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[ Colonel Dr. Irina Spalko Character Page ] Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) | ||||||
 Cate Blanchett plays the villainous Soviet agent Irina Spalko in the movie Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. |  Blanchett had wanted to play a villain for a "couple of years", and enjoyed being part of the Indiana Jones legacy as she loved the previous films. Spielberg praised Blanchett as a "master of disguise", and considers her his favorite Indiana Jones villain for coming up with much of Spalko's characteristics. Spalko's bob cut was her idea, with the character's stern looks and behaviour recalling Rosa Klebb in From Russia with Love. Blanchett learned to fence for the character, but during filming, Spielberg decided to give Spalko "karate chop" skills. LaBeouf recalled Blanchett was elusive on set, and Ford was surprised when he met her on set outside of costume. He noted, "There's no aspect of her behavior that was not consistent with this bizarre person she's playing. | |||||
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| Irina Spalko was born and raised in a small mountain village in the eastern regions of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. When her apparent psychic powers began to manifest themselves, the superstitious villagers shunned her, called her witch, and worse. Her family was ostracized. Left to herself, she gradually became consumed by a determination to learn who she was, what she was, and most importantly, why she was; it was a personal quest that would fuel her from then to the last day of her life. Then, as she grew older and more curious, her dissecting of small animals - her innocent attempt to understand life and biology - caused even her own mother to fear her. As soon as she was old enough, she fled the village and mountains altogether, certain that the answers she sought could only be found in the wider world. Her singular quest took her far and wide; she studied with master yogis, trained with the best parapsychologists. She learned techniques developed by Nepalese monks to control her heart rate, her breathing and her body temperature. She studied classical fencing and became expert with the rapier, the saber and the foil. Eventually Spalko obtained a doctorate and joined the Soviet secret police. This security, intelligence and counterintelligence organization underwent multiple name changes since its inception in 1917 and - depending on the time she joined - would have been known by Spalko as the NKVD, the NKGB, the MGB and the MVD - and would become, in 1954, the Komityet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti or KGB (Committee for State Security). As part of the KGBs Science and Technology Directorate, she participated in numerous experiments in ESP, telepathy and telekinesis - potentialities that the Soviet Union generally took more seriously than the West. In one such experiment, a mother rabbits newborn litter was placed aboard a submarine, which was then submerged. The mother remained onshore, her EEG readings carefully monitored, while beneath the surface of the water, inside the submarine, the young rabbits were killed one by one. As each one was slain, the mothers readings registered a reaction at the exact instant of each death. The experiment verified what Spalko already instinctively knew: that there was a tangible psychic link between living beings. Joseph Stalin himself was so impressed by her that he personally recruited her for his dream project: psychic warfare research. She was awarded the Order of Lenin, the highest decoration in the Soviet Union, three times for outstanding services rendered to the State, and the honorary title of Hero of Socialist Labor for exceptional achievements in the national economy and culture. In 1957, she led a group of special forces in the search for the Crystal Skull of Akator. Competing with Indiana Jones, she went to Peru to retrieve it. Lusting for the knowledge the Crystal Skull contained she was overcome by it and her corporeal body disintegrated; her nonphysical essence was drawn into another dimension. | ||||||
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