From here to issue #27, series art is by Bart Sears over Keith Giffen layouts until otherwise noted. All plots and layouts by Giffen, though DeMatteis will only script through #8.
The idea of a “Justice League Europe” was a natural extension of the “Justice League International” concept, but it has an intrinsic problem: almost any high-profile or mid-profile characters it could use were always going to be Americans. Giffen and DeMatteis leaned into that as an inherent source of conflict from the get-go.
Got my new sweats. I'm not sure why they delivered it at 9:30 at night, but okay.
The third blanket kept me toasty warm.
Woke up at 7 AM. I was wondering what to do about the dogs and the dangerous wind chill, but both Gracie and Bella peed inside. I’ll let them out in the afternoon. It’s currently-5F/-21C with a wind chill of-11/-23C.
Oliver wants food now! Fed us all.
I’m feeling dubious about Dial-A-Carol later tonight. I guess that I’ll brush off the cars later and go from there.
Gracie was barking at the cats. I told her to shut up. Now she and Bella are wrestling on the bed. Gracie just scratched near my eye. I yelled.
Had a nice nap. The sun is shining on my chair in the kitchen, so it’s warm. I have a dog (Bella) partially in my lap, a cat (Oliver) in my face, and another dog (Gracie) looking at the cat. I’m trying to explain to Oliver that I fed him this morning, and he’s not going to eat right now. He is not convinced.
Now they’re having a severe weather advisory going all day. I’m going to change my Dial-A-Carol signup. I don’t want to go out tonight. I removed my signup for tonight. I didn’t see a time to sign up for later. I’m going to brush off my car tomorrow.
I want to let the dogs out, but I’m worried about my Amazon order arriving while they’re out. Maybe I should stand out with them, but it’s cold. I’ll go put my boots on. Maybe I should start brushing off the car while I’m out with them. Or not. I’d rather stay on my porch. I stayed just inside the door, and tried to bring them back inside in about 15 minutes. Bella came in, but Gracie did not. I waited a few more minutes inside, and then Gracie was on the porch saying that it’s cold outside (Me: No, really?) and came in. Whew.
I’m thawing a little, and then I’ll take my shower. I’ll wear my new sweats because I’m not going out.
I bought a blue topaz ring that says “Fuck it and begin again” on the inside. A good sentiment.
The cold bathroom is COLD. I felt like an icicle before I got the hot water on. Now I’m cozy in sweats and wool socks. I’m making soup to make my insides as warm as my outsides.
Oliver: maybe if I get in Mom’s face, she’ll feed me early. Dream on, cat.
Oh crap. My Christmas cards are now arriving on Tuesday. They’re going to be late.
Had my soup. I got dizzy when I took it out of the microwave and spilled some of it. The dogs were happy about that. I think that I’m going to lie down for a little while.
Had a nice nap. The dogs came in on the first try. Cold out there, isn’t it. Fed us all. I need to go measure the laptop and order a sleeve for it while I’m thinking of it (done and ordered).
Oh crap. The laptop that I was going to take with me on the trip is not turning on. I’ll have to take the “new” laptop. The sleeve that I just ordered will fit it though. Heck. I’m wondering if I should order another small travel laptop. I saw one for $265 that would get here on time. What to do. Okay, I got it. I travel enough that it’s worth it. I need to get rid of the old one.
It's a nice night for some tea (steeping). I think that I'll go to bed early because I want to get up early and brush the snow off of the cars.
I drove out to my local reservoir to charge my car battery and check the water levels after the unusually hot spring we've had (global warming and La Niña). It wasn't too bad as despite the heat we've also had bouts of heavy rain. The Watercare site says the local dams are at 85% of usual levels.
As mentioned several times before, I used to be a professional film critic, leaving the job in early 1996 to take a job at America Online, which at the time was the new hotness in the exciting field of online services (it’s been a while, yes). When I left the reviewing job, I went from watching six or seven movies a week to… none. I had a serious movie-watching detox for several months, during which time I focused on my new job, read some books, appeared on Oprah, and did all those other sorts of things people do when they’re not watching movies. What film finally got my ass back in a theater chair months later? Twister. It was a good call for a re-entry back into the world of cinema.
