For Indy, Whenever I May Find Him

In its most recent issue, Entertainment Weekly declared George Lucas to be an “enemy of fun” in a review of Clone Wars, which is widely being dismissed as a feature-film length commercial for the animated TV series of the same name. Luckily, an unfortunate character flaw rendering me indifferent to animated films, coupled with my sincere disdain for peripheral Star Wars projects (let alone the duress of finding a babysitter and neurotically debating whether ordering tickets online in advance is worth the extra dollar per ticket) has rendered the possibility of my viewing Clone Wars virtually non-existent. But I think that the folks at EW may be onto something.

Lucas has seemed to systematically destroy all of the trust of his long-suffering fans over the course of many years through the extortion of untold small personal fortunes from the believers, who have longingly spent one dollar at a time on the futile hope that something, maybe something, will reconnect them with the manifestation of Longinus’s Sublime they felt upon seeing Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time. Among Lucas’s many well-documented offenses is the release of the Special Edition of the Star Wars trilogy. Upon its release, it seemed a generous offering, affording the fans and novices alike the eye-widening opportunity to bear witness to the Star Wars trilogy on the silver screen, but upon reflection and, perhaps, a bit of hard-earned cynicism, proved to be an elaborate ploy to revise our memories to include images that weren’t there the first go-round, in order to advertise for the forthcoming, ill-fated Episodes I, II and III. Sorry, but Boba Fett was never in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, even if his dad (his fucking dad!) was a major plot point in the aptly-titled Attack of the Clones.

It’s almost as if Jim Davis were to go back and remove all traces of Jon’s live-in, mustachioed pseudo-homosexual love interest (and, lest we forget, Odie’s owner) Lyman from Garfield at Large and Garfield Gains Weight. Sure, the uninitiated or the casual fan may be oblivious, but if you were there the first time around, you know that it goes a certain way. The United States didn’t win the Vietnam Conflict and Arthur Dimmesdale doesn’t live in the end. You can’t rewrite a history that could be recanted by untold thousands. Lucas tries anyway.

So, then, it should come to no one’s surprise—though it did to mine—that Lucas would go back and tinker with his early masterwork THX1138 a little bit, adding a few expansive CGI shots that make the picture a little less claustrophobic, claustrophobia being the whole point.

For me, though, Lucas’s most heinous offense is his changing the title of Raiders of the Lost Ark to Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, and inserting it and its sequels, numerically, into a lineage that includes the sleep-inducing television series The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones (re-titled The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles by Lucas for its recent DVD rollout) that somehow managed to be less Indiana Jones-like than either ABC’s Tales of the Gold Monkey or CBS’s Bring ‘em Back Alive, having Young Indy cavorting around with historical figures in lame-duck scenarios. And that’s how Indiana Jones met Howard Hughes ... and that’s how Indiana Jones met Dizzie Gillespie ... and that’s how Indiana Jones met Abbot and Costello, etc.

Now, American Graffiti remains as Lucas’s only unaltered major work.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is my favorite movie ever. Sure, sometimes I wish I could say my favorite film was Godard’s Weekend, or Last Year at Marienbad or something, but it’s not. And I vehemently deny and reject the notion—while understanding its importance in the equation and its applicable weight—that this is so primarily because I was seven years old when I saw it for the first time. That certainly accounts for my near-panic driven desire to buy any and all Indiana Jones merchandise, modest as it is ( and certainly for the nearly untouched box of Indiana Jones emblazoned Apple Jacks in my pantry), but there are plenty of things I loved with as much fervor that I have no problem disavowing, or even denying any knowledge of ever having heard of in order to spare myself unneeded embarrassment. No, Raiders of the Lost Ark is just about perfect, and there are many reasons why; primarily the brilliant script by Lawrence Kasdan and the dust-up direction of Steven Spielberg, less-so the creation of Indiana Jones (nee Indiana Smith) by Lucas.

So it was with an awkward, manufactured optimism that I greeted the news of the fourth installation of what was soon to be the former Indiana Jones trilogy—after all, this making of a quadrology out of a trilogy had just been done somewhat successfully with the former Die Hard trilogy, which, strangely enough, nearly mirrors the steady decline of the Indiana Jones trilogy film for film: the brilliant first film; the exciting yet ridiculous second film; and the hugely disappointing, yet I can’t help but want to like it because it has some brilliant elements but man some of it is so terrible third film. After all, I figured (as I had with Live Free or Die Hard), they have already caused irreparable damage to the series with the third one; what’s there to lose?

Everything seemed to be in place for at least the possibility of the great Dr. Jones of our youth to make a heroic comeback. Pictures released from the set of Indiana Jones 4 showing Harrison Ford in his trademark fedora and yellowed, casually destroyed white button-up shirt inspired man-crush goose bumps. Karen Allen was, finally, back as Marion Ravenwood. Cate Blanchett looked assuredly wicked and cruelly beautiful as the sure-to-be formidable Soviet villain. Rumors, seemingly fuelled by the filmmakers, abounded that the plot had something to do with the Lost Ark of the Covenant. Then they released the name, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and everything deflated.

Vanity Fair published a very insightful article documenting how Indiana Jones 4 came to fruition: Lucas had been pitching the impetus of what would become Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to Spielberg and Ford for the better part of 20 years to no avail. It’s this or nothing, Lucas warned. So screenwriters were hired, one after another, in the thankless task of attempting to spin Lucas’s unyeilding refuse into gold. David Koepp, a good writer (he wrote the screenplays for Carlito’s Way and War of the Worlds) was the man who finally won the endorsement of all parties involved with an uneven script that, at times, gets to the core of what made Raiders of the Lost Ark incomparable entertainment and, at other times, resorts to the silliness that ruined the series.

Having now seen Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I suppose it was okay, and though there is, indeed, a crystal skull, its kingdom is nowhere to be found. There’s a strong (practically ripped) possibility that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a terrible offense, and I’m either being generous or cowardly in my assessment that it was okay because I want to like it so badly. Regardless, I will most definitely purchase Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull upon its DVD release because, well ... Christ, who knows? But hopefully there will be an absurdly expensive two-disc Special Collector’s Edition that will render the notion of my purchasing the one-disc version seem just preposterous.

The first red flag raised was that goddamned title, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which struck me in way not dissimilar to the way The Phantom Menace (itself somehow akin to “silent but deadly” as another euphemism for expelled gas) struck me: I thought it was uniformally stupid. So I have chosen other possible—dare I say better—titles for an Indiana Jones movie, inviting a visualization of the films they could represent:

Indiana Jones and the Last Slice of Pizza

Indiana Jones and the Challah of Salah

Indiana Jones and the Bucket of KFC

Indiana Jones and the Flatulence of Angels

Indiana Jones and the Can of Low-Sodium Tomato Soup

Indiana Jones and the University of Illinois at Chicago

Indiana Jones and the Loincloth of the Lord

Indiana Jones and the Official Sportsdrink of the NFL

Indiana Jones and the Parameters of Decency

Indiana Jones and the Grand Mitsubishi of Elmhurst

Indiana Jones and the Season of Giving

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Gayle

Indiana Jones and the Preponderance of Sexual Ambiguity

Indiana Jones and the Thawing of the Frozen Hamburger

Indiana Jones and the Undercover Fatsuit of American Shame

Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Country Kitchen

Indiana Jones and the Burning Bush of the She-God

Indiana Jones and the Boner to end All Boners

Indiana Jones and the Farts That, Surprisingly, Were More

Indiana Jones and the Gravy Boat of the Future

Indiana Jones and the House of Hunan

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Donuts

Adios, Sapito.