The Indiana Jones films take great joy in having fun with action-adventure flicks at the same time they establish themselves as the foremost champions of such thrillers.
"You call this archeology?!"
--Sean Connery, "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"
In the American Film Institute's 2003 poll of top movie heroes, Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) placed second behind Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck), the noble lawyer from "To Kill a Mockingbird." Given that Finch is a decidedly nontraditional hero, we can safely assume the AFI think Indy is the best conventional, swashbuckling action hero of all time.
Not that we needed the AFI's word on the matter. That Indy is almost everybody's favorite hero has been accepted wisdom for some time now, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" regularly winning viewer-opinion polls as the best adventure film ever made. With all three of the first Indiana Jones movies finally arriving on DVD, it's time for all-around rejoicing.
The only drawback to the situation some buyers will find is not being able to purchase the movies separately, at least not yet. Like Paramount's previous decision to package all three "Godfather" films in one box, the studio is only releasing "The Adventures of Indiana Jones: The Complete DVD Movie Collection" as a set, with widescreen or fullscreen being one's only buying option. But not to worry. The sets are priced very reasonably, with substantial discounts available from many retail outlets, and the sets include a worthy fourth disc of bonus materials. It's a winning proposition all the way around.
By now, everyone knows the genesis of the series. Buddies George Lucas and Steven Spielberg had just come off the successes of "Star Wars" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" respectively, and they wanted to do something different, something old-fashioned, something that didn't rely on flashy, outer-space technology. Spielberg had been wanting to do a James Bond epic, and Lucas had just the right story idea. They settled on a homage to the movie serials of their youth, the cliff-hangers they remembered from Saturday afternoon chapters of children's adventures that featured heroes like Jack Armstrong, Spy Smasher, Flash Gordon, Commando Cody, Dick Tracy, Zorro, Ace Drummond, Captain America, Buck Rogers, and the Masked Marvel. They made their hero an archaeologist and named him after Lucas's dog. They borrowed Indy's hat from Humphrey Bogart in "Treasure of the Sierra Madre," his leather jacket from Commando Cody, and the bullwhip from the likes of Lash La Rue and Whip Wilson. It's even said Lucas and Spielberg may have patterned their hero in part after the fictional character Allan Quatermain, H. Rider Haggard's adventurer in "King Solomon's Mines" (1885); and in an ironic twist of fate Sean Connery, who plays Indiana's father in "The Last Crusade," stars as Quartermain in "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" (2003). So we're back to square one.
All the while, Lucas and Spielberg had Tom Selleck in mind for the hero, but he was occupied with the "Magnum, P.I." television show at the time. Then, I've read (IMDb) that Nick Nolte turned down the part. Instead, the role of Indiana Jones went fortuitously to Harrison Ford, the haughty rogue of the initial "Star Wars" saga, and the rest is history, as they say. We'll never know how good Selleck or Nolte would have been, but there's no doubt about Ford. His modesty, his charm, and his self-effacing style combined with a virile strength and masculinity that appealed as much to men as to women, and as much to adults as to children. With Lucas co-writing and producing and Spielberg co-writing and directing, the series became the stuff of legend.
A cliff-hanger (or cliffhanger as it is sometimes spelled without the hyphen) for the young and uninformed was a precarious ending to old-time movie serials that left the audience in suspense and wanting to come back for the next installment; things like the hero hanging off a cliff, falling from an airplane, or apparently being blasted to smithereens by a bomb exploding under his seat. Today, the word "cliff-hanger" refers to any suspenseful predicament of which the outcome is uncertain until the very last moment. The "Indiana Jones" movies are a succession of cliff-hangers, and what fun Lucas and Spielberg must have had (and must still be having) concocting them. Poor Indy is subjected to everything from tarantula spiders to deadly snakes, giant rolling balls to medieval snares, near-fatal pitfalls to the fires of hell. And the Nazis. Set in the mid to late 1930's, there are almost always the Nazis. "I hate these guys," says Indy in a moment of supreme understatement.
The "Indy" films are among that rare breed that have their tongue planted firmly in their cheek but never ridicule the action-adventure style; they're entertaining with their high spirits and good humor, while being serious participants in the genre. "The Crimson Pirate" was able to poke good-natured fun at pirate movies while being a great swashbuckler in its own right; the early Bonds paid friendly homage to spy capers while being suspenseful and exciting spy capers themselves. Likewise, the "Indiana Jones" films take great joy in having fun with action-adventure flicks at the same time they establish themselves as the foremost champions of such thrillers. It's not an easy accomplishment.
Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark:
Anyway, it all started in 1981 with "Raiders of the Lost Ark," more recently relabeled "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark" for those younger viewers who might not recognize it as a part of the early trilogy. Don't laugh. When my wife and I were leaving the theater after seeing "Raiders" for the first time, we overheard a teenage girl saying to her companion, "I liked the movie, but why did they call it 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'? I didn't see any football players in it." Honest. True story.
In "Raiders" the time is 1936, and Jones, a professor of archaeology, is hunting for the Ark of the Covenant, the chest containing the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments, the most sacred object of the ancient Israelites and said to have been lost after the sacking of the Temple in Jerusalem, where it was kept in the Holy of Holies. In the movie it is supposed to have tremendous supernatural powers, carrying with it "the wrath of God," thus making it a subject of interest to Adolph Hitler, who in real life was said to be a believer in the occult and actually did try to collect various reputedly metaphysical items.
The U.S. Government wants the Ark before the Nazis can get it, and they send Jones, an expert on such matters, out to look for it. Along the way, Indy meets his old sweetheart, Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), still the best of the "Indiana Jones" female leads for her intelligence and spunk. Then there are the good guys who help Indy: Dr. Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliot) and Sallah (John Rhys-Davies); and the baddies, Rene Belloq (Paul Freeman), a rival archaeologist out for himself alone, and Toht (Ronald Lacey), a Gestapo agent who gets one of the best laughs in the film from a coat hanger. Everyone knows the rest, the giant rolling ball, the spiders, the snakes ("Why did it have to be snakes"), the shoot-outs, the adventures continuing from what appears to be Berkeley, California, to Nepal to Egypt to heaven knows where else. And all along the way, there's one hairbreadth escape after another. When Sallah asks Indy how he's going to rescue the Ark from the baddies, Indy replies, "I don't know. I'm making this up as I go." Yet despite the fast pace, the movie is never frenetic or tiring, just pure, unadulterated fun throughout. Classic stuff. Trust me.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom:
A few years after "Raiders," in 1984, Lucas and Spielberg tried to top themselves with the second Indiana Jones installment, "The Temple of Doom." Attempting to make the new film as different as possible from the first one yet retain the adventurous atmosphere, they set it in China and India, gave Indy a kid for a sidekick, and provided him with a stereotypical ditzy blonde girlfriend rather than the plucky and resourceful Marion of the earlier film. They also took out the Nazis, set it a year earlier in 1935, confined three-quarters of it to a single locale, the cavernous underground depths of a mountain temple, and designed the plot around a group of children in jeopardy. The result was a film that felt more claustrophobic than its predecessor and an adventure that was darker and more somber. In fact, several scenes in the film were considered so grisly, the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings board was inspired to come up with the now-familiar PG-13 classification to supplement their regular PG. Even the original title, "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Death," was toned down.
"Temple of Doom" pays homage to any number of classic films along the course of its plot, beginning with "Casablanca," Ford in the Bogey role, continuing with "Gunga Din," and adding bits and pieces of things along the way like "Chandu the Magician" and "The Pied Piper," among others. Indy's job in this one is to retrieve a sacred stone stolen from an Indian village, a stone the villagers believe brings them good fortune. Without it, their land has gone to waste and their children are disappearing. Turns out, the children are being kidnapped by a nearby Thuggee cult to work in the mines beneath an abandoned Hindu temple, Pankot Palace.
The filmmakers strove mightily to outdo "Raiders," but rather than the adventure springing naturally from the story line, the excitement this time is generated mostly from a series of gross-out gags and several exhilarating stunts. There's a banquet scene, for instance, that features monkey brains, eels, eyeball soup, and various huge bugs to eat; there's a segment with a Thuggee priest reaching into a man's chest and pulling out his heart; and there's a passageway filled with creepy-crawly insects that is an obvious endeavor to one-up the snakes and tarantulas in "Raiders." The three best action sequences are a fight on a narrow rope bridge and two amusement park-type attractions, a bobsled ride down a Himalayan peak and a wild, heart-pounding roller-coaster ride inside the temple's subterranean tunnels. The latter is the highlight of the film.
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