Taking a Roller-Coaster Ride With Indiana Jones

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Marion (Karen Allen): You're not the man I knew 10 years ago.

Indiana (Harrison Ford): It's not the years, honey. It's the mileage.

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When George Lucas co–wrote "Raiders of the Lost Ark," which premiered on this date in 1981, his intention was to re–create the movie serials of the 1930s and 1940s.

That was before my time, but my parents used to watch the movie serials when they were children, and I gathered from their reaction to the movie that Lucas succeeded in his objective.

Film critic Roger Ebert apparently agreed with them, even though he was born in 1942. Movie serials continued to be made into the early 1950s so he was probably old enough to witness the end of that era — but certainly not its heyday. Nevertheless, his homage to the serials was as entertaining as it could be. I watched it again recently, and I probably enjoyed it as much as I did the first time I saw it.

Ebert wrote nearly 20 years after its debut that the movie "plays like an anthology of the best parts from all the Saturday matinee serials ever made," but he added that "I haven't seen much discussion of the movie's other driving theme, (director Steven) Spielberg's feelings about the Nazis."

Ebert went on to observe that Spielberg gave us his adult treatment of the Holocaust in movies like "Schindler's List," but it was Spielberg's inner teenager who made "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

It was full of edge–of–your–seat adventures from Nepal to Cairo with snakes, spiders, explosions, Nazis — and Karen Allen, who played Ford's sidekick, his best of the series, in my opinion. And it had moments that one remembers years after seeing them — like the iconic scene at the beginning of the movie in which Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) outran the big ball.

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That was in the first seven minutes. After that, no one should have had any doubt about what to expect in the next hour and a half. And what followed was most of the stuff that tends to appeal to teenage boys — primarily action and pretty girls.

It was a roller–coaster ride, from one adventure to the next, each one loosely connected to the central theme of the race between the Nazis and the good guys to find the Ark of the Covenant.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about it was that it worked.

I have seen only a few original serial episodes, but that was probably enough to get a good idea what the serials were like, and my impression was that they were, in a word, preposterous.

I suppose they had to be. The plot, as it were, existed solely to get the hero into some kind of predicament so, no matter how unlikely the premise might be, the viewer would accept it — it was the price that had to be paid to see the hero hanging from a cliff by his fingernails or something like that.

(It is much like the strategy my journalism professors encouraged for prodding a reader to read one's story all the way through. Newspaper readers, we were told then, give — on average — less than half an hour to the daily newspaper, and with so many news sources available today I am sure the average is much lower now. Most newspaper readers, our professors told us, skim the headlines and read the first paragraph or two of stories with headlines that intrigue them.

(My professors told us never to reveal everything we knew about a story in the first paragraph — or the second or the third ... Instead, we should give just enough information for the reader to want to be hungry for more and continue to the next paragraph — and the next and the next. Before they knew it, the readers had read the entire story — even if that had not been their original intention. Well, that was how it was supposed to work. And sometimes I guess it did — or does.)

And, too, I suppose that the serials seem more preposterous to me in 2016 than they did to someone in 1946 because moviemaking technology is so much better now with computer–generated graphics and all that stuff that didn't exist during the serials' heyday. It can make even the most preposterous plot seem plausible.

And yet ...

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Was it so implausible to think that the Nazis would devote all those resources to locating a biblical artifact that may or may not have existed outside of the pages of the Bible?

After all, it is pretty well known that the Nazis sought supernatural support and justification for their cause — and, according to legend, any army that possessed the Ark was invincible. Could the Nazis have resisted such a concept?

It is beyond doubt that the Nazis actively sought any advantage they could get in World War II. The prophecies of Nostradamus, for example, were used as propaganda tools, and we know the Nazis were in a race with the West to develop a nuclear weapon.

Is it so far–fetched to think they might have been looking for the Ark, just as Spielberg and Lucas suggested?

I guess that is a matter of opinion. But the truth of the story was mostly irrelevant because, as Ebert noted, it was "just plain fun" — whether you were a teenage boy or not.

Revealing How Darth Vader Became Darth Vader

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Padmé (Natalie Portman): So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.

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What I will always remember most about "Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith," which made its debut 10 years ago today, is something that almost no one else will remember.

It is the only Star Wars movie I have seen at the theater with my father — and, even though Episode VII apparently will be showing on America's movie screens sometime next year, Episode III likely will be the only Star Wars movie I ever see with him. (And, unless my brother went with him to see another of the Star Wars movies, it may be what he remembers as well.)

