What's Mysterious

A couple days ago I read that the teaser trailer for the new Indiana Jones movie would be coming out today (you can watch it at indianajones.com, you should watch it now). So when I woke up this morning, that was what I was most excited about. Rather pathetic for Valentine's Day, I know, but when you're single, like me, on this blessed day you must find something to keep you going. So in my case, it was a happy jaunt back to my boyhood days before I ever cared about girls and watched "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" or "Raiders of the Lost Ark" at least once a week. For many years I heard rumors from friends that they were going to make another one, but I never believed them. Harrison Ford kept getting older. Spielberg's movies contained less and less the whiz bang excitement and sense of awe that his eighties movies had. And Lucas, well, Lucas was doing . . . something. But somehow, after all these years, they all pulled together and made a new Indiana Jones movie. How did it happen? I don't know. But let this be a lesson to all those who disbelieve. Just because you don't believe something will happen, that doesn't mean that it wont happen.

The movie is still forthcoming, I will doubtless have more to say about it come May 22. But we do have a trailer (which can be found at indianajones.com and before you do anything else, if you have not already done so, you should go over there right now and watch it) and I am excited beyond belief.

It reminds me of the same giddy feeling I got when the trailer to Star Wars Episode I came out. Before you roll your eyes, remember that this was back in the spring of 1999 before anyone had seen it and had any reason to complain. Star Wars was still the awesomest thing ever. They showed the Episode I trailer on the news, and we recorded it onto a VHS tape. I wore that little spot on the tape out from watching it, and rewinding it, then watching it over again. This was also in the days when we had a dial up connection for the internet and the only videos you could get online were tiny. I think the first trailer I ever watched online was for Harry Potter, but I digress.

I hope this new Indiana Jones movie (have you watched the new trailer yet? you really should) keeps the sense of mystery and danger that was so gripping in the other movies. Star Wars also had that sense of mystery and awe. But as it turns out, as we discovered in the prequels, there really isn't much mystery in galactic politics (actually there is, because it's a mystery how Jar Jar could convince anyone, let alone the entire galactic senate, to grant emergency supreme almighty powers to Palpatine, allowing him to position himself to become Emperor and therefor take over the entire galaxy, but that's not the kind of mystery I'm talking about). It's that sense of mystery and awe that you have when you're a kid, when you go on vacation to a place you've never heard of before, and it is all strange and new yet at the same time ancient. Then when you get older and learn about geography and global studies and all that, the sense of mystery fades. I hope that this new Indiana Jones movie will give me back a piece of that.

And if you've read this far without going to indianajones.com and watching the new trailer, than all I have to say is, you're already on a computer, what's stopping you?