Seriously, for all I know this movie could end up being the biggest piece of crap since, well, anything else Lucas has had his hands in for the last ten years. But right now I just don't care. There's a new Indiana Jones movie on the way and I can't wait. What's the movie gonna be about? How will the story play out? I don't know, I'm making this up as I go. Come on in and speculate with me.

Just look at that. Sweet, sweet nectar. If my brain had a dick, it would be a throbbing hard love-staff right now. I am so excited about this movie. And this article. I love writing reviews like this because they're not reviews at all. The movie hasn't been released yet. Nothing's out there to form an opinion on, at least nothing of substance that can really be trusted. The movie is months away, so most of the crap we're hearing is rumor and speculation. All I know is that there is a new Indiana Jones movie, and a few details such as the title and a few pics from the sets. With those few guides as my direction, I have a blank canvas on which to let my imagination go crazy. I haven't been this excited about a movie in a very long time. There's a new Indy movie on the way! Fuckin' A!

Here's something even the other Sci-Fi Guys don't know: Indiana Jones damn near ruined us as a television show. You see, back in the dark ages, long before we had a web presence, we existed only on cable. The physical telecommunications grid of Northern Kentucky was our home; we weren't even being broadcast over actual airwaves yet.

Early on, before the first inch of tape rolled, I was in a late night class getting my producer's license. There were exactly 45 bazillion forms to fill out to become a producer and get a series on the air. I know, 'cause I counted. Each and every form required the name of the series. That was a no-brainer; I had come up with the name The Sci-Fi Guys at work one day. I had been thinking about a name that would present an informal, familiar tone but would also tell the viewers everything they needed to know about us before they ever watched a second of footage.

And then it hit me. The Sci-Fi Guys. It hit me like I was shot… like I was shot with a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, "My God, the genius of that. The genius, the will to do that." The Sci-Fi Guys. Genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. It was informal, it was relaxed, it accurately told the viewers about our content, and the icing on the cake was that it had a catchy, rhyming rhythm to it. It was succinct. It was memorable. It was perfect.

Later that night, as I sat there in the studio with the forms, I knew that once I put it on the sheet I was stuck with it. But I was so happy. Its a great sounding name for a TV show. I knew I couldn't possibly come up with a better one. Just me and the guys and a show about sci-fi. The Sci-Fi Guys. That said it all. And then, literally as I put my pen to the paper, it occurred to me:

What about Indiana Jones? 

There was not one ounce of sci-fi in any of the Indiana Jones movies, at least not that I can remember. Indiana Jones was magic and curses and gods and ancient sorcery. It was fantasy. I had always envisioned The Sci-Fi Guys to be a show about sci-fi, and strictly sci-fi. My love of Star Trek and my love of talking about Star Trek was the reason for the show. Sci-fi is what I know and care about. But I also love Indiana Jones. A LOT. I consider the Indiana Jones trilogy more inventive, enjoyable, and personally meaningful than the original Star Wars trilogy ever was. They are three of my very favorite movies. They are hands down my favorite fantasy movies ever made. I love them more than Conan The Barbarian, The NeverEnding Story and The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, and those are all very damned impressive fantasy movies. Since the instant I'd thought of it just a scant few hours earlier, The Sci-Fi Guys was the name I had my heart firmly set on. I figured Mark would want to kill me for it, but I was willing to exclude fantasy and magic and just talk about sci-fi on the show… except for Indiana Jones. I'll be damned if I'm gonna have a TV show where I can't talk about Indiana Jones. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't exclude Dr. Jones. I sat there in gut churning horror as the name of my television show went from being perfect to being a dirty fucking lie.

I actually started to have a little panic attack. The walls were closing in. What the fuck was I gonna do? I'd just wasted four hours I was supposed to be using to do homework, just to get a producer's license for a show I now couldn't name. Because of Indiana Jones. That was going to be a pretty weak excuse to offer up to my professors, and to the studio manager, and to my fiancée, whom I had promised this would be a one time thing. There's no way I could spare the time to come back and do this all over again. There I was in a room full of new producers, all clamoring for air time, air time they were going to fill with shitty high school football games, poorly filmed church sermons, and all manner of utter garbage that I knew I could beat in the ratings even if I shot the show in my sleep. And these people were going to get MY time slot. Because of Indiana Jones.

Well, fuck that. I was determined to start a television show, and start it that night. The Sci-Fi Guys is a great name. I was not giving it up. My viewers would just have to understand. Indiana Jones would just have to understand. And I would just have to suck it up and face the fact that I'd named my show inaccurately. Before I wrote a single letter I forced myself to come to terms with the fact that, despite the name, The Sci-Fi Guys was going to be about sci-fi and fantasy. That settled, I hastily filled out the ridiculous stack of papers and turned them in just seconds before they closed the studio and kicked me out. Genesis! If The Sci-Fi Guys was a baby, that was the sperm breaking through the corona radiata and fertilizing the egg. The seed had been planted. I was gonna be a mommy.