My brother and I took Dad to see it on Father's Day 2005. He saw Episode IV, which was the first Star Wars movie, way back in 1977, but I didn't see it with him. He might not have seen it at the theater at all. He may have waited to see it on TV, whenever it was first shown.

Dad doesn't go to the theater alone; typically, he went with my mother when she was alive. When the first Star Wars movie was showing in theaters, though, I saw it with Mom, who loved movies and often watched a movie multiple times and might very well have gone to the theater with him to see it a second time. So that may have been when he saw it, but I don't know that for certain. All I know is he didn't see it with me.

And then I saw the next two installments in the Star Wars franchise with friends — on both occasions in theaters that were far from where Dad was living at the time. That wasn't really unusual for me, though. I have rarely seen a movie in a theater with my father since I was a small child. In those days, I imagine he took me to movies that I wanted to see and were appropriate for my age group. I doubt that he wanted to see them.

Dad wanted to see this one, though. He has never said why, but my guess would be that it would answer a lot of questions for him, just as it answered a lot of questions the Star Wars fans had about how Darth Vader came to be. He just didn't care to sit through the first two episodes.

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Might have been a good idea if he had, though, since his mental image of Obi–Wan Kenobi was Alec Guinness, not Ewan McGregor. And Hayden Christensen surely was not his idea of Darth Vader. If, along with the rest of the audience, he had been familiar with the actors playing the younger versions of those characters, he wouldn't have had to ask me who they were.

Anyway, the movie answered all the questions about how Anakin Skywalker gravitated to the Dark Side — although, in hindsight, I suppose it wasn't too hard to guess. For all the buildup the movie received for how it would answer all the lingering questions about Darth Vader and his relationship to Luke and Leia, the Star Wars trilogies have been pretty transparent, haven't they? There clearly are biblical parallels in the battle between good and evil, the conflict between the Force for good and the Dark Side.

I guess that was what intrigued my father. He was a religion professor when I was growing up — like his father before him. I also remember that he enjoyed science fiction — the Star Trek TV series, for example, and "2001: A Space Odyssey." Maybe he liked the mix of biblical morality stories played out against a futuristic backdrop. The light saber duels — and there were many in "Revenge of the Sith" — provided an obvious example.

Looking back on it, I am inclined to wonder if "Revenge of the Sith" might have been a metaphor for something more sinister, like the rise of radical Islam.

Natalie Portman's character may have held the key to that — and perhaps it may have given us a clue of what to expect in the third Star Wars trilogy. Her strong female character seemed to be eliminated faster in "Revenge of the Sith" than it probably would be even in a radical Islamic environment.

Speaking of Portman, she wasn't exactly a newcomer when she made "Revenge of the Sith," even though she was not quite 24 when it premiered. She was a big–screen veteran, having had several minor roles and a few major ones in the previous decade. By the time I saw "Revenge of the Sith," I had already seen Portman in Episodes I and II, as well as "Cold Mountain," so I knew she had some talent.

But, even though there were times when "Revenge of the Sith" was a swashbuckling romp of which Errol Flynn would have been proud — and the dialogue could have been better — Portman never gave in to the temptation to camp it up.

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And that probably wouldn't have been too hard to do with all the technological bells and whistles that George Lucas used in the sixth (but, apparently, not final) installation in the Star Wars franchise.

I can only wonder what is in store in Episode VII.

The Unnecessary First Chapter of the Star Wars Saga

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"Every Generation Has A Legend. Every Journey Has A First Step. Every Saga Has A Beginning."

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Every story must start somewhere, and I suppose that the Star Wars saga needed a first chapter. (I was OK with leaving the original "Star Wars" as the first chapter — forget this prequel stuff — but no one asked me ...)

But I really felt like "The Phantom Menace," which made its highly anticipated debut 15 years ago today, was the weakest of the six Star Wars movies that have hit the theaters — so far.

I didn't see it at the theater. I was never terribly excited about it, even though I saw the fan frenzy that the movie inspired among supposedly otherwise normal people who stood in long lines for tickets. I didn't go through that; a co–worker bought it when it was released on video tape, and I borrowed it from him.

I could understand why reactions were mixed.

Film critic Roger Ebert said it was "an astonishing achievement in imaginative filmmaking."

Mark Deming of AllMovie.com was less glowing in his assessment.

