It has been 20 years since cinema audiences have seen new adventures of Indiana Jones on the big screen. 20 years of overly CGI, government conspiracies, and a never ending stream of copycat pretenders to the throne of pulp action adventure. Over 20 years a lot of things can change, cinema technology, stadium style seating, popcorn prices, ticket prices, political climate changes, and even characters archetypes can change.
20 years ago we saw our hero riding into the sunset with his mentor, his Egyptian sidekick, and his father. It was his last crusade, his penultimate adventure, and we never expected to see him again. We resigned ourselves to a world of reruns, copycats, and propaganda laden stories about national treasure hunters. Deep down inside the cinema goers of America craved a man in a fedora fighting the evil foreign power from a forgotten day, saving the day, getting the girl, and teaching us about a long lost holy relic.
Over the past 20 years American movie goers have seen things their forefathers and foremothers could never have predicted. Things in the media, in the cinema and on our doorstep have affected our concepts of entertainment and changed our outlook on life. But after all of that deep down inside we want to see Indiana Jones battle an evil long defeated foe and save our world for all that we hold to be good and wholesome.
Over the past 20 years, Indiana Jones has aged, grown old, and lost his goose stepping foe to the passage of time. His world has grown and changed as ours did, but are we the American movie going audience ready for that? When we first met Dr. Jones he was in an archeological race against Nazi Germany, a foe that many today consider to be the ultimate evil. When we last saw Indiana, he had just defeated that same foe in a race for what many consider to be the ultimate prize; the cup of Christ, the Christian key to life everlasting, what many would call, cinema gold.
Indiana Jones is not timeless, our hero has aged, his foe is gone, and has been replaced with a new foe. A foe that the present movie generation knows to be all too real, a foe not cinematic and exciting because it is too close to home, and a foe that we all remember being afraid of. In the 1980’s Americans were terrified of the threat of Nuclear War with Soviet Russia, but fear of the Nazis party was a thing for our grandparents, a foe who had already been defeated. A foe safely relegated to the cinema, a foe we could easily poke fun at, a foe that did not make us quiver in the back of our mind as we remembered a very real threat on the evening news.
In 20 years when Dr. Jones films his final crusade against the Communists in Cuba our children will laugh at his quips and daring do and remember fondly their first introduction to their hero, in the classic film The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Where they saw Indiana Jones defeat an evil foe that predated the enemy on the evening news and found a holy relic from a people that time had forgotten.
When I was 7 years old, I saw Indiana Jones on the big screen defeat an ancient foe with a smile on his face and a girl on his arm. Now I am 34, and Indiana Jones has defeated an ancient foe with a smile on his face and a girl on his arm. All is well in the world.
