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What’s your take on the Indiana Jones sequels?
I have seen Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and it’s ….
Well, I can’t tell you just yet. My review will post in this space early Thursday morning. For the time being, I want to get your thoughts on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
I have fond memories of Temple of Doom, partly because of its best scenes, and partly because it was the first movie I saw with girls who weren’t relatives. Still, I think it’s clearly the runt of the Indiana Jones litter, the movie I revisit least often.
The film has a great opening, up through when the raft lands in India, and a great last half, from the mine car chase forward. (Tellingly, the opening club sequence and the mine car chase were originally meant for Raiders.)
However, almost everything in the middle falls flat. Except for the fun spike room sequence, the middle is a turgid mess with a really nasty streak. Steven Spielberg’s direction, normally so sure-handed, feels sloppy and half-hearted. He’s even gone on the record as saying he pretty much dropped the ball on that film. And as for the heroine, Willie Scott … well, as Indiana put it, “The trouble with her is the noise.” Every other line of hers seems to be “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
So it was a great relief when Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade turned out to be a return to form. There are some nagging flaws. The villain and the heroine were disappointingly ordinary, and I hated seeing Marcus Brody reduced to playing a slapstick buffoon.
What gives the third movie its greatest boost is the brilliant casting of Sean Connery. The filmmakers could have gone the easy route of making father and son carbon copies, but they turned Connery’s macho man persona on its head, making him into a befuddled academic who turns out to be not so bad in the field - and still has a way with the ladies, much to Indiana’s chagrin. He’s so much fun in the part that it’s almost too bad Connery had won an Oscar a couple of years before for The Untouchables - he’s just as good, if not better, in Last Crusade.
But the sequel isn’t all Connery and Ford. The opening scene with the young Indy is a blast, with a great performance by the late and still lamented River Phoenix, and the final search for the grail is quite ingenious.
What do you say?
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Comments
By Alice
May 21, 2008 1:49 PM | Link to this
It’s ironic, because usually critics seem to have gone the opposite way; seems like the critics are often harsh on the Last Crusade, which I enjoyed. I have to disagree with your take on the Temple of Doom though. I enjoyed it equally. If I was Indy,yes I would consider Willie Scott an annoying burden and I didn’t think she made a good love interest, but her character added some laughs too. All three movies were good in their own distinctive way. Crusade was the only one that really moved me emotionally, and I did love the opening scene, as well as the addition of Connery. My only disappointment with any of the three was the heroine for Crusade. I even think the term “heroine” could be debated. I was happy to hear that Marion is back in the new one… and not some young starlet. According to the cable TV ratings for last week, the Indy movies on USA actually competed with cable sports. Apparently women don’t watch as much television.