CHAPTER 19: THE FRANCHISE
Gary Gerani (editor, Topps bubblegum card series): As most fans know, Star Wars has been a cash cow property for Topps ever since the first 1977 Star Wars trading cards hit the market. But, surprisingly, this candy counter success was not repeated by the second of Lucas' great “serial” movies. When Raiders of the Lost Ark was announced and screened for us, the President of Topps, Arthur Shorin, was ecstatic. He thought he had another Star Wars on his hands, since the movie was entertaining as hell, and kids seemed to love Indy. We tied into the property, but it never, ever sold the way Lucas' science fiction extravaganza did. My theory at the time was, when you freeze the action for Star Wars and put that image on a trading card, you're still looking at exotic creatures in other-worldly environments, something pretty fanciful and compelling. But when you do the same thing with an Indiana Jones movie, it's mostly people in dusty clothing you're looking at—you need the movement, the kinetic excitement of the movie itself to recapture Raiders' charms. Picture cards can't quite give you that, sad to say. Even so, we happily tied into the sequel, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and eventually did an overview-type card series when the final Indiana Jones film (Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) was released. So ultimately, Topps has a proud history of releasing Indiana Jones-related products. It's just that it's a blip when compared to the company's mega-success with Star Wars, which continue to this day.
Scott Rogers (author, Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design): I have always been a fan of the Indiana Jones IP. Who doesn't want to play as a two-fisted, whip-wielding archeologist?! My favorite titles were Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures on the SNES, the underrated Indiana Jones and his Desktop Adventures for Windows and, of course, the incredible Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures. I only wished that they had made more Indy games, there weren't enough of them!
Steven Awalt: I'm a huge fan of Temple of Doom since back to 1984, and I enjoy Last Crusade and yes, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but Raiders stands very tall within the series and also within all adventure films throughout all of Hollywood history.
Joseph McBride: The most loathsome of the films, by far, is Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which is the most flagrantly racist, as well as filled with ghastly hyper-violence throughout, aside from a few comic set-pieces such as Kate Capshaw’s charming song number in Chinese. Spielberg was in a dark state of mind when he made that ugly film.
Scott Mantz: I will say that as far as the Indy sequels are concerned, Temple of Doom is still my favorite, even over The Last Crusade. As much as I love the scenes with Ford and Sean Connery in Last Crusade, Temple of Doom is much more fun and action packed. It's also much darker, as it was one of the films (in addition to Gremlins) that led to the creation of the PG-13 rating!
Zaki Hasan: Temple of Doom is a sequel that had the courage to swerve away from audience expectations. I wish we'd see that more often.
Scott Higgins: I think that when people return to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, they will be surprised by how 80s it seems. Raiders made the leap to “timeless icon” pretty quickly. As with Star Wars, it can be difficult to get critical distance from a film like Raiders. Doom isn’t burdened by being a “classic.” Things like the Dan Aykroyd cameo, Kate Capshaw’s haircut, and the “racy” sex jokes are abysmal in a very historically specific way.
Eric Lichtenfeld: Temple of Doom is not the masterpiece that Raiders is, but it’s a brave movie. For the most part, it has a reputation it doesn’t deserve, and it doesn’t have the reputation that it should. And visually, it’s practically a feast. The cinematography is some of my favorite of all time—not just of the series.
Cliff Stephenson: When Temple of Doom came out, I was visiting California and was fortunate enough to get to see it at the world-famous Mann’s Chinese Theater in 70mm. It was my first time at the Chinese and it couldn’t have been a greater experience. I’m actually one of “those people” who prefers Temple to Raiders. I know Raiders is a better movie, full stop, but I find Temple to be so gloriously well-paced, over the top and fun that it’s always the one I go to when given the choice. Maybe some of that is tied to that Chinese Theater visit in ’84, but it’s where I’ve lived for thirty-seven years now. (Temple of Doom was also the very first movie I ever bought on VHS in late 1986.)
Scott Higgins: Willie Scott is a really tough character to pull off—it requires subtlety and timing that Capshaw just doesn’t have. I used to think Willie was just a terrible character and a thankless role. I’ve changed my mind, probably because I’ve seen quite a lot of Jean Arthur, Claudette Colbert, and Barbara Stanwyck since then. Watch The Lady Eve, or It Happened One Night, and then tell me that the problem is the role.
