Indy...? Jonesy...!

Ah, we meet again, Dr. Jones...

Like most people of my era, Dr. Jones is an institution, much like Star Wars. We grew up with it, we were dazzled by it, we wanted to be Harrison Ford, just in the same way we wanted to be Han Solo and later on Dr. Richard Kimble.

What? No one wanted to be Ford in the Fugitive? I'd rather be Kimble than Jack Ryan.

Either way, I grew up on Indy. The score alone brings up a whole swell of emotions and memories of a much more innocent time, a time when I wore one of my dad's hats that vaguely resembled a fedora and made my own bullwhip out of a shit load of rubber bands linked together and practice whipping the clothes stand in an attempt to wrap it around, Indy-style. Indiana Jones was the type of hero that made you think that being a hero was possible, because the dude often got three shades of shit kicked out of him. He wasn't as acrobatic and agile and strong as other so-called heroes. He felt a bit more... real. Real, yet fantastic at the same time. I'm sure a lot of people out there felt the same way and, as much as they may not want to admit, definitely got a kick out of the thought of another Indy movie, regardless of any doubts about age.

The night before I was going to see it, Col. Kurtz buzzed me...

"Hey, I saw Indy 4 tonight."

"Yeah, how was it?"

"Answer me this: how would you put the Indiana Jones movies in order, from favorite to least favorite?"

"Well, I love all of them, but I'd put Last Crusade at the top and Doom at the bottom. I loved Doom as a kid but nowadays I totally get a kick out of Sean Connery being his dad."

"Ok. Well, this Indiana Jones movie makes Temple of Doom look like the Godfather."

He then proceeded to tell me just how shit he thought the movie was, with choice quotes such as,

"This movie made Shia LeBeouf's acting in Transformers look like Marlon Brando."

"National Treasure 2 was better than this shit."

"Ray Winstone sounds like an American trying to put on a British accent."

"John Hurt is Dumbledore on crack."

Regardless, I went and watched it last night, and yes, I totally understand where old Kurtz was coming from, but at the same time...

...that shit was fun.

Don't get me wrong: it definitely won't replace any of the slots of anyones 'top 3 Indy movies' list, but it's still fun. Silly, mindless fun, and I enjoyed it. There's fisticuffs and snakes and weird artifacts and a bullwhip and Marion Ravenwood and military bad guys and jet setting adventures. And fuck it, Shia was fun too. And the rest of the cast. It was a fun adventure movie, full stop.

Though there are two comments of Kurtz's  that did ring true...

The lighting - what... the... fuck...? There's some strange ass cinematography going on in this movie. There are some scenes where I was actually thinking "my God, I've never seen a movie so wrongly lit in my life."

The CGI - what... the... holy... fuck...? Spielberg's CGI is usually better than anything ILM comes up with for other directors, but this one just looked... supremely fake. Badly matted and composited with that blurry finish which cheaper production companies usually use to hide the errors.

And that's where the biggest gripe about the movie comes in, the main difference between this one and the previous movies - the overdose and over-reliance of CGI. One of the most consistent memories of the Indiana Jones movies was that feeling that Indy's in real trouble because those were real people riding horses and jumping on tanks and holding on to a truck with a piece of rope. I know that Doom and Crusade had some CGI but ever so slightly to enhance the whole thing. In this one, the major race set piece through the jungle was totally CGI, which kinda made it feel lesser compared to the other ones.

And it's not like stuntmen haven't been able to pull off the insane ideas the filmmakers had for Indy - in Last Crusade Indy takes on a tank on a horse. A fucking horse!

Perhaps what's going to alienate people the most is the setting - Indiana Jones was so much the product of a 40's environment that some people may not be able to follow him into the fifties, where it's no longer religious artifacts but sci-fi tinged spookiness and ruskies.

All I can say is go in without expecting any of the past movies, and you should have a decent time. Sure, Indy looks old as fuck now, but he's still Indy, and he can still throw a hook harder than any of you other cats.

Peace, daddy-o.