My Big Bad Indiana Jones page

Recently Zen and Naoko and I have been watching hit movies from the 1980s, since Zen is anyway a big fan of the Star Wars movies, and now it’s time to meet Dr Jones!

I showed Zen the DVD box and told him that the actor is someone he’s seen before in another movie, it took him about 30 seconds to figure out that Indiana Jones is played by the same guy who plays Han Solo. All right, Zen!

ROTLA

ROTLA


Riders of the Lost Ark – The movie is awesome, full of great lines, great scenes (Han shoots first!), great temple-destroying effects and flesh-melting graphics, and an earth-defeating theme that doesn’t need to destroy the earth (hello Michael Bey) to get the job done. Plus lots of snakes! Great dialogue: “Asps… very dangerous… you go first.” “We are merely passing through history. This… this is history.” Everyone’s seen the movie anyway, so there’s no need to review it scene by scene. If you’re one of the few people around who’ve never seen it, make sure that you do.

The extras are good fun too. There are quite a few interviews from 1981, with Spielberg saying he told George Lucas he wanted to do a James Bond movie with a John Wayne score. Tom Selleck was cast, but couldn’t do it in the end. Spielberg explained how Et, Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind all went over budget, his goal was to get Raiders in under budget and under schedule (he’s not saying so, but he was probably under massive pressure coming from somewhere else – maybe his own pocketbook – to do so), it came in 15 days under schedule. Nice. Since this came out in the prelude to Indiana Jones 4, the crappy crystal skull movie that was ruined by a bad screenplay and the presence of Shia Laboeuf (not that it didn’t make money for the studio, but still…), Shia makes an appearance to give comments, as does Cate Blanchett. Very nice re-creation of the melting head scene where they explain how it was done. Fascinating. Great photo gallery, some images of which I snapped with my own camera from the screen, see below. Shots of George Lucas hanging out with Stephen Spielberg on sets all over the world, in his white tube socks, looks really weird.


Indiana Jones and the Temle of Doom – A gory, silly and freaky weird movie (inflatable rafts go flying out of airplanes, etc). Nice opening sequence of poison, antidotes, torch singers (one – Kate Capshaw, who ends up marrying the director), annoying little kids, nutty Old Shanghai setting, corrupt Chinese businessmen, and all sorts of other nonsense. Oddly, the villains decide to doom Indiana Jones by ordering the crew of the airplane that is flying them to abandon ship midi-air (jump out over the Himalayas with parachutes) and allow the ship to smash pilotless into a mountain. What kind of a plan is that? Naturally, Dr Jones and his sidekicks survive by riding an inflatable raft from a mountaintop to the foothills of the Himilayas in no time, they then also get up and walk away from the incident. And it just gets more ridiculous from there. Great. Two good parts in the film – near the beginning when he thinks that he’s escaped gangster businessman Lao Che in an airplane, when the door of the we see that the plane is owned by Lao Che Air Services (i.e. he hasn’t escaped Lao Che’s clutches, he only thinks he has) and Lao Che and companion’s evil laughter; the other good part is Indy and Willie’s smutty discourse where they momentarily forget that they’re in the lion’s den and want to have a good time with each other (Short Round can’t watch, though, or he has to pay a hundred). Some nice dialogue: “Hey, Dr Jones, no time for love – we’ve got company.”

Special features show Stephen Spielberg being interviewed that he wanted the second Indiana Jones movie to be the darkest of the trilogy, perhaps mirroring what was happening with the Star Wars trilogy (makes no sense, since the Indiana Jones stories don’t bother with continuity!), but he was probably just after an excuse to justify lower sales since he knew there was no way the second film could be as good as the first. His screw-around movie, so it was not as commercial as parts one and three. The idea of the mine chase, with its gravity-defying stunts, had been slotted for Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it didn’t come off. The camera catches George saying “I’m more of a humor guy than a dark guy.” Yes, George Lucas – the guy with the best sense of humor in all Hollywood. Harrison Ford talking about how there were 8,000-10,000 snakes on the set, thousands of which escaped each day. Among the “snakes” were lizards called glass snakes (they’re lizards because they blink). We learn that the Tunisia scene from Raiders Of The Lost Ark was the same spot that R2-D2 was captured by the Jawas in Star Wars. Elsa Schneider resented Sean Connery in Raiders III, “he had my role” (why are people from the third movie popping up in the bonus materials of the second movie?). Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote the screenplay, notes that it’s very rare to have a beautiful woman who can do comedy. Huh?

IJATLC

IJATLC


Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade – The highlight of this film is surely the opening sequence of the young Indiana Jones, played by River Phoenix, stopping artifact looters (ironic, since this is what Indy himself is at the beginning of the first movie), nice chase sequence, great animals (snakes! a lion!!). Cool iconography, with the villain of that sequence looking like Indiana Jones later will… although we’re not sure why someone who defeated the young Indy would eventually become his style inspiration.

The film has a lot of satisfying elements from the first movie – Nazis, cartoonish deaths at the end – and a great, great role for Sean Connery as Indy’s dad, the two great actors have awesome chemistry. The bickering, the emotions, the “dad” scenes – all come off very well. There’s also less opportunity for sluttishness from evil/beautiful Nazi women (we had plenty of sluttishness in Temple of Doom). Decent dialogue, like “how dare you kiss me,” horniness and outrageousness on both sides, very funny. “Nazis – I hate those guys.” Great scene of Indy in Berlin, tons of Nazi regalia, hilarious face-to-face with Adolf Hitler. “No ticket!!” “He chose… poorly.” Airplane in tunnel scene completely outrageous, but also funny. Using seagulls to defeat the enemy… ingenious. How do they come up with these things?

Disco-looking Raiders of the Lost Ark poster

Disco-looking Raiders of the Lost Ark poster

Disco-looking Raiders of the Lost Ark poster (part II)

Disco-looking Raiders of the Lost Ark poster (part II)

Belloq bust

Belloq bust

Tied to a post and lovin' it!!

Tied to a post and lovin' it!!

Joke heiroglyphics in the Well of Souls

Joke heiroglyphics in the Well of Souls

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