Eric Lichtenfeld: The light touch that Short Round brings offsets the darkness of [Temple of Doom] nicely. And his relationship with Indy—somewhere between father-and-son and two brothers—gives the movie a warm underpinning, too.
Bruce Scivally: My favorite will always be the first, for the simple reason that all the sequels repeat elements of the first (some more successfully than others) and consequently, don't seem as fresh and inventive—although I do like the cleverness of the musical/action sequence that opens Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom; after that, the movie rapidly descends to bottom-of-the-barrel, ending as a tepid rip-off of 1939's Gunga Din. (Some say the original Indy was itself inspired by the 1954 film Secret of the Incas, starring Charlton Heston as a fedora-topped, leather-jacket-wearing adventurer; Indiana Jones costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis admitted that Indy's look was inspired by Secret of the Incas.)
Joseph McBride: I like the third film in the series, Last Crusade, because instead of Third World villains, it has villains we can all despise (Nazis). Last Crusade also has a more relaxed, expansive visual feel and a more interesting storyline than the others, with its religious overtones. (Spielberg’s films are full of Christian iconography and themes.) And it has that fascinatingly complex father-son tension between Indy and his dad (Sean Connery), which goes to the heart of Spielberg’s thematics.
Eric Lichtenfeld: Raiders is first—in both senses of the word. But it’s so clearly the best that the question I always find more interesting is where do Temple of Doom and Last Crusade come out in the battle for second place?
Bruce Scivally: There's a lot of fun in watching the interplay between Harrison Ford and Sean Connery in Last Crusade, and the script and Spielberg's staging of the scenes allows both to show off their comedic skills,
Scott Higgins: I’m happy to defend the other films, but no matter how much I love them, I always feel like I’m making a case for them (and allowances for them) in light of Raiders. The highest achievements of the other films (the tank-vs horse fight/chase in Last Crusade) and their great weaknesses (the various ex machina) are never quite as good or are just a bit worse than Raiders.
Mike Matessino: Raiders is clearly the tightest and most solidly successful of the series and is important because it’s the first one, but on a personal level I enjoy Last Crusade more. The themes of that picture, particularly the father/son aspect and the whole idea of a “leap of faith” resonate with me. When looking at all of the films I feel Last Crusade might be the only genuine Steven Spielberg movie of the series, at least thematically.
Scott Higgins: We should celebrate The Last Crusade, if only as a blip on our collective nostalgia radar. The film comes right at the moment that Spielberg begins to more or less mechanically “diversify” his output between prestige and popcorn/audience movies. The surrounding films all have this patina of serious ambition about them—The Color Purple (’85), Empire of the Sun (’87), Always (yes, even Always, also ’89). From here on, he would alternate between two kinds of film—Jurassic Park (’93)/Schindler’s List (’93); Lost World (’97)/Amistad (’97)—and we all quickly learned what to expect and not expect from him. But in ’89 it still wasn’t entirely clear which films belonged to which camp, or even if there were two camps. We could almost expect every bit as much passion, precision, and serious engagement in Last Crusade as we (or the critics) might in prestige bait. Arguably, Jurassic Park carried on the tradition of extremely carefully wrought, audience-pleasing, genre pics, which Jaws had promised, but by then the split was clear. Last Crusade, at the time, felt like a return to form for Spielberg—a flexing of the entertainment muscle. In retrospect, it was just the first swing of the pendulum between middlebrow and populist—the bloom coming off the rose. I’m nostalgic for that rose. But the film is also much more—it is, in fact, a good movie. A less flawed, more worthy follow up to Raiders. We should celebrate it as a fitting end to the trilogy. If we celebrate hard enough, we might erase all memory of Crystal Skull, and that sinking depression that comes with the announcement of a fifth installment.
Eric Lichtenfeld: Last Crusade is a well-loved movie. It’s brought lots of people lots of joy. And in a way, it’s the most accessible of the first three—it’s not the capital-C classic that is Raiders or the strange, dark detour that is Temple of Doom. And because it’s not a classic like the first or a purely cinematic achievement like the second, I think that when we celebrate Last Crusade, what we’re celebrating is our own memory of it, our own ongoing experience of it—even more than we’re celebrating the actual movie itself. But is that such a bad thing? To me, those are the best things moviegoing ultimately gives us. If they’re not worthy of commemorating, then I don’t know what is.
