There seems to be hatred towards Shia LeBeouf here but I’d rather see him than a decrepid Harrison Ford tottering around. Ford was too old in Crystal Skull. It’s time to pass on the hat and whip.
I’ve read that Lucasfilm has no plans to recast the role and continue with Indiana Jones’ movies. In a way, that’s a shame, as it was a fun film series. But there’s no reason that this or another studio can’t make another film in the same vein.
Unfortunately, I watched most of those (TV series, too)*. They tried, and most of them just didn’t work. Maybe Raiders was a fluke, or the right movie at the right time, and that time is gone forever, I don’t know.
*Magnum PI did an homage/parody because Selleck could have been Indy. It wasn’t very good, or a very good parody.
Speaking of Selleck, High Road to China wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t Raiders good, either.
There seems to be a certain type of director who grew up loving film, collecting in his mind some of the coolest scenes and visuals from everything they’ve seen, and figuring out how to scrunch it all together.
From there, they produce a few films that largely take from those earlier sources, improving the visuals for modern sensibilities.
The success of those features, however, convinces them that they’re actually good at coming up with such content on their own and they switch from “mostly-upcycling” to “mostly inventing” and suddenly come up empty.
See:
George Lucas
Quentin Tarantino
The Wachowski Siblings
Maybe now that Lucas has been semi-barred from making new films, he’ll use his free time to watch more of other peoples’ movies, aggregate a new store, and come out with something excellent before the end of his life.
I think these movies become movie-exec committee movies after the success of the first one.
“Hey, let’s make a sequel. But we need a kid to bring in the kids!” (as if kids didn’t see Raiders)
“If we make a sequel, it has to outdo the first one. So let’s make it super gross, and put a crazy train ride in it.”
“Everyone liked the love interest, so let’s give Indy a new love interest.”
“We need to make sure we follow the beats of the first successful movie. So we need an opening chase, then Indy has to learn a big secret, then he goes on a mission.”
“Hey, remember when everyone loved it when Indy took out his gun and shot the guy with the sword? Let’s riff on that! Have a similar scene, but this time his holster is empty!”
“Hey, remember those two scenes about the swords and guns? Let’s reverse it! This time everyone has a gun! It’ll be awesome!”
Ad so it goes. Once a movie is a huge success, everyone wants to be part of the next one, and they all have ideas. Usually lousy ones.
So you get these crappy movies with the ‘action’ ramped up to 11, while all the familiar Indy ‘beats’ are in the movie to make everyone happy. Script? Who needs a script? It writes itself!
This is actually the entire franchise. Henry Jones, Jr. (“We called the dog ‘Indiana’) is in reality a mild mannered archeologist who spends his off-semester time carefully brushing away dust from artifacts collected by other more aggressive trophy hunters, and in compensation imagines himself a world-trotting mercenary who beds the hottest women and defeats powerful adversaries in single combat a la Cloak & Dagger. The entire franchise is his internal RPG played out as he envisions it, with sufficient Luck points to avoid being poisoned (“Bad dates!”) or drowned while attached to the conning tower of a submarine.
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles were going for a somewhat different vibe; less over-the-top pulp, more history lesson, and were good for what they attempted to do. They were perhaps a bit before their time but featured some real talent and acknowledged that history wasn’t just white guys stealing artifacts from tombs. It is definitely a product of the ‘Nineties and doesn’t hold up particularly well today but still worthwhile viewing, and Sean Patrick Flanery is arguably a better young Indiana Jones than River Phoenix was (as contentious as that statement may be).
Stranger
Why not? It’s not like Ford is irreplaceable. They already had four other actors in the role.
The rumour is that a prequel series is planned for Disney+ but it won’t be about Indy, and instead will be about Abner Ravenwood, and presumably a young Marion too, going on archaeological adventures circa 1920s. We’ll see if that manifests.
James Mangold has addressed this a couple of times already, but he continues to insist that the big plot rumour going around is baseless. I trust his word over anonymous trolls.
