A lot can change in 27 years. That's how long it's been since the original Raiders of the Lost Ark and it's been nearly two decades since the last one, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Look at it this way: Two of the biggest adventure hits of 1954 were 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Naked Jungle. Now imagine Kirk Douglas and Charlton Heston making sequels to those movies in 1981, 27 years later. By 1981 the movie landscape was decidedly different than it was in 1954 and 2008 is decidedly different than 1981. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't sense the excitement about a new Indiana Jones film like I did in the eighties. When the other two sequels were released they, like the Star Wars sequels The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, were the summer movies to see. Now Indiana Jones is practically lost in the shuffle. Iron Man and the next installment of Batman have generated far greater buzz and even Speed Racer has it's share of enthusiastic defenders.
One could sense the change with the release of Revenge of the Sith in 2005. It was the biggest money maker of the year to be sure but was it exciting? Was it an event? Was it the movie to see? No. And not because of any standard of quality (although full disclosure: I was underwhelmed in the extreme with all three later episodes and could live another 1,000 years without a desire to watch them again) but because there was too much competition. Among the top ten moneymakers of 2005 that could be considered direct competition with Revenge of the Sith were The Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, War of the Worlds, King Kong and Batman Begins. Two decades earlier and any one of those would have been the movie event of the summer but now there's an event every other weekend.
And quite frankly, with the possible exception of Batman Begins, I don't believe any of those films have had the lingering sense of fan devotion that the original Star Wars or Indiana Jones movies did, and part of it is simply because there's a new blockbuster each week. And that's fine, I'm not making a judgment call. If the summer audiences want one special effects popcorn flick after another and the studios can provide them it makes perfect business sense to me to give the ticket buyers what they want. It's just that the blockbuster has lost its luster, so to speak (there's a rhyming couplet to be had with those two words but I don't feel like figuring it out).
[Warning: Good Old Days Geezer Alert!]
Back when I was a kid the blockbuster was an event. Each year promised a high profile movie that some studio would sink all their money into and everyone had to see it. Since the success of 
Star Wars was unanticipated by the movie going crowd (that is, we weren't waiting and waiting for it to be released, it just kind of happened) my first recollection of an anticipatory blockbuster was The Empire Strikes Back. Oh Dear Lord I couldn't wait to see that damn thing. My friend, Chris, had read the Star Wars fiction released in between the two and told me all about Darth Vader falling into a volcano and that's why he had to wear the suit. Wow! How cool was that? Little did I know when I finally saw it happen in 2005 I would be stifling yawns during the climax. And of course the Star Wars fiction made absolutely no mention of Vader's name or who he was so the whole "Father" moment was absolutely flooring (although since Vader actually means 'father' I'm curious why this was not picked up on sooner by the adults seeing the movie. Were people just that un-curious and intellectually lazy back then? Nowadays the 'Vader' thing would've been blown after the first showing of the first movie).
The next E-V-E-N-T was Raiders of the Lost Ark. It came out the following year (nowadays it would have come out the following weekend - Hey, I didn't put that geezer warning up for nothing) and again I was just crazy to see it. But this time something strange occurred: After I saw it, and loved it, I didn't go back. Now with Star Wars and Empire I had gone back multiple times to see them again and again in the theatre. With Raiders, once was enough. Not because of the movie, but because, well, I just didn't feel the need. By 1981 I was knee deep in my early days of cinephilia and the movies I wanted to see again and again were Citizen Kane and anything foreign. We had just gotten a VCR (cost somewhere around $900 - In 1981 dollars!) and I was constantly renting video after video of whatever old or foreign films they had (for the curious, the first video I ever rented was Dr. Strangelove). My days of haunting the theatre to see the newest blockbuster again and again were over, and I hadn't even gotten my first pimple yet. And believe it or not, I'm not just thinking of this for the first time because I'm writing this entry for a blogathon. I have often thought of Raiders of the Lost Ark as the turning point blockbuster for me. It was, through no fault of its own, the first blockbuster I didn't return to in the theatre. When I didn't go back multiple times I knew I had changed. I watched it again on video and later on DVD and enjoyed it immensely. I think it's a great adventure movie and had it occurred just a year or two earlier it probably would have meant a hell of a lot more to
me. But it came at just the wrong time for me to fully appreciate it. It came at a time when my obsession with art was in full blossom and I was more interested in torturing my mother with videos of Truffaut and Godard than seeing blockbusters. I wanted to see what all the hoopla was about with Last Year at Marienbad. I wanted to see The Magnificent Ambersons and The Lady from Shanghai. I wanted to see Shadow of a Doubt and Vertigo. I wanted to see Nashville. I wanted to see Britannia Hospital and If. I wanted to see so much and I didn't have the time to see them all if I was constantly returning to the theatre to see the same movie again.
That's not to say I don't watch movies repeatedly, I do. I just don't watch them repeatedly with only days or weeks in between the viewings. And because my time is so constricted now I can't even imagine watching the same movie a second time before watching a fresh movie in between. There's still too much I need to see and I'm sure as hell not going to pass up the opportunity to watch a movie I have heard and read about for years but haven't seen yet to see some summer movie again that I just saw a week before. I have stacks of DVDs of highly regarded English and Foreign Language films that I still haven't seen so when I have time I try to watch one of those instead.
And now here it is, 27 years later and I'm knee deep in my cinephilia again. Netflix affords me the opportunity to catch up on so many movies I have missed and the AFI Silver theatre, just 20 minutes walking distance from where I live, is constantly showing highly regarded as well as little known cinema classics, both foreign and domestic. An abundance of choice surrounds me and I am forever grateful. But that abundance, and age, have also diminished my excitement for the new Jones film.
Blockbusters are a dime a dozen these days. Opening weekends are everything and even the biggest money maker of the year won't play more than a few weeks before being pulled in preparation for its DVD release. Which opens up even more choices. It used to be (geezer time 
again) that if you didn't see the movie in the theatre you were out of luck. Maybe, just maybe, it would be shown on commercial television in three years time and we all now how unsatisfying that is. So you made sure you saw it in the theatre. Besides, the home viewing experience just couldn't compare. Now, it can compare. Sitting six feet from a 70 inch high definition television is the equivalent of sitting in the middle row of a multi-plex. And the differences favor the home viewing experience: No one sits in front of you, you can pause the movie at will for bathroom breaks and no one's breaking your bank account for a drink and a bucket of popcorn. Of course, we don't all have 70 inch sets but still it can be much more relaxing to watch a movie at home. At the same time, there is an excitement of seeing a movie in the theatre that the home experience can't match and many times, it's the blockbusters that generate that sense of communal excitement.
So the new Jones film opens on May 22nd. Even if the series "must-see" status has evolved over the years from major to minor it should still be a big event at the movies. Will I see the new Indiana Jones movie? Of course I will. Will I see it in the theatre? Uh... let me get back to you on that.
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This has been a part of the Indiana Jones Blogathon hosted by Cerebral Mastication - Thanks Ali.
