Space 1979 Franchise Fatigue: The one that started a franchise people want to end

 

Title: Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

What Year?: 1981

Classification: Mashup

Rating: Downright Decent! (4/5)

 

In the course of doing movie reviews on this blog, a major and disconcerting development has been seeing 40^th anniversary re-releases go by. Given the parameters I had set for my review features, these fell well outside what I would normally consider, notwithstanding the exceptions I had made for Star Trek The Motion Picture, Lethal Weapon and various entries in the Weird Sequel category. Still, as time went by, I gave thought to the matter on and off as I saw movies I was used to thinking of as practically made for VHS. I went to see Alien around the time I started the blog with the Evil Possum adventure. I caught Empire Strikes Back when I was planning the Revenant Review. Then, I saw one more, just when I was thinking about doing something different, and I knew what I had to do. Here is Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first of a lineup of franchise-starting movies that are a lot odder than people remember.

Our story starts in the middle of the action as our hero Indiana Jones braves a boobytrapped temple to steal a golden idol, only to have the prize stolen by the evil Belloq. On return to the USA, his employers and a few government types approach him about a new mission. Pre-World War Hitler is searching the world for occult antiquities (really more Heinrich Himmler’s thing), and his agents are closing in on the Ark of the Covenant, the Biblical artifact that made the Hebrews invincible (except that one time the Philistines beat them up and took the Ark). Indy professes not to believe in the Ark, but accepts the assignment. His first stop is his old flame Marion, the daughter of his late mentor, but Belloq and the Nazis are already closing in. It’s all enough to start many fights, chases, betrayals and semi-random deaths, and it all ends with the opening of the Ark as Indie and his adversaries face an angry God!

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was the first installment of a franchise created by Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas, following their successes with Jaws and Star Wars (see also Duel and… Howard the Duck?). The series was by all accounts based on the pulp magazines and serials of the 1930s and 1940s, as well as real-life adventurers like Ray Chapman Andrews. Harrison Ford was cast in the title role, with Karen Allen as his romantic interest. Other cast included the late Paul Freeman as Belloq, John Rhys-Davies as Indy’s ally Sallah, and stuntman Sergio Mioni (d. 1987) an unnamed and uncredited Nazi sergeant in the “desert chase” sequence. The film was an immediate commercial success, earning almost $390 million against a $20M budget. The franchise received two sequels, Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade in 1984 and 1989 respectively, but went largely dormant until Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in 2008. A planned further sequel remains in limbo as of 2021.

For my experiences, Indiana Jones rivalled Star Wars and Trek as a central and unquestioned reality of my childhood pop-culture experience. As with most things, I didn’t see the movie until relatively late (I distinctly recall having it and Batman over a weekend), though I remember seeing Last Crusade in the theater as well as playing the soundtrack into the ground. Still, what really stands out in hindsight is that it never quite had the “footprint” that other movies did. I remember reading one of the Marvel comic, and one or two “choose your own adventure”-style tie-in books. I also saw a few episodes of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, and heard about the video games. (The smattering of toys were totally under my radar.) Even given my usual obliviousness, it was a modest trail, and it all seemed to fade away by the time the TV show fizzled out. Yet, the movies were enough to keep the franchise alive in my experience and memory, exactly where many old and new fans have been clamoring to let it remain.

Moving to the movie itself, one more thing I will get off my chest is that I’m one of the ones who absolutely considers the third movie the best one. Watching the first movie with an eye to a review did a lot to clarify why. Indy never really has a strong motivation to look for the Ark, where the search for the Grail is entwined with his conflicted relationship with his father. The Ark likewise doesn’t seem to offer any clear value, while the Grail is part and parcel with the quest for immortality. Even when it comes to the action scenes, the chases and fights in Raiders  are well-staged but episodic, usually without much impact on the story (a whole can of worms I will get to momentarily) and often more violent than needed. By comparison, those of Last Crusade usually have a reasonable objective that’s justified by the story, and are further livened by a pervasive sense of slapstick that fits the light-hearted mood of the franchise. (And don’t get me started on how that plane would have fared with 1930s tech…)

On a deeper level, there’s still the now-infamous conundrum  of whether anything Indy does really changes the course of events. On careful consideration, the movie itself doesn’t really address this either way; whether the Nazis would have found Marion on their own is specifically ambiguous. What I find misunderstood and vaguely irritating is that none of this was what we were talking about back in the day. Having the treasure or prize destroy the villain, or prove fake, worthless or otherwise unusable, was a respectable pulp/ serial device I could already have traced back to The Maltese Falcon at least. Having a larger-than-life hero who was still fallible enough to do possibly more harm than good was similarly a common “trope” we could all go along with (not much different than Han Solo). What complicates things for me, as already alluded above, is the odd lack of deeper weight or emotional engagement. Again, this is where the third movie did things much better, enough to diminish the original just a little by comparison alone.

That still leaves the “one scene”, and the one that has stayed strongest in my memory is the utterly over-the-top fight/ chase scene. In a sense, it was probably a favorite even before I saw the movie thanks to the John Williams score, which was absolutely hypnotic for kid-me. There’s plenty of moments to pick out, but to me it’s always been about Indy against the sergeant, whom I only thought to identify while writing this review. (Among other things, it turns out the same guy was posthumously credited for Robot Jox.) What stood out watching on the big screen is a shot as the sergeant (even the rank seems to be strictly from fandom) climbs on top of the truck after his men try and fail to take the truck back from Indy. (Why nobody tries to shoot through the back of the cab is the kind of question that doesn’t help anyone.) The music gets more ominous if possible, incongruously since Indy still has the upper hand, but there’s no doubt that this is going to be something big. I could go on much further in a lot more detail, but the one thing I find worth further comment is the final turnabout, culminating in a grueling reaction shot as the sergeant meets his fate. For all the more famous sketchy content, it is this brief shot that stands out to me as the most mindboggling example of what the movie and franchise got away with.

In closing, the one thing I still have something to add about is just how solidly this movie and franchise have remained in the 1980s. I’m not a purist who dumps on every remake or belated remake that comes along. I can even still say I actually like Crystal Skull, if only because I haven’t had the heart to watch it since I caught it in an actual theater. But I have long since come to agree that it is long past time to let it rest. That just brings me back to what it was like seeing the books and merchandise that usually accrete around a successful movie struggle, dwindle and finally disappear within a few years of the last of the movies. (The tie-ins that did continue to pop up are by now mostly forgotten and forgettable enough to make rather than disprove my point.) We hadn’t forgotten the movies, but we never needed anyone to add to them. With the further benefit of hindsight, in a time almost as far from the movie’s release as it was from its “historic” setting, that may be the best legacy a movie can have.

Image credit Film Music Site.