Indiana Jones and the Title Everyone Hates Except Me

[matril]

We finally got to see the movie yesterday, and we loved it. I'd probably put it on the same level as Temple of Doom, which is the least of the three but, in my opinion, still a great, fun movie.


Just a few random thoughts:

Everything has aged appropriately - Indy, older and wiser; Marion, a bit more sentimental after 20 years of motherhood but still as wonderfully reckless and hot-tempered as ever; the setting, from Nazis in the 30s to Commies in the 50s; and the nature of the supernatural artifact, science fiction-esque rather than holy. I loved all the little touches, shades of American Graffiti to set the stage at the start, a glimpse of the Ark, the nods to past characters and situations.

No great surprise to learn just where Mutt came from - his dog-inspired name gave it away if nothing else. And I was happy to see the wedding to finish everything off - at first it seemed an abrupt conclucsion, until I recalled the other three movies end much more abruptly, with no more than a little tail after the climax, while this was a more final, satisfying completion. Meaning they can stop now, as they should, because Indy's looking pretty old! He can still hold his own, but he could probably respectably retire from his adventuring days. Sounds like he kept plenty busy in the intervening years - of course he would be an acclaimed soldier in the War; no one hates Nazis more than he does. ;)

Complaints? Not too many. It's not a perfect movie but none of the Indiana Jones movies are. I personally have no problem with the title. I'm not entirely sure why people despise it so much. There's a long-lost kingdom and that's where the crystal skull belongs. :shrug: I've read some whining about the sci-fi alien aspect (but they're not spacemen!! They're inter-dimensional beings! ;p) directed at Lucas, and I have to wonder - have they never heard of Close Encounters? E.T.? War of the Worlds, for heaven's sake! That's totally Spielberg's domain. The paranoia about government interference too, for that matter. But hey, if something bugs them about the movie, it has to be Lucas. And I thought the prairie dogs and monkeys were cute, in a goofy way. To hear people gripe about them, you'd think the sequences had gone on for hours. Sheesh.

I liked it. I'd like to see it again. :)


Today, meanwhile, was the first visit of Ryan's participation in the Infant Sibling Project. We had a harrowing time getting there, because traffic made us late and then, flustered, we went the wrong direction. But once we finally found our way, things went just fine. After a bunch of paperwork, they took a picture of me with a neutral expression and watched how Ryan responded to that versus an unfamiliar woman's face. Then they put a little cap on his head to measure his brain activity - totally painless and just plain adorable to see him in - and did some more with the pictures, as well as having him hear syllables "da da da da da da da ta da da da" and so on.

Then we went to another room to play and assess where he's at in fine and gross motor skills, and verbal and visual development. We'll be back in three months, bringing Luke for an assessment as well. But mostly the visits will be about Ryan. It's amazing how accomodating they are when you're helping with their research - they had toys for Emma to play with and food for her to eat; they paid for our parking and will reimburse all other expenses; they gave Ryan a free toy; and gave us a refrigerator magnet with a picture of Ryan beaming in his little brain activity cap. He was getting fussy by the end of it all, but I think in general this will be a lot of fun.

Comments

[krpalmer.livejournal.com]

I suppose that my initial thought when wondering about the "saucer men" I was gathering would be in the movie was "Hey, it's a Steven Spielberg film"... but then, when reading "The Complete Making of Indiana Jones," I saw that George Lucas had come up with the idea of setting the fourth adventure in the 1950s quite early on, and then had to convince a Steven Spielberg objecting that he'd already done Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T... Still, I think my uneasiness had less to do with some hypothetical conviction that "Indy and UFOs don't mix!", and more with my general skepticism about the "flying saucer myth," and my suspicion that it's become "imaginatively sterile," with the saucers less the gleaming promise of interstellar travel and more just discs that are always crashing, to be locked away to no effect but seeding paranoia. Fortunately, I think that for me the movie stepped away from that, and the "liftoff" scene carried a good dose of that science-fictional "sense of wonder." I have tentative plans to go see the movie again this weekend, myself.

Also, Ryan's participation in the project sounds interesting; I hope that everything continues to work out.

[matril.livejournal.com]

Hmm. That's surprising; I wouldn't have expected that Lucas was the proponent of it. But I agree; for all the weirdness of UFOs in an Indy movie, it still redeemed itself to a certain extent, with that sense of wonder at the liftoff instead of ending with cover-ups and paranoia. In fact, the ending of Raiders was more like the latter...but somehow it seemed fitting there.

[krpalmer.livejournal.com]

Once I'd heard that George Lucas describe his idea more in terms of "the original movies are an homage to 1930s serials, and this movie will be an homage to 1950s 'sci-fi' movies," I suppose it made more sense to me. For some odd reason too, although I know it doesn't have that much bearing on the issue, I've been reminding myself that he did also set some movies "in a galaxy far, far away..."