I just finished watching the new, and final, Indiana Jones film. I won't spoil it, but I'll give a few thoughts.
And for parents wondering about curse words in the film, rest assured, this is as family friendly as Indy has always been.
I, like many people my age, grew up with the original Indiana Jones trilogy, and love those movies. And while they're set in the modern age, they've got a lot that can be emulated in D&D. The movies are, after all, about a treasure hunter. But also like most of us, I felt that the 4th film, which came out 15 years ago, was terrible. It had some of the style of the old movies, but not enough. It relied overly much on CGI (which wasn't always that good), and had a clunky script.
But this latest and final movie learned from those mistakes. And it's not surprising, as it's directed by James Mangold, who knows how to make a great movie.
This iteration of Indiana Jones is of course much older, but we do get some time at the beginning with a digitally de-aged Indy during WWII, and it looked really good. It felt a lot like Spielberg's original trilogy. The whole movie, really. Even once it transitions to the "present" of 1969, they quickly move the action to the Mediterranean Sea, where things are a bit older and less modern than 60's New York City.
The movie has all the plot points you'd expect from an Indy film. Lots of chases, reversals, switching possession of the McGuffin, clever escapes from dangerous situations, bad guys who just won't stop, and tension between Indy and his allies. One down-side is that the movie is nearly 3 hours long. That's a bit much, but the movie does keep things moving so it wasn't boring. And Harrison Ford was still able to pull off that Indiana Jones charm one more time.
In addition to all the swashbuckling, derring-do, and such, Indiana Jones is given an emotional character arc in the movie, but that part was a little weak. It's set up and worked into his character choices in the film, but in the end it gets resolved a little too quickly, and not by a choice made by Jones. But we really come to these movies for the chases, the crawls through old ruins and tombs, and the excitement. So it doesn't bother me too much. Indy didn't really have much character growth in the first two films, either.
There are only a few references to the older movies (and that includes Crystal Skull), but there were some nice cameos from some of our favorite characters. One was noticeably missing, though. Too bad.
Now that Ford is retiring the character, I'd love to see a reboot of the series, but not a rehash of the old films. I'd rather they do what they do with James Bond. Cast a new young actor. Make more Indiana Jones films set in the 1930s. Hell, they don't need to stick to any sort of timeline. Just give us some good early 20th century cliffhanger serial style adventure films, and every few years recast Indy with a new, younger actor. Why not? Disney has the property now, you know they're going to try and milk it for all it's worth. Might as well dive feet first into what really works.
Oh, and an interesting side note. Neither of my boys were interested in seeing it, so I went by myself. There were maybe around six or seven fellow geezers (yeah, I'm not quite that old, but...) in the theater. When I arrived, there were around 100 6th graders hanging around the lobby. I thought they were probably going to see Across the Spiderverse as a school trip (my younger son's school is right now on a science museum field trip, must be field trip day in Busan). But no, they were here to see this movie. And there were more than 100. The theater was packed with them, and I think there were 180 seats. While they were somewhat noisy and disruptive, they were having fun. And when the movie finished, a lot of them started to applaud.
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