GEN X FIGHTERS & THE LAST CRUSADE
Back in 1989, you were either Indiana Jones or Luke Skywalker depending on your preference toward 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 times for us "Spielberg" and "Lucas" kids who were about to enter into a new decade (the 90s) as teenagers. What we perhaps didn't appreciate as we watched the sun go down on the Indiana Jones franchise in the third installment of a near-perfect trilogy was that between the swarthy archeologist and the young Jedi knight, we were actually looking at the two most pivotal hero archetypes for Gen Xers moving forward into the 21st Century. For little did I know back then while first watching 'Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade' at the Cheltenham Odeon when our Fedora-wearing hero had to test his own sense of faith in order to save his father (plus the civilised world) that our own generation would also have to face its own test of faith and embark upon its own crusade many decades down the line.
Often referred to as the lost or invisible generation perhaps there is a symbiosis between the lost boys of J.M Barrie's creation and our movie-obsessed generation X where often we found our Neverlands were being projected on 70-foot screens and we could barely distinguish between the magic of cinema and the everyday magic of our lives. Case in point was me kicking a ball into a shed each night at the end of the garden waiting patiently for E.T. to kick it back to me. And yes, I'm still waiting.
Now in the year 2023, I realise that with all the endless and anemic makeovers of our beloved heroes' lore from our childhood that there was a far greater significance to what they represented than any of the current woke studio execs will ever fathom.
I'll try and 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 that there was any more to say on the subject of Luke Skywalker and his journey from a desert Prince of Tattoine to transcendent Jedi Knight of the galaxy but as we grew older we realised that for some (looking to make money) there would be too much to say and like ever deteriorating xeroxes they never managed to have the same fresh quality of the original image.
So for most of us, Luke Skywalker's journey on screen ended back then in '83 and we learned well our basic lessons from the original trilogy and what it had to say about the innate belief and faith in Jedi Knights and Rebel Enterprises vs Storm Troopers and Galactic Empires.
These tremendous battles above the stars seemed very far away back then but as many of us grew up they came to seem ever closer to home as we realised that the war that Luke Skywalker and his allies fought was essentially a spiritual one for the soul of the universe. These days it feels remarkably similar in the West as we fight to salvage our crumbling civilization from ruination and total and utter collapse from forces far bigger than we might have ever imagined.
It seems for some of us 'lost generation' that we now understand our place in history and just as Luke intuits his own sense of destiny to play out whilst admiring the two suns of Tatooine, so, too, have many of us idle Xers suddenly found the greater meaning behind those early space dreams on screen inspired by Rebel Alliances and Jedi Knights.
INDIANAS
The character of Indiana Jones was not just 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 hell-bent on saving the universe from being taken over by the evil Galactic Empire, so, too, Indiana Jones in his own inimitable way fought against the Nazis from achieving world domination by saving religious items 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 an evil ideology and now, similarly, a few of us Gen Xers have finally awoken from our decades-long slumber and remembered that there is some part of our collective history also worth protecting now that we find we face our own adversaries in the guise of new rabid ideologues and identitarian fascists that are invariably on the rise. This then means that we now have some saving of culture and history to do ourselves. We're all Indiana Jones now, we might even say.
Of course, this current battle is a war of the mind and in protecting those foreign countries of the past and unknown places of the future, it also seems an invisible one.
An invisible war for an invisible generation.
It makes more sense than you might think. ^^
CONCLUSION
At this point of history, it can be said that Gen Xers have generally lived half their life before the internet and half their lives after it. They are both the Indiana Jones 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 their vague intuitive sense of spirituality to navigate with.
Previous generations before us had religion to guide their sense of faith.
We just had the movies.
And of course, the Force. ;-)