The first teaser trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has just been released…and I must say, it’s the first movie since Superman Returns that has begun to fuel some long lost enthusiasm and anticipation.
Indiana Jones is another fond part of my childhood. Hell…it’s the golden age of my childhood. When Star Trek and Doctor Who dominated my television world, and Superman, Star Wars and ET ruled the box office. An era of magnificent blockbusters and super-films that has long since given way to wave after wave of bog-standard, CGI factory-line creations…it’s also yet another return by Hollywood to the glory days of the 1980s.
It would seem that the U.S. movie and TV making machines are only capable of working in cycles of 20 years: just as the 1970s reached back to the 50s for American Graffiti, Happy Days and Laverene & Shirley, the early 21st century seems obsessed with returning to the era that gaves us some of the biggest movie and television hits we old ones recall so fondly. Rambo is hacking his way through cinemas already, and Knight Rider is returning to television screens this Sunday…it’s only natural for another Indy film to follow.
But I’m hoping the imagination, the wit, and the enormous, epic scope of the previous Indy films is included as part of the package. These weren’t simply cardboard thin adventures…but an attempt at a vision of bringing old-fashioned, Saturday morning serials to life on the big screen. An attempt to bring excitement, passion and warm smiles to the faces of adults longing for their childhood…and on that level, it succeeded brilliantly. Certainly, in a decade known for its vapidness (to say nothing of its big hair, big shoulder pads and mullets), the Indiana Jones films were an island of quality in a sea of outrageousness.
I will be taking my history students to see Indy as part of a museum field trip this May. Many of them have actually never seen an Indiana Jones film (pause while I faint in disbelief). I’m hoping that the heady combination of history and action-adventure is enough to fire their imaginations…the way these movies fired my own. This is something I’m looking forward to…and I haven’t looked forward to anything in quite some time. I just hope it doesn’t disappoint me…
…then again, judge for yourself and watch the trailer. 
