I’m looking forward to a 4th Indian Jones movie.
Ehh…I agree Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was bad. I certainly wouldn’t advise anyone to go out of their way to find it and watch it. But if you have the time, and it’s on anyway…It definitely has a lot of bits that are “beyond awful”, but also some worthwhile bits. I was honestly frustrated by it because I could see the bits of a genuinely good update of Indy’s mythos lurking around in there, but the movie kept glancing off of them and being dumb. And not goofy-fun-dumb, just frustratingly dumb.
I would enjoy seeing Jonathan Ke Quan, who played Short Round in Temple of Doom. He is currently acting and doing stunt choreography. He has some other upcoming movies. A grown-up Short Round (Jonathon is currently 49) who insists Indy use his real name, continues to have a lot of attitude and humor, and gets to do some martial arts butt-kicking would be cool.
Not entirely - Crystal Skull tried to “replace” Ford by introducing his kid, Shia the Beef, and people rejected it. The Han Solo stand alone tried to replace Ford with Ansel Entmoot, and was not hugely successful. Meanwhile, everyone loved seeing Ford in The Force Awakens and his cameo in Rise of Skywalker. Pretty sure the pitch here wasn’t, “How can we make another Indiana Jones movie,” but rather, “How can we make another Harrison Ford movie.”
I don’t think his age should be played up at all except to maybe comment that he’s always behaved like a cranky old man. Body doubles and other FX will take care of the practical problems in what should basically be a two hour chase with a few intermittent puzzles along the way.
I like this idea and in some ways there can be a call back to the Jones just pulling out the gun and shooting the guy - Short Round gets into elaborate fight scenes and Jones doesn’t bother, most of the time standing back and letting Short Round save the day by beating off the bad guys multiple times, but eventually when Short Round is overwhelmed pulling out a gun and shooting the bad guys … of course having had the gun the whole time without Short Round knowing but enjoying letting Short Round get knocked around some.
It shouldn’t play up his age for laughs but neither should it, by way of stunt doubles and CGI, have him do things that are not realistic for even a very fit 80 year old Professor Jones to do. That’s a young adventurer’s game.
And, IMO at least, Karen Allen is one of the few redeeming features of that film.
I’m thinking of the sorts of stunts performed by a 73 year old Sean Connery character in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
I agree. He should be cast as a retired professor, not a young adventurer. I would find it disconcerting to see an 80 year old leaping off trains and tackling the 20 year old villain. I would rather see him outsmart the villain. Maybe step aside just as the train shows up to knock the villain away. That sort of thing – things that are realistic for a fit, healthy, strong 80 year old.
I laughed my ass off.
But it always bothers me- some fat-ass thirty something, sitting down in his moms basement, who wheezes with the effort of opening his third bag of cheetos for the day, makes jokes about how old Biden or Ford or whoever is.
Granted, Ford is very fit for his age. But those last three words are important: Fit for a guy in his 70s isn’t all that fit, by action-movie standards.
Sure. Ford isnt as fit as The Rock, etc. No doubt.
But action movie stars are way more fit that the average couch potato.
Indy was ridiculously fit for a college professor, so why not a senior citizen?
Have you seen the way Indy trashes archeological sites? Maybe this film will have the other archeologists of the world trying to get him arrested.
A side plot would be Indy finding Al Capone’s vault before Rivera and cleaning it out.
True. Pretty much any site he visits collapses into rubble shortly thereafter, destroying countless priceless artifacts. Indy is really the worst archaeologist in history.
But, but… that’s not HIS fault, it’s the fault of the bad guys chasing him, or the Gods trying to protect the site, or…
That’s one of the things I mentioned upthread that frustrated me about Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I thought they could have portrayed Indy as an obsolete cowboy archaeologist, and his son as a proper, scholarly archaeologist, which could have been an interesting conflict, and lampshaded Indy’s terrible techniques.
You could also have gotten a bit of character growth that way, even if it’s cliche, with both learning a bit from the other. Indy learns the value of proper, modern archaeological techniques from his son, and his son learns that when bad guys come for the McGuffin, sometimes you just have to blow up the dig.
Not to mention, I think Shia LeBeouf would have been more believable as a nebbishy archaeology grad student than as a greaser…
I like it quite a bit, actually. I think it is overly attacked. Not perfect, but more or less fits in with the other three.
This is the second time the 5th one has been fully announced. Spielberg was set to direct, but has dropped out.
I wonder if Harrison Ford will all together retire after this one.
If they’re looking for something Indy can search for that tops the Ark and the Grail maybe he can hunt for Jimmy Hoffa’s grave.
Thanks for the tip. I only watch a few movies on TCM and Grit.
It’s unlikely they’d reunite Ford and Allen again. Hollywood never forgets bad movies.
I’m not sure how Harrison can convincingly portray Indy.