Indiana Jones is not the first monster to escape and transcend their creators. I have been waiting, enduring like the Grail Knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade for something like this to happen. Finally it has. If I had a sword I would offer it up to Jonathan Rogers and welcome him with, “Knew you’d come.”
Film commentators have noted that Indy grows increasingly PG through the mainstream series, which to some degree I suppose he must. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, he makes his debut to ominous music as he steps out of the shadows. At that moment we do not know...Is this a good guy? Is this a bad guy? Of course he is both. The watershed is generally conceded to the boudoir scene in Temple of Doom. Indy and Willie have a provocative exchange referencing primitive, sexual rituals. A sharp left turn, the door — visually a boudoir door but also a thematic door — gets slammed shut. This is not in any way to denigrate the series, just point out a subtle shift in tone. Ford’s consummate acting, Spielberg’s direction, the honed dialogue, production aspects, all tantalize of more beneath the surface. Excavated at last: The Indiana Jones Interrogations.
Token acknowledgement must be made to the usual fan film caveats, but most are irrelevant here. The minimalist graininess of 1930s “found footage”; the bizarre, telescoping focus of the camera; any hesitancy in delivery; all serve to promote an atmosphere that is claustrophobic, unnerving, surreal; a vortex as entrapping for its protagonists as it is for its viewers. (I find myself thinking about Indiana Jones and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in the same paragraph. This is going to require a stiff drink and a cold compress later.) One senses a nightmare situation that is becoming as extreme for the Nazi interrogators as it is for their prisoner. Why? Because while unwaveringly true to the character’s core attributes, here is an Indiana Jones we may have always been encouraged to suspect but never permitted to encounter. Until now.
Indiana Jones - R Rated At Last!
Indiana Jones is not the first monster to escape and transcend their creators. I have been waiting, enduring like the Grail Knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade for something like this to happen. Finally it has. If I had a sword I would offer it up to Jonathan Rogers and welcome him with, “Knew you’d come.”
Film commentators have noted that Indy grows increasingly PG through the mainstream series, which to some degree I suppose he must. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, he makes his debut to ominous music as he steps out of the shadows. At that moment we do not know...Is this a good guy? Is this a bad guy? Of course he is both. The watershed is generally conceded to the boudoir scene in Temple of Doom. Indy and Willie have a provocative exchange referencing primitive, sexual rituals. A sharp left turn, the door — visually a boudoir door but also a thematic door — gets slammed shut. This is not in any way to denigrate the series, just point out a subtle shift in tone. Ford’s consummate acting, Spielberg’s direction, the honed dialogue, production aspects, all tantalize of more beneath the surface. Excavated at last: The Indiana Jones Interrogations.
Token acknowledgement must be made to the usual fan film caveats, but most are irrelevant here. The minimalist graininess of 1930s “found footage”; the bizarre, telescoping focus of the camera; any hesitancy in delivery; all serve to promote an atmosphere that is claustrophobic, unnerving, surreal; a vortex as entrapping for its protagonists as it is for its viewers. (I find myself thinking about Indiana Jones and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in the same paragraph. This is going to require a stiff drink and a cold compress later.) One senses a nightmare situation that is becoming as extreme for the Nazi interrogators as it is for their prisoner. Why? Because while unwaveringly true to the character’s core attributes, here is an Indiana Jones we may have always been encouraged to suspect but never permitted to encounter. Until now.