Not because it was a great film — it’s fine! — or a classic film — it’s really not! — but because it was a “B+” sort of film, a summer entertainment that had lots of fun action, an occasional bit of better-than-average acting, cool state-of-the-art-at-the-time special effects, and some memorable scenes (“we got cows!”). It’s unapologetically a popcorn movie, with lots of butter and maybe, just maybe, a dash of fancy salt. It looked good on big screens, but it also looked good on small screens, where it was, famously, the first major studio film release in that revolutionary new format: The DVD.
The story is easy to follow, too. Weather scientist Dr. Jo Harding (Helen Hunt) is about to lead her seriously rag-tag team of University of Oklahoma grad students on a quest to map the interior of a tornado, when her soon-to-be ex-husband Bill (Bill Paxton), shows up in his new truck, with his new fiancée (Jami Gertz, taking on what used to be called the Ralph Bellamy role), with divorce papers for the apparently avoidant Jo to sign. But before that can happen, Bill gets rodeo-ed into helping Jo’s scrappy team of storm chasers do their science, and from there the tornadoes, and the stakes, keep getting bigger. It’s science!
Well, mostly. The screenplay was written by Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin (then husband and wife), and has a lot of Crichton’s special blend of “science until science gets in the way of drama” (see: Jurassic Park, Congo, Coma, etc). It all feels kinda plausible if you don’t know much about meteorology, which is, honestly, nearly all of us. Crichton has Jo’s scrappy band of poor grad students go up against another team of storm chasers, led by an oily Cary Elwes, who have corporate backing and are just storm chasing for the money, although how there’s big money in storm chasing is never really explained (the nearly 30-years-later sequel, Twisters, explains how: By having the storm chasers be online influencer types. That avenue was not open to Mr. Elwes’ character. AOL was not that good). Nevertheless it’s enough for a second-order conflict.
The first order conflict is Jo versus the twisters; they are not just her academic interest but also her white whale, for reasons that are essayed in the first few moments of the film. The film never sells this point especially well — it’s more interested in doing a “will they or won’t they” bit of push and pull between Jo and Bill (you don’t really have to wonder how this is going to go, I already explained to you why poor Jaime Gertz is in this movie) — but it does give the film an excuse to keep putting Jo and Bill in situations involving strong winds that normal not-obsessed people would actively avoid.
Of course, if Jo and Bill avoided tornados, we wouldn’t have much of a movie. So in they go, and the good news for them (and us) was CGI in 1996 was just barely at the point where it could make twisters, and all the damage they do, look real, and really terrifying, onscreen (that and the absolutely monster sound design, which is often overlooked as a special effect but which really is key here. Both the VFX and the sound were nominated for Oscars). The twister effects are good enough that they still stand up pretty well three decades later. It’s not every bit of mid-90s CGI that doesn’t distract today’s viewer.
Speaking of special effects, this movie is weirdly overweighted with actors who went on to awards glory. Helen Hunt you probably know won an Oscar a couple of years later, but then, out there in Jo’s motley crew of grad students, is not only future Best Actor Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman but also Todd Field, who as a director, producer and screenwriter has been nominated for the Oscar six times. Jeremy Davies has a primetime Emmy for acting, Alan Ruck and Jami Gertz have Emmy nominations. So did Bill Paxton, God rest his soul. This is movie is friggin’ stacked, and nearly everyone in the film is just being kind of a goofball. It’s lovely, really.
(This movie was also the high water mark for director Jan De Bont, who did Speed before this movie, and then, rather disastrously, Speed 2 right after it. He was also the cinematographer of some notable action films, including Die Hard, The Hunt For Red October and Basic Instinct. I mean, Speed 2, we all make mistakes, but otherwise, a pretty nifty career.)
