For anyone who grew up in the 1980s, the Indiana Jones Trilogy was one of those things that truly defined the decade. I saw the original- when it was called "Raiders of the Lost Ark"- in 1981 with my father at the Paramount Theater in Barre, Vermont. We loved every minute of it (I mean, really, what's not to love?) Years later, my college girlfriend insisted on watching it over and over again whenever she came over for a date. Just can't think of the 1980s without being reminded of Indy, his whip and his Fedora.
The series came to an end in 1989, and we all knew it. Reagan's presidency ended that year, too, and there was a pretty strong sense that not only a decade but an entire era was ending. The Berlin Wall was falling, bringing a close to the Cold War that a lot of us thought might turn very very hot when the decade opened. That summer of 1989 was probably the biggest for summer blockbusters in the history of Hollywood - not only the last of the Indiana Jones films, but Batman, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, a Bond film, two Undersea Monster flicks....that summer was packed. If you were in the United States you were going to the movies every weekend and seeing something everyone else was seeing, too. And maybe the biggest moment in film was watching Indy and his dad ride off into the sunset.
Well, we know what happened almost two decades later- 1980s nostalgia was all the thing and we got unwanted remakes of Total Recall and more Alien films and a Ghostbuster reboot nobody asked for and another Independence Day and yet another Star Wars Trilogy basically every time we turned around we were being assaulted by reminders that we had left our youth in the last century. Worst of all, we got some god-awful mess called Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull or something like that and it was lame and lazy and CGI-infested crap.
Harrison Ford is past eighty years of age, but I guess he's borrowed Tom Cruise's age-defying camera filter and is ready to pretend to be young again like we'd all like to be, and despite the steaming pile of craptitude the fourth film was I'll probably watch this one because Child of the 80s and all that. It doesn't have Shia LeBouf, after all. That's something. But gosh am I tired of being reminded that I'm a product of another era who is supposed to have extra cash in his pocket to hand over to movie studios that ran out of ideas when Ronald Reagan, and Harrison Ford, rode off into the sunset.
There's a reason he does this sort of thing: to keep from being dragged into service as Ham Yoyo. He never met a camera he didn't like but he hates his signature role.
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