FORTUNE AND GLORY AND THE LAW OF DIMINISHING RETURNS

I suppose I shouldn't have peered in like those Nazis do with the Ark of the Covenant in 'Raiders Of The Lost Ark' (1981) but that Pandora's box of childish things lured me back to see the old boy one last time.

Funnily enough, on my way to the cinema, I bumped into a character straight out of an Indiana Jones movie. He was a commando who'd seen action in Iraq 2 and the Afghanistan war and told me about how two weeks after 9/11 he was in Spin Ghar (White Mountains) not far from where Bin Laden was hiding before the bearded one got away like the perennial Hollywood villain. He then proceeded to tell me some fascinating esoteric information about King James which sounded a little Dan Brown at times but compelling nonetheless.

Anyway, I digress. The main reason I went to watch 'Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny' was for one particular detail of the story I'd heard about which was to do with an early part of the film set around the time of the moon landings in 1969 where Indy is now an old man and America and the world is fast headed toward the future while he's still stuck in the past. Some time ago I had written a screenplay with my co-writer entitled 'The Moon And You' which was also set in the exact same year and was ostensibly how the moon as a romantic symbol was killed by the first moon landing when the Apollo 11 crew speared it like a whale with the American flag, putting those poets of the past and in our case a fictional Broadway lyricist who'd always written songs about the moon out of business.

I liked the idea of an old Indiana Jones who finds refuge in the past as his youth and days of adventure have now seemingly vanished. There was, of course, in contrast, the somewhat disconcerting aspect of watching a digitally de-aged Harrison Ford in the opening sequence set during World War 2 which begs the question of whether Hollywood is not dissimilar to the Nazis in this franchise, seeking powerful artifacts and tools to help them achieve immortality. In this sense, Disney has found their own holy grail in AI and I'm sure they'll forge ahead with no concern for the consequences of what this process does to the authentic experience of cinema.

The other great irony, of course, is that it would have been useful to have an actual dial of destiny to go back in the past and fix the script and sort out that absolute mess of a second act where the only jeopardy I could see ahead of me was whether my eyes would remain open for the remainder of the movie. It's easy with hindsight to see what to fix what is now history just as the ageing archeologist hopes to do in the final act, but there is also a sense that like the future, it's always just beyond our grasp. All we can ever really do is focus on the present and in many ways that is the lesson that Indiana learns, even if it comes at a hefty cost for both him and Disney ($300 million).

Back in the old days of Raiding Arks and exploring Temples of Doom, Indy claimed to be all about "fortune and glory".

Now there's less fortune and even less glory.

But then again, we, the audience, who've grown up with Indiana Jones and Luke Skywalker as our generational screen heroes can always go back to the past via our own digital or analogue dials of destiny and watch the original classics over and over again.