There’s nothing in Twister that will change anyone’s life, but as a movie you can just put on and dip in and out of while you’re setting up the Christmas tree or wrapping gifts or keeping one eye on Instagram or, I don’t know, polishing your silverware, it’s hard to beat. I put it on when I’m signing signature sheets for books. When you’re signing these sheets you want to be distracted enough that you’re not bored by the repetitive activity, but not so distracted that you mess up the pages. Twister is perfect for this. I can sign my name a thousand times, easy, with Jo and Bill getting buffeted by high winds pleasantly at the edge of my consciousness. This may or may not qualify as high praise to you, but trust me, I appreciate it.
Also, the film’s soundtrack has one of Sammy Hagar-era Van Halen’s best and most slept-upon songs:
In any event: Twisters was a fun, no-pressure return to movies for me in ’96, and a fun, no-pressure movie to enjoy on the regular since then. It’s the very definition of a comfort watch. On this side of the screen. On their side, it’s a little windy. That’s a them problem.
NME (which seems have a much better of understanding on K-pop than Rolling Stone) has released a list of the [top 25 K-pop songs of 2025]! I scrolled to it, sure that I would have forgotten a lot of songs from earlier in the year, and was pleasantly surprised to see there were some I hadn't heard before, so it was like an early birthday present from NME!
I was also looking to see if NMIXX made the list — I've loved their new songs, and I was hoping that other people appreciated them. I was happy to see NMIXX's "High Horse" ranked #7 — four places higher than Blackpink's "Jump" (which I thought was highly overrated and wouldn't have ranked so high had it been by someone other than Blackpink). I then kept scrolling and was pleased and surprised to see H1-Key's "Summer Was You" ranked #6. Then I kept scrolling and was absolutely gobsmacked to see Huntr/x's "Golden" ranked #2 — I expected it to take the top spot, and was extremely surprised to find it in #2! So what was #1? I had absolutely no idea. I scrolled and was surprised and overjoyed to find NMIXX's "Spinnin' on It" at #1!
"He took the Walkman out of his pocket and flipped through the songs in the cassette."
Oh, sweetie. That's... that's just not how cassette tapes work. Not even overseas. You fast forward or rewind - literally winding the tape again - and hope that your timing is amazing. I mean, with practice I guess you can get pretty good, but still.
It took over a month for my hold on this book to come up, but Friday night I finished Martyr!by Kaveh Akbar. If you look into online book recommendations like on New York Times or NPR, you've probably seen this title come up. This book is about a young poet who sobers up after years of severe addiction and is now looking for meaning and purpose.
Martyr! is a beautiful book about the very human search for meaning in our lives, but it also is not afraid to shy away from the ugliness of that search. It juxtaposes eloquently-worded paragraphs of generational grief with Cyrus waking up having pissed the bed because he went to sleep so drunk the night before. Neither of these things cancels the other out.
Everyone in Martyr! is flawed, often deeply, but they're all also very real, and they're trying their best; they aren't trying to hurt anyone, but they cause hurt anyway, and then they and those around them just have to deal with that. Martyr! weighs the search for personal meaning against the duty owed to others and doesn't come up with a clean answer. What responsibility did Orkideh have to her family as opposed to herself? What responsibility did Ali have to Cyrus as opposed to himself? What responsibility does Cyrus have to Zee, as opposed to his search for a meaningful death?
Cyrus' story is mainly the post-sobriety story: He's doing what he's supposed to, he's not drinking or doing drugs, he's going to his AA meetings, he's working (after a fashion)...and what's the reward? He still can't sleep at night and he feels directionless and alone and now he doesn't even have the ecstasy of a good high to look forward to. This is the "so what now?" part of the sobriety journey.
It's also in many ways a family story. Cyrus lost his mother when he was young and his father shortly after he left for college, and he spends the book trying to reckon with these things and with the people his parents were. Roya is the mother Cyrus never knew, whose shape he could only vaguely sketch out from his father's grief and his unstable uncle's recollections. Ali is the father who supported Cyrus in all practical ways, and sacrificed mightily to do it, but did not really have the emotional bandwidth to be there for his son. And there are parallels between Cyrus and Roya arising later in the book that tugged quite hard on my heartstrings, but I won't spoil anything here.
Cyrus wants to find meaning, but seems only able to grasp it in the idea of a meaningful death--hence his obsession with martyrs. The idea of a life with meaning seems beyond him. He struggles throughout the book with this and with the people trying to suggest that dying is not the only way to have lived.
