The Older the Stronger: ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ Review

Indiana Jones series is our important memory. It should be said that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg jointly shaped my fear of nature: Jaws (1975), memory of science fiction heroes: Star Wars series, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and of course the Indiana Jones series that influenced my elementary school would-be archaeologist.

After many years, I failed to become an archaeologist (I didn't even think about taking history or archeology-related majors), and instead studied movies. If it is said that I owe Indiana Jones the influence of ancient civilizations on me since I was a child, a gorgeous fantasy that cannot be reached in the wilderness, then a historical viewing of this video of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) seems to be the only thing that can make up for not being an archaeologist A kind of psychological compensation, and of course Harrison Ford's heroic figure with whip and hat.

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg made the first Indiana Jones in 1981. The title was not Indiana Jones, it was called Raiders of the Lost Ark. It was not until the hero Indy became popular that the title began to appear in the second episode. In addition, the first three films of "Indiana Jones and XXX" were set at the time of World War II. Of course, the opposing side of the axis must be the German Nazis. The fourth film puts Indy in a scene from the post-war period to the formation of the Cold War. Of course, at this time, the opposition The latter also changed from Nazi fascism to American imperialism against the Russian communist regime.

Here I want to talk about the scene of the nuclear bomb explosion in the film. For me, the first person (Indy's POV) intervenes in the Manhattan Project of the United States secretly testing nuclear bombs, and it is an interesting imprint embedded in it.

In the movie, the nuclear weapon test that India happened to be in, the location recorded in the historical facts is Los Alamos in the United States, and the date is July 16, 1945. It was used to kill human beings on August 6, less than a month later. It was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, and again on Nagasaki three days later. Here I do not want to discuss the judgment of the right and wrong between the United States and Japan in World War II, but the archaeology of an atomic bomb seen in the video and its history.

I suddenly remembered a few scenes that appeared in the movie Der Zauberberg (1982). The scenes showed the American middle-class suburbs and urban life and Indiana Jones. A kind of montage contrast. Regarding the images of nuclear bombs, except for the huge fungus cloud, we rarely have the opportunity to place our observations in the nuclear explosion, just like director Alain Resnais interspersed with a lot of Hiroshima in the movie Hiroshima mon armor (1959) The video of the people/debris of the atomic bomb was recorded, but the character said, "I saw everything in Hiroshima", the heroine replied, "You saw nothing in Hiroshima".

(Hiroshima mon amour)

We can say that only those who died in the atomic bombing, the few survivors, could witness the explosion of the nuclear bomb with their own eyes. Others can only be imagined.

Perhaps, for those of us who were born in the 1980s, the threat of the atomic bomb is far less than that of nuclear radiation (such as Chernobyl Nuclear Accident). To say that the image of the atomic bomb appeared in my life, it should have come from 1991 in Anoshwa In Singer's masterpiece Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Linda Hamilton, who played the role of the protagonist's mother, saw a child playing in a park encountering a nuclear bomb explosion in a dream and being smashed to pieces. This scene, for me in middle school Said, a kind of shock of high fever death fear that I can't experience it happened in my eyes. When I grew up a bit, I also saw that the early French director Alain Resnais also placed many documentaries after the Hiroshima atomic bombing in Hiroshima mon armor (1959), or the director Akira Kurosawa's late color film Dreams (1990) added nuclear fear. segmented story.

(Dreams)

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have used film technology to replace and shape countless spectacle for the audience from the early 1980s to the present. From E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) in the 1980s to the 1990s Jurassic Park trilogy, etc. This time he chose to let Indiana Jones plunge into the memory of the Cold War from the background of World War II, and the impossible nuclear explosion scene made me fall into the horror impression of nuclear explosion again.

Postscript: Of course, I think I must be very humble to describe these images and organize the history I want to tell. I am just trying to dig out and piece together the partial appearance of those histories through a process of writing as a person who has not experienced those terrible histories.