How’d You Spend the 99 Days of Summer 2023 (Part 1)?

by
Scott D. Parker

I read at lot and watched a lot of movies.

There. End of post. See ya.

What did I see and read? I'll recap the reading next week. Here's what I watched...and hopefully you did, too.

Summer 2023 Movies Were Great

When was the last time we had a summer movie season like this? I think many of us earmarked certain dates on the calendar to get ourselves to the movie theater. I did that nearly every weekend this year. The end result was that, with the exception of the Pixar film, Elemental, I saw every movie I wanted to see this summer. And I enjoyed just about every one of them.

The nostalgia of seeing Michael Keaton as Batman was one of the highlights. The film was quite good and I seriously loved the cameos. Speaking of nostalgia, it was great to see Indiana Jones one last time in a movie that I thoroughly enjoyed. Heck, it even prompted me to rematch Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls (and it’s not as bad and you or I remember).

And how visually stunning was Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse? Is that the best example of what you can do with animation to tell a rich, engrossing story like that? Asteroid City was another example of a visually interesting movie by local Houstonian, Wes Anderson.

Then there was Barbenheimer. Two great films, polar opposites, but the same weekend. The wife and I saw Oppenheimer on opening night. How stunning was it that a 3-hour movie largely consisting of people in rooms talking went by so fast? And that last line? Barbie was phenomenal. I found myself laughing one moment and tearing up the next. Such a bold, fresh, exuberant film. It’s probably the best of the summer.

But not my favorite. I only saw one movie twice in the theaters and that was Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part 1. It’s all there, in this film, everything you’ve come to love about M:I films, and this time, we get Henry Czerny back, chewing up scenery and dialogue. Hailey Atwell is a great addition to the franchise, and her chemistry with Tom Cruise is right there on the screen. And that final sequence…with the train? Fantastic. Just as breathless the second time as the first…and I knew what was coming. Love, love, love.

I saw an enjoyed other new films including Meg 2 (it’s exactly what you think it’ll be), Haunted Mansion, and, after watching the first one, Book Club 2. How frigging charming are those movies? More please.

I had the hankering to watch Mad Max: Fury Road (the fourth one) but after about 30 minutes, my wife suggested we go all the way back and start with the original. After the first two (which were interesting), she told me that I was going to feel compelled to watch Thunderdome but that I shouldn’t. She nailed it. What the heck was that? Fury Road was quite good.

There was some great TV as well. The finale of Ted Lasso! Season two of The Bear, especially that episode entitled “Forks.” A stunning hour of television. The old TV series “Brothers and Sisters” and our new favorite thing we’re catching up on: Parenthood. Oh, and on Netflix, there’s a spellbinding documentary called “Cave of Bones.”

Those are the highlights of what I watched this summer. Come back next week when I talk about what I read.

Growing Up and Older With Indiana Jones: A Dial of Destiny Review

by

Scott D. Parker

The new movie is a chance to reconnect with an old friend for one last adventure before we have to say good-bye. In that framework, the new film works quite well.

The Space Age of 1969

After a wonderful opening sequence that can stand alongside any action sequence from the original trilogy, we meet the old Indy. He’s shockingly in his boxers, asleep on a recliner, with the remnants of booze on the side table. Gone is the hale and hearty man we met in the 1980s or even the middle-aged version we saw in 2008. This man—Indiana Jones and Harrison Ford—is old. As good as it was to see an old friend, the visuals took a few scenes to get used to.

Soon, however, things begin to roll along. Helana Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) arrives and she’s looking for one half of the Dial of Archimedes, an object her father was obsessed with and ultimately the cause of his death. She’s not the only one. A former Nazi scientist (Mads Mikkelsen) who now works for NASA is also after the Dial. His plan is to find the other half, link them together, and then, armed with the knowledge of how World War II ended, go back in time to not only kill Hitler but become the new leader of Germany.

Chases ensue, clues unraveled, treasures found, and Indy has one last adventure.

The Clash of Styles

I found the inclusion of Helena a breath of fresh air for the franchise. She’s a little bit Elsa from Last Crusade but she’s also a bit how Indy himself was in Temple of Doom. He wanted the Shankira Stones because they’d be worth a fortune. Remember the “Fortune and Glory” mantra he says over and over? Helena has debts to pay and she thinks antiquities can fetch a high price. As such, it is a battle of wits between her and “It belongs in a museum” Indy over what’s more important.