I really enjoyed this book and I think it deserves the praise it's gotten. I've tried to sum up here what the book is "about," but it's a story driven by emotion more than plot. It's Cyrus' journey and his steps and stumbles along the way, and I think Akbar did a wonderful job with it.
Last week's bread held out fairly well until it did a variety of mould-related activity. There were still some rolls left, fortunately.
Friday night supper: Gujerati khichchari (with cashew nuts) which I do not seem to have made for absolute yonks.
Saturday breakfast rolls: brown grated apple: Light Spelt flour, molasses, a touch of ginger (this didn't really come through, probably overpowered by the molasses): rose like absolute whoah.
Today's lunch: the smoked haddock and pulses thing - smoked haddock loin fillets baked in cream + water with bay leaf, mace and 5-pepper blend, flaked and then layered with bottled black beans (would buy again), some of the cooking liquid added, top sprinkled with panko crumbs and baked in moderate oven for c. 40 minutes, served with baked San Marzano tomatoes, and slow-cooked tenderstem broccoli, finished with lime, some of which seemed less tenderstemmed than one might have expected.
Like TJ's, you get 12 pucks of cookie dough in a package and can bake on demand. It also says you can freeze the dough. I baked them straight out of the refrigerator for about 18 minutes, and got thin cookies about two inches across, with crispy edges and a chewy middle.
I found these odd. The cookie bit is weirdly grainy, like it has cornmeal in it. Maybe it's oat chunks. It also has a hearty flavor, probably again due to the oats and maybe the molasses. Kind of a homestyle vibe. The chocolate is very nice and kind of softens the cookie experience, but there isn't enough chocolate to make up for its grittyness or its unusual flavor.
On Friday, I saw icicles that were 5 feet long hanging off the metal roof of a low slung hardware store in a small town. Nice!
I also saw a great many houses with icicles caused by ice dams. This is bad, bad, bad. Ice forms at the edge of the roof and then melting water cannot drip off. It backs up and, usually, leaks into the building. My former house suffered from this and no amount of ventilation or insulation or anything else could prevent ice dams from forming. It was stressful, frustrating and expensive. I think it had to do it being a four-square, hip roofed house built in the 1920s. Every time I see ice dams on a house I feel a surge of gladness that I no longer have to deal with this problem.
The best icicles are on a sunny day in the late winter, after a wet snow that sticks to the evergreens. As the snow melts in the sun, short icicles form at the end of the branches, like a fairy tale image of winter.
This morning's low temperature was -11F / -23C and the big warm up (sarcasm) for the afternoon is 4F / -15C. But on Tuesday the prediction is for 36F / 2C. Ahhh....
Aka the third Benoit Blanc mystery plotted and directed by Rian Johnson. Now, each of these movies has a main character who is not Blanc whose fate and/or motivation to solve the mystery is at the heart of the story - Martha in Knives Out and Helen in Glass Onion respectively - and in this case it's Father Jud, played (well and movingly) by Josh O'Connor. In each case, the movie's structure harks back to the classic age of detective mysteries with various twists and turns and a grand denouemonet while also commenting on the here and now in its social satire. If Glass Onion among other things went for the tech bros and the self satisfied "disruptors", Wake up, Dead Man! is very much about the US under the Orange Menace despite his name not mentioned even once. And lo and behold - it even offers hope. And hey, there is even a Star Wars gag. (Just for the record, I still stand by The Last Jedi being the only one of the sequel movies which actually tries to do something new and creative with the franchise. #RianJohnsonwasRight . The gag has nothing to do with that at all, though.)
If you want to have a little extra fun, be a little more yourself, and be part of keeping the site open for everyone in the future, we can’t wait to see you in our new subscription-based section with exclusive content and events.
Everything you’re used to seeing at the Hot Pink Palace that is Smart Bitches Trashy Books will remain free as always, because we remain committed to fostering community among brilliant readers who love romance.
First: my Hanukkah wishes for you tonight and for the next eight: may each candle lit lead to another and another, until we have all connected to bathe the world in light and warmth. May there be peace in our lifetime.
