Indy returns

The good doctor very kindly gave me permission to attend the first showing of Indiana Jones today (what's with me and first showings?), and it was fun. I went with the Baers and Mom and Mrs. Finnegan, and Rachel and I shrieked and held onto each other at all the scary bits while Ethan looked at us tolerantly. Caspian was a much better movie, but Indy was fun.

[Caution: spoilers ahead.]

This Indiana Jones wasn't so much archaeological and political adventures, exactly, as a sort of action version of Napoleon Dynamite, with a Soviet Galadriel in an Egyptian bob chasing Our Hero and his messy personal life through a nuclear blast, some car and motorcycle chases, the Red Scare, and the Cold War, and ending up with aliens building the Mayan pyramids. It was fun, but not precisely a Plot on the caliber of, say, hunting the Holy Grail.

Cate Blanchett, Villainess Extraordinaire, amused me. It's my problem, I know, because I don't exactly think of her as Cate Blanchett so much as "Cate Blanchett Who Wasn't A Very Good Galadriel." So when she turns up as a commanding officer in the KGB--with the aforementioned dark Egyptian-style haircut and a hideous gray flightsuit and a sword and a pistol--it's just hard to take her seriously. But she enjoyed herself, and we had some great swordfights on two moving vehicles. Also she came to a bad end, as well she ought, so justice (or something) was served.

The absolute best part of the movie had to be the return of Marion Ravenwood, whom Indiana (as you may remember) loved in Raiders of the Lost Ark. They got Karen Allen to play her again.* The actress had aged right along with Harrison Ford, and it was so--nice. It added a touch of "aww!" to their love affair or whatever it was, that it was them, and not some chit of a girl. Marion didn't look like her old self at all until she smiled, but then there was no mistaking. She also kept her sense of adventure. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I didn't really care for the giant red ants; the scorpions; the creepy natives who hang out in cemeteries for no apparent reason and try to kill Our Hero; the extravagant collection of partially-decayed corpses; the miles of ill-lit tunnels out of which something was sure to jump; the aliens (aliens?? I ask you!); the psychic nonsense that was foggier than midichlorians; or the unimaginative Hollywood-politics attempt to make Americans look dumb by having the CIA suspect Indy as a communist. That plot thread was never resolved, by the way.

I kind of liked the wedding, the Mayan glyphs, the chases, the character interaction, the romance, Indy's take on school, the duck's wild ride to the river, the swordfights, the architecture, the snake moment, and the way that every question can be solved by a sufficiently educated and brave individual and his friends. It was highly entertaining.

But about the plot. There's a lot to be said for pacing yourself and including transitions. I'm all about keeping the action going, but when there's so much action you aren't sure what continent you're on--well, it might have been better to have calmed down a bit. And I think cliffhangers lose their potency when they're bunged together anyhow like socks in a suitcase. Also the plot was more an excuse to multiply really nasty skeletons, large amounts of water, nifty stone machines, and gunfire, than a story to be told. But action was the point, really.

Best quote: "Das vedanya, doktor Jones!" --Villainness, about to knock Indy off a cliff.
Worst quote: "I have a bad feeling about this." --Indy, having a Han Solo moment.

The Indiana Jones series demonstrates the breakdown of your standard humanist worldview rather well, I think. Lucas really, really wants to take us beyond the ordinary. In the first three movies, he did it by going after religious artifacts. This is all well and good if religion is true. BUT. For the Grail to mean anything, there has to be Jesus: after all, it's the cup He used at the Last Supper and the cup that collected His blood at the cross. No Jesus; no Grail. So Lucas, since he doesn't really want to deal with the true God, made an excursion to Asian deities in Temple of Doom. But even then, for the gods to work as a plot device, there have got to be gods: or at least the possibility of them.

Humanism doesn't like gods. Humanism likes this world, and for every force to be understandable and conquerable by man (especially Our Hero). So Lucas is scrabbling around, and having exiled the gods from this world, he looks to space aliens and mystic psychic forces.

Rather sad, really. But then, so is the SETI project. "And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind..."

So there you have it. It was fun with some unpleasant bits, and overall Caspian was a much better movie. But you might enjoy Indy. I did.


*I just discovered on IMDB that Karen Allen shares my birthday: October 5. Cool!!