Brushing down those old bones

PROFILE:  INDIANA JONESWHEN DID nostalgia get so complicated? Tomorrow night, the fourth film in the Indiana Jones saga will have its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, writes Donald Clarke.

In recent years, studios have enjoyed tantalising fans by withholding even the tiniest details of anticipated releases - Will Carrie Bradshaw have a nose job? Does Batman finally get to kiss the butler? - but the security cordon around the plot of (deep breath) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has been particularly unyielding.

Fans have been reduced to analysing elements of the film's Lego merchandise for clues as to the story's concerns. Late last year, Tyler Nelson, an extra on the picture, dared to tell the world that Indiana Jones is be captured by Soviet agents and interrogated by an evil Cate Blanchett.

Steven Spielberg, director of all four pictures, responded by threatening to cut the unfortunate Nelson's scenes. "Who knows whether that particular person will ever work in this town again?" his representative fumed.

Thank goodness for the Irish Film Censor's Office (IFCO). At time of writing, John Kelleher, the holder of that post, is the only person known to have seen the film in this country. IFCO's comments on Crystal Skull, which opens worldwide on Thursday, are as follows: "Swashbuckling comic-book-style action adventure violence, scares and stunts (fights, explosions, chases, etc), punctuated by humour."

It sounds great.

We do, of course, know that the film will revolve around the activities of an ageing archaeologist with a severe fear of snakes.

The sight of Harrison Ford, now a crinkly 65, staring out of billboards, magazine advertisements and lunch boxes, creates an understandable surge in the minds of movie fans from three generations. But, in the 27 years since Indiana first took up his bullwhip for Raiders of the Lost Ark, the series' nostalgic impulses have curled in upon themselves somewhat. The middle-aged Indiana Jones fan looks at the hero and remembers an era of Space Invaders, Reaganomics and ladies' shoulder pads. In contrast, the creators of the franchise have their minds focused on a much earlier epoch.

Indiana Jones was conceived as a tribute to the heroes of the cheap adventure serials made by the likes of Republic Pictures throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Yet, by the time Spielberg and George Lucas, the series' producer and occasional co-writer, got to view these romps on television, they were already period pieces. The distinguished ladies and gentlemen in Cannes are, thus, being offered the opportunity to indulge in nostalgia for nostalgia for nostalgia.

At this very moment, some PhD student is composing a thesis - the word "discourses" will appear in the title - on this puzzling post-modern phenomenon. The tome will, surely, begin with a description of Raiders' opening shot, in which the old studio logo of Paramount Pictures gives way to an image of a real mountain.

THE TWO PRIME creators of Indiana Jones were undergoing different types of trauma in 1980. Lucas was concerned that the swelling reputation of Star Wars would overcome his other achievements.

Meanwhile Spielberg, following the critical and financial failure of 1941, a bloated war comedy, found himself in the unusual position of craving a box-office hit.

Spielberg and Lucas had a hard job selling the project to the studio chiefs. Michael Eisner, then head of Paramount, later a triumphant boss at Disney, initially suspected that the film would be prohibitively expensive, but the two caballeros stressed that, as well as referencing the plots of the cheap movie series, they intended to revisit the working methods of those thrifty pioneers.

"It isn't necessary to make a perfect movie; that's just a formula for going broke," Lucas told Eisner. "You have to make a movie good enough to achieve the desired magic. There's a difference between magic and perfection." He went on to explain how they were happy to cut corners while constructing visual effects and, within 10 minutes, Eisner was won over.

Raiders of the Lost Ark even managed to make its money in the old-fashioned way. Despite taking in a relatively meagre $8.3 million on its opening weekend, the film picked up great word of mouth and hung around in cinemas for month after month. It eventually garnered $200 million and, with nearly twice as hefty a take as its nearest rival, easily topped the box-office chart for 1981.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom followed in 1984, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade completed the opening trilogy five years after that. Both sequels were enormous hits.

So how much of the films' success is down to the personality of the hero? In truth, Indiana Jones, as played by the slightly wooden Harrison Ford, is little more than a cipher in a hat, a bundle of pop-cultural allusions wrapped in scuffed leather.

