So, last week, I dug out the old original Indiana Jones trilogy on DVD and watched them. These movies are classics. I like Temple of Doom and Last Crusade the least of the 3, but they are all quite good. Something interesting I noticed while watching them (well, "Raiders..." specifically) was how they used light and shadow to compose images in the movie. Indy would sometimes be obscured by shadow and step into the light. Sometimes all they had to light the set was the natural light of the desert sun. Sometimes, all there was to see was a silhouette.
The viewing inspired us to discuss who would make for a good Indiana Jones today. If you look at the behind-the-scenes footage on the original trilogy, Spielberg & co. talk about how they envisioned these movies as a pulp fiction kind of story, each one acting as part of a series. If memory serves, Indiana Jones was intended to be America's answer to James Bond. But instead of a womanizing secret agent, we have a womanizing archaeologist in search of lost treasures from the ancient world.
I thought, instead of using Harrison Ford, since he's getting on in years, it would be good to simply just use a younger actor. James Bond has been portrayed by many different actors by now. Connery, Moore, Brosnan, Craig, and more have played the notorious secret agent. Why can't they do the same thing with Indiana Jones? Especially since they were intended to be a set of serials, it really wouldn't matter who portrayed him, as long as they were good at it. And you wouldn't even need to worry about chronology. You could simply just tell the various stories of his womanizing and treasure hunting. We both thought the guy that played Two-Face in the recent Dark Knight movie would make a good choice for a new set of Indiana Jones stories. I also suggested some others, but they seemed lesser choices. Indiana Jones needs to be a serious character, but also have a bit of a dark sense of humor... Well, along with being athletic and all that.
Ultimately, I remembered that they made that new Indy movie. I actually forgot about it until we started talking about a new Indiana Jones movie. So... We borrowed it from the library and watched it....
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
After about 10 or 15 minutes into the movie, I actually said out loud "This movie is stupid." and it was probably just some reflex response to what I was seeing unfold on the screen. When you see Indiana on screen for the first time, you really see how old Harrison Ford is, and how he really shouldn't be doing what he's doing anymore. I mean, sure, serious dramatic roles are fine. But this action stuff? I got nervous during certain fight scenes because it looked like some Russian guy is beating up an old man. And that just isn't pleasant to look at.
After a while, Shia "The Beef" shows up looking like Brando in "The Wild One". So basically he's ruining 2 movies all at once. He's riding a motorcycle on a train platform. Ok, first of all, why did the railroad people let him do that? Second, why is he even riding a motorcycle?
So I keep on watching and it really doesn't get much better. Somehow Indy survives A NUCLEAR EXPLOSION even though he's standing well within the blast radius. There's some crazy old guy that they have to rescue. Then I fell asleep after a while. When I woke up again, they were in the jungle riding tanks or something. There was a swordfight on top of 2 jeeps. They somehow encounter some ancient Aztecs even though they've long been wiped out or whatever. And eventually they befriend an alien after discovering some ancient treasure.
Oh, and a UFO destroys the Aztec temple and flies away.
If there's any one message that children should learn from this movie is to please stay off the crack rock because there's no way in hell that George Lucas was stone cold sober when he thought of that shit.
After witnessing the debacle (and no, I did not go back and watch the parts I slept through), I decided to watch the behind-the-scenes stuff to learn why they decided to unleash this steaming shit pile on the world. Seeing George Lucas (sans-neck) and Spielberg talk about it (never together in the same room at the same time, mind you) made it all perfectly clear.
George Lucas is completely insane. The man has lost his grip on reality.
What could you expect from the guy who invented Jar Jar Binks? Spielberg never had the major movie blockbusters that Lucas had, or say, Cameron had. This is not to say that Spielberg was not successful. No. Spielberg made some very spectacular movies for his time. But not one of them was a Star Wars or Avatar or Titanic. And somehow, I think that helped him retain a bit of sense. The things he said really resonated. They seemed to be sensible from the standpoint of, "Hey, this guys knows how to direct movies." But then you start to see that with Lucas as EP, he was telling Spielberg to do certain things, like show some curious prarie dogs and have monkeys fight Russians. Stupid shit like that, just like how he threw in a bunch of stupid nonsense into Star Wars. He also ruined THX-1138 this way as well.
So we have this dumb Indiana Jones movie that was made, basically, because George Lucas is fucking batshit insane, and Spielberg was paid a lot of money to do it. Bravo, you two! And bravo, Hollywood for shoveling this shit out to us... I think an 8-year-old could have made a comparable Indiana Jones movie. But instead of paying an 8-year-old to come up with the "Indiana Jones meets an Alien" story, you paid George Lucas. Did nobody else see how horrible those Star Wars prequels were? The guy shouldn't be let near a camera ever again.
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