He chose...poorly
Well, that sucked. There are myriad problems with the latest installment of
Indiana Jones: Harrison Ford is too old, Shia LaBouef too much of a blank, the Soviets too poor a substitute for the Nazis. The largest seems to be that Jones himself, intended as a reconstruction of 1930's and 40's Saturday morning serials, has so transcended his source material that simply up and transporting him to a new era - the 1950s - fresh with its own brand of pop signifiers, simply doesn't work. Sure, the fish out of water feel helps make the central fact of the film - star Harrison Ford's apparent advanced age - sit more gracefully: at home in the 1930s, battling fascists for iconic Judeo-Christian relics, Indiana Jones is a stranger in a strange land navigating the vicissitudes of the Atomic Age. However, the changes divorce the character from his own mythology - rather than the rogue rugged individualist of the original trilogy, now Jones is a Red-baiting government stooge - and place what pseudo-history those films invested in their MacGuffins entirely on the back burner, reducing this artifact-grab to sub-Scooby Doo levels. I would be remiss if I didn't congratulate Mssrs. Spielberg and Lucas (and their billed screenwriter, David Koepp) on the ingenious poison pill that makes it impossible to divulge the most noxious element of the film without spoiling an already overripe plot: let's just say that the Times' Manohla Dargis was spot on
when she pointed out the similarities to
Stargate.
He chose...poorly