"While the computer–generated alternate universe was top notch and [George] Lucas' knack for whiz–bang special effects action reached an apex in the Ben–Hur–esque pod race," Deming wrote, "critics (professional and otherwise) objected to the wooden human characters, overly kiddie–friendly atmosphere, and goofy alien sidekick Jar Jar Binks."

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That pretty much covered it for me.

When I watched it on video tape, my initial impression was that the entire project was designed to market a line of children's toys. Oh, sure, there has always been an element of that in the Star Wars movies, going back to the original. But it was always kept under control in the first trilogy (OK, things were starting to unravel in "Return of the Jedi").

It was rampant in "The Phantom Menace." For a long time, I was convinced the movie had been written to support the toys that were flooding the market. (There's a part of me that is still not convinced the movie wasn't motivated entirely by commercial interests.)

And "goofy" is only one of the words I would use to describe Jar Jar. Others would be "annoying," "stupid," "distracting."

"Grating," possibly. Definitely "irritating."

But certainly not "endearing."

I know some people who liked Jar Jar. I didn't. That won't change. Let's move on, shall we?

I had to agree with Deming when he praised the special effects in the movie, and the pod race did bear a striking resemblance to "Ben–Hur." I suppose it was a glimpse into what that chariot race scene might have been if the makers of "Ben–Hur" had the technological advances that were available to the makers of "The Phantom Menace."

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Ebert was enamored with the whole eye candy thing.

"Unlike many movies, these are made to be looked at more than listened to," Ebert wrote, "and George Lucas and his collaborators have filled 'The Phantom Menace' with wonderful visuals."

If the visual was more important than the audio, then perhaps anyone could have played the parts, but I didn't really think that was true. Some people complained that the actors were wooden, but I felt they did as much as their parts would let them. Liam Neeson made a strong contribution to the story as the Jedi knight who trained Ewan McGregor as his apprentice, a young Obi–Wan Kenobi. It gave the audience some new insights into the old Obi–Wan Kenobi.

Please don't misunderstand. I thought the visuals were impressive. But, for the most part, I thought that was most of what "The Phantom Menace" really had to offer.

And I expect more from a Star Wars movie. Or I did — until 15 years ago.

Likewise, Natalie Portman did a good job as Queen Padmé Amidala, who went on to marry Anakin Skywalker (later Darth Vader) and give birth to Luke and Leia. (I don't need to tell you who they were, do I?)

In "The Phantom Menace," Anakin was portrayed by 10–year–old Jake Lloyd. His character was played by an older actor in Episodes II and III.

Actually, I am inclined to think that maybe Ebert was on to something when he spoke of the appeal of the visuals, possibly at the expense of the story.

"We are standing at the threshold of a new age of epic cinema, I think, in which digital techniques mean that budgets will no longer limit the scope of scenes," he wrote. "Filmmakers will be able to show us just about anything they can imagine."

From the perspective of a mere 15 years down the road, it seems positively prophetic, doesn't it?

Young Stars Left Their Mark in 'American Graffiti'

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As I have mentioned here before, my father was a college professor when I was growing up.

He was rather young compared to others on the faculty, and I guess he always had a more informal relationship with his students than many of his colleagues did. I never really stopped to think about it. All I knew was that many of his students came to our house when I was a child.

The young men in my father's classes frequently came to help with the landscaping that my father often did around our property. Their girlfriends — well, I guess I assumed that was what they were — chatted with my mother and helped her make lemonade for the men to drink when they took breaks from their labor.

Other occasions appeared to be extensions of my father's classes. I remember times when many students came to our house, apparently for prearranged group discussions. My point is that my father had a friendly relationship with his students.

Anyway, we were kind of in a hurry in August of 1973. My family had spent about six or eight weeks in Austria that summer, and not long after our return, we had to move to Nashville where my father was going to be on sabbatical for the rest of the calendar year.

When "American Graffiti" premiered on this day 40 years ago, we probably hadn't returned to the United States yet, and, when we did, we didn't have time for movies. Fact is, I don't think we went to a single movie while we were in Nashville.

After Dad's sabbatical was over, my family returned to my hometown, and Dad resumed his teaching duties at the college where he had been employed for as long as I could remember. And not long after classes resumed following the Christmas break, I remember being in his office one afternoon, and a group of his students were there.

They were all chatting about a movie that had been in the theaters for some six months but was just getting to my hometown theater, and they were all excited about it.

(Actually, that was pretty quick for my hometown. As I have mentioned here before, it typically took movies a year or more to come to my hometown when I was a child.)

