GEN X FIGHTERS & THE LAST CRUSADE
Back in 1989, you were either Indiana Jones or Luke Skywalker, depending on your preference for the future (sci-fi) or the past (Saturday matinee adventure movies).
Some, like me, were both.
The legendary movie summer of '89 was perhaps the pinnacle of cinema-going for us "Spielberg" and "Lucas" kids, who were about to enter a new decade—the '90s—as teenagers. What we perhaps didn't appreciate, as we watched the sun set on the Indiana Jones franchise with the third installment of a near-perfect trilogy, was that between the swarthy archaeologist and the young Jedi knight, we were witnessing the two most pivotal hero archetypes for Gen Xers as we moved into the 21st century.
Little did I know back then, watching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade at the Cheltenham Odeon, that when our fedora-wearing hero had to test his own sense of faith to save his father (and, incidentally, the civilised world), our own generation would one day face its own test of faith—and embark upon its own crusade—many decades later.
Often referred to as the lost or invisible generation, perhaps there is a kind of symbiosis between the Lost Boys of J.M. Barrie's creation and our movie-obsessed Generation X, where we often found our Neverlands projected on 70-foot screens, barely distinguishing between the magic of cinema and the everyday magic of our lives. Case in point: me, kicking a ball into a shed each night at the end of the garden, patiently waiting for E.T. to kick it back. And yes, I’m still waiting.
Now, in the year 2023, I realize that amid the endless and anemic makeovers of our beloved childhood heroes, there was a far greater significance to what they originally represented—something today's "woke" studio execs may never fully grasp.
I'll try to explain.
SKYWALKERS
After watching the final scenes of Return of the Jedi play out in the festive Ewok forest back in 1983, none of us had any reason to believe there was more to say about Luke Skywalker and his journey—from desert prince of Tatooine to transcendent Jedi Knight of the galaxy. But as we grew older, we realised that for some (particularly those looking to make money), there would be far too much to say. Like ever-deteriorating Xeroxes, the later attempts never managed to capture the fresh quality of the original image.
For most of us, Luke Skywalker's journey on screen ended in '83. We learned the essential lessons from the original trilogy—lessons about belief, faith, and the battle between Jedi Knights and Rebel Alliances versus Stormtroopers and Galactic Empires.
Those tremendous stories above the stars once felt very far away. But as we grew up, they began to seem eerily close to home. We came to realise that the war Luke Skywalker and his allies fought was, at its core, a spiritual one—for the soul of the universe.
These days, it feels strikingly similar in the West, as we struggle to salvage our crumbling civilisation from what appears to be ruin and total collapse, driven by forces far greater than we could have imagined.
It seems that, for some of us in the so-called "lost generation," we’re only now beginning to understand our place in history. Just as Luke sensed his own destiny unfolding as he gazed at the twin suns of Tatooine, so too have many of us idle Gen Xers suddenly found a deeper meaning behind those early space dreams—dreams sparked by Rebel Alliances and Jedi Knights.
INDIANAS
The character of Indiana Jones was not simply a direct throwback to old adventure movies—he was also an unlikely protector of holy, sacred relics from nefarious forces. Just as Luke Skywalker, the young Jedi prince, was determined to save the universe from being overtaken by the evil Galactic Empire, so too did Indiana Jones, in his own inimitable way, fight to prevent the Nazis from achieving world domination by rescuing religious artifacts such as the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail from their black leather-gloved clutches.
Indiana was protecting the past from being rewritten by a malevolent ideology. And now, similarly, a few of us Gen Xers have finally awoken from our decades-long slumber and remembered that there is a part of our collective history worth protecting—as we find ourselves facing new adversaries in the guise of rabid ideologues and identitarian fascists, invariably on the rise.
This means that we now have our own culture and history to safeguard.
We're all Indiana Jones now, you might even say.
Of course, this current battle is a war of the mind—and in defending those foreign countries of the past and unknown places of the future, it also feels like an invisible one.
An invisible war for an invisible generation.
It makes more sense than you might think. ^^
CONCLUSION
At this point in history, it can be said that Gen Xers have lived roughly half their lives before the internet and half after it. They are both the Indiana Joneses of history and the Luke Skywalkers of the future—moving forward with humanity’s ever-accelerating march into a tech-heavy, uncertain dystopia, armed only with a vague, intuitive sense of spirituality to navigate by.
Previous generations had religion to guide their sense of faith.
We just had the movies.
And, of course, the Force. ;-)