So Indiana Jones was the coitus interruptus of The Sci-Fi Guys. It all worked out, though, and today I'm as happy as a pig in shit to be here telling you about his new movie. Just so there are no complaints later on let me be clear about one thing: this article may contain spoilers that will give away info about the film. I say 'may' because a lot of what I'll be talking about is rumor, conjecture, and educated guesses. Besides the photos, I trust nothing I've seen or read concerning what this movie's really about, but even still, I'm giving you fair warning. If you don't want to know anything about this movie, you'd best turn back now. 

Although I've already told you how much I already love this movie, and how much more I expect to love it once I actually see it, there are a few problems I can foresee with this film. Not the least of which is that there will be no Nazis. On a previous post, Mrs X. voiced her disappointment when it was confirmed online that there will be no Nazis in this movie. While I agree it sucks that Indy's most troublesome enemies probably won't be making an appearance, I honestly wouldn't rule it out of future stories entirely. Crystal Skull is set in the 1950s (1957, according to Wikipedia), so the lack of Nazis is understandable, historically speaking. However, it is well known that some very notorious Nazis escaped to South America immediately before and after the end of the war to escape the Nuremberg Trials. Some of them lived well into the 1980s. There's plenty of Nazi trouble left for Indy in the 1950s. If George Lucas has a single brain cell left in his head, which is no safe bet, he would make Spielberg use this as a plot device. I'm certain it will not happen.

Since I'm childishly hopeful and I like to set myself up for disappointment, I'm not completely ruling out Nazi involvement. There are scenes in this movie featuring Jones interacting with the US Army, with whom he has had dealings with before, and who were established in the first film to know about and cover up paranormal/supernatural threats. How cool would it be to have Indy be the one the US Army taps to uncover and/or eliminate the Nazi threat in South America?

My biggest problem with this movie so far has got to be that there is no Sallah. Allow me to rephrase that so I can more clearly communicate my distress at the situation: THERE IS NO MOTHERFUCKING SALLAH IN THIS MOTHERFUCKING MOVIE. What kind of bullshit is that?! Parts of this movie take place in Morocco. That's Sallah's part of the world! Its not exactly like it would be a stretch for him to be there. He's been in Turkey and he lives in Egypt; Morocco's not that far away. Sallah is a huge part of the Indiana Jones myth for me. His part in Last Crusade was not that large, but he was absolutely instrumental to the first movie. He save's Indy's life so many times I can't imagine a good reason for the character's exclusion from this story. Its just shitty.

But the fact that he isn't in the movie is not the worst part. I would have been okay with it if John Rhys-Davies, like Sean Connery, had chosen not to participate for personal or professional reasons. But he wasn't even asked. At a convention in New Zealand he was interviewed and asked about not being in the film, and he revealed that he had never even been approached about being a part of the film, and that he had been told through a third party that Sallah had been written out in favor of a younger cast. Who the fuck are Lucas (63 years old) and Spielberg (60 years old) to discriminate against John Rhys-Davies (63 years old) based on age, especially when they cast Harrison Ford, who's fucking 65 years old? Younger cast? You've got to be shitting me. Everyone involved with this thing is approaching seventy.

Another sore point seems to be the title, Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. I don't have a problem with this title, but it seems like a lot of folks really don't like it. To be honest — and I realize I'm opening the floodgates for people who will scream that I'm a heretic and drive me out of the village with torches and pitchforks — I think this is a much better title than Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Let's face it, Raiders was a fucking astounding movie experience, but if it hadn't been so cool, the title would probably seem laughable today. Its not very succinct, not at all clever, and not very compelling. Its a far better title than, oh, lets say The Phantom Menace for example, but if it hadn't kicked as much ass as it did, it would be considered a shitty name for a movie. I even remember being totally disinterested in the movie when I was a kid because the title sounded completely dull. Its only cool because the movie made it cool. 

By comparison, Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull is an awesome title. Unfortunately they tacked "Indiana Jones and the" to the beginning, making it only four characters shorter than Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl, which is easily the most unwieldy name for a movie since Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb. Its just too long. Those high school punks who work the theatres get paid shit wages to stand out in the cold and rain and put those letters up on the marquee. Why is Hollywood making it so hard on these kids? Chill with the paragraph-long titles, people. "Indiana Jones And The Crystal Skull" would have been just as good.

