The Adventures of Indiana Jones DVD Movie Collection
Filed Under: Film, Reviews | Article Tags : box set , DVD review
By: DVDave
December 2003
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It’s a privilege for me to review one of the greatest movie trilogies of all time. I can only hope I do it justice. The Indiana Jones series changed the way movies were made and Indiana Jones changed the way we saw movie heroes.
From the get-go its obvious this DVD collection is a tour de force. The packaging of the box is freshened. There’s a phenomenal new THX trailer at the beginning of each film that will rock your living room. The menus are animated and concise. All extras, commentaries, trailers, and bonus features are combined onto their own disc comprising over three hours of material. The whole collection weighs in at four DVDs with over nine hours of Indiana Jones footage, enough to fill a whole Saturday night…like I did.
Harrison Ford. The man is such an amazing actor his name deserves its own sentence. The reason we love Indy so much is because of Ford’s human, vulnerable, and quick wit portrayal. It would be impossible to see anyone else in the role of Indiana Jones.
It had been so long since I’d seen “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in widescreen format that I had almost forgotten what a glorious film this is. Years of watching it on VHS tape or on WGN and TBS in full screen and hacked up with commercials had dulled its affect. One such scene (at 30:10 into the DVD), although not pivotal yet one that bugged me nonetheless, is the shoot out at Marion’s bar in Nepal. When the head Nazi, Toht (brilliantly played by Ronald Lacey), and his thugs are about to put the hurt on Marion, there’s a shot of Toht poking at the fire with an iron and his thugs in the background holding Marion captive. In past viewings with the pan and scan version, when Toht gives the order to take out Marion and there’s an obvious “pan” to the right to show the thugs about to do their thing. For the first time since 1981, I got to see this shot the way it was made, the way Spielberg wanted us to. Praise the lord for widescreen.
I was surprised there was no DTS track in this collection, after all, isn’t DTS kinda Spielberg’s thing? But, nevertheless, the soundtracks are absolutely phenomenal. The remix of these fifteen to twenty year old soundtracks is simply masterful. There are two distinct sound effects of the multi-channel aural output that I just can’t get enough of: the gunshot and the punch. Indiana Jones trademarks. Each punch rattles your teeth and every gunshot has you ducking for cover in your own living room. I got a huge kick out of the “Sound of Indiana Jones” featurette. Bypass everything else and watch this first. You’ll probably find the sound effect for the opening of the Ark as humorous as I did.
The other featurettes on the fourth disc are fairly interesting, too. In the “Music of Indiana Jones,” John Williams teases us by saying he’s looking forward to composing the music for Indiana Jones 4. I guess that seals it, folks. From what I’ve read, the fourth Indy movie is due out July 4th weekend of 2005. Oddly enough, this is a little more than a month after Spielberg’s buddy Lucas has some movie coming out. You might have heard of that one too. In all, there are really not a whole lot of extras. No deleted scenes. No commentary tracks. This box set is, for the most part, a showcase for the films themselves.
Raiders is by far and away one of my all time favorite movies, therefore being my overwhelming favorite of the Indy movies. I could have done without “Temple of Doom” and “Last Crusade” in much the way the Back to the Future box set came out last year with II and III being the chaff of the first movie’s wheat. Seems like Spielberg is tackling one of his classics per year with Close Encounters, Jaws, ET, Back to the Future, and now Indiana Jones all coming out in successive years. What’s next? I think I see Schindler’s List on the horizon.
This package as a whole is a must have for any Indy fan. Personally, I bought this solely for the Raiders DVD, but was pleased with the other two movies and the extras. Seeing as the box is pushing ten hours of viewing time, you’ll be better off buying it and holding on to it.
(Thanks to www.TheRaider.net for various factual tidbits)
Reviewer’s Opinion: BUY IT!!
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