The movie was "American Graffiti," and its advertisements asked a simple question: "Where were you in '62?"

One of the students had seen the movie while she was home for Christmas, and she told the other students, "If you can remember the '60s, you'll love this movie."

And on the basis of that remark, my father decided to take my mother to see it. They were reasonably young, younger than most of my father's faculty colleagues, and I guess my father figured they could relate to the same things his students could.

But the truth was that my parents were a bit older than the characters played in the movie by Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss, Harrison Ford and Cindy Williams. My father's students were a bit younger, but they were influenced by the same things.

So they could relate to what they saw in "American Graffiti," but my parents really couldn't. They had already been shaped by other experiences by 1962, and I think that was when they realized that their lives were at a different point than my father's students.

I couldn't really relate to it, either. It was before my time. Wolfman Jack, an important albeit minor character in the movie, was a pioneer D.J. to my father's students; to me, he was an occasional host of The Midnight Special on Friday nights in the '70s.

And, while I can't speak for my father's students or anyone else, I remember the night before I started my college years, and it was nothing like what was depicted in "American Graffiti."

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Well, it was a different time.

What's really interesting for me today when I watch "American Graffiti" is to think about where all these people are now and what they've done with their lives in the last 40 years. "American Graffiti" was a big break for many of them.

Howard, of course, needed no break. He started out as Opie on The Andy Griffith Show, and he starred in another hit sitcom, Happy Days, not long after appearing in "American Graffiti." Then he moved on to directing.

Dreyfuss has had a distinguished career, which included an uncredited part in "The Graduate" several years before he was in "American Graffiti," but his best, most successful — and, in one case, Oscar–winning — roles came after he was in "American Graffiti."

(In hindsight, success may have come a bit too quickly for Dreyfuss. He was, at 29, the youngest Best Actor winner, and he struggled for awhile with drug issues.)

Ford was in several movies before he made "American Graffiti," but it seemed to open a lot of doors for him. He's made a lot of movies in his life, but he is probably best known for playing Han Solo in the first "Star Wars" trilogy, and Indiana Jones in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and the other Indiana Jones movies, all of which came along after "American Graffiti."

Williams is probably best known for starring in a TV series that was a spinoff from Happy Days — although she also appeared with Ford and Gene Hackman in "The Conversation" the next year. She had mostly forgotten TV roles in the years before "American Graffiti;" people remembered her after the movie was a hit.

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Even Suzanne Somers, who played the mysterious (and silent) girl in the white T–bird, enjoyed success that may have been due, at least in part, to her role in "American Graffiti." A few years later, she was a co–star on a smash hit TV sitcom, Three's Company.

Concluding the First Star Wars Trilogy

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It is really difficult to make a truly strong movie trilogy.

Sustaining the momentum is the problem, and that third installment really seems to be a stumbling block. I can understand that. Most of the time, it seems to me it is best to let a great movie stand unencumbered by a mediocre followup ... or two. I can think of only a few really good sequels, let alone a third edition.

But that doesn't keep people from trying to recapture lightning in a bottle anyway.

To an extent, that is what I thought when "Return of the Jedi," the third Star Wars movie, was released 30 years ago today.

As I have written here before, the original "Star Wars," which was in theaters in 1977, caught most people by surprise. It was based on a sci–fi novel that few outside the sci–fi followers demographic group knew anything about with a cast of largely unknown actors.

If memory serves me correctly, "Star Wars" started off slowly, then gathered momentum in the summer months of 1977. By the time I saw it, talk of a sequel had gained momentum, too. I don't remember exactly when it was announced that a sequel — 1980's "The Empire Strikes Back" — was being made or when it was announced that a trilogy of films eventually would be completed.

My guess would be that the trilogy plans were announced first — mainly because my memory is there was a lot of talk of a trilogy well before "Empire" made its theatrical debut. Certainly, there was talk of a third movie when I was making plans to see the second.

And, to be fair, I thought the sequel to "Star Wars" (which was subsequently renamed "A New Hope" with all of the movies in the series considered episodes of George Lucas' Star Wars franchise) was pretty good.

I suppose my attitude at the time could best be summed up in a comment I heard one moviegoer make as we left the theater — "What a wonderful movie! I can't wait to see how it ends!" Everyone who saw "The Empire Strikes Back" was prepared to be left hanging for another three years.

