OK, nobody’s going to get the joke in the title, but that’s OK, it’s not a very funny joke anyway.  Turns out that I have enough materal about Indiana Jones to write a blog about.  Just like Star Wars and Transformers, Indiana Jones was a pretty big part of my childhood.  In fact, there’s some aspects about Indiana Jones movies that I like even BETTER than Star Wars.  So grab your fedora and come along on an adventure!

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

The first movie came out when I was very young, so I imagine that I didn’t go see it in the theater.  I would’ve only been like, six years old.  Surely my parents thought that would be too young to go see it.  But the strange thing is that I DO remember seeing it.  Maybe not in theaters, maybe just on the new at the time TV cable HBO channel.  But I do know I must’ve saw it lots because there’s certain scenes that stick out in my mind the most, like running away from the giant katamari boulder, or fighting the boxer guy around the airplane.  So yeah, the first movie was very memorable. 

I know I must’ve been very young when I watched the first Indiana Jones movie, though, because when they’d get to the part where they open the Ark and that guy’s face melted off, I’d always go and hide behind the couch.  I didn’t like that part.  It’s funny because it looks so fake now.  So I know I saw the first movie before seeing any of the others anyway.  It’s a good movie.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Temple of Doom is probably my least favorite of the three movies.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a great movie, I just like the other ones better.  All the Indiana Jones movies are a bit unrealistic, but this one seemed to really push the limits.  I mean, they jumped out of a plane on a inflatable raft and while in the air, it never flipped over once and landed on the snow AND in the water butter side up!  And that’s just for starters!

I think the other thing I didn’t like about the second movie was that the leading lady this time around was even more annoying than the kid (of course I’m used to annoying little kids what with all my little brothers around…ha ha, just kidding, I love my little brothers lots).  I hear in the LEGO Indiana Jones game, the lady character in the second movie has a scream attack!  The leading lady in the first movie was better even though she drank too much, and the third movie’s leading lady ended up being a bad guy!  Oh yeah, the other reason why I didn’t like the second movie as much was because Indiana Jones forgot to fight any Nazis.  That’s one of the things he’s SUPPOSED to do!

Now, I DO remember seeing Temple of Doom in theaters.  I think this was the movie that caused them to change the ratings system to have a PG-13 rating.  Otherwise my parents probably wouldn’t have taken me to see it.  I didn’t hide behind the couch or anything, but I do remember thinking this movie was much scarier than the ones they normally took me to see.  And because of it, there are certain scenes that stuck out in my mind the most, even though it’s the movie I’ve seen the least amount of times.  Like the guy taking the heart out of the other guy and eyeball soup and monkey brains.

I think we can blame Temple of Doom’s mine cart scene for inspiring EVERY video game made after that to have an annoying roller coaster style mine cart level.  It’s almost a stereotype, really.  Who actually LIKES mine cart levels anyway?  They’re like ice levels, mostly annoying rather than fun.  At Six Flags Over Texas, they have a roller coaster that I like called the Runaway Mine Train, and when I was little and rode it, I’d always pretend I was Indiana Jones riding the mine cart.  OK, OK, I’ll come clean, I STILL do that when riding that ride.  Just don’t tell anyone, OK?

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

I think the third movie is my favorite.  I like it just a tiny bit better than the first movie because Indiana Jones’ dad (Sean Connery) rocked!  He was hilarious.  Like when they were in the plane, “Sorry son…they got us.”  And when they were in a hurry and running around, Indiana kept saying, “Come ON, Dad!”  I can’t wait to see what his dad does in the LEGO game.

The other thing the third movie introduced us to was a young Indiana Jones.  I remember later they even had a TV show called “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.”  I don’t remember it being very good, but I watched a few episodes at the time because a lot of it took place during WW1, and at the time I was studying WW1 in school.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

And now, nearly 20 years later, a new Indiana movie finally gets made.  I went and saw it last weekend.  I won’t spoil the plot or anything for those of you who haven’t seen it yet, but here’s a few snippets of my observations and opinions:

Well I think it got a little too X-Files-ish near the end. But that’s kind of OK because I like X-Files. I think near the end, they didn’t know how to carry the story along with clever writing, so the director and producer just threw a bunch of cool stuff that both liked into the movie in hopes of saving it. And knowing who the director and producer is, you can guess what that entails.

The bad guy lady was cool because she had a sword. If the movie was called Indiana Cary, here’s what I would have said, “OK Natasha, you can have the crystal skull. But you have to do something for me first. You have to say  ‘Where is moose and squirrel?’ I mean, seriously, if you had a short guy named Boris with a black hat around you, it would be perfect. So you can have this skull if you do that. It won’t do you any good anyway. It’s just a Halloween candy dish I found on sale at Target.”

