Indiana Jones and the Script of Doom
My parents enjoyed this movie more than I did. It's fun. It knows it's being done only to satisfy nostalgic demand so it doesn't shoot for the moon. It delivers what it promises, just don't expect any real surprises. But I just can't help feeling that there was a much better story waiting to be found.
Almost twenty years have passed. The Fedora a still a trademark of his attire. He still carries his whip, wielded with calm precision and he still teaches. But it is very clear from the grey hair, clamer attitude and more deliberate motions that this an Indiana Jones which has had 20 years of adventures and growing up that has happened outside our view. He's been through war, he's lived and adventured and bonded with people we've never met before. This isn't the same Indiana Jones we knew 20 years ago, this is the man he has grown into after going everywhere, seeing everything. He's past his prime and he knows it, but experience has replaced bravado. He has also developed a character flaw in his maturity, an academic curiosity that tends to blind him to the difference between friend and foe so long as there is a mystery to unravel.
The story begins by making a mountain out of a molehill (literally). A group of happy days era kids and parade of military vehicles informs us to the era and setting in the opening credits. But soon this will lead us into the opening scenario of the film. Unlike previous films, this scenario is not a seperate prelude, but rather throws us into the main event, quickly introducing our hero and our villainess for the feature. There is an audible gasp from the audience as the doors of a famous warehouse open wide and our hero comes full circle to where his first great relic ended its journey. He isn't here to find it, he doesn't even know its here, but truth be told, this was where my first letdown of the film happens. I want and Indy who is still obsessed with the Ark, an Indy who realizes this is where it must be. There is a great sequel to be had here ... but it is not to be. The Ark, once the ultimate treasure, is now just collateral damage.
The nostalgia of the moment is wasted because the story is going somewhere else. Ok, now stop for a moment. Imagine and archeologist plus top secret box labled "Roswell". Did the rest of the plot just write itself in your imagination? If "Chariots of the Gods" comes to mind then congrats, you don't need to play attention to the story any more, you've seen it all before. It's a lazy script, a very lazy script. The writers have a checklist of nostalgic points and images to make and they play connect the dots, tossing in some random historical and scifi geeknobabble. It's a purely mechanical "this formula worked once before" script with nothing of its own to say. I'm not claiming anything I tried to write would come out better, but it just didn't feel worthy of Raiders (I had a very similar reaction to Last Crusade's story).
Poor Marion. In her first scene in Raiders, she was a strong and bitterly independant woman, holding her own in a remote corner of the land against all comers (expect the evildoers which had followed Jones to her). Half-way through this movie, she finally returns as Indy's true love. But the woman we loved is missing ... she's not matured, she's sort of regressed back to being the awestruck girl she was in the backstory before Raiders.
So what are we left with? We do get an interesting portrait of a mature Indiana Jones, with many more years and a lot more milage, who has grown to be more like his father without losing himself. We had some amazing visuals: two poster-worthy scenes come to mind: one standing on a ridge as a mushroom cloud rises (the Indiana Jones vs an atomic bomb scene somehow, against all probability, works for me as an exciting and interesting moment of the film), one standing in a tropical cliff overlooking the floating/flying debris of a ruin (which is part of the finely crafted but utterly uninteresting finale). There is a villainess who adds through acting much more deapth of character than the dialogue even hints at (I think a much more interesting story would have had Jones really be a closet communist sympathizer). There are ants, lots of ants. There are also a lot of hints - in scenes or just in lines - of other directions the film could have taken.
PS. do not stay to the end of the credits - there is a reworked (mangled) version of the Raiders march towards the end which I found painful to listen to.
Almost twenty years have passed. The Fedora a still a trademark of his attire. He still carries his whip, wielded with calm precision and he still teaches. But it is very clear from the grey hair, clamer attitude and more deliberate motions that this an Indiana Jones which has had 20 years of adventures and growing up that has happened outside our view. He's been through war, he's lived and adventured and bonded with people we've never met before. This isn't the same Indiana Jones we knew 20 years ago, this is the man he has grown into after going everywhere, seeing everything. He's past his prime and he knows it, but experience has replaced bravado. He has also developed a character flaw in his maturity, an academic curiosity that tends to blind him to the difference between friend and foe so long as there is a mystery to unravel.
The story begins by making a mountain out of a molehill (literally). A group of happy days era kids and parade of military vehicles informs us to the era and setting in the opening credits. But soon this will lead us into the opening scenario of the film. Unlike previous films, this scenario is not a seperate prelude, but rather throws us into the main event, quickly introducing our hero and our villainess for the feature. There is an audible gasp from the audience as the doors of a famous warehouse open wide and our hero comes full circle to where his first great relic ended its journey. He isn't here to find it, he doesn't even know its here, but truth be told, this was where my first letdown of the film happens. I want and Indy who is still obsessed with the Ark, an Indy who realizes this is where it must be. There is a great sequel to be had here ... but it is not to be. The Ark, once the ultimate treasure, is now just collateral damage.
The nostalgia of the moment is wasted because the story is going somewhere else. Ok, now stop for a moment. Imagine and archeologist plus top secret box labled "Roswell". Did the rest of the plot just write itself in your imagination? If "Chariots of the Gods" comes to mind then congrats, you don't need to play attention to the story any more, you've seen it all before. It's a lazy script, a very lazy script. The writers have a checklist of nostalgic points and images to make and they play connect the dots, tossing in some random historical and scifi geeknobabble. It's a purely mechanical "this formula worked once before" script with nothing of its own to say. I'm not claiming anything I tried to write would come out better, but it just didn't feel worthy of Raiders (I had a very similar reaction to Last Crusade's story).
Poor Marion. In her first scene in Raiders, she was a strong and bitterly independant woman, holding her own in a remote corner of the land against all comers (expect the evildoers which had followed Jones to her). Half-way through this movie, she finally returns as Indy's true love. But the woman we loved is missing ... she's not matured, she's sort of regressed back to being the awestruck girl she was in the backstory before Raiders.
So what are we left with? We do get an interesting portrait of a mature Indiana Jones, with many more years and a lot more milage, who has grown to be more like his father without losing himself. We had some amazing visuals: two poster-worthy scenes come to mind: one standing on a ridge as a mushroom cloud rises (the Indiana Jones vs an atomic bomb scene somehow, against all probability, works for me as an exciting and interesting moment of the film), one standing in a tropical cliff overlooking the floating/flying debris of a ruin (which is part of the finely crafted but utterly uninteresting finale). There is a villainess who adds through acting much more deapth of character than the dialogue even hints at (I think a much more interesting story would have had Jones really be a closet communist sympathizer). There are ants, lots of ants. There are also a lot of hints - in scenes or just in lines - of other directions the film could have taken.
PS. do not stay to the end of the credits - there is a reworked (mangled) version of the Raiders march towards the end which I found painful to listen to.