I also enjoyed Helena’s own “Short Round,” Teddy, a teenaged street urchin in Tangiers. Once he enters the story, he never leaves. There are generational differences to exploit and echoes of Short Round himself as Indy slowly comes to make sure the kid is safe, despite all the bad guys doing bad guy things.

Like Marion, Helena goes toe to toe with Indy. She’s not a screamer. She’s an active participant in the story. Heck, it was her entrance that started the story itself. Loved the somewhat gawkiness of Helena despite as she put up multiple fights. If memory serves—I’ve only seen the movie once at this point—she’s never in a situation where Indy needs to save her. It’s Indy that needs saving, and more than once.

The McGuffin

I really dug the truth of the Dial itself. It wasn’t a tool that would enable someone to go back anywhere in time. It only went to a single place in time: 212 BC at the siege of Syracuse. The twist of the Dial was foretold via Helana’s card trick, something that only comes into focus after you learn the truth of the Dial.

I like that there are fissures in time that present themselves. It helps explain how boats and planes just disappear from time to time. I like that Archamedes figured out a way to calculate their location and duration. It’s all just math.

Indy’s Vulnerability

No matter where this movie lands in the list of Indiana Jones films, there is one scene that will be vaulted into one of the best of the franchise. When Helena asks Indy where he would go if he could truly travel back in time, without hesitation he says he’d go and prevent his son from enlisting in the army as an act of defiance against his father. Mutt dies in Vietnam, and that broke Indy and dissolved his marriage. Harrison Ford may not get a lot of credit for his acting, but in that scene, he was fantastic. As a father myself, I felt the gut punch of Indy’s words. I find it fascinating that so many movies this summer—Dial of Destiny; The Flash; Into the Spider-Verse—all have common moments when parents talk about their children. It’s just a sign that we’re all getting older.

Growing Up and Older With Indiana Jones

For so many of us, much of our lives have had Indiana Jones in it even if there were not any new movies. In 1981, I had little experience with the type of film Raiders the Lost Ark wasis and it lit a fire. I didn’t become an archaeologist but I did become a historian, and part of the ingredients that blended together in my being that made me love history was Indiana Jones.

The kid I was in middle school the summer of 1981 became a high school freshman by the time Temple of Doom came out. I loved both films, and, awkward teen boy that I was who had zero luck with girls, I fantasized about being Indy’s partner in Temple of Doom. Naturally, Willie Scott had a younger sister that was just about my age. My derring-do won her heart… because of course it did.

I worked in a movie theater the summer of 1989 and saw Last Crusade many times—and parts of the movie even more than that. The music by John Williams was phenomenal as ever, and seeing Indy’s dad be Sean Connery was icing on the cake. I was twenty, in college, and yet I still wanted to be like Indy. But it was Connery as Henry Jones imploring his son to “Let it go” that helped set a certain mindset. Like both my parents and my grandparents showed me by their words and actions, Connery reminded his son that there were things in life way more precious than some trinket.

I was a father myself in 2008 when Indy returned. My son was in grade school and, just in case Crystal Skulls was another dark film like Temple of Doom, only my wife and I saw it on opening day. While Last Crusade ended in the best way possible—literally riding into the sunset—it was nice to see Indy again. And Marion and their son, Mutt. At the time, I didn’t love the film like the original trilogy but that has softened over the years. But here was Indy as a dad, and I was a dad, and wasn’t that something.

Here in 2023, Indy is much older. He’s alone and he’s lost his son. Thankfully, I am happily married and our son is starting his life on his own, but he moved out last year and his absence is felt everyday. There are times when I imagine my son’s future and I remember what it was like to be in your twenties with a lifetime of choices and experiences waiting to be made. For the younger me, part of the zeal for life was the the zeal for adventure like Indy had, even if I wouldn’t be traipsing across the globe dodging bullets or finding lost treasures.

Now, at middle age, I have the ability not only to look backward but to look forward as well. I get to reflect on the results of my own life’s adventures so far and have the time to adjust for the future. Inexorably, life moves forward. The beauty of a movie like Dial of Destiny (and Crystal Skulls before it to say nothing of The Force Awakens) is to acknowledge that time moves forward for our movie heroes as well. Some characters—like Ferris Bueller or Kevin McAllister—will forever remain fixed looking a certain way at a certain point in time. Others, like Indy, get to age with us. Just like old friends do.