Jonathan Rinzler: Casting Sean Connery as Indy’s dad was a stroke of genius. All the father-son material in that film is a lot of fun and so well written and acted.
Zaki Hasan: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is my favorite Indiana Jones movie because it builds on our familiarity with the character and his world to ply humor from Sean Connery’s introduction into the mix as odd-man-out Dr. Jones Sr. Ford and Connery are having fun, Spielberg is having fun, and we can’t help but have fun along with them. For thirty-plus years, Last Crusade has been my go-to comfort food movie, and it’s in no danger of being replaced anytime soon.
Scott Higgins: Elsa Schneider’s no Marion Ravenwood. But then, she’s no Willie Scott. On balance, I’m more grateful that she’s no Willie Scott.
Eric Lichtenfeld: The greatest strength of Last Crusade is its tone. This movie returned the fun and breeziness to the series. Fairly or not, Temple of Doom is widely seen as when the franchise went off the tracks (an apt image considering the movie’s signature mine car chase). It just has so much darkness and gore and outright weirdness. Last Crusade corrects for that. That’s not even a full accounting, though. Last Crusade may have a light touch—even lighter than Raiders—but it also has resonance in just the right places. It’s light without being insubstantial. In that sense, it’s Spielberg at his most “Spielberg.” But at the same time, there’s something about this that has always felt a little calculated, even machined, to me. Maybe that’s because the movie is so obviously a correction for Temple of Doom.
Zaki Hasan: When I first saw Last Crusade I related to Indy. Now I’m old enough to relate to Henry Sr. Such is life.
Eric Lichtenfeld: Last Crusade plays like the end of a trilogy (even if it wasn’t truly a trilogy per se). And starting in ’81, and ending in ’89, it was series that encapsulated the decade, a decade which George Lucas and Steven Spielberg helped define, no less. So Last Crusade—especially the end—has a real feeling of summation. But now there’s Crystal Skull, a sequel largely rejected by fans who now double-down on the idea that the first three constitute the trilogy!
Scott Higgins: Last Crusade will always shine as the final film of the Jones trilogy. It is a fitting end to the series—thank god they didn’t make another!
Jonathan Rinzler: When they rode off into the sunset, I thought it was a great end to the trilogy.
Eric Lichtenfeld: The legacy of Last Crusade is that you can go home again, while the legacy of Crystal Skull is that you can’t.
Zaki Hasan: The Young Indiana Jones TV series was a noble failure. A better idea in concept than execution, due largely to what seems like George Lucas fundamentally misreading what audiences wanted out of an Indiana Jones series.
Richard Woloski (co-host, Skywalking Through Neverland): It seemed like the end of Indiana Jones as we knew him came with Last Crusade in 1989. Sure, there was the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles after that but that wasn’t the Harrison Ford version. Then in March 1995 Indy was back and this time he’s bringing us with him in the Disneyland attraction Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Forbidden Eye. Later the title was shortened to just Indiana Jones Adventure since no one ever called it Temple of the Forbidden Eye. I waited in line four hours that opening weekend just to join Indy on this new adventure. Even though the ride itself is just three minutes long, the adventure starts in the queue where you pass by the Nazi troop transport truck that was used in the filming of the desert chase in Raiders of the Lost Ark (which blew my mind when I found out that fun-fact just a few years ago). Dimly lit hallways led through booby trapped corridors. Then, after that long wait it was time to get in the jeep that takes you on a very bumpy ride that replicates the mine car chase in Temple of Doom. But the end of the ride features (spoiler) the large rolling boulder from Raiders and that was all I needed to see. And the ride was bookended by an animatronic Indiana Jones that was never up to Disney quality, why they still haven’t upgraded it I’ll never know. After seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981 I’ve always fantasized about my own Indiana Jones adventure and with this Disney attraction I finally got one.
Sarah Woloski: I went to Disneyland for the first time in my life the day before I started college at USC. The first attraction I ran to was Indiana Jones Adventure! Finally, I could be transported to the 1930s and a forbidden temple, with Indiana Jones leading the way. As Indy says during the ride, it was "BIG fun." Afterwards I only had my eye on one souvenir—an Indiana Jones fedora! It comes in handy when I want to Disney bound as my favorite adventurous archeologist.
