What will the new but old friend Indiana Jones have prepared for us in the fifth and presumably last film with Harrison Ford as the archaeologist with a crooked smile, hat and whip always at hand? Indiana Jones and the Call of Fate it’s as funny as it is ridiculous at times, and purists having fun Raiders of the Lost Ark in a cinema from almost 42 years ago, we have fun again.
Steven Spielberg is no longer behind the cameras (along with Indy creator George Lucas are listed as executive producers). On the one hand, better, because the quarter of Indy (The realm of the crystal skull) had not lived up to the previous ones. He is now James Mangold (Loganothe best of the X-Men movies?) that gives him verve, but what he doesn’t get is a personal film, like the first three that had the signature, Spielberg brand.
Raiders of the Lost Ark it marked a before and after in adventure cinema, creating those “set pieces” or scenes of great impact that could be “cut” and seen independently, but which came together one after the other in perfect conjunction. Hollywood screenwriters have been copying the style for four decades. If it’s time to renew, Indiana Jones and the Call of Fate it is not meant to.
After a prologue in which Indiana is young – we are talking about 1944, the fall of the Third Reich is coming – and looks more like a wax doll with CGI effects, in the style of De Niro and Pacino in the Irishby Martin Scorsese-, and is after the Lance of Longinus, the knife used to draw the blood of Christ.
But oh, surprise, it’s fake, and on the train where the Nazis transport hundreds of stolen treasures is half of Antikythera, the cog created by the Greek mathematician Archimedes in the 3rd century BC
Whoever obtains it, it is later said, will be more powerful than a king, an emperor or the Führer: he will be a god, since the gadget allows its owner to control the forces of space and time.
Other than the shot of Thanos.
There, in 1944, Indy fights a Nazi, Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen). The prologue is 22 minutes long, and there are still over two hours of chases, explosions, deaths, and less humor than other Indiana adventures.
Then we find ourselves in the “present”: it is 1969, in New York, and she wakes him up in her apartment Magical mystery tourby the Beatles. She looks at Marion’s divorce papers, puts whiskey in her coffee, and walks away.
Indiana is retired (!), but teaches at Hunter College. There Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge, from Lots of fleas), who in the previous films would have been Indy’s romantic interest, and not his goddaughter. He hasn’t seen her for 18 years: Helena -daughter of Professor Basil Shaw (Toby Jones), who accompanied him on the adventure in 1944-, tells him that she too is an archaeologist and wants to accompany him to look for the other half of the artifact of Archimedes.
Obviously Voller didn’t die, but he is now the scientist with the surname Schmidt whom NASA has hired to put a man on the moon. In the middle of the parade in New York, anything is going to happen. And just like in 1944 there were motorcycle chases with sidecars (ring a bell? the temple of destiny?), now we will be riding in Manhattan.
And there will be many more in the course of the film, which goes from Tangier to Italy, and reserves surprises related, for better or for worse, to Indiana Jones with the Marvel superheroes. Not because of superpowers, you’ll understand why when it opens at the end of June.
There are a lot of winks for fans, especially Raiders of the Lost Arkfrom those animals that Indy fears to those kisses to give where it doesn’t hurt.
However, nearly 42 years later Indiana Jones is still alive and kicking, punching and shooting. He may be many years older (Ford is already 80 years old), but if what we’ve learned is that it’s the mileage that matters, well, know that Indiana will never let his hat hang.
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Source: Clarin
