After weeks...months...years of waiting, a new Indiana Jones trailer debuted on Thursday. Who would have thought that after 19 years the khaki clad, bullwhip toting, fedora wearing, treasure hunting ladies' man would be back. So how does he look after going missing for almost two decades? Not too shabby.
The trailer shows that eventhough he may be older, he's still the same old Indy. He's still getting chased through ancient temples and fighting bad guys (but this time its the Soviets, not the Nazis). The trailer gives us a look back on Indy's past adventures, shows some quick clips of action scenes (including Mayan? warriors), and hits us with some quick one liners. However, theres no real clues as to the plot. But being a teaser trailer, I wouldn't expect that much anyway.
The only real clue in the trailer is the shot of a box marked "Roswell 1947", furthering the idea that this installment will deal with aliens and maybe even link to Spielberg's
Close Encounter. This seems a little far fetched but, personally, I like it. I think we saw enough of the middle east and surrounding area in the first three movies. It will be interesting to see what happens in South America this time around. There are enough theories about aliens interacting with ancient civilizations to make this idea interesting and not completely out of nowhere. And if it does connect to
Close Encounters, even better. Connecting two seemingly unrelated movies is genius in my book. Sure there is a huge potential for failure, but Lucas and Spielberg have been working on this movie long enough that it should be good. They took their time, rejecting and rewriting scripts over and over again. I have faith in them.
Some of the most interesting scenes in the trailer take place in the government warehouse where the Ark of the Covenant was stored at the end of
Raiders. Are the Soviets just looking for something relating the the Crystal Skulls or is the Ark involved? Every Indy movie begins with him searching for an artifact that has nothing to do with the main plot of the movie. Perhaps in
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, that artifact is the Ark.
Last, but not least is the cast. Of course there's Mr. Ford, but there's also Cate Blanchett as some sort of Soviet leader. It seemed a little unusual to me at first, but from what I've seen she looks amazing. Then there's Shia LaBeouf, or as I still think of him, Louis Stevens. Is he Indy's long lost kid or just an accidental sidekick? But most interesting of all is Karen Allen's return as Marion Ravenwood. Surprisingly, she recieved almost no screen time in the trailer, but she is the person that I most want to see. How could you not like her? Marion is basically the female version of Indy. She was the only woman in the trilogy that had any real substance. And who could forget when she dominated that guy in the drinking contest?
Anyway, after 19 long years, I'm glad Indiana has returned.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull opens on May 22.
