Indiana Jones

Reviews vs. Watching the darn thing

Today, I didn’t realize that I received some subscribers for my “hobby” blog while the one I want to make a few bucks on, “Thinking About Markets,” has stayed flat recently. Regardless, writing is an adventure every time I light up my laptop and the feedback I receive is the greatest entertainment I like to receive (up to a point!). So for the brave few who have dared to subscribe to an unknown writer, I shall begin.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

Both the movie and the reviews are out for the 5th installment of many people’s favorite adventurer.

From my normal view of RottenTomatoes.com, the audience rates things higher if it’s more entertaining while the critics are supposed to require something new, or thought-provoking form of entertainment.

A pet peeve of mine is that movies when criticized should be seen two times. Not once. A critic who has seen and read everything is in no way shape or form can separate his biases from content he is reviewing. It needs to be seen a second time to see it from a better perspective.

My conclusion is that from beginning to end, I enjoyed watching it. I share share some of my thoughts as to the merits of watching it and some of the nuances over looked in good entertainment.

Caution! Don’t read this unless you saw the movie or enjoy reading spoilers.

First, I will admit that I didn’t want to see it and most people probably have the same inclination. The dude is 80 and has had unbridled success so unless I want to relive my youth, why bother. So I was looking for an excuse to watch it or I would have waited for streaming. First, I tried to get my 5 year old to watch, but he was too engrossed in Sonic game streaming on YouTube to come with me. I then asked my friend who is visiting to come and he agreed. So off we went humming duh duh duh duh duh duh (not sure how to convey that into words).

The movies beginning starts on a train adventure where Indy along with his sidekick Basil who snatch a time travelling device, albeit only half of it. The critics I read said that we have seen these kind of predicaments a thousand times. But that doesn’t mean we have seen them done well. And also the train setup had well layered plot points that all tie together.

1. Indy caught

2. Indy about to be hanged

3. Deux Ex Machine saves him against the Nazi soldiers

4. But not against the hanging rope and the falling bell on the church tower

5. Indy set for escape, but the Nazi’s mistake him as a driver

   1. In the meantime, Basil his sidekick is caught on the train and interrogated

6. Indy in a car chase/ escape

7. Indy goes back to the train to acquire Christ’s knife

   1. Mads Mikkelsen character is introduced and both him and Indy realize the knife is a fake

   2. But Mads says that there is a time travel mechanism (Antikythera) with unlimited power

8. Indy has to escape a trainful of Nazi’s

9. Indy knocks Mads out, grabs the Antikythera and saves Basil. Now they need to escape the from the Train and the Nazis

10. Now Indy and Basil are on the train top escaping from Nazis. With the help of Allied bombing, the Nazi numbers are reduced

11. Mads is on the top of the train with a gun and get Indy to hand over the bag containing the Antikythera, but victory is fleeting as BAM he is hit HARD by a train marker.

12. The Allies bomb the bridge and Indy and Basil have to jump off into the river to escape. And SURPRISE Indy fooled Mads as he did a switcheroo and had it all the time

End of the exciting opening. So yes the action has many resemblances to what we have seen countless times, but this is a $294 million dollar extravaganze so when an action event seems to go as a paint by numbers, the action is LOUD and IMPACTFUL and FAST. Another subtle thing is that in a good action movie you learn thing you don’t realize that is occuring: experiencing an Allied bombing raid and the destruction it causes. No one will doubt the set pieces and veracity of the sequence.

Don’t worry I’m not breaking down the entire movie. I’m just trying to highlight items that stick out in my mind. After this action filled beginning, we see the present, or at least Indy’s present which is in the late 60s when the astronauts who landed on the moon came back. It’s a noisy day in a beautiful day in crowded and bustling New York City and Indy is sleeping in, in a modest, unkept apartment. He doesn’t look like the adventurer we know but someone old, and disappointed with his life. So much so that the coffee to wake him up has a little hooch in there for good measure.

