With the latest Indiana Jones epic now on DVD, This Weekend’s Film Festival wants to look back on his adventures. Due to only four feature outings, the fifth film in the lineup is clearly influenced by Dr. Jones and the serials that inspired him. The four INDIANA JONES film will play in chronological order (which doesn’t mean in the order of release). While it was recently reviled on the season premiere episode of SOUTH PARK, KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL does have some defenders, myself included. While it has its flaws, the film did capture some of the adventurous fun features in the original RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. So dust off your Fedora, pop some popcorn, check out the opening act and then judge for yourself the merits of the INDIANA JONES series.

As I said in my original review of SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW, “[the film is] like watching Flash Gordon, Indiana Jones and the cast of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and WAR OF THE WORLDS all wrapped into one.” Mixing globetrotting adventure with vintage sci-fi, the story finds hero-for-hire Sky Captain (Jude Law) teaming with plucky reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) to uncover the secret plans of the mysterious Dr. Totenkopf. Giant robots flying into Manhattan. Black cloaked female assassins lurk the streets. Strange experiments. Fantastic flying machines. They all make up this world, which is bathed in a nearly sepia tone. Law and Paltrow create characters that harken back to Golden Era performances such as Lawrence Olivier and Katharine Hepburn. This serial-inspired sci-fi action flick recaptures the day when adventures were supposed to be fun not sadomasochistic.

Speaking of sadomasochistic, INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM starts off our INDY retrospective. The darkest of the series, TEMPLE OF DOOM was the follow-up to RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, but was actually a prequel, before the word was coined. Indiana Jones, more interested in “fame and fortune” than history, battles Chinese gangsters and an Indian blood cult. Along for the adventure is the prissy American singer Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) and his Chinese orphan sidekick Short Round (Ke Huy Quan) as they try and stop the world domineering plans of Mola Ram (Amrish Puri). Featuring human sacrifices, child slaves, blood drinking, eyeball soup, this twisted story in the Indiana Jones series helped raise the call for the PG-13 rating. Indy and his sidekicks have to survive a poisoning, a pilot-less plane ride, a cavern filled with bugs, pits of lava, a mineshaft chase and being trapped on a massive rope suspension bridge. In Short Round Indy has admiring student, and with Willie, he gets a pretty albatross. In the end, a more self-centered Indy learns the importance of helping others. As I said in my original review, “And Harrison Ford brings the perfect “oh crap” quality to his smart hero that always makes every impossible situation even more fun.”

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK was producer George Lucas and director Steven Spielberg answer to James Bond. Taking the suave hero and globetrotting from that series and mixing it with the ancient myths and locales of classic adventure serials, Lucas and Spielberg crafts a new iconic hero in Indiana Jones. Brought to life with a resourceful resilience by Harrison Ford, the famed archeologist must re-team with his ex Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) to discover the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis get their hands on it. The irony of the Nazis using a Jewish artifact to control the world is just part of the humor than underlines the action. From the opening cave sequence to the fight at Marion’s bar to the Arab market to the truck chase to the snake pit to the airfield battle to the submarine escape to the final scene, the film is nearly wall-to-wall action, each subsequent scene standing as a classic action set piece on its own. As I said in my original review, “RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK is a sweeping voyage that takes the best of Golden Age serials and mixes it with a Nazi smashing fantasy. What Spielberg accomplishes is nothing less than joyous.”

With the title, INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE, many thought this would be the last Indiana Jones adventure, but in reality it just closed the first trilogy in the series. As I said in my original review, “If RAIDERS is a globetrotting adventure and TEMPLE OF DOOM is an impenetrable fortress mission than LAST CRUSADE combines a rescue mission yarn with a treasure map adventure.” Indy is recruited by greedy collector Walter Donovan to aid him in discovering the Holy Grail. The winkle is that his father Henry, played with a matter-of-fact fatherly quality by Sean Connery, has been taken prisoner while doing just that. Femme fatales, spies, double crosses, European locales, all give this Jones adventure its closest Bond flavor. Yet, rat-filled Venice catacombs, Nazi zeppelins, tanks chases and secret temple booby traps are all the kind of set pieces that have become a signature of the Indiana Jones franchise. Ford and Connery have a great rapport as a father and son whom are the same in many ways, but different in just as many that their relationship is combative. Following DOOM, CRUSADE brought a higher sense of fun back to the series. This is clearly stated in opening flashback sequence to when Indy was a teen, which reminds us that adventure can be right around the corner.

So we close with the latest, INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL. Most critics overlooked its flaws and gave it positive marks, evidenced by its 77% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. As I said in my original review, “CRYSTAL SKULL, with its new iconic villains and interesting twists of myths, actually breaths new life into those areas, which the series hasn’t had since RAIDERS.” Set in the 1950s, the fourth installment does a good job bridging the gap between the first three films and the time elapsed in the fictional world. Indiana, played wiser by Harrison Ford, has a new sidekick in greaser Mutt Williams, played by rising star Shia LaBeouf. Instead of Nazis the villains are Commies, including one of the series best baddies Irina Spalko, played iconicly by Cate Blanchett. The new legend surrounding the crystal skulls brings the series into the modern myths of the 1950s, while retaining some of the classic ancient myths. Even with too many sidekicks, loads of implausibility, and some outright silliness, INDY 4 won me over with its sense of fun. In the tradition of the serial, director Spielberg and producer Lucas upped the ante, maybe even poking fun at sequels upping the ante too much. Four waterfalls and lead-lined refrigerators seem like a touch of self-parody to me.

So the adventure begins. To book your ticket head to the video store, update the rental queue, check out Zap2It.com for TV listings, or buy the films on DVD at the below links and help support the site in the process.

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Buy “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” Here!

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Buy “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” Here!

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Buy “Raiders of the Lost Ark” Here!

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Buy “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” Here!

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Buy “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” Here!