I am so thankful I got to grow up and get older alongside Indiana Jones.

Embrace the Differences: The Raiders of the Lost Ark Novelization

by Scott D. Parker

Raiders of the Lost Ark turns forty today. Hard to believe, sometimes. I still remember watching Siskel and Ebert gush over the movie. Youthful though I was--twelve--Harrison Ford had already become my favorite actor because he was Han Solo. Who knew Indiana Jones was just around the corner.

To commemorate the movie's anniversary, I decided to do something I had never done before: read the novelization by Campbell Black. Yeah, I had the book back in the day. Yeah, I remember cracking it open. But I also know I never finished it. Heck, I don't even remember getting that far into the book before stopping it. I have no memory why. Unlike Star Wars--where I devoured every morsel of news, read every book, and bought every comic--I don't remember doing the same thing with Raiders. It is possible I didn't continue with the novelization because of the differences. Now, forty years later, those differences are fantastic.

Raiders is one of my Top 5 all-time movies. I have no idea how many times I've seen it, but those clips in the Siskel and Ebert segment are all familiar. It's probably one of your favorite movies, too. I can "see" the movie in my head when I listen to John Williams's brilliant score. But the novel was a nice breath of fresh air. 

Early Days of the Canon

Campbell Black is the pen name of Campbell Armstrong, a Scottish writer, who wrote over twenty-five novels. Few pieces of information exist on the internet about him, but his bibliography notes Raiders was this third, and final, movie novelization. 

In the one interview he did for TheRaider.net, Black comments that he "wrote Jones as I saw him. An adventurer, yes, but I always felt there was a slight melancholy side to him. I don't think Lucasfilm really approved of this, but from my point of view I couldn't write the novel if I had to base it on the character in the script - I found him shallow and shadowy, all action and no thought, and I wanted to add some kind of internal process to him, which I think I did. Up to a point."

As much as I enjoy the extensive universe other writers created with Indiana Jones (and Star Wars, too), there's something special about a single writer, very early on, looking at stills and the script and crafting a story as he sees it. No canon, no interlaced movies, no franchise, no established backstory, just a script and one writer's ideas on how scenes of a movie can be stitched together into a coherent novel.

Like Alan Dean Foster, who ghostwrote the Star Wars novelization, Black must have had access to an earlier script because the differences between the movie we know so well and the events in the novel are sometimes striking, but that's what makes the experience so rewarding. 

The Movie is Not the Novelization

I'm not sure what happened to my original copy of the novel. I had the version with black on the cover. The paperback I read this week was published in 1989, after Last Crusade, so it has a white cover. Soon after I started reading the South America prelude, I took a pencil and began annotating the differences.

In a movie, editors can make cuts and swipes and change scenes. You can do the same in a novel, but Black provides a lot of connective tissue between scenes. Just how did Indy get to Nepal? Well, Black describes in detail all the travel and driving Indy did, even throwing in a new character, Lin-Su. Granted, he doesn't do the same for the journey from Nepal to Cairo, but who cares.

I enjoyed the languid pace of the novelization. As much as I enjoy the movie and all that it delivers, there's something to be said for the same story delivered via text over a number of days. What Black does is what novels do well: get into the heads of the characters. We hear the inner thoughts of Indy, Marion, and Belloq. They all prove quite compelling in Black's hands, adding layers and nuances to each character. 

Belloq, for example, proves himself more competitive and mercenary than Paul Freeman portrays him in the film. With Freeman, you could almost side with Belloq in his quest for the Ark and the secrets it holds. In the novel, he's depicted very much as borderline insane with his single-minded devotion to getting the Ark and using it before Hitler gets his hands on it. 

Speaking of Belloq, something occurred to me that I never considered in forty years. It's regarding the headpiece to the staff of Ra. Belloq gets his version of the headpiece because the words are burned into Toht's hand. With that, Belloq makes his calculations. Indy, however, needs the Imam to read and interpret the words on the headpiece. Did Indy not know that language?