Came here to post Mangold’s response. I’m glad to hear the rumors aren’t true.
I don’t know, I read another article that’s very telling that says he doesn’t dispute the time travel rumors just the Indy Erasure stuff, so the whole “CGI Indy is only in a prologue” stuff they’re telling us might be a lie too.
No one wants to talk about that airplane cockpit scene?
I think it’s fairly obvious that time travel will play a big part in the plot, I’m just glad that Indiana Jones won’t be erased history - “wiped clean by the wrath of God.”
I am excited but no self-loathing here. Ford can still act and command the screen.
Huh?
Are you referencing River Phoenix, who played him as a kid? George Hall who played him as a really old man? Sean Flannery, who also played him as a really young man?
No one else has really played the character as seen in the main parts of the movies.
River Phoenix played a younger version of Indy in one movie. And three actors played him at various ages in the TV series.. Making five actors who played Indiana Jones.
You forgot Corey Carrier.
Actually yeah I’m confused about that part too, somebody on the YouTube comments claims thats a B-29 cockpit so their time travel device might be a giant B-29 if the time travel rumors are true. Definitely trying to make it look like the Millennium Falcon though.
Well…
Ford’s laconic charm, his ability in understated comedy in pivoting from overconfidence to desperation, and his careless-seeming vulnerability is what made him a star and arguably much of what distinguished Raiders from a bunch of imitators, and until he stopped caring he managed to carry some pretty crappy films on his charisma alone. You can see screen tests with Tom Selleck and Kurt Russell as Jones and Solo respectively, and while they’re both fine actors Ford has a particular quality that made him the go-to for the charming rogue. River Phoenix did a good job at playing a younger version of the character (despite not looking much like Ford physically) but the single extended cold open is essentially it’s own movie and doesn’t bear much comparison to Ford’s portrayal as the mature Indy, and Flannery played a somewhat different, more earnest take on the character that was appropriate for the tone of the show but there is a good reason he hasn’t been cast as an adult replacement for Ford. There is an argument for recasting but doing it as a completely different take on the character, i.e. with the Bond franchise, not as someone trying to imitate Ford’s performance.
The trailer to Dial of Destiny is…not promising. I see way to much use of what looks like poorly thought out CGI, and even if that is interim renders and not the final cinema cut it still just looks way too gamified, especially on the train and the car chase. What makes Raiders hold hold up so well is the immediacy of the practical effects sequences; no CGI is ever going to have the same sense of desperation as Ford and (his stuntman) being literally dragged behind a truck. That isn’t to say that CGI is necessarily bad; when used effectively, as in Jurassic Park or True Lies, it creates action sequences that look phenomenal in ways that could never be done practically. But the over-dependence on CGI to completely replace the actor/stuntperson just ends up looking like a well done videogame cutscene, and a lot of the action in that trailer definitely falls into that category.
I’m also unclear as to who keeps awkwardly shoehorning Phoebe Waller-Bridge into every possible role recently. I’m sure she’s a fine actress in many ways but she often just seems like a willow tree in the middle of a pine grove. She’s great for getting the incels raging about political correctness or whatever but honestly she seems really out of place even in this short trailer. As for the time travel plot element…just, no. Time travel is difficult enough in a film specifically built around it, and even then ends up either creating giant plot continuity issues or used as a cheap narrative reset to get the main characters out of a hopeless situation. Maybe I’m totally wrong and they’ve come up with an amazing novel time travel plot that works well with a pulpy matinee actioneer but I very much doubt it.
Stranger
It’s not a B-29, I’m pretty sure. At least not like the B-29 I had the privilege of crawling around in for a few hours. Glass pattern is different. There’s a super brief shot earlier in the trailer of a twin engined plane that looks like it also has a glass nose.
But that’s beside the point. I was cracking up at the obvious Star Wars reference. I wonder if the co-pilot has a very furry jacket.