A Touch of Nostalgia is Good at the Box Office?

Well after being absent from cinema screens for 20 years, Indiana Jones makes his return to the movies this week. His last outing back in 1989 was titled "the Last Crusade" but as with anything in the movie business, nothing is done until the box office returns are putting your studio deeply in the red. So is there hope for Indiana Jones? I think there most certainly is and it's something deeper than the fact that it's being made by nearly the entire original group of creative folks who put together the original.

If one looks at the movies in recent days there has been a sudden resurgence in the number of old movies and old movie characters coming back to the screen. Whether it is a sequel or a remake (or a loosely termed re-imagining) both film and television are full of things from my childhood and the childhood of others who grew up around the same time as me. Don't believe me? Well if you think back to 1997, George Lucas decided to re-release his original "Star Wars" trilogy to see if there was interest in the franchise on the big screen after so many years. What happened? Despite being over 20 years old, the films did wonders at the box office. I myself saw my favorite, "Star Wars" (still the best of the series) in the theatre several times and it was just as fun. It was wonderful to see the film on screen since I wasn't really able to see and comprehend much the first time it was in theatres back in 1977. People who grew up with these movies loved them even more and they introduced a whole new crop of fans to them in the form of their kids.

Fast forward a few years and now you have the prequel trilogy complete with a loyal fan following. Lucas set us up by teasing us old-timers (and I use the term loosely) and then got us to hook a new generation of kids on the films with both the old and new. I get into arguements with young kids (rather heated arguements actually) about which group of films is better. I guess I have a preference for the older ones since they are so closely linked to my childhood. The same goes for so many other characters that have been coming back to the screen lately. Stallone has rather successfully returned both Rocky Balboa and John Rambo to the screen. Though their characters are just as old and wizened with age as the people playing them, there is still appeal because these are characters that so many of us have grown up watching.

Indiana Jones is no different. I can still remember as a kid putting on my dad's sun cap (I didn't have a Fedora then but I have one now) and taking one of my mom's old leather bags (which resembled Indy's satchel) and running around with a laundry rope on my belt and a plastic gun in hand chasing invisible Nazis as I plotted my own adventures around the house and my neighborhood. Was Indiana Jones the perfect role-model for a young impressionable youth? Probably not but there were far worse I could emmulate weren't there? I was never the most athletic or most rough and tumble adventurous sort but then again, my imagination propelled me to be that way. Maybe that's why I enjoy acting on occasion.

But it's this love of our youth and things we grew up with that is driving this demand for going back and seeing sequels or seeing old shows being revisted. Knight Rider is returning to TV's as a regular series. Battlestar Galactica will be ending this year after successfully returning to television. Star Trek will be coming back to the movie screen. Transformers already came to the movies and it will be back again soon in sequel form. G.I. Joe is gearing up for a release in the near future. The list goes on and on and on. Sure there is hope that money will be generated by tying in toy sales and such to many of these things but still, look at the base fact that if there wasn't a fan following for these things to begin with, there wouldn't be the desire to even consider making such films and series. I'm glad Indiana Jones is back. He's almost like a relative who has come back for a visit after a very long time. He may not be the same as he was the last time I saw him but I'm sure it will be an enjoyable visit nonetheless.