Now, let’s talk about what’s in the care packages. I used to be super great at care packages because my kids went to sleepaway camp – not the type of camp where the care packages included Gucci bags and Loro Piana slippers wrapped in an Hermes scarf or anything – and I LOVED putting them together.
I still sort of send care packages now that they’re in college because I have to send them things pretty regularly, but that’s a small item in a bubble mailer. This is a whole ass box.
So what’s in the care package?
I’m not telling!
Well, I’ll share some details so you know what to expect, but some of it will be a surprise. It might rhyme with “schmeggo.”
In keeping with my wishes for all of you to have a cozy and warm 2026, the care packages will include:
things that are fuzzy
things that are warm
things that are soothing
things that are fizzy
things that are indulgent
things that are fun!
And, like last year, I reached out to folks I know in publishing, and have assorted books, of course! There will be several books in each package, including some major titles from this year. And maybe an ARC or two (shhh!).
This is a way for me to thank you for being part of yet another lovely year here at SBTB. We are still here, and it’s because of you hanging out with us each day. It’s been a big year, and we’re looking forward to more mayhem and silliness in 2026!
SO, ready to enter to win?
To enter, please comment and tell us what book (or recommendation of any sort!) that you found at SBTB that you most enjoyed?
It doesn’t have to be a 2024 book, of course. Any book that you haven’t read is a new book! But what did you discover this year at SBTB that you really liked?
Standard disclaimers apply: We are not being compensated for this giveaway. Void where prohibited. Open to international residents where permitted by applicable law. Must be over 18 and ready to be warm and cozy. May cause increased feelings of security, warmth, and delight.
Comments will close 21 December 2025 at or near 11:59am ET, and winners will be announced shortly afterward. Packages will be shipped out in January 2026.
Canceled a bunch of subscriptions on PayPal. I think that all I have left is Netflix, which I want to keep. Oh, and I should resubscribe to Hulu.
I checked into my cruise, but the boarding documents won't be available for a few days. I also bought the Have It All package, which includes WiFi, drinks, and one specialty dining meal.
Bought a ring that looks like hugging arms, and it'll have "Mom" engraved on the inside.
Now I really need to go to bed. I have a boatload (so to speak) of stuff to get done this weekend.
Gracie is trying to play dog play with me on the bed, and I told her to go play with Bella. That’s why I have two dogs. Now she’s snoozing with her head on my leg.
Woke up a little before 6 AM. I explained to the dogs that the cats get fed first. They don’t think that’s fair. Fed us all. My stomach hurts. I’m going back to bed. The dogs are wrestling on the bed and not leaving me any room. The snow has started.
Woke up a little before 11 AM. I’m feeling cold. It’s 15F/-10C out. So yeah, cold. I’ll take a shower in a few minutes. After lunch.
BuddhaStoneShop had a bracelet that I liked for only the shipping cost, so I got it. They also had a ring in the shape of a cat for shipping cost, so I got that too. And a Tree of Life bracelet. And a Yin-Yang necklace. They’re probably getting money from part of the shipping cost, but still, it’s cheap.
Oliver was warming my lap and purring.
I’m IBSing. But I’m staying home today so I guess that it’s okay.
Ate lunch.
Finished the book on James I. I just ordered a book on Charles I to continue my investigation into the Stuarts.
Oliver is knocking stuff down and being annoying.
The Precip app says 3.3 inches of snow so far, to make a total of 6.5. It’s like living in a snow globe. I saw a map on Facebook with the words “Stay home” over our band of snow. Will do.
I think that I’ll have one more nap. Slept for about an hour. I’m feeling cold and trying to warm up before my shower. It seems like the dogs and cats are sleeping. At least, they aren’t in the kitchen.
Opened packages while I and my clothes were warming up. I got the file folder wall holders for sheet music. I need to dig out my drill.
Hmm. UNICEF Market has a lot of rings that I like.
The dogs are barking at who-knows-what.
I think that I’ll have some soup.
