Indiana Jones and the Trend in Movies.

A comparative of the four films.

By Jason Pluscec (aka J-Man)

I own all the Indiana Jones film series, not the televisions series though, but I still consider myself a true fan of the series and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was the first movie I ever rented on VHS (the second was Robocop).

In grade school when asked “what do you want to be when you grow up?” I said Archeologist. I loved ancient civilizations and learning about our past. Even as a kid I knew that Archeology wasn’t about fighting Nazis and obtaining magical artifacts, but I have to say that the Indy series really inspired me to look into it. I never became one obviously but still it was a dream of mine.

The series as a whole has been one of the most successful franchises of all time and is considered by most to be up there with Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, and it should be. The series offers high adventure, action, fantasy and one of the most recognizable characters ever, Indiana Jones.

Of course if you really research it, you will find that a lot of the Indy series was inspired by the old Serials – or chapter plays. I mean Raiders especially is considered to be a homage to that style of film making.

The cliffhanger endings were a staple of the Serials and Indy sure has his far share of narrow escapes. But with each installment came a slightly different tone and style, even though they were all made by Spielberg and Lucas.

I am not going to bore with you the details of each movie, but I am going to examine the way others see them.

Some say Raiders is the best, others say Crusade, and still others say Doom. A lot of people are very sure of which they like the best, and when asked, some have very strong opinions on which is better or worse. I find it odd that this occurs since Lucas and Spielberg were both involved in all of them. Maybe there is some connection between age and which film you like, or gender, or the order in which you saw them?

For those of you who are not in the know – the films are:

Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Interesting to note here is that Temple of Doom takes place BEFORE Raiders. If you note the dates given during the films, it takes place before Raiders. In Raiders, Indy is battling the Nazis during WW2 but in Doom he was a soldier of fortune. In any case, my personal favorite was always Temple of Doom. It was the first one I saw though and I was blown away by the land of India. I mean the locations and scenery were so amazing and Indy was fighting to save kids from a real bad guy (turns out that bad guy is a super-duper famous Indian actor who always plays evil bastards). Also to note is that a kid named Short-Round is Indy’s sidekick. When you are a young boy watching this movie you connect with Shorty because he is a kid too and you feel as though you can go on an adventure with Indiana Jones and not get in his way. I also found him to be really cool and not annoying at all.

Something else to note is that I love horror movies, so Temple of Doom was a great way to showcase some really creepy stuff. The bugs, the ripping out the heart, the cult etc. Plus the Temple itself is an amazing design. And the action in the end was so amazing, the rope bridge, the mining cart chase, and at one point Indy turns bad too! This movie has it all folks!

So you see this whole experiment thing started when I was speaking to some people about the series and I always assumed that Temple of Doom was the best one. It’s like when people talk about Die Hard – part one is obviously the best. Or Robocop, or even the Exorcist. But I was informed that they thought Temple of Doom was one of the worst ones! I was in total shock of course. I just couldn’t believe it, but maybe I was crazy? Was I wrong? Or was my viewing experience and age somehow to blame – probably, so I decided to undertake this experiment.

I recently completed a survey of friends, family and co-workers and asked them to rank the four films in order from best to worst. I put the results into excel and studied them. Now I didn’t use the scientific method, but I did keep personal opinion out of it and stuck to the facts. Most of the people on this survey have seen all four films, a few of them hadn’t seen Skull, but it seems that everyone I surveyed but 3, thought that Skull was the worst. So I think I’ll start there.

When I decided to do this survey I had a feeling that people would rank Skull the last. It was very obvious why – they didn’t like it. Well that and I think the whole Alien thing was perceived as being silly or unrealistic.

Well all the films have unrealistic stuff, but it’s usually in a religious context and this was an extraterrestrial one. But remember for those who don’t believe in a religion, the earlier films too were unrealistic. Indy himself doesn’t even believe. So I don’t really see a point in arguing that the alien stuff was too out there. But don’t get me wrong, introducing Indy’s kid and trying to force him to be a lead wasn’t a good idea. That and the fact that Indy didn’t really know what was going on and was kind of bumbling his away around until he found the Skull. I think the people who grew up with this series where kind of let down, but 2 of the 3 people who ranked it 3rd best were people who were older when they saw the films – and they thought it was enjoyable. They weren’t nostalgic about Indy as much and viewed it as an entertaining film that had an interesting concept. The 3rd person who ranked it 3rd best was someone my age, who just thought the alien angle was cool and different. So there you have it.

All in all I surveyed about 30 people and they all said Skull was the worst, so there really isn’t much more to say about that.

How about age? Does your age determine which one you like. Well my study shows that older people – when I say older I mean older than 35, tend to prefer Raiders. I am guessing they saw it as kids/teens and loved it, and that was their first memory of it. For people my age, the results were a tie between Crusade and Raiders. I would assume that is true because adults who loved Raiders would show their kids that movie and it would be their first exposure to the series. As for Crusade’s high marks, I think it’s was probably the first one they saw in theatres. I wasn’t really old enough to see Temple of Doom in the theatre, but I defiantly saw Crusade – I think seeing it on the big screen gives more of an impact. I did however see Temple of Doom at the Cinesphere at Ontario place on the Imax screen – that was amazing. In any case, there were a few who ranked Doom the best, but they were few and of the younger crowd – seemingly for the same reasons I did. Maybe it was the first they saw on VHS, or the fact that its in a totally foreign land.

Crusade for me was 3rd because Sean Connery spends much of the movie belittling Indy. As a kid who worshipped Indy (I would even play Indy at home – complete with a skipping rope whip, and my mom’s bag, and a crappy hat) I wasn’t into the idea that Connery was always saying he sucked. Didn’t Connery see the other movies? Also there was a bit too much comedy for me in it.

Funny that when I got older I actually enjoyed the bickering between Connery and Indy and understood it more. Typical father/son relationship that I didn’t get when I was a kid. But when I was older I found other problems like the Grail. Does it make you immortal? If so is Indy immortal now? But I think the immortality was limited to the surrounding area where the Grail was found. If you leave that mountain you are normal again. So then why were Connery’s wounds healed and not reopened? And if you are only immortal in that mountain, then why does anyone even care about the Grail. I know they wouldn’t know that going in, but still – why protect the Grail with traps and the Templar Knight if the Grail doesn’t work outside the mountain? I don’t know, I just didn’t get it. The movie is still wicked though, but I don’t understand the how it’s better than Doom. But the prime arguers for Crusade vs Doom are women.

If you go by gender, then only one female ranked Doom the highest, and that was my cousin. I only mention that because we grew up together playing Indy and I always watched Temple of Doom, so she has seen it like 20 times, so no doubt she likes that one the best! All the other women ranked Doom 3rd or worst. I think that’s because the gross out factor was too big.

Granted that I see their point, the bugs, ripping out the heart and eating the snakes and monkey brains is pretty odd, but I don’t see how it’s much worst than a pit of snakes, or a cave of rats. But I have to admit that the bugs are defiantly the worst of the gross out parts.

In any case, I think I have given enough food for thought for one post, just wanted to sign off by saying that this is just my opinion and my experiment was very loose and of course nothing is set it in stone when it comes to opinions. These were just my observations.

Until next time.

J-Man.