Column: The new ‘Indiana Jones’ trailer will make you nostalgic — for a thriving movie culture
The official trailer for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” dropped today and I am so excited it’s embarrassing.
I knew it was coming and I thought I was prepared, in my jaded covered-this-business-for-decades way.
But I wasn’t. I laughed, I cried, I watched it five times in a row and immediately marked its June 30 opening on the calendar.
Not the one on my phone; the old-fashioned paper one that hangs beside the refrigerator. Then I watched the trailer one — OK, two more times.
Like I said: embarrassing.
After years of relative radio silence, Harrison Ford is suddenly everywhere, playing a craggy cowboy in “1923” and bringing pathos and deadpan comedy as a therapist in “Shrinking.” And I would be lying if I said I did not scan each of these performances for some glimmer of my first real cinematic love/hero, Indiana Jones.
And now Indy’s back, in the flesh and the hat (or at least, a hat), with Phoebe Waller-Bridge at his side and the incomparably villainous Mads Mikkelsen as his nemesis. Does Lucasfilm have a computer chip attached to my id?
Yes, it is unsettling to see Hollywood, in its desperation for victory in the war for audiences, raising an army of the dead. But at this point, whatever works.
Was I excited when Tom Cruise resurrected “Top Gun” to bring crowds streaming into pandemic-emptied theaters? Of course I was, but in a much more philosophical way. “Top Gun” and its sequel, the Oscar-nominated, “Top Gun: Maverick” are masterful crowd-pleasers, with just enough romance and bromance to make them date-night favorites. But Tom Cruise’s Maverick is a mountaintop icon, cool rather than warm, with an emotional range that runs from taut shoulders to clenched jaw.
Easy to admire, difficult to love.
Indiana Jones, on the other hand, had everyone swooning like the students taking his archaeology classes from his first appearance. The ultimate summer movie, “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” which I saw while still in high school, bridged entire generations. A seemingly mild-mannered professor with a side gig searching for buried treasure and battling Nazis (often on horseback), he displayed the kind of serial heroics my parents enjoyed. But as written by Lawrence Kasdan, he was also quite modern. Funny, occasionally childish and casually sexy, he was a hero who made mistakes, got his feelings hurt and was afraid of snakes.
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There was nothing distant about Indiana Jones; he was usually dusty, sweaty, wounded and ill-shaven. And we all wanted to be him. Or date him. Or at least do a few shots with him in a Moroccan bar. The love was unconditional and, for some of us, a trifle insane. (When the Indiana Jones ride opened at Disneyland, I was eight months pregnant and, ignoring all the medical warnings, got halfway through the cave that leads to the ride before common sense turned me back.)
That love did not, however, extend to the entire franchise. The first and third films — “Raiders” (1981) and “Indiana Jones and the Lost Crusade” (1989) are splendid; the second, “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” (1984) not so much. As for the fourth, 2008’s “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” well, it’s best to just draw a veil.
Given the law of odds and evens that has governed the films, No. 5 should be a good one. Still it would make sense to view the “Dial of Destiny” trailer with, if not trepidation, then at least something more measured than wild, tearful, almost painful excitement. What if it’s terrible? It could so easily be terrible. Seeing Waller-Bridge in her first big acting role since “Fleabag” is amazing, but Cate Blanchett was in “Crystal Skull” and look how that turned out.
Early hysteria over early rumors that Ford (who is 80) was digitally “aged down” for flashback scenes was quelled by the revelation that though AI technology is involved, so was “archival material.” “The face is my face,” Ford has said.
He was a young favorite -- Short Round in ‘Temple of Doom,’ Data in ‘The Goonies’ -- then he left acting, or rather, acting left him. Now he’s back in ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once.’
“Dial of Destiny” takes place in 1969, as 70-year-old Indy faces retirement, but rather than involving him in the Vietnam War or the space race, it sends him searching for an artifact he encountered, along with Nazis, as a young man.
Unlike Cruise, Ford, who is 80, does not appear to have spent any time in a cryogenic chamber between this film and the last. His voice deeper and more gravelly, his face deeply lined. But he can still crack a whip, take a fall, mount a horse and, more important, that sexy sideways smile is still there, as is the easy ability to sell the inevitable transition from “are you crazy” skepticism to narrow-eyed resolve. There appears to be at least one scene on a train — always a cinematic hallmark of greatness — and Indy rides that horse, through a subway tunnel!
Not surprisingly, for a certain demographic (of which I am definitely part), the trailer is a euphoria-inducing injection of pure, high-quality nostalgia.
But it’s more than just the pleasure of seeing a beloved character again. Watching the clips flash by to the deeply Pavlovian strain of John Williams’ iconic theme music transported me to a time when going to the movies was a part of, if not daily, then weekly life. When theaters were hubs, like train stations, where you went with your entire family, or on dates or with a group of friends. There you would inevitably bump into other families or friends you hadn’t seen in ages, people passing each other on the way to separate or communal journeys to every place imaginable.
In a way I’m glad there are months before “Dial of Destiny” comes out. Months in which to watch the old films (and, if you haven’t seen them, “1923” and “Shrinking”), months in which to savor the anticipation and plan where you will see the film and with whom. I hope the film is as good as the trailer, but for today it’s enough to have respite from the ongoing turmoil of the film industry, with all the dithering over theatrical versus streaming and endless concerns about box office, to feel for a moment or two that old movie magic.
See that figure on the horizon? Indiana Jones is on his way to herd us all back into movie theaters.
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