The part with all the ants reminded me of a short story I had to read in middle school called Lillingen vs. the Ants.  I’m sure they were inspired by that story, too.  Except I felt sorry for the ant that got squished by the bad guy lady.  Even if it was probably a CG ant.  I hope those prairie dogs didn’t get all nuclear and mutated.  I think Indiana Jones should’ve kept one as a pet!

But the big question here is: Did I have fun? Was I entertained? And the answer to that is a big YOU BET! Even though I didn’t like it as much as the 1st or 3rd movies, I still had fun, and that’s all that really matters. 

Indiana Cary and the Marching Golden Cougar Army

One thing about Indiana Jones movies that most people are familiar with is the music.  Everyone knows the theme song.  But I am especially familiar with the music of the movies because when I was in high school, I was in the marching band.  And one year our marching show featured the music of the Indiana Jones movies.  And as those of you who were in band once know, you have to practice the music a LOT.  So the Indiana Jones music is forever ingrained in my brain now even after all these years.  I can even pick out the bass parts of the music when I watch the movies today (I played bass trombone in high school, it’s like a big trombone that sounds more like a tuba).  See, the subtitle of this section makes sense when you know that our high school mascot was the cougar and our colors were black and gold.

Anyway, for the Indiana Jones marching show, we played the main theme (of course), the love theme from the first movie, the airplane travel theme, and the Temple of Doom theme.  The drum section also had a solo that was the motocycle chase theme from the third movie.  Of course, being a bass player, I didn’t get to play the melody in any of those songs.  But we did play a little snippet of the Nazi theme from the third movie, which features lots of low brass, so I did get to go all out on that one.  You know, it’s the theme that goes “Dum, Dummmmm, dummmm, dummmm, dum-dum, dum-dum-dum, DUM, DUM, DUUUMMMMM.”

Speaking of the airplane travel theme, you know how during marching band shows, they’ll make pictures or spell out letters on the field?  Well during the travel theme, we made a giant airplane!  (I was part of the left wing)  We’d march as a plane from the left side of the field to the right.  And some of the color guard, you know, the girls who wave the flags, well some of them would follow the plane with a big red ribbon like the trail on the map.  And some of the other color guard girls were near the plane wings and spun propellers around.  In fact, I kept one of the light wooden propellers we used for practice (I snagged one when we were cleaning out the band hall one time), and I still have it in my room today!

The Last Crusade movie came out a couple of years before we did the Indiana Jones marching show.  During that time, one of the food places sponsoring that movie (think it was Pepsi), they had a contest with different first, second, and third prizes.  The first prize was probably a vacation or something.  Well I entered the contest and actually won the very last prize.  It was an Indiana Jones hat!  So later on, when we started practicing for the Indiana Jones marching show, I started wearing that hat to all the practices.  Of course I got made fun of a lot for wearing it because the other kids would say I wasn’t as good looking as Harrison Ford and stuff.  But by that time in high school, I stopped caring what other people thought about me and just had fun.  And by the end of the marching season, things just didn’t feel right at practice unless I did wear that hat.  I wish I could find that hat now, I’ve lost it along the way.

Out of all the marching shows we did in high school (western, Indiana Jones, medieval, and music from some Russian composer), my favorite show was the Indiana Jones show.  I was the most involved with that show over the others.  I even helped design the T-shirts we made for that year’s show (our band was really big).  The T-shirt had a map of Texas with an airplane going to Austin (where state marching competitions are held) and had the red line on the map and lettering font that looked like the movies.  But I also liked our Indiana Jones show because, even though we didn’t win state with it, it was the most crowd-pleasing show, and that’s more important to me than winning.  You know, I never had a desire to look at my old high school yearbooks or anything, but one thing I wish I did have was video tapes of our old marching shows.  I would love to show them to my little brothers (one of which is now in the same band I was).  And I could upload the shows on YouTube and show them to all of you, too!

Indiana Cary’s Electronic Adventures

Well, I’ve let enough of my band geekiness show through, now it’s time for my video game geekiness. I thought I’d talk about the Indiana Jones video games I remember playing.  I read an article on the Internet a few days ago that talked about ALL the Indiana Jones games ever made, and some of them I don’t even remember!  For instance, I didn’t know there was a SNES Indiana Jones 2-D platformer!  Just when you think you know everything about video games…

But one game I do remember was the Indiana Jones Atari 2600 Raiders of the Lost Ark game.  But I didn’t like it because I couldn’t figure out what you were supposed to do.  But honestly, and I’ll probably anger a lot of Atari fans, but I really didn’t like the 2600 that much.  Really, the only 2600 games worth anyone’s time were some of the ones made by Activision.