Joseph McBride: The filmmakers had trouble eventually finding acceptable villains for these films because they became more aware of the problems stereotyping ethnic groups and with the crassness and casual brutality of the central character; eventually, in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Indy winds up on the side of the “natives” and returns treasures rather than looting them.
Bill Hunt: It’s fair to say that Crystal Skull’s notorious “nuking the fridge” moment quickly became the cinematic equivalent of Fonzie’s infamous “jumping the shark” TV episode of Happy Days. And yet…the movie still has its moments, some of them good and some completely ridiculous.
Steven Awalt: Crystal Skull disappointed what seems to be a large set of very vocal fans, but it did receive a majority of positive professional notices, and it was undeniably a box-office smash in 2008. [But] I see admirers like myself who consider Crystal Skull an important progression in the adventures of these beloved characters. It has its flaws, especially compared to Raiders or Temple of Doom, but where everything clicks, I still maintain it’s a damned good expansion of the Indiana Jones mythos. I loved the Chariots of the Gods angle, the Soviet interest in the paranormal and especially seeing an aged Indy in a whole new era. I hope we can see more films set in that time period and with similar themes—Cold War, paranormal, supernatural and super-ordinary themes that were a part of the American imagination from the 1950s to the 1970s.
Joseph McBride: Unlike many Indiana Jones fans, I sort of like Crystal Skull—or as someone called it, Indiana Jones and the Terrible Title—with all its absurdity, because I believe Spielberg approached it as a lark, a framework for spoofing his earlier work systematically, genre by genre. I even like the “nuking the fridge” scene and especially the self-satire of immolating the iconic Spielberg suburban home. What I like about it is the generally unnoticed fact that Spielberg is amusing himself by parodying his work in various genres. The destruction of the fake suburban town—“Doom Town,” or Spielbergland, in effect—is the best part of the film. Spielberg’s gift for parody is rarely appreciated, but it’s an integral part of his work.
Zaki Hasan: Crystal Skull was possibly the most disappointing theatergoing experience I’ve ever had in my life. I’ve softened on it since then, but seriously...woof.
Steven Awalt: I hope that critical notices about the outré "alien" theme in Crystal Skull don't send the filmmakers back to safer ground like we saw with Last Crusade after outcry toward Temple of Doom in 1984.
Laurent Bouzereau: Raiders is the best of all the four films. It sets the tone and has an innocence to it. But I have to say that each of the other films are also quite special and original. I have experienced them through the years and have enjoyed rediscovering them through my documentaries.
Scott Mantz: Should the Indiana Jones series continue without Harrison Ford? Well, I'm not sure the series should continue even with Harrison Ford—that last movie, Crystal Skull, was pretty bad! In fact, it was so bad that I still refer to the film series as The Indiana Jones Trilogy! That last movie doesn't even exist to me. Of course, they're filming a 5th movie as we speak, and I'm hopeful it will represent a rebound for the series, if for no other reason than because it's being directed by James Mangold, who makes great movies in any genre (Walk the Line, Logan, Ford v Ferrari). But if it's bad, my fear is that it will dilute the series in the same way that the Star Wars prequels and sequels diluted the Original Trilogy. But, hey, I hope I'm wrong, and if it's great, I will happily eat my words!
Mike Matessino: I’m all for one more Indiana Jones movie with Harrison Ford that wraps up the series in an appropriate and satisfying way, validates all four of the films (as well as the Young Indiana Jones series), and which perhaps sets things up for a reboot in a way that audiences will accept and get excited about. I fully believe that something like that is achievable.
Eric Zala: I tend to agree with Spielberg, that for the character of Indiana Jones…there is Harrison Ford, and there are facsimiles. Yet, I would love to live in a world where one can look forward to more. Ultimately, I like the idea of the passing of the torch. If not to Indy’s son in the 4th chapter…perhaps to his daughter in the 5th? I am open.
Bruce Scivally: In a way, the Indiana Jones series is the inverse of the original Star Trek movies. With Trek, it's the even-numbered entries that are the best (The Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home, The Undiscovered Country); with Indy, it's the odd-numbered ones (Raiders and Last Crusade). That bodes well for Indy 5's prospects.
