No real spoilers in this post. Just a little too much Temple of Doom, not enough Raiders of the Lost Ark. Or something like that. The movie wasn’t bad, and it’s hard to see how any movie could live up to these expectations and this hype — it’s been just shy of twenty years since Last Crusade came out, after all — but I think some of the magic has worn off.
I saw it this afternoon, in a not terribly packed theater — although admittedly it wa’s playing on about four or five other screens. When the LucasFilm logo popped up at the beginning, I couldn’t help but think, “Some of these people would have cheered at that, just a few short years ago. But then Phantom Menace happened…”
Update: Gerry Canavan, with whom I don’t think I’ve ever actually agreed on a film before, gets to the heart of what I think are my own feelings about the movie — albeit with considerably more spoilers than above. (And even more in the comments there.) The film is actually a lot of fun, most of the time, but only if you divorce yourself critically from it, and try not to dwell on the far superior films (Raiders and Last Crusade) that preceded it.
And the re-releases of the spiffed-up Star Wars (Hans shot first!) etc. I admit to being a little leery of it myself. Glad to hear it wasn’t a complete travesty — we might be going tomorrow.