The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Volume Two - The War Years
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Actor: Sean Patrick FlaneryBrand: PARAMOUNT HOME VIDEO
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Box set, Color, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 726 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-12-18
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Paramount
DVD Reviews of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Volume Two - The War Years
DVD Review: About mixing fun and education...
Summary: 4 Stars
Everybody has tried it -- mixing roller-coaster fun with hard-core education -- right?
And so far, most of us feel a twinge of resentment toward any who do, except maybe Sesame Street. But Sesame Street never pretends to be a laugh-a-minute white knuckle fun-ride. It is what it is -- a clever and entertaining way to learn, and an hour of giggles for the really small folks.
Indiana Jones, on the other hand, met the world at a full speed run just ahead of the giant rolling rock cave-stopper, grasping a golden statue, a whip, and a pistol. There were no reviews about Indy- the educational movie, or Indy, the historically and archeologically accurate school lesson.
George Lucas started these back in the day when he, Indy and Harrison Ford were young. It was a novel and clever idea to do a TV spin-off that showed how such a widely read, widely traveled generalist became the swashbuckling Indy we know and love. And -- as long as we are watching how Indy learned and grew to be the legendary hero -- we might as well learn a bit of what he learned along the way! A younger/smaller Indy had younger/smaller adventures -- a perfect fit for a smaller screen!
Good idea! As far as it goes. However, in his attempt to make the Young Indy Chronicles into the most heavily loaded DVD sets to date, Lucas had added new documentary and educational "extras" that are not about Indy -- but about the real people, times and places of his adventures! Real history IS great fun and entertainment -- but there is no comparison. Indiana Jones is ALWAYS more fun (or should be)-- and Indiana Jones (of any age) is what we thought we were buying.
If there are mis-steps in these newly released DVD sets, here they are:
1. The re-edited re-releases gave up some of their "fun" in exchange for the look and feel of packaged educational material. I enjoy a great documentary as well as the next person, but these sets are easily HALF supplemental educational stuff. The Indy Shows are still as much episodic Saturday morning serial (sureal? cereal?) as ever, but they are surrounded by sometimes dead-dull tourism ads and classroom tools.
No swashbuckling = no fun.
2. There is an obvious casting futz between these re-edited re-releases and the upcoming Indy IV movie -- the actor Sean Patrick Flanery. This kid has been playing Indiana Jones now for 20+ years -- and he's just now the right age to step in and take over the franchise from Harrison Ford -- but instead, the Lucasfilm family seems to have tossed out the previous heir in favor of Shia LaWhoever.
I don't know about you, but if I were Flanery, I'd be unlikely to show up at the Jones Thanksgiving dinner.
3. Lucas couldn't leave Star Wars alone, and he can't seem to leave anything else alone either. We all know that in the digital age, re-editing films after release has become both acceptable and sometimes expected. If we were talking about literature, we could have the Da Vinci Code only available electronically, and the author could make daily edits -- we could maybe have a fan-site devoted to digging out the edits and analyzing why each one was made - and what it really means....
But liquid media can't possibly mean liquid art. At least we hope it doesn't. Part of the miracle of the original Star Wars (before it became episode IV) was its simplicity. The addition of all the new special effects is interesting, but on the whole does more damage than good in that it replaces that simple masterpiece with one more FX-heavy incongruity.
Even though Lucas originally said there were 9 Star Wars stories, he's managed to all but wipe out that trilogy-of-trilogies memory by replacing it with all new interviews which said 6 was always the goal number -- and the liquid media never bothered to go back and check to see if he'd rewritten his own history as well as the history of the universe. And we know he didn't really have it all constructed because if he had (as J.K. Rowling did) -- there would not be all those narrative inconsistancies and incongruities.
Now, he's rewritten Indy's history. And except for a few curmudgeons still hanging on to their VHS versions of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, we'd probably never know what was missing.
Part of what is missing is the pure glee of smaller Indy on smaller adventures, on a smaller screen -- tripping over mummified details with Howard Carter, or fretting over the waste of hunting down endangered animals with Teddy Roosevelt. Now, with editing, and with the addition of packaged educational films, even young Indy's fun seems to be tainted with the all-too-serious mandate of turning even the best roller coaster ride into a bus-trip to the public library.
And yes, I still give it 4 stars -- because at his worst (and this probably is) Lucas is still more fun than most of the Hollywood crowd ever dreams of being.
And yes, I know. The Chronicles are only being released now as part of the "whetting your appetite" snack tray leading up to the summer 2008 big event of Indiana Jones IV. How many versions of all the various Star Wars movies did he release in advance of each of the last (first) three? It's all show biz, after all.
Description of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Volume Two - The War Years
Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 12/18/2007 Rating: NrGeorge Lucas? The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Volume Two, The War Years continues the extraordinary narrative, historical, and production achievements found in Volume One. As with the first series, each feature-length program (re-editing material from the original, one-hour broadcasts to smooth out the chronology of Jones? experiences as a child and young man) resembles a theatrical experience more than episodic television. Each drama is remarkably rich in layered detail, shedding light on major events, figures, and ideas from a pivotal era in world history. Where Volume One largely focused on the early childhood of Indiana Jones as he traveled the world in the company of his parents, meeting the likes of Picasso, Tolstoy, Freud, and T.E. Lawrence, Volume Two is exclusively concerned with Jones? experiences during World War I. This time, Jones (Sean Patrick Flanery, introduced in the final episodes of Volume One) is serving in the infantry of the Belgian army under an assumed name, eventually rising in rank from corporal to captain and becoming a spy after paying extensive, nightmarish dues on the war?s front line in Europe. The series captures some of the horror of World War I?s most infamous battles, directly inserting Jones into the thick of the action at Verdun, the Somme, the Middle East, and elsewhere. In time, Jones is repeatedly recruited to become a secret agent, going undercover in Austria to help forge a separate peace between the last Habsburg emperor and the allies, and playing a crucial part in the survival of British and Australian forces crossing a merciless desert. Along the way, Indy befriends Bolsheviks preparing for the Russian Revolution, has a romance with Mata Hari, attempts a prison break with Charles de Gaulle, and has a wonderful encounter with Albert Schweitzer. As with Volume One, this follow-up box set includes an astonishing number of excellent special features, primarily dynamic documentaries about many of the real-life people and incidents introduced in the stories. These extras provide much depth and analysis without being at all dry; a creative history teacher would do well to incorporate them (and, for that matter, the shows themselves) in a class about the 20th century. --Tom Keogh
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