I didn't grow up in the age of movie serials — my parents did so I suppose they could tell you if the Star Wars trilogy of the late 1970s and early 1980s did a good job of re–creating the experience.

I can only speak of how I felt about "Return of the Jedi" in the context of the movies that preceded it.

I am no sci–fi fan. I do like some books and movies in the genre, but that is usually because the book and/or movie offers more than splashy space battles or strange intergalactic creatures.

And, at its core, the Star Wars story was always about the struggle between good and evil — within cultures, within galaxies, within individuals — more than it was about space. Space was merely the backdrop.

"Return of the Jedi" did a pretty good job of tying the loose ends from the first two movies together. In those first two flicks, for example, Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) always faced a hard choice between two suitors (Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill). When Luke (Hamill) and the audience learned that Luke and Leia were siblings, that opened a face–saving way for Luke to bow out and Leia and Han Solo (Ford) to be a couple.

I guess movie audiences always had the feeling that Leia and Han would wind up together. Han was the roguish swashbuckler type, the bad boy who always seems to get the girl — in real life as well as the movies. Luke, meanwhile, was the honorable, dependable country boy who fought his father and then redeemed him.

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(Incidentally, Fisher has confirmed that a personal trainer is helping her prepare for the seventh Star Wars film, and Ford apparently has all but acknowledged that he will participate in the movie, too, which should be interesting. I'll bet no one imagined a geriatric Leia and Han 30 years ago.)

"Return of the Jedi" was a reminder that a Lucas project, like a Steven Spielberg project, could be counted upon to give moviegoers more than a taste of the latest bells and whistles in moviemaking. It certainly delivered in that regard.

I have always thought the special effects in "Return of the Jedi" — while modest by 2013 standards — represented the state of the art at the time. In fact, I felt the special effects were the real stars of "Return of the Jedi." The scene I always think of is the heart–stopping, high–tech (and high–speed) bike chase through the trees. The actors were merely along for the ride.

But I could live with that. Lucas and Spielberg have always been like wide–eyed kids whenever technology gave them a new toy to play with. They can hardly wait to have a film project in which to try it.

The part about "Return of the Jedi" that I found objectionable was the way new creatures were introduced into the story — flimsy, transparent excuses for commercial mass–marketing of Star Wars toys. The introduction of the gremlinesque Yoda in "The Empire Strikes Back" was only the first step in an evolving strategy that included the creation of the teddy bear–like Ewoks who fought alongside the rebels in "Return of the Jedi."

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As I say, the first "Star Wars" caught everyone by surprise, and marketers had to scramble to catch up. By the end of 1977, there were Star Wars action figures and lunchboxes and that sort of thing, but I've known enough sales people in my life to know that most of them must have viewed the summer months of 1977 as a lost opportunity — one they were determined not to let slip through their fingers again.

When "The Empire Strikes Back" was still in the planning stages, I'm sure those sessions included marketers who could tell the people who would be writing the script and designing the costumes what the surveys of the day indicated would be most popular with various demographic groups.

And high on that list, I believed then (and still believe today), was what surveys indicated would appeal to children. That was an approach that was refined in "Return of the Jedi" — and greatly expanded upon 16 years later when the first episode in the prequel trilogy hit the theaters.

And yet ...

In many ways, I felt that "Return of the Jedi" may have been the most adult–oriented of all the Star Wars movies, not just the ones from 1977 to 1983. For example, it took a long, hard look at Luke Skywalker and the hatred that burned within him. Given Luke's passion for fighting the Empire and being the ultimate Jedi warrior, I guess audiences had long suspected there was a seething rage within him, and "Return of the Jedi" confirmed it.

There were some fearsome visions in that movie when Luke confronted the truth.

I'm sure they inspired some nightmares for younger viewers. "Return of the Jedi" may have inspired a successful line of toys, but it wasn't quite a kiddie movie.

There is a lingering perception that "Return of the Jedi" was the weakest of the series' original three movies, but I think that is truly a relative matter.

There was a segment of the population that could be counted on to come to the theaters no matter what anyone else said about it. By 1983, Star Wars devotees knew what to expect from a new movie in the series, and they simply would not allow themselves to miss an opportunity to watch Hamill and Ford wave light sabers or spaceships wage laser battles.

To bring non–Star Wars viewers to the theaters — which it did, earning more than $400 million at the box office — it had to have more. It needed a plausible story.

It was weak in parts, but it was entertaining enough to be a worthy finale for a successful movie trilogy.