The way he and Lucas wound their childhoods and their manhoods, their fantasies and their experiences, into their adventurer’s maturation and aging was part of the inimitable texture of those films. The personal investment in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull only became more blatantly obvious after Spielberg’s more recent The Fabelmans (2022). Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) offered at its heart an idealised expression of a father and son reunion, and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull saw its hero find himself a family man at advancing age. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) contained a wry, teeth-gritted portrait of Spielberg’s disintegrating first marriage and also proved an allegory about growing a social and historical conscience. But Indy, as forged by a gang of filmmakers also including Lucas, Philip Kaufman, and Lawrence Kasdan and extended through his sequels, had nonetheless become Spielberg’s fictional avatar and foremost autobiographical figure. First and foremost, of course, the character of Dr Henry ‘Indiana’ Jones Jr and his adventures were inspired by B-movies and matinee serials devoured through a misspent youth. That was, to be blunt, the actual end of Indiana Jones. Trouble was, Steven Spielberg eventually abandoned the idea of making the film himself. Indiana Jones was the last of their major properties to tap, and the idea of a fifth film featuring everyone’s favourite archaeological swashbuckler likely gained a new lease of life after everyone was surprised at Harrison Ford’s strong turn in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). That sale is long enough ago, the fruit of it so copious in amount if not so much in quality, that it counts as its own epoch now, including five Star Wars films of sharply declining returns, and a grab-bag of TV series. Long after George Lucas sold his company Lucasfilm and the rights to all his brainchildren to Disney. Long after the successful but divisively received fourth instalment, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008). It was a memorable occasion because I also saw Jaws (1975) on the same bill, and caught lice from some filthy undergraduate. I’ve been an Indiana Jones fan since I was about five years old, when I first saw Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) in a cinema on a university campus close to where my family lived and where my mother was studying at the time. Some journeys have been too long, too bound up with the way we think and see and feel. Sometimes, like desperate lovers, substance abusers, or obsessive questers, we cineastes know very well we should stay away from certain things, but can’t. Tags: 3d printing / aadrl / Amy Whittle / artscience / arttech / automato / AV&C / Benjamin Bratton / Benjamin Maus / best of / books / can / Christopher Bauder / Claire Hentschker / creative applications / creative technology / creativeappsnet / Daniel Rourke / Daniel Shiffman / David Newbury / digital art / experimental / experimental art / field / field notes / fuse / Games / Gene Kogan / Generative Design / Georg Nees / Giorgia Lupi / Golan Levin / Haavard Tveito / Harold Cohen / interactive architecture lab / Interface / internet of things / John Russell Beaumont / Kadenze / Kyle McDonald / laser scanning / light installation / Luiz Zanotello / machine learning / media art / media design / mediaart / Mediated Matter / Molleindustria / Morehshin Alllahyari / new media / new media art / performance / Peter Buczkowski / projection mapping / Prokop Bartoníček / Quadrature / R.Screenwriters: Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, David Koepp, James Mangold
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