words yvonne teh

Will Indiana Jones once again raid our hearts and the world’s box offices?

He has been played on TV by Sean Patrick Flanery, Corey Crainer and – as a 93-year-old – by the late George Hall. A young version of the fictional adventurer cum archaeology professor whose trademark fedora and battered leather jacket are on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s American Museum of History in Washington, DC, was also essayed on film for a few precious minutes by the late River Phoenix. However, for millions – if not billions – of people the world over, by far the most memorable portrayal of the iconic character known as Indiana Jones has been by Harrison Ford in the three 1980’s action blockbusters that have cemented his place among movie legends forever.

Wait-a-minute. 1980s? Was it that long ago since this bullwhip-wielding individual last appeared on the big screen? Yes, really. This fact hit us in the bc office after a casual conversation revealed that some of our younger staff members were not even in primary school when the third Indiana Jones movie was released. Hence we decided it would be worth devoting a page in the magazine to revisiting some details about these cinematic classics and the charismatic actor who, 19 years after he last took it on, will be reprising a role that no doubt calls for much derring-do in the highly anticipated Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

A master carpenter – who made cabinets for George Lucas and worked on Francis Ford Coppola’s office expansions – before rocketing to movie stardom, Harrison Ford achieved major film fame playing the buccaneering Han Solo in George Lucas’s Star Wars (1977). In between the first and second Star Wars movies (or Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) as they are now formally known), he also starred in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), the gloriously entertaining Steven Spielberg film – which George Lucas also had a major hand in – that introduced the intrepid Dr Henry ‘Indiana’ Walton Jones, Jr, to the world.

An even more exotic and outlandish prequel – it was set in 1935, a year before the events of the first film – followed three years later. Beginning in Shanghai – where it picked up companions for our hero in the form of shrill-voiced nightclub singer Wilhelmina ‘Willie’ Scott (Kate Capshaw) and the spunky Chinese boy referred to as Short Round (Ke Huy Quan) – before moving to India for the bulk of its story, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) also did gangbusters at the global box office but nonetheless had its share of critics; including those who badly missed the original movie’s gutsy heroine, Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), along with others unable to overlook factual goofs like the usually very knowledgeable Dr Jones thinking there were vampire bats in India when they are native only to South America.

Focusing on events that largely take place two years after the first Indiana Jones film, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) was released eight years after Raiders of the Lost Ark. Maybe to help detract from Harrison Ford’s aging, this third rollercoaster ride of a movie added the gruff Sean Connery to the cast as Indiana’s father, Professor Henry Jones, Sr. At the same time, however, it marked somewhat of a return to the winning formula of the first film, with the despicable Nazis as the villains once more and much sought-after treasure coming in the form of Judeo-Christian material culture.

This time around, director Steven Spielberg, producer George Lucas and co probably realized full well that there’s no denying that quite a few years have passed since the public last accompanied the snake-hating archaeologist on an original adventure.

Consequently, the events of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull takes place at the height of the Cold War, in 1957 – a full 19 years after those of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. So, gone are the Nazis and, in their place, we have Soviet agents led by ice-cold Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett). Absent from the film too is our hero’s dad. However Indiana’s beloved, the feisty Marion Ravenwood, is back in an Indiana Jones movie for the first time since Raiders of the Lost Ark.

This long awaited fourth Indiana Jones movie also features new characters, notably a youthful rival known as Mutt (Shia Le Beouf) along with fellow academics Mac (Ray Winstone), Professor Oxley (John Hurt) and Dean Stanforth (Jim Broadbent). Will they, together with Marion and Indiana, make for a winning team against the Soviets and at box offices internationally? Suffice it to say that we have as little doubt about this as that, at some point in the film, we will hear our hero proclaim that a treasured item “belongs in a museum” as his considerable charm shines through in a show sure to thrill and entertain!