Steven Spielberg likes to talk about his films, and he likes to make long films – like Scorsese, Tarantino and Nolan. He shares other similarities with them: he has never done an audio commentary or director’s cut. That can mean two things: too lazy, or too braggart – if you can bring films to the cinema as you want, you don’t need a director’s cut afterwards; and afterwards discussing scenes for the home cinema is probably too time-consuming for him. The umpteenth edition of the “Indiana Jones” works would have benefited from such additions; the extras alone are known.
Part five, “The Wheel of Destiny”, which is now being released in cinemas, will also be compared more sharply with the previous ones because James Mangold has replaced Spielberg as director. Chard tends to be grumpy, over-characterizing and romanticizing old age. In contrast, parts three and four, “The Last Crusade” and “The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, are likely to reveal their strengths. All lessons about wear and tear, longing for death and forgiveness are conveyed less in dialogue than in action scenes – the anger of the junior (Harrison Ford) at the overpowering senior (Sean Connery) erupts after a brief quarrel in a sharp salvo of Indy’s machine guns against real opponents who Nazis.
The four adventure films, covering a period from 1935 to 1957, also tell the story of a driven man who by no means always knew why he should serve the state, which later also persecuted him as a “communist”. The archaeologist is looking for treasures that he has to deliver – to the museum. The Ark of the Covenant from “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, as Indy geeks have recognized, would not have fallen into Hitler’s hands even without him. All he had to do was find the Sankara Stones from the “Temple of Death” to keep zombies from overrunning the world. What was Spielberg thinking with all this? One would have liked to hear that in an audio commentary.
(Paramount Home Entertainment)
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