oliver9184

I agree with that 100%. I also really rate Poltergeist: it fits in well with Close Encounters and ET. Proxy or not Spielberg could absolutely nail those domestic scenes.

My two main reasons for disliking Indiana Jones are the actor and the character. This applies equally to the first three films. I have not seen the latest one but I don't suppose it would make much of a difference. Be assured I'm not speaking from a position of ignorance: I've seen the three multiple times (as numerous peers have made subsequent efforts to try to change my mind about them) and I can remember them all reasonably well.

The actor: I don't like Harrison Ford. I can watch him easily enough, but I find him cold, rude, unnecessarily abrupt, smug and I hardly ever really care about the characters he plays. I like some of his films - Witness, Frantic, The Fugitive and the two Jack Ryan films - but scarcely because of him. It could just as well be Dennis Quaid playing those roles. I can stand him in Star Wars - even though all those adjectives apply - because the attention isn't always on him. The Indiana Jones francise is a one man show where the focus is relentlessly and exhaustingly on him.

The character: Indiana Jones is a selfish, callous, arrogant, childish and often cruel individual. He's so dislikeable. Watching these films I simply do not want him to triumph because he's unpleasant. Macho, rugged, tough and resplendent with adventuring and fighting skills though he is, Jones comes across, implicitly, as either impotent or asexual. It's very difficult to imagine an Indiana Jones sex scene: I suspect he'd burst into tears if it ever got that far. The absence of sex is a Spielberg trademark but nowhere does it make itself as conspicuous and incongruous as in these films.

If some other actor played a character similar to Indiana Jones, but he was less of a scowling, anti-social and perennially flaccid penis and more of a, you know, proper hero I could enjoy the films a bit more, I think. But still they're really too big, too dumb, too emptily extravagant and with too much loud and stupid shit going on for me to get much from. They're just hollow bluster and hot air. I saw bits and pieces of them on TV when I was much younger and as I mentioned, I've watched them more properly as an adult, several times - I've tried to get into them, to see the appeal. It's pretty lonely on this side: the only people I meet who seem to shared my sentiments are unthinking buffoons who can't concentrate on films that aren't The Fast and the Furious and whose so-called opinions are, to me, completely invalid anyway. I don't begrudge anyone who likes the films any more than I would fans of, say, Star Wars (not me) or Harry Potter (me); however if anyone wants to counter my arguments above and get a healthy debate going, I'm up for it.