DanM has also expressed his displeasure with the title, but it could have been worse. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was just one of six different titles that were being considered for the movie. Earlier this summer Lucasfilm, Ltd. registered six different titles to be included on the Motion Pictures Association of America Title Registration Report. Either they were trying to throw people off by registering five fake names, which is possible, or they really hadn't yet figured out which title they were going to use and registered them all so no one else would use them, which I think is far more likely. Here are the five that didn't make the cut:

Indiana Jones And The City Of Gods - This has been the long-rumored working title for the script/film, and the one most everyone assumed would be the title of the fourth movie if there ever was one. Although its fairly lacking in useful information, its still a pretty sweet title, so I wouldn't be surprised to see it as the title of another movie, or maybe a video game or book. Because I have no more to say about this, I will now abruptly cut to a picture and an interesting side note.

Indiana Jones And The Lost City Of Gold - When I first got wind of what I considered reasonably substantial rumors that there might be another Indiana Jones movie, early on I heard that he would be investigating American Indian artifacts here in the States. While that seemed a little weak to me, the "Lost City of Gold" sounded like Indy may have been looking for El Dorado, the mythical golden city which has been assigned to virtually every Southwestern, Mexican, and Central and South American Indian tribe you can imagine. Although originally supposed to be located somewhere in the Amazon basin, the El Dorado legend has been associated with tribes as northerly as the Apaches, which means El Dorado could conceivably be as far north as Oklahoma.

I'll be honest with you, I was a fan of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, but I never got to see many episodes, so I don't remember much about it. Nor do I know a lot about the various Indiana Jones comics, novels, and games, as they mostly came and went before I got really into comics and video games. So with these pieces missing from my knowledge of Indiana Jones lore, I can't say for certain that Indy hasn't delved into some interesting American Indian adventures. However, I do know that he has been to El Dorado in the German-only novel Indiana Jones und das Gold von El Dorado (Indiana Jones and the Gold of El Dorado). This novel establishes that El Dorado exists deep in the Bolivian rainforest, and the gold of El Dorado is under some sort of curse. I've heard it's a decent novel, but I don't read German, so I'll just have to live with the mystery.

Will Indy ever delve into Native American lore on the big screen in more depth than just the side adventure he had with Belloq and the Hovitos? I don't know. I don't know if l like the idea an Indiana Jones movie without seeing a red line trace its way across an ocean to some exotic location. Could an American Indian movie with Indy be good? Certainly. But right now the idea just doesn't pique my interest.

Indiana Jones And The Quest For The Covenant - Its been done, Lucas. For god's sake, you hack, don't do it again. Both the Jewish Tanakh and the Christian Bible verify that the covenant, the actual stone tablets the ten commandments were written on, were placed in the Ark. In Raiders it was very clearly established that the tablets had since turned to sand. Could they have been removed and regular desert sand somehow made its way into the Ark instead? I guess, but that's completely lame. Its much cooler to have had the covenant fragments turned to sand, robbing the Nazis of their prize. Why change the story? There's no need for it. Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto, Norse, Celtic, Native American, and any number of other religious myths and legends tell of a vast inventory of holy/magical items that have never been found. Have Indy look for one of those. There's no reason to go back to the well for more of the same. Indy's part of the The Ark Of The Covenant story has already been told. We've seen it.

Indiana Jones And The Fourth Corner Of The Earth - What a shitty title. At first this sounded to me like something out of Chinese mythology, but really its a biblical reference. The Bible refers to the "four corners of the earth" in several places (Isaiah 11:12; Ezekiel 7:2; Revelations 7:1 and 20:8), and it firmly establishes that the world is flat. In Matthew 4:8 and Luke 4:5, the Devil, in a failed attempt to tempt Christ, takes Jesus up an "exceeding high mountain" and showed him the whole Earth at once, which would only be possible if the earth was flat (or concave) and finite.

The reason I bring all this up is that, although the title is crap, this might be a clue that a very cool Indiana Jones adventure has possibly been conceived around the treasures found in King Solomon's palace temple. For those of you not up on your scriptures, you sinning heathen wretches, allow me to explain:

King Solomon, considered to be the most legendarily wise man ever born, was the son of King David, the man who killed and decapitated Goliath. After David died, Solomon became the last king of the united monarchies of Israel and Judah before they split up, and thus is of major importance to both Jewish and Christian religions. Solomon was also exceedingly wealthy, and that's very important to the whole Indiana Jones tie in.