Speaking of Activision, they made an Indiana Jones style game that felt more like the movies than anything else did at the time.  And the movies probably helped the game’s popularity, too.  The game I’m referring to is Pitfall.  I didn’t like it much as a kid, but playing it now, I have a lot more respect for it.  And Pitfall 2 was fun, too.  And so was the 16-bit 2-D platformer: Ptifall: The Mayan Adventures.  Did you know there was even a Pitfall cartoon at one point?  Part of Saturday Supercade. 

My favorite Pitfall game was the most recent: Pitfall: The Lost Expedition.  It was a 3-D action adventure on the last generation of consoles (GameCube, PS2, etc.) and had a lot of elements of the old Pitfall game and even some Metroid style adventuring, too.  And it was creative and darn funny.  It even had references to old Pitfall games, like Quickclaw.  You should try and get it if you see it.  The makers of that game are working on a new Pitfall game for the Wii, so I’m going to keep my eye out on that one.

David Crane, the creator of Pitfall, must’ve been a fan of Indiana Jones because another one of his games, A Boy and His Blob for the NES, even had a similar theme song and title screen font.  I met David Crane one year at E3.  That was really cool, except he seemed kind of bummed out. Of course, I would be bummed out, too, if I got to go to E3 and had to spend the whole time in Kentia Hall like he did!

Anyway, back to Indiana Jones games.  I know it’s hard to believe now, but for a while a long time ago, I was more of a PC gamer than a console gamer.  This was when point and click adventure games were really big and LucasArts (LucasFilm Games back then) were leaders of the pack.  My favorite was Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, but I also enjoyed Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island, and The Adventures of Willy Beamish (OK, Willy Beamish wasn’t made by LucasArts, but it was darn good).  During this time, LucasArts made a really fun Indiana Jones point and click game called The Fate of Atlantis.  The story in that game was probably better than the one in Crystal Skull.  In fact, for years there’s always been a rumor about another Indiana Jones movie, and for the longest time I thought it would be a movie based on the Fate of Atlantis game.  I think there was also a 3-D Indiana Jones game on the N64 or PSOne or something, but I don’t remember playing it.

This coming week, the newest Indiana Jones game is swinging into stores, and that’s the LEGO Indiana Jones title.  At first I thought I would wait until the price goes down before I got it, like I did with the LEGO Star Wars games.  I mean, my friend described it best about the LEGO games: “They’re not very good games, but they are fun games.”  The LEGO games are a little buggy and wonky in places, but they’re still fun to play is what I think he means.  So I would never pay full price for them.  However, I did get a Target gift card from a sales contest at work a while back, and I have to use it SOMETIME, so I think next week a co-worker and I are going to run up to the nearby Target at lunch.  He’ll get the PS3 one to play with his kid and I’ll get the Xbox 360 one so I can get achievements and possible online play.  And I’ll use my gift card so I don’t have to pay full price for it after all!

Indiana Cary and the Infernal Marketing Machine

Finally, I’ll conclude with some of my favorite recent movie marketing cross promotions with the Indiana Jones film.  One of my favorite things about summer movies are some of the crazy marketing ideas people come up with, like Lex Luthor encouraging you to eat Krytonite green Doritos, or turning 7-11’s into Kwik-E-Marts.

One funny Indiana Jones toy I saw last time I went to Wal-Mart was a toy Indiana whip!  Of course, to make it safe for kids, it was all plush and short and really big around.  I bet if you curled it up a few times, you could even lay on it like a pillow!  I’m sure it made a whip sound when you cracked it.

Another funny Indiana Jones toy I saw was an Indiana Jones Mr. Potato Head.  I thought about buying it, but I have enough junk in my house as it is!  I DO have the Mr. Potato Head Optimus Prime, though.

Finally, I saw some Indiana Jones M&Ms in the candy aisle.  When they did Star Wars M&Ms, they even made some action figures of the M&Ms dressed up as Star Wars characters.  Normally I don’t collect Star Wars action figures, but I HAD to get a few of the M&M ones.  If they made M&M Indiana Jones action figures, I would have to get some of those, too.  Did you know the same advertising agency that brought us the California Raisins and The Noid also do the current M&M commercials and characters?

Well, that’s about everything about Indiana Jones that I can talk about.  Share your favorite Indiana Jones memories in the comments section.  Later!

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