Amid all the hype of the new Indiana Jones movie, it gave me reason to go back and (try) to watch the trilogy again. I say "try" because I could only make it through Raiders and Temple of Doom. Raiders was enjoyable, if not alarming as I remembered it so well, and saw on the dvd case that it came out in 1981 (Reagan's first term. Suck on that for a second). Adjusting for what we now consider to be suitable and realistic special effects, Raiders still holds up pretty well. Sure the face melting at the end is dated, but it was pretty questionable even then, and I was nine.
Temple of Doom, however, was tough to get through. I'll suspend disbelief for a movie, especially one so fondly remembered, but gooood gracious they took some liberties. The inflatable raft down the mountainside, the strange reappearance of the trademark Fedora after they have been through something that clearly would preclude Indy from having his gear...I could go on. And I will: the scene in the cart in the tunnel was a little much. Could have saved 5 minutes and lost nothing, and if you look closeley there is some serious claymation there. I think I even saw Yukon Cornelius.
After mounting frustration with Temple, I couldn't pull the trigger on Last Crusade. Especially since it would have ended with my poor Connery impression - and plenty of it, people.
At the end of the day, I was left with a few impressions:
1. Harrison Ford has very long arms.
2. In some scenes his run is funnier than that of Steven Seagal.
3. Speilberg directed Temple, which is where (I think) he first hooked up with Kate Capshaw; this is worth noting because all she does is scream in that movie. That evidently worked for him. Interesting.
4. Does Speilberg owe Lucas more than Lucas owes Speilberg? If my memory serves, and I have done no research to this effect, I think they wrote and/or directed every movie from 1977-1987. Nice run.
All this comes with a large grain of salt, because you should also know that I left the theatre after Rocky V thinking I just saw a great movie. So there's that.
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I was (and am) a huge Raiders fan. As hunnert of thousands of kids in '77 felt the call come to them from Star Wars, I didn't feel the call until Raiders. Yes I loved Star Wars, but I didn't feel the "I want to be a Jedi!" vibe, I did however proclaim to all after Raiders "I want to be an archaeologist!" (with accompanying whipping motion, upon further research it turned out the whip would need to be traded in for a spade. Bye, bye study of ancient civilizations).
I have watched Raiders about 50 times (the opening scene up to " 'neo' (meaning 'new' and 'lithic' i.t.h.i.c. meaning 'stone' " about 200 times.), I've watched Temple of Doom four times and Crusade twelve. Kudos for your attempt.
So yes I'll be there with bucket of popcorn and large $17 coca cola for Skull and I'll adjust my expectations. I've already started the adjustments. Yesterday I saw a still pic online of Spiellzy directing Harrison in Skull. "Indy's" pants were hiked up just below his first rib, yes Indy's got the old man pants-hike thing going on...ah the giant bolder rolling after all of us...age.
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