So we have three layers, like a good sandwich: contrast of adventure to defeatism, the city is moving and he is not, glamourous posing Indy to a bare old man chest in pajamas. And so his real adventure begin which is…

Learning who he really is and what he accomplished.

An archeologist learns and thinks about the past through artifacts all the while forgetting about the contribution you are making to the people around you. Now that’s nice and poignant, but this is an adventure story rooted in facts and history. As a result, this adventure story provides a history lesson - thinking about things or scenarios you didn’t think about. In this case, Archeamides, Syracuse, ancient weapons, and the Romans.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Syracuse-214-212-BCE

When you see a recreation of an ancient battle in a realistic setting and not on a History Channel documentary with Nazis dying from spears and attached by Romans with swords in such visceral action sequences that most certainly is thrilling and also allows you to realize how deadly war can be in any generation.

Another interesting thing about sequels and a thrill by the minute adventure is that we suspend our disbelief about the hero and while rooting for him hope that he won’t die. But after 4 movies, we don’t have any expectation for Indy’s demise. But what about the relationship and the side characters? That’s how you compensate is by placing the emotions on side characters. And if they don’t have emotional resonance, put in a famous movie start - like Antonio Banderas (who has 9 lives in another of his films). So while the critics are yapping about the lack of suspense or formulaic way of the scenes, think about why the filmmakers are making the decisions they are. You have to work with the material provided.

Is Indiana Jones a comic book hero? Is it a cartoon now with the de-aging of Mr. Harrison Ford? or is it a film? It’s important to decide this as the merits of each are decidedly different. A comic book hero on the most part is 1 dimensional and there is. no growth. Because if there is growth then the next time you see him will be a different character. A cartoon is able to bend reality and showcase a spectrum of ideas that are distant from reality from pure joy to utter abstraction.

I feel that he’s a comic book hero stuck in a film where the other characters are trying to break him out of his heroic tropes. And in this film they succeed. The scene where he wants to die in the past and Helena knocks some sense into him. The film ends in reality. Not as a comic book fable.

One other subtle note about Indiana Jones is that he is not a war hero. He is not trying to survive a conflict. He is not attempting to save a love one or seek revenge. His adventure starts with trying to capture rare artifacts and gets sucked into a bigger operation of greed and power. While his adventures are fund these movies have a coda: Adventure for the sake of history is noble. But war is no adventure as well as profiting from history as well. As proof, Shie LaBeouf character, Indy’s son, dies in Vietnam war (no adventure) and he is living his sunset days in a low rent apartment in NY instead of some magnificent mansion from the riches of the artifacts he discovered. His loyalty to the artifacts even trumped his loyalty to his friend Basil as he never destroyed the artifact. Probably out of cycnicism but we see his loyalty to artifacts trumped his to humans.

What more could a critic want in a movie? An old Indy who stays old. Drinking and called to test loyalty? Lets forget the action and lets dig into his character. Boring.

Even Avengers attempted at that in End Game, I feel was not successful and was the beginning of the end to anything even remotely entertaining in comic book films.

A very good rule of thumb in any good action movie is locations or scenarios we want to visit but probably won’t or try to avoid. So a movie critic must consider this but probably won’t. Being in 1960s New York, trying to outrun Nazis and subway cars, tuk-tuk car chase in Morocco, ancient Greek tombs, trying to survive a Roman siege, and entering a time warp sounds pretty cool to me. All believable in small doses.

The big reason some movies are just better than others is as Sallah yells at Indy

“Give them Hell Indy!” or as we enjoy on 4th of July - Fireworks.

I feel the movie was great and made very well. Entertainment wise is for the individual to decide. But for my time in life, I like endings with some charm and where you reflect on not just the adventure but also about a life once lived.

After a lifetime of adventure, who will really remember what you did and accomplished? For Indy, he’s a retired professor on a pension in a noisy apartment with a bad a/c. He thought no one will know and he made no difference to the world. The movie corrects this assumption and reminds us the viewer optimistically that at end of day he did make friends and you do make an impact - with or without saving the day in a heroic fashion.