with one of their planes.
Back at the States, Völler faces Indy again in Chinatown, San Francisco after learning that Archie Tan, one of Indy's friends, knows about Kingston's enigmatic whereabouts since 1933. To do so, Völler hires Blind Duck and his Hip Chen Tongs to kidnap Archie's granddaughter Suzie during a Chinese parade. After Indy defeats Blind Duck's men, saves Suzie and retrieves the Jade Sphere, while from opposite sites between a tramway, Völler and his bodyguard hold Archie hostage and threaten Indy to kill his friend if he doesn't surrender the Sphere. Upon seeing the incoming tramway, Indy throws the "Sphere" to Völler and Archie incapacitates his bodyguard, distracting them enough to allow Indy and Archie to jump into the tramway, after which Völler realizes that Indy didn't give him the real Jade Sphere but a decoy bundle, angrily shoving it to the ground and sending cars with his men after the tramway, though Jones and Tan still survive.
Returning to Panama, where Indy has decided to visit again the temple where the Jade Sphere was found as Kingston made friends with the inhabitants of a village in the Panamanian jungle, Völler recruits Sudao and his pillagers to raid the village and retrieve the Jade Sphere from Indy, though they fail at that and Indy kills all of Völler's Nazi forces before uncovering Kingston's hidden journal, which has all the information Kingston gathered about the Staff of Moses. Accompanied by two Nazis, Völler corners Indy and demands him to hand over their professor's journal, as Indy now knows about what his former classmate is seeking, but with a distraction provided by Maggie O'Malley, who had been posing as an Irish photographer and met Indy while renting a boat to the jungle, Indy is able to escape from Völler once more and temporarily leave him and his Nazis trapped inside the ruins.
Undeterred, after somehow escaping from the Mayan ruins, Völler tracks Indy and Maggie to Istanbul, where they plan to attend the opening of the Topkapi Palace's museum. As Indy goes on his own to investigate and look for clues in the catacombs about where the Staff of Moses is while fighting some Nazis, Völler welcomes O'Malley to the gala and offers her a champagne glass while hinting that he knows about her true allegiances as his men surround her. However, Maggie is able to escape from Völler thanks to bumping with a waiter and runs away to hide from him, allowing Indy to catch up with her after retrieving the clues to the Staff's hiding place, proceeding to escape from Völler's men by riding an elephant.
With all the clues, Indy and O'Malley go to Nepal, where they find a village in which Professor Kingston has been living since his disappearance, as the villagers protect the Staff of Moses to prevent the wrong hands from claiming it and misusing it for their own ends. However, Magnus finds them by tracking Indy down with his zeppelin the Odin with one of the Shepherd compass Kingston previously used to find the village, leading him and his Nazis to attack the village and its inhabitants, so Charles tells Indy to go to the temple where the Staff of Moses is hidden and protect it. Facing several of Völler's men on the way, Indy does so, but is stopped by Maggie, who insists him to destroy the temple and seal the Staff inside it, but their arguments allow Völler to catch up with them, leading him to take Maggie hostage, claim the Staff from Indy and then detonating the temple by shooting at some explosives to bury Indy alive. As Indy runs away to escape, Völler retreats back into the Odin.
Once he survives the collapsing Nepalese temple, sneaks into the Odin and rescues Maggie, Indy finds Völler on the zeppelin's catwalk, arguing with Kingston, whom he also took hostage and is trying to dissuade him from misusing the Staff of Moses, with no success. Völler notices Indy spying on them once the zeppelin's captain warns him, so he pulls out his revolver to shoot Jones dead, but Kingston tries to stop him, resulting in Völler shooting his former mentor dead. As Indy runs to be with Charles in his last moments, Magnus tries to shoot Indy dead, but his revolver has run out of ammunition, so he takes the Staff of Moses and uses it to split open the Red Sea in the Bay of Bengal. Völler then escapes with it in a motorcycle while Indy and Maggie pursue him with a motorcycle with a sidecar while several of Völler's men chase them, though Indy either shoots them dead or disables their motorcycles with sidecars so they can be killed by the incoming waves that Völler lets close behind them.
After getting rid of all of the Nazi reinforcements, Indy pulls out a rocket launcher, which he uses to distract Völler enough with blasts until reaching him. Both archaeologists start a tug-of-war for the Staff of Moses, but their fight ends with Indy sucker-punching Völler into the water wall next to them. As his motorcycle gets consumed by the ocean, Völler barely grabs from the Staff as the water pulls him upwards and pleads for mercy, but Indy doesn't help him and lets him slip from the Staff, leading Völler to be pulled into the water to his watery death, avenging Kingston's death and putting an end to the nefarious schemes he planned for the Staff of Moses. As he drowns offscreen, Indy and Maggie make it to land and stop the waves with the Staff of Moses, which also destroys the Odin and the rest of Völler's forces before the Staff turns into a snake, whom Jones lets go to retreat into the wilderness.
Trivia[]
- Magnus Völler's backstory with Indiana Jones was meant to be fleshed out far more in an unpublished novelization veteran Indiana Jones author Rob MacGregor was originally hired to write before being shelved due to Lucasfilm's feelings that there was no more interest in Indiana Jones novels.
- Among some details, MacGregor's novel revealed that aside from being the son of one of the Thule Society's founders and studying also under Abner Ravenwood's mentorship, Völler had an infamous reputation of linking several artifacts to Germany despite the usual lack of basis and was outraged at René Belloq and Walter Donovan being recruited by Adolf Hitler to seek for the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail, hence why he had been chosen to seek the Staff of Kings.
- It's unknown how exactly Völler found out about Maggie O'Malley being a British Intelligence spy, as nothing prior to their first face-to-face encounter in Istanbul suggested that they were even aware of each other's existences.
- Ironically, even if he had been able to escape from Indy and Maggie with the Staff of Moses in his possession, it's more than likely that Magnus would have lost the Staff anyway as it turns into a snake at the end of the game once Indy and Maggie celebrate having escaped from Völler and saved the day, so had Magnus been the one to have escaped with the Staff, he would have lost the relic and possibly still been killed if the snake bite him.
- The main villain of the fifth and last Indiana Jones film Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was named Jürgen Voller. However, it's unknown if maybe this is an indicator that Mads Mikkelsen's character is somehow related to Magnus Völler or not, given how obscure the video game is (though James Mangold is cited to be a great Indy fan) and that their last names are pronounced differently.
External Links[]
- Magnus Völler on the Indiana Jones Wiki
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 Villains
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