Indiana Jones and the Tales of the Culturally Relevant

That’s right. After 28 years I have now seen all 4 Indiana Jones movies.

Seeing as how the first class I enrolled in for Fall term of Freshman year of college was Archaeology 101 and that I ended up minoring in Anthropology you would of thought Indy shaped my youth. False.

In fact, my first exposure to Indiana Jones was the first 7 minutes of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark which my archaeology professor showed during the start of the first class and then said “If you enrolled in this class because this is what you think archaeology is all about then leave now” and shockingly many people did leave. I was confused because I thought archaeology was about dinosaurs not running from boulders so I stayed.

Fast forward from that day in 2001 to 2007 when I was harassed a bit further at the shock and awe that I hadn’t seen these critical movies and there was one attempt to watch the at the time trilogy. About 1/2 way once again into Raiders of the Last Ark an unanticipated interruption took place.

Fast forward yet again to 2011 and it’s complete. I watched the first 2 in one weekend, the 3rd a few weeks later and after a hiatus in which I was informed that watching the 4th one wasn’t critical since it was bad I went ahead and completed the set.

Rankings in order of best to worst:

1. Last Crusade
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark
3. Temple of Doom
4. Crystal Skull

Really those last 2 are throw aways to me – they were equally bad.