As has become our tradition for Valentine’s Day J and I had a takeaway curry for dinner and watched a film I’ve not seen before but probably should’ve. This year it was the third of the Indiana Jones films. What can I say, I just don’t do films much 🙂
It’s been a bit weird watching the first three of these films over the last few years, partly because I saw the fourth film first (and twice) before I saw any of the others, partly because I know some of the references through osmosis of pop culture and only now have I seen where they come from. The thing that struck me that way from this particular film was the “you have chosen wisely” bit near the end. And the Grail diary reminded me of Drake’s journal in the Uncharted games. Obviously for everyone else that’s the other way round 😉
At first I felt the film was going to be just too cartoony for my tastes – the opening bit with Indy as a boy in particular. Tho I did like the fake-out where they try & set you up to think the leader of the team that find the cross in the first bit is Indy rather than the boy. And the origin story for the fear of snakes was entertaining too, even if it was the first of many bits during the film where I averted my eyes coz of all the wriggling or scuttling creatures.
In fact I think I enjoyed all the set pieces throughout the film, just ended up feeling like the whole wasn’t quite as good as the sum of its parts. The plot was very by-the-numbers just moving us from set piece to set piece and ultimately very predictable. Like the man who says “trust no-one” … is a bad guy. Like the fabled Grail … isn’t made of gold & jewels. So I ended up talking back to the screen more than once. Hopefully not too much to J’s irritation 😉 It’s hard to tell, tho, how much of that predictability is because I saw it 24 years after it came out – did it drive the cliché-isation of the plot? Or was it that clichéd in 1989?