George and Steven originally wanted Tom Selleck for the role, but all they really needed was a performer with a square jaw and the willingness to play the cog in a well-oiled narrative machine.

FOR ALL THAT, Indiana Jones has accumulated quite a busy biography over the past three decades. The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, a television series from the 1990s, put the teenage Jones among numerous significant upheavals and helped establish the hero as one of the last century's great historical catalysts. In 1916, the young Jones romanced a Dublin girl and made friends with WB Yeats and Sean O'Casey while the city geared up for rebellion. Elsewhere he encountered Leo Tolstoy, Pancho Villa and Charles de Gaulle.

Henry Walton Jones jnr was, it seems, born in Princeton, New Jersey, during the summer of 1899. His father (played in Last Crusade by Sean Connery) was also an archaeologist, and became both a professional and romantic rival to the younger man in subsequent decades. His mother, to whom he was close, died of scarlet fever in 1912. Taking his nickname from that of a cherished puppy, Indiana drifted away from his negligent father and into adventure.

However, following various romps during the first World War - and the Mexican and Russian revolutions - the young man eventually returned to study in the University of Chicago and followed dad into the relic-hunting business.

Being both a boffin and a swashbuckler, he cannot have been altogether surprised when, in 1936, the US government asked him to locate the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis got their mitts on it.

Two years later, after accompanying his father on a search for the Holy Grail, he rode off towards the movie-development hell that lies beyond the setting sun.

Listing the scriptwriters who were never asked to work on a fourth episode might be easier than numbering those who did deliver drafts or treatments. M Night Shyamalan, Stephen Gaghan, Frank Darabont and Tom Stoppard all worked on the film, but none managed to discover a narrative hook to satisfy the series' guardians.

Eventually, after nearly two decades of dithering, Ford put his foot down and declared that if the film were not made by 2008 then it would not be made at all. David Koepp, writer of Spider-Man and War of the Worlds, promptly delivered a script that passed muster.

THE FILM-MAKERS, sensibly allowing Jones to age, have set the movie some 18 years after the events depicted in Last Crusade. Chatter in the corridors of Hollywood suggests that, in an effort to maintain the series' enthusiasm for contemporaneous pastiche, the tone is closer to that of a 1950s B-movie than a 1930s adventure series. As the hapless Tyler Nelson suggested, the villains do indeed seem to emanate from the Soviet bloc.

The film will, undoubtedly, offer Ford many opportunities to extract comedy from the creakiness of Jones's bones and the weariness of his soul. And, yes, the world has changed greatly since the archaeologist first stomped towards the camera. The notion of an intimate, economical epic no longer seems respectable in an age where studios rely on a tiny handful of "tent-pole" blockbusters to keep the roof above their heads.

Sure enough, the budget for Crystal Skull has been estimated around the $200 million mark, which, when you add in marketing and print manufacture, suggests the ultimate cost is close to $300 million. The days when an event movie could be allowed to follow the Raiders of the Lost Ark model and build business slowly are long gone. For example, the failure of the Wachowski brothers' Speed Racer at the box-office last week has already led the trade papers to speculate about sackings at Warner Brothers.

The irony is that few film-makers have had as much to do with the advance of blockbuster economics as George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Tomorrow night, Indiana Jones ventures forth into a frightening, ruthless universe largely fashioned by his own originators. Nostalgia really is an odd business these days.

CVINDIANA JONES

Who is he?Ageing archaeologist and adventurer who first graced our screens 27 years ago in Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Why is he in the news? Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the fourth movie in the franchise, has its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival tomorrow evening. The picture, which opens worldwide on Thursday, also stars Shia LaBeouf and Cate Blanchett.

Most appealing characteristic:Ability to retain his sangfroid despite assault by giant boulders, knife-wielding maniacs and gun-toting Nazis. Only snakes seriously shatter his composure.

Least appealing characteristic:A certain woodenness of delivery that results from his being played by Harrison Ford.

Most likely to say:"I really am getting too old for this."

Least likely to say:"Anything for a quiet life."