An avowed nerd, I first read about Raiders of the Lost Ark through the official Star Wars Fan Club newsletter, Bantha Tracks. That’s how I learned about a sneak preview showing — remember those? — a few days or maybe a week before the movie’s official release on June 12, 1981.
Bantha Tracks gushed that the new movie — starring Harrison Ford, directed by Steven Spielberg, and co-written by George Lucas — was a thrill-a-minute throwback to serial flicks from the 1930s. I convinced my best friend Kevin to come with me, despite neither one of 12-year-old selves having much idea what 1930s serials were all about.
But we did know three things: Ford, Spielberg, Lucas. That was enough to place our butts in seats, loaded down with popcorn and Coke, for the sneak preview. We had no idea what to expect after the Paramount logo appeared on the screen. Just shy of two hours later, walking out into the warm midwestern evening, waiting to get picked up, we COULD. NOT. STOP. TALKING. about what we’d just seen.
“Thrill-a-minute” was a serious underestimation of the action/laughs/romance packed into Raiders’ 115-minute runtime.
The fun didn’t begin on the screen, however. It began with Lucas and Spielberg who, after making all those big-budget blockbusters, got the idea of shooting an action movie just as quickly and as cheaply as they could. They wanted to make a movie for the sheer joy of making a movie — and it showed in every frame.
Raiders was shot in just 73 days on a budget of $18 million, or maybe $60 million in today’s dollars. A modern blockbuster will easily spend double or even triple that $60 million just on marketing costs.
“Had I had more time and money,” Spielberg said later, “it would have turned out a pretentious movie.”
A couple of years later I lined up to see The Temple of Doom on opening night and loved that one, too. There are haters, sure, but don’t count me among them. If Raiders was a modern serial, Spielberg added an extra element to the sequel: one of those 1930s “zany” comedies that might have starred Carole Lombard and Cary Grant. That decision clearly didn’t work for everybody, but it worked for me.
For the third outing — The Last Crusade — Spielberg and Lucas removed the zany and added Sean Connery as Henry Jones Sr. Even the tagline was perfect: “The man with the hat is back. And this time, he’s bringing his Dad.”
Sheer joy for the third time running. And, yes, of course, I was there on opening night.
Despite some serious trepidation based on Ford’s age and the questionable trailers, I was willing to give 2008’s The Crystal Skull an honest chance. The best thing I could say was that it had some moments. I saw that one on opening night, too, but haven’t bothered watching it a second time in all these years.
All these years… 15 of them since the last time Ford was probably too old to do justice to Indiana Jones.
I tell you all this to let you know that my Indiana Jones cred is way up there. You need to know how solid my credentials are so that when I tell you this next thing, you understand how deeply it cuts: I’m not just willing to avoid Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny completely, I am fully prepared to hate it, sight unseen.
It isn’t just me, either.
As I shared earlier today on Instapundit, audiences soured on the new Indiana Jones weeks before its official release tonight. Box Office Pro predicted in early June that Dial would enjoy a “domestic opening weekend between $81 million and $111 million” and that domestically it would “gross between $225 million and $380 million.” They then reduced the gross to anywhere between $211 million and $325 million.
On a budget — not including marketing costs — of around $300 million. I’m not sure if that figure includes the extra money spent on seemingly endless reshoots that were ordered once the studio — Disney — realized what a stinker they had.
We’re about to witness the release of an Indiana Jones movie that will be lucky to break even.
Rotten, woke dialog like these two samples apparently remain, even after the reshoots:
Indiana Jones: You stole it!
Dr. Voller: You stole it!
Helena: Then I stole it! It’s called capitalism.
And:
Indiana Jones: I fought the Nazis you know!
Helena: And you stole from indigenous people, too!
Helena is Indy’s goddaughter, played by the aggressively unlikable Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and who is reportedly being groomed to don the fedora as the franchise’s new leading lady. You might have last seen Waller-Bridge — heard her, actually — as the voice of L3-37, the droid in the execrable Star Wars flop, Solo. L3 was the droid that galactic playboy Lando Calrissian was romantically attached to. Lando!
You will not be surprised to learn that Disney’s Lucasfilm chief, Kathleen Kennedy, was in charge of both productions. And so it appears that Kennedy, fresh off of driving Star Wars into the ground, will do to Indiana Jones what Nazis, supernatural cults, more Nazis, and space aliens never could: Murder the man with the hat.
It's official: Kathleen Kennedy is the depleted uranium wrecking ball of American pop culture. https://t.co/cgVbHJGNQH
— Stephen Green (@VodkaPundit) June 28, 2023
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