First things first. This film is a brilliant adventure movie, of a kind I don’t remember seeing since, well, the last Indiana Jones. Barrel fulls of excitement and derring-do. And I enjoyed it one hell of a lot.

Problem is it doesn’t really deliver much else.

There’s nothing here that’s any less weird, mystical or unlikely than can be found in any of the earlier films (although surviving a nuclear explosion in a fridge is pushing it), but I found myself less able to buy into it this time round. I’ve got no idea why, exactly. I mean Transformers is universally considered to be a stinker on every conceivable level, but I ate that up with a spoon. Maybe the magic’s just not there for me anymore.

The problem isn’t so much that Indy IV has to compete with every other blockbuster out there (although that’s a factor), it’s that it has to compete with Raiders, just about the most perfect adventure movie ever made (or even, as I read somewhere but have forgotten where, the first fifteen minutes of Raiders, probably the best action sequence ever filmed). Temple of Doom got round this by- actually, I don’t think it did manage to get round this, as I’ve never been the prequel’s biggest fan. Last Crusade’s added value was the inspired casting of Sean Connery. If not for the brilliant way the Jones boys played off each other, that film wouldn’t have worked either.

With Last Crusade in mind, it’s a hell of a lot to ask Shia LaBeouf to be able to capture even an echo of the father-son relationship. The Connery/Ford chemistry really wasn’t the kind of thing you can predict. The other thing I’d like to have seen more of was the puzzling out of archaeological clues. We saw a little of it, but it seemed mostly to be decoding Mad Old John Hurt and following him than, say, the Staff of Ra stuff. When Nicolas Cage does the puzzlin’ better than Indy, you know you’re in trouble.

The thing is, I never thought I’d see this film made. Maybe ten years ago would have been the best time to make it. The better part of twenty puts way too much weight on the flick. It was never going to be as good as we hoped it would be. Lucas and Spielberg’s reluctance to
make another, plus the countless redrafts of the script, should have tipped us off that maybe they weren’t as engaged as they needed to be. And let’s be honest, even though the Area 51 and the alien stuff worked way better than I was expecting it to, even though they were deliberately making a B-movie (and capturing the paranoia of the era perfectly, no less), didn’t all our hearts sink a little when we first found out it was more SF than supernatural?

Some final notes: Jim Robinson from Neighbours turns up, and I am sick to death of seeing his fucking face. The CGI sucked. The aliens should have stayed in their crystal form, as that ET-looking bugger at the end was pants. And Christ, do you think Spielberg will ever get embarrassed about spending thirty years working out his missing daddy issues on screen?

What really worked well: Jim Broadbent. The funny bits. Those terrifying fucking ants. And the two images blatantly crafted with loving awesomeness by a production designer; Indy’s distinctive silhouette standing in front of a mushroom cloud, and then later an enormous spinning flying saucer.

Please stop doing that snorty laugh thing.

Look, I’m part of the ultra-violence generation. Brain corrupting video-games, Robocop, staying up far too late to watch Mark Cousins on BBC 2, all of it. Action films have become anaemic PG friendly revenue generators, with no nasty swears and absolutely positively none of that Godless sexin’. I need my killfix. Quickly, before I lose myself and go out in a hoodie looking for a right-thinking common-sense member of the public to beat to death.

Sly’s actually written well about plans for both Rambo and in the run up to Rocky Balboa over on Ain’t It Cool News and please will you stop laughing now. I don’t care. It’s been great to see how enthusiastic he’s been to revisit the old characters, though it helps to love the original Rocky more than it probably deserves.

Which I do. It’s in the top ten somewhere, perched uneasily next to  other worthier works, like Twelve Angry Men, Fellini’s 8 1/2, and Predator 2.

What?

I still haven’t seen Rocky Balboa, not because I don’t want to but because I missed it in the cinema and there’s still a part of me that thinks it’ll get another showing somewhere so I can see it on the big screen. Which, I grant you, is a little odd.

Speaking of long-delayed sequels, I keep going back and forth on the new Indiana Jones. I read somewhere that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will be thematically based on a 50s B movie, in the same way that the originals are 30s adventure serials. Which is a little worrying, because while I understand why Lucas and Spielberg need to put a new spin on it, I’m really not sure that grey melon-headed Aztec spacemen squirreled away in a New Mexico bunker quite suits the occult archaeology angle.

I really like the title, although I think it would’ve been a nice bookend to the series if they referenced the original Raiders by taking the good Doctor Jones’ name out, and just had “The Kingdom” in swishy red and yellow and “of the Crystal Skull” in the smaller font.

At first, I wasn’t particularly excited about this flick. It’s been a long time since the last one and we all know what happened last time George Lucas decided to revisit an old favourite, plus it’s taking them a while to settle on a script which suggests some kind of difficulty. But then the pictures and the poster came out, and I was right back in 1989 with my Dad in Caerffili’s long-destroyed cinema (honestly, if memory serves it burned down in the early 90s).

There’s a lot of nostalgic retread in this ‘08 preview aimed squarely at my generation, so fuck knows big business have hooked me in once again.

Bond 22

As yet unnamed. Like the previous character, and the series below, James Bond was a big part of my childhood, in particular the Bond seasons that HTV used to put on, a different one every week. And like Indy, before Casino Royale I was a little ambivalent about the reboot. It’s not that I thought it would be bad, only that it didn’t really capture my attention.

And then it came out and it was one of the best films of 2006, not because I was predisposed to like the character but because it was a genuinely brilliant film on its own merits, no nostalgia needed, and one of the few films of the decade so far that stayed in my mind for days after seeing it. Fingers crossed the sequel will be just as strong.

Star Trek

Due out all the way at the end of the year, this has got to be the film I’m most looking forward to. The original Trek has so much potential for a reboot by people who know what they’re doing, and Mission Impossible 3 was crazy awesome and very faithful to the original. Zachary Quinto as Spock is perfect casting, and I kind of get Karl Urban as McCoy, as odd as it seems.

I think the film will live or die on how accessible it is. The really should take a leaf from the Bond franchise and fucking chuck everything out. Trek has long since descended into fanwankery, but there’s nothing that a tidy script and sharp boot to the concept’s nads shouldn’t be able to sort out.