The significance of Solomon as related to the "four corners" lies in his wealth. Solomon used his riches to build an immense palace in Jerusalem that was so ornate and bejeweled with treasures of every kind that it became a focal point for raids by neighboring tribes and kingdoms for the next 350 years. Within this great palace was Solomon's temple, which held a model recreation of the seas in the form of an immense circular bowl representing the waters that surrounded the earth (check out how he built it in First Kings, Chapter 7). The model would have been supported by 12 ornate bronze bulls, three facing outward toward each of the cardinal directions. It could be interpreted that these trios of bulls represent the four corners of the Earth, and that perhaps Indy has located, or is trying to locate, one or more of these bronze statues, and the trouble he gets into along the way.

The tales of Solomon's palace and temple may not just be a story, by the way. Some historians believe this palace may have actually existed, and was finally pillaged and destroyed by the Babylonians under king Nebuchadnezzar when his army sacked Jerusalem in 586 BC. Nebuchadnezzar would have used part of this stolen treasure to finance the construction of one of the original Seven Wonders of the World, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which were built an estimated 14 years after Jerusalem fell. So if anyone had these bulls, it would probably have been the Babylonians.

Interestingly enough, according to First Kings, Chapter 8 and Second Chronicles, Chapter 5, the Ark Of The Covenant was also placed in Solomon's palace temple, in a central chamber called The Holy Of Holies. If the Ark was a real item, it may have been Nebuchadnezzar's men that stole the Ark from the Well Of Souls, which was supposedly a natural cave below the temple where the Ark could be hidden if it was ever endangered. If used as a setting, Solomon's Temple and The Well Of Souls beneath it would provide a new Indiana Jones story a very cool tie-in to Raiders.

All in all, the "four corners" idea could make for a great Indiana Jones movie, but this would be a horrible name for it. While it could most definitely be cool to see Indy digging up some more Judeo-Christian magical stuff, the title just blows. I hope they never use it.

Indiana Jones And The Destroyer of Worlds - Physics geeks like myself will know this title comes from the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, one of the most important texts of the Hindu tradition, considered by many to be one of the world's greatest religious and spiritual scriptures. The original quote is "The Blessed Lord said: Time I am, destroyer of the worlds, and I have come to engage all people. With the exception of you [speaking to five righteous brothers], all the soldiers here on both sides will be slain." Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who directed the Manhattan Project in the 1940s, quoted his own translation of the text as "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds" while watching the world's first nuclear test in 1945.

To me, this is the single most compelling of all six titles, and easily my favorite. The various interpretations of the text as Vishnu saying he has become either time and/or death would be an incredible tie in to the fact that Indy is a lot older now, and is starting to get a sense of his own mortality, perhaps as he realizes that he is simply not as able an adventurer as he once was. The title's ties with Oppenheimer's quote from the Manhattan Project is also an excellent way of acknowledging that Indy is now living in the nuclear age. Instead of the threat of Nazis marching all over the face of the Earth, Indy now lives in a world where the American-Soviet Cold War threat of impersonal nuclear death from above looms over the world.

When we last saw Indy in India it was 1935, and he was searching for the lost Sankara shiva lingham stones and being hunted by Thuggee cultists. If Wikipedia is to be believed, the new movie would take place 22 years after the events in Temple Of Doom. A hell of a lot of things have changed in India during that time: Gandhi led millions of non-violent protesters in mass campaigns of civil disobedience and won India's independence from the British in 1947, most of the country's Muslims left, taking a large chunk of land with them to form Pakistan, the First Kashmir War between India and Pakistan was fought, the People's Republic of China formed to the north in 1949, India drafted a new constitution and became a republic in 1950, and relations with China became increasingly tense starting in 1954 when a India made a controversial and somewhat dubious claim to land in South Tibet that had long been regarded as Chinese territory (this would ultimately lead to the Sino-Indian War in 1962). So India's got a lot going on to build an interesting story around.

But is it enough to build an interesting Indiana Jones story around? Hard to say. The Indiana Jones movies have all made a point of having Indy entangled in the politics of the day, whether it be the buildup to WWII, the tension between the Indians and colonial British administrators, or just the local politics of a unscrupulous treasure hunter using the town sheriff to get a priceless artifact out of the hands of a well-meaning teenager with an overdeveloped sense of historic propriety. But we don't have to worry about it, because they didn't go with that title.

They went with this one. So what does this title hint at? Well, first of all, it makes a pretty strong case for my argument that this movie will have crystal skulls in it. I think you have to give it to me on that one. Secondly… well, you'll just have to wait for that. This article is long enough already and I'm sick of typing. In any case, these few misgivings I have with the movie are NOTHING when compared to all the awesome things this movie has going for it. These complaints are trivial. I'm stoked about this movie. I think its going to rock. Check back for Part II where I show you a bunch of awesome pics from the new movie and tell you why I love it so much. Peace out.