It was sort of a letdown this week -- seeing my cinema hero Indiana Jones back in action after an 18-year (or is it 19?) hiatus. I couldn't believe it had been that long, until my wife told me to look it up. It seemed like about five years ago that Indy and his dad went in search of the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Man, does time fly.
I was first talked into going to see Raiders of the Lost Ark back in 1981 by my friend Clarke. He was the guy who called me nothing other than Herp for our entire association; in fact, it was so habitual that his mother thought my name WAS Herp, and SHE always called me that, too. Oh well, I digress. A bit. Back in those days, about 27 years ago, I guess, I was a bit more energetic, and I loved guys who could do all the things onscreen that I could only dream of doing. I had seen some commercials for the movie, but it looked a bit far-fetched for my taste. Clarke, however, knew me better than I apparently knew myself, and insisted that I go downtown to see it. Skeptical though I was, from the moment I saw Indy running away from that big rolling stone ball in that Peruvian temple I was hooked.
And his girlfriend, Marion -- man, she had spunk. The bar fight scene with Indy, Marion, and the Nazis and their native toadies -- best I've ever seen.
It also had yet another thing going for it: I have always been fascinated with explorers and Egyptology, ever since I had read Howard Carter's three-volume set on the Tomb of Tutankhamen. Carter, a British Egyptologist backed by a wealthy benefactor (the Earl of Carnarvon -- his castle, Highclere, near London, is still in the family) with a passion for ancient Egyptian relics, lived in the days when there were bandits and grave robbers hanging out near the Valley of the Kings where most of the Pharaohs had their tombs. Carter, a superb and systematic researcher, once tracked down a group of bandits hacking their way into sarcophagi down in a hole on a slope overlooking the Valley, and pulled their rope up, not giving it back to them until they agreed to stop digging. He allowed them to emerge from the hole emptyhanded, with his gun trained on them to keep them from changing their minds before they left. Anyhow, Tut's tomb, which HAD to be somewhere, had eluded every digger for about a century, but Carter, after systematically searching in the Valley, found the first steps down to the sealed, heretofore undiscovered tomb in 1922. When he broke a hole in the wall and shoved a candle through it to test the air, all he could see was the glitter of gold. Carnarvon, waiting impatiently behind Carter, asked him if he could see anything; it was all Carter could do to gasp out: "Yes -- wonderful things!" But Carter wasn't alone in feeding my fantasies: there was also a fellow named Roy Chapman Andrews.
Roy Chapman Andrews was a paleontologist for the American Museum of Natural History in the early years of the 20th century, and is widely regarded as the MODEL for Indiana Jones. Andrews organized huge expeditions in search of dinosaur eggs (he was the first person to find them) and fossils through China's Gobi Desert, with trucks, camels and horses, and was routinely attacked by bandits. They also had a campsite they referred to as Viper Camp, which found their tents overrun by snakes. Andrews ALWAYS wore a ranger hat, and packed a revolver and long guns (no whip, as far as I can remember) but I do remember him writing about one occasion when he was outrunning bandits on horses by putting the pedal to the metal in his big truck, and as he looked in the sideview mirror, one of them took a shot at him and vaporized the mirror as he was using it to look back at them. I believe he shot at least one bandit in his career, due to Mongolian bandits constantly trying to rob and murder people out there. He didn't appreciate it. Andrews was no lightweight, and in those days scientific exploration was a LOT more colorful than it is today. Here's a quote from one of his books:
"In the [first] fifteen years [of field work] I can remember just ten times when I had really narrow escapes from death. Two were from drowning in typhoons, one was when our boat was charged by a wounded whale; once my wife and I were nearly eaten by wild dogs, once we were in great danger from fanatical lama priests; two were close calls when I fell over cliffs, once I was nearly caught by a huge python, and twice I might have been killed by bandits."
—Roy Chapman Andrews
On the Trail of Ancient Man
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1926, pages 20-21
Here's the real guy:
So with true life stories like that under my belt, it was only natural that I would be attracted to Indiana Jones and his adventures. He could do it all. He'd get beaten, thrown down holes, shot, swing across pits with his bullwhip, and he'd always keep going. Indiana Jones is the kind of person that most guys wish they could be.
After all the years of speculation that there would be yet one more Indy adventure after Last Crusade, I had sort of written it off. It had been too long ten years ago, and so when this one came up, I was astonished, and wondering how Indy had weathered all that time. I found out, mostly to my disappointment.
The problem with all of us is that we get old. We don't want our heroes to get old, too -- we want to live through them and to have things be just like the old days. It's why I read favorite books again and again: the characters are just the same now as they were when I read the books at age 15. On camera, however, that's a tough job.
In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Indiana Jones is now (if we go by Harrison Ford's true age) 65 years old. He's gray, which I can live with, and he's in good shape for his age; he wears the same size outfit now as he did in 1981, so that in itself is amazing. That being said -- he still looks old. His trademark whip was used, what -- once or twice in the movie, and that was it. We have a young "sidekick" who swings with monkeys and has improbable swordfights between moving vehicles, and we have a hero who survives a nuclear blast at ground zero by shutting himself into a refrigerator. Ugh. The original, and best in my estimation, movie of the series was Raiders. Sure, you have to suspend a lot of disbelief to expect ghosts to come out of the Ark of the Covenant and vaporize Nazis. But a lot of that stuff could have been done without special effects, and WAS: being dragged behind the cargo truck (although it was done at slow speeds and speeded up for the movie); swinging across chasms with a bullwhip as a tool, climbing on top of huge statues and bashing through temple walls with them. This movie: Area 51 and aliens? Russian bad guys (we could relate to them when I was a kid during the Cold War, but most kids today are clueless about the Soviet Union; everyone STILL understands the Nazis, who make much better villains)?
Lucas doesn't get it. Us old-timers who remember movies being done without CGI point to Raiders of the Lost Ark as a good example of a minimal use of this stuff, for the simple reason that it was NEW then. They did a hell of a movie without it. This movie: the WHOLE thing was computer graphics -- at least it seemed like it. Lucas (and Spielberg) had an opportunity to make a plausible story that brought Indy back for one last romp through the desert with plausible relics, and instead we get half the Peruvian jungle swirling around and taking off into space. And a really stilted line, to boot: "Knowledge was their treasure." Weighty stuff. Whew. Or should I say P.U.? Lucas and Spielberg forgot the original "feel" of the series, and threw everything into the CGI pot to make money. It would have made money anyhow, fellas. Trust me. And guys like me would have one more good memory. As it is, I was looking at my watch through most of the movie. Not a good sign.
It's time to close down the series before they damage old fans' memories of Indy any further. The bright spot, as far as I was concerned, was seeing Karen Allen again -- she looked great. Indy, however, made me feel old. That's not the feeling I hope for when I follow Indiana Jones on a trek through tombs and temples. I want to feel young again, and that's why I loved Indiana Jones. For a couple of hours I could identify with him, and live his adventures onscreen. For that, I guess I'll have to fire up Raiders of the Lost Ark on my TV again. This one wasn't a keeper -- I'll buy it to round out the collection, but I doubt I'll have a huge urge to watch it again anytime soon.
I say bring Raiders of the Lost Ark back to the big screen for one month-long engagement in select theaters. I'll see you there.
Herp
