I have already seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, my #4 film of all time on Flickchart, about seven or eight times, and I think my recent rewatch of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was my third overall.
So in order to prep for this week's release of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, I didn't need to see those movies again if my goal were to have at least two notches on my belt for each Indiana Jones movie. The Last Crusade and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, though, both lay in my way. So I took care of them both this past weekend.
It would be a surprise for most of you to learn that a child of the 80s like me, who worships at the altar of Spielberg only slightly less slavishly than other Gen X kids, would have seen the second-best Indiana Jones movie only once. Some crazy people even argue that The Last Crusade is better than Raiders, though as I said, they are crazy.
I can probably blame the timing for only the single viewing. Since The Last Crusade came out in 1989, the time it would have been playing on cable on repeat was right around when I graduated from high school in 1991. And in my college years, my movie viewing understandably dropped considerably, especially with movies on cable that you'd already seen. I can't remember if I had cable at all while in college -- always too poor.
At the time I saw it, I did indeed have little doubt that the third Indiana Jones was better than the second, which I would have had time to watch on cable -- if not at my own house, since I think my parents had ditched cable by then, then at a friend's house, which is where I likely did see it that second time. The Last Crusade was a solid course correction that I enjoyed quite a bit.
But obviously, not enough to watch it again in the 34 years since it was released.
It's actually long been on my list of movies to catch a second time. I can remember trying to prioritize it as long as five years ago. I initially had other ideas about what to watch on Saturday night, but when my wife assured me that my first idea wasn't really Saturday night viewing, I did finally move Indy to the top.
And I found it solid again, though I must say, not even in the vicinity of Raiders in quality.
I remember the set pieces being a strength of this film, but I didn't really have that impression on this viewing. The ones I remembered -- particularly the opening with River Phoenix -- weren't as good as I'd recalled. And though it was certainly good to have the Nazis back as villains, they didn't have very satisfying comeuppances -- at least not compared to the face melting at the end of Raiders.
One real deficit, I thought, was the female lead, who crosses over from Indy love interest to villain. Everyone knows Karen Allen is awesome in Raiders, and say what you will about future Spielberg wife Kate Capshaw in Temple of Doom, but at least you remember her. Alison Doody is pretty much of a nothing in the role of Elsa, which may be why we haven't gotten much from her in the decades since. (Though in looking at her IMDB, I did note with a bit of a chuckle that she was in RRR.)
Harrison Ford's interactions with Sean Connery remain the best part of the film, and it's not even close. Connery in particular is the real win here, as he out-charismas even the charismatic Ford.
I could probably continue analyzing the parts of The Last Crusade that work well and not so well, but to be honest, the viewing didn't really trigger that part of my brain. It was an enjoyable experience that pretty much went in one ear and out the other.
I do have more to say about Crystal Skull.
I didn't hate Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull when it first came out. I did rank it 77th out of 87 movies in 2008, and the movies below it are pretty bad. But I think it sunk in my impression the farther I got away from it, and by the end of the year there were only ten I considered worse. At the time, though, I remembered being mildly entertained by it.
But there's a reason that the phrase "nuke the fridge" has persisted in our culture alongside the phrase "jump the shark," because indeed, Indiana Jones surviving a nuclear blast by hiding in a refrigerator is the sort of shark-jumping moment that requires its own special term. As I watched that ridiculous scene, I thought about how the mere propulsion of the refrigerator several miles from its source would have been enough to kill Indiana Jones, let alone the proximity to the radiation. This scene does not require any analysis to confirm its absurdity.
Bothering me more than this, though, were the digital gophers. (Or prairie dogs, or whatever they were.) Nowadays I can't remember all the topics of outrage this movie inspired in people, but the digital gophers had to be one of them. George Lucas and his bad judgments are all over this film, as characters interacting with digital gophers is something right out of one of the prequels. (Oddly, though, I was reminded most of the porgs in The Last Jedi, which is not actually a product of Lucas' mind.)
Then Shia LaBeouf's greaser. I don't like greasers, as movie characters or in general. The fact that he's always taking out his comb and running it through his hair is not ingratiating, and it's probably worse now that we know LaBeouf didn't become the beloved star everyone thought he might become 15 years ago, but rather a massive creep.
There's fan service in this film, though probably not the sort of fan service I expect we'll see in the movie that comes out this week. And one of my favorite sequences is the escape from the warehouse full of government crates, one of which does contain the ark of the covenant. But then another scene that struck me as fan service, this time servicing Temple of Doom, was the terrible scene where they go over three consecutive waterfalls in their boat car. The sequence utterly fails to play up the real possibility -- nay, likelihood -- that if you go over three consecutive massive waterfalls, the last of which ejects all the passengers from the vehicle, you will lose at least one of your group. In fact, never for a moment is there a doubt that all five will emerge fine, and Indy doesn't even lose his hat.
Of course finally you have the aliens. To show you just how I didn't remember all the details of this film, I thought I remembered the reveal that it was aliens being held to the very end of the film, making it all the more head-smacking. Instead, it's a crate from Roswell they're looking for in the very first scene, so the emergence of a UFO from a South American temple only feels like the cherry on top of a bad idea, not the sudden explosion of third act idiocy I had remembered.
I did notice that the movie was very faithful to the amount of time that had passed in the real world since the last movie. While Temple of Doom takes place in 1938, this film takes place in 1957, and 19 years also passed between the 1989 release of the first film and the 2008 release of this one. If they continue with that, Dial of Destiny should take place in 1972. Whether that will work or not, we'll see.
These two movies did make me nostalgic for a time when a movie that crossed two hours in length was considered indulgent. Both of these movies are in the 120s in minutes, which seems very reasonable nowadays. Without even looking, I knew Dial of Destiny must be at least 2:30 -- and true enough, it's 154 minutes long.
Will all that extra time mean that much extra good?
Doubtful, but I guess I will find out later this week.
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