Key Differences

This is what you want to know, right? Well, let me get to it.

South America 

- The pit over which Indy and Sapito swing is actually obscured. Sapito nearly falls into the pit because he steps into the cobwebs covering the pit.

-Indy takes a swig from a flask as he reaches the idol. [Love this]

Berlin

There are a few scenes not at all in the movie. They are from the point of view of Dietrich, the main German officer as played by Wolf Kahler. Dietrich never trusts Belloq and we get many internal thoughts from the German. It also explains how Belloq came to be employed by Hitler. Later, during the Cairo scenes, we get a few more scenes from Dietrich's POV, irritated at Belloq's pomposity.

Connecticut

It is certainly implied that Indy is a womanizer, all but taking an undergrad per semester. This is part of the apparent--but never explained--backstory with Indy and Marion. Based on the book, she might as been as young as sixteen when the mid-twenties Indy had a relationship with her. 

Cairo

-There's a nighttime scene between Indy and Marion and whether or not they they'll hook up. It includes their actual first kiss and we get the skeevy take from Indy about how well the woman kisses versus the child from his past.

-The Imam who reads the markings on the headpiece is the one who puts into Indy's head the idea that no mortal should look at the contents of the Ark. It is the Imam's warning Indy remembers at the end.

Tanis Dig

-There is no scene between Belloq and Marion where she puts on the dress and tries to drink him under the table. In its place is Marion's seemingly being under Belloq's spell. They actually kiss and she all but succumbs to him. 

-Belloq actually sees all the lightening that floods the sky when Indy and his friends open the Well of the Souls. 

Truck Chase

-Toht is in the car that flies off the cliff. He dies here and doesn't get his face melted at the end.

-Black describes how the Germans discovered which pirate ship is carrying the Ark.

The Island

-We learn how Belloq arranged for him to open the Ark before delivery to Berlin.

-The scene where Belloq challenges Indy to blow up the Ark isn't here.

Verdict

The novelization is a nice addition to the wonderful movie. There is a place for both. Campbell Black's novel is a good story and a worthy addition to the canon we now have, even if much of what he comes up with (how Indy got the bullwhip) is overriden with subsequent movies and books. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and actually might continue with the novelizations of the next three films. 

Side Note

I went and located my copy of the comic adaptation and many of the scenes mentioned here are in there. Perhaps the Marvel comics folks and Black read from the same script.

Wishing on a Star

By Dave White

There are days I wish I was Spenser. I wish I could drink a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee, eat a doughnut, run five miles, shoot a bad guy, drink some beer, snap off a joke or two, and then make a gourmet dinner.

There are days I wish I was James Bond. Traveling the globe, shooting at bad guys, getting every available women, and again with the jokes. (The movie Bond, anyway. Fleming's Bond was rarely funny... and when he tried to be... he still wasn't.)

I've been thinking a lot about my favorite characters lately, in movies, books and TV, and there seems to be a common theme that runs through them. Indiana Jones, Spenser, Bond... they're all typically the same person, gruff, tough, funny, confident. They're not the everyman. They're the ideal man. They're the code hero, not the Hemingway hero. They get up.

When I sit down to look at my characters, very few of them have this thread going through them. They're not happy people, usually. And when they are happy, that happiness is taken from them in a flash.

My characters are a bit more realistic, I suppose, but I'm not sure they have the staying power of Bond or Spenser or Jones. They don't often stick with you months after you put the book down. My characters are dark heroes. They do their job, but they're never better for it.

I tend to like both types of characters... but I write about what I think I do well. I'm not sure I could come up with a Bond type character. The never lose your cool kind of guy. I don't see much tension there.

But these are the types of characters people love. These are the characters I'm drawn to over and over and over again. I still read Spenser... I still see every Bond book. I can't even bring myself to hate Crystal Skull.

Why?

Probably because it's what we can't be. And it what we want to be. So they watch this characters and imagine they'll have the same witty line, the same grin, the same cool under pressure.

It strikes me, that when you look at these popular heroes... the code heroes...They stick out because we, the audience, is the Hemingway hero. We're, in a way, jealous that these guys can keep getting up and up and up.

Deep down, we know we'll stay down.

So, dear reader, what's appealing to you about the code heroes? And why do we still enjoy reading about the Hemingway hero at times too?