The Indiana Jones Trilogy
The soon to be released Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the fourth instalment of the Indiana Jones franchise blindsided everyone when it crawled out of development hell last year.
Those who had already written off Harrison Ford as being too old to step into Indy’s dusty boots had clearly forgotten that he drunk from the Holy Grail in Last Crusade, which means he’s immortal, and therefore ‘too old’ doesn’t come into the equation.
The film, which was intended to faithfully recreate the feel of the first three films, is not overly reliant of cutting edge CGI; computers were only really used to edit certain stunts such as removing wires from stunt sequences.
The titular crystal skull seems to refer to the supposedly Mesoamerican artefacts widely believed to be fakes that were ‘discovered’ in the 19th Century. This quite literally represents a shift away from the traditional old world artefacts of the previous Indy films, by setting it in the New World.
Similarly, the focus on Nazis as the bad guys has been shifted, the villains this time round are those dastardly commies from the Soviet Union, the shape-shifting Cate Blanchett provides the villain of the piece, donning a bob cut and stepping into the boots of ruthless KGB agent Irina Spalko.
Even though the original films have been broadcast on Freeview recently, there’s not been a better time to get reacquainted with the series on DVD – this way the awesome face melting bit at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark won’t get cut by a squeamish pre-watershed BBC censor.
The Indiana Jones Trilogy box set (which, confusingly, contains four discs) is available for rental from all the top UK providers. The set comes with the three original films, and a disc of bonus material which, unlike the majority of DVD bonus features, is actually worth taking the time out to sit through, packed as it is with interesting insights; who knew that Tom Selleck was originally considered the top choice for the role and that Indiana’s original surname was Smith? OK, so these revelations are hardly new, and you can find everything on the internet, but where’s the fun in that?
Also, ordering the box set makes sense as it only counts as one order, as opposed to the three order slots ordering each film individually would.
