On Temple of the Seven Golden Camels today, I found the following, expressing concern about the new Indiana Jones movie:
The part of the trailer that sets off alarm bells in my head is the moment when Ray Winstone says "This isn't going to be easy" and Harrison Ford answers "Not as easy as it used to be" (If you haven't seen the trailer, it can be found here or here.The reason I think this line is troublesome is that it's basically a wink to the audience that refers to the first movie and the fact that the first movie was made over twenty years ago. It's a line that would be meaningless if those first films had never been made and if we weren't all aware of them.
I have a hard time believing that anybody would ever really say that line in that situation. I know people who have aged and have made remarks about their diminished faculties but never at all the way Indy does here, and it's hard to imagine that being the first thing on your mind in the situation that Indiana Jones seems to be in here.
That line in the trailer bothered me as well, but for slightly different reasons. I don't have a problem with the occasionally improbable aside, but this one strikes me as being horribly out of character. A more appropriate response would have been for Indy to say, "It never is." After all, it's not like he handily sailed through the first three films, and unless those were exceptions to his career or he spent the time between "The Last Crusade" and the new film sitting quietly on dissertation committees, we have to assume that he has these kinds of adventures on a regular basis.
Posted by Jason at April 6, 2008 02:16 PM