Final snow total: 5.7, for a total of 8.4. Now we’re into the cold part of the weekend (currently 0F/-18C). I'm going to pull out another blanket and go to sleep. I hope that Gracie won't chew holes in the blanket. Oh, and I need to set the faucets to dripping.
Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the greatest adventure films of all time — if not the greatest adventure film of all time, full stop — but here nearly 45 years after its release, it’s also a hugely interesting cultural artifact. When it was first made it was explicitly an act of nostalgia, a throwback to the serial adventures of the 30s and 40s, where every 20-minute installment ended on a cliffhanger to drag you back to the theater the next week to find out what happened. Filmmakers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg kept the 20-minute cliffhangers, they just strung them along into a two-hour movie. Into that movie they poured a hero who discovered ancient treasures, beat up Nazis, wooed pretty women who had spunk, and even had a few supernatural events occur, because of course they would, if you’re pilfering the storage locker of God, what do you expect would happen?
It was everything you could want in an old-timey adventure but more — “more” in this case being a decent budget ($20 million, not extravagant by 1980s standards but more than any Republic serial ever got), a rising star in Harrison Ford instead of whatever second-order actor could be cheaply assigned by the studio, and two of the hottest young filmmakers in Hollywood, Spielberg and Lucas (three if you counted Philip Kaufman, who co-wrote the story with them). Spielberg had just flubbed with 1941, so there was some minor tarnish there, but only minor, and Lucas, well. When you have a calling card like Star Wars (followed up by The Empire Strikes Back, which went out to theaters almost exactly the same time as Raiders started principal photography), you have some credibility to burn.
Spielberg and Lucas did not burn their credibility. Raiders was the smash of 1981, the number one movie of the year by a considerable margin, and a massive cultural event that might have been even bigger than it was, had its filmmakers not wedged it between a Star Wars installment and E.T.: The Extraterrestrial. We were not starved for absolutely ridiculously huge blockbuster entertainments in the early 1980s, I tell you what. Spielberg and Lucas were cottage industries in of themselves.
45 years on is actually a really good time to think about Raiders of the Lost Ark, because 45 years prior to its release, 1936, was the start of a golden age of movie serials: Universal’s Flash Gordon made its debut and was an instant serialized smash, becoming Universal’s second biggest hit of the year, while Republic Pictures jammed out Darkest Africa and Undersea Kingdom, both with “exotic” locales and/or wild fantasy elements.
By the time 1981 had rolled around, however, serials were very old news. Some were re-edited and repackaged as single films that lived a weird afterlife in local TV channel movie slots, but most were just gone. Flash Gordon had enough cultural cachet that in the wake of Star Wars, Universal decided to make a big budget movie with the character, but not enough cultural cachet to have that movie actually be a hit (Lucas, who had wanted to do a Flash Gordon movie before making Star Wars, may have dodged a bullet).
The serial, as a format, was long dead before Spielberg and Lucas mined its corpse in Raiders, killed by television, a wholesale change in film distribution and theater ownership, and the end of the studio system that give film studios actors under contract that they could plug into these mini-movies at will. Raiders brought back the vibe of serials, but it also upgraded everything about it on the technical and filmmaking side, from story to special effects. No serial was ever as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark. They didn’t have to be; they were mostly filler in a whole program that also included a newsreel, a cartoon, a b-movie and a feature film. Raiders was the main course. It was always meant to be the elevated form of the serial, and was.
And now, how does Raiders fit in to the modern landscape? Well, like the serials at the other end of this timeline, its moment has run its course. The most obvious sign of this was the 2023 installment of the series, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, being the lowest-grossing installment of the series even without factoring for inflation (when you do factor for inflation… ooooof). The film also cost $350 million to make, and was the first of the series not to make a profit at the box office. There are lots of reasons for this, not the least of which was that an octogenarian action hero strained credulity, no matter how much one may love Harrison Ford in the role.
But a lot of it is simply that the world is a different place than it was. An American archeologist grabbing artifacts from their native soil plays a lot differently in 2025 than in 1981, and “it belongs in a museum!” is not the rallying cry it once was. Not to mention that Dr. Jones’ method of procurement for many of these objects is, shall we say, highly unorthodox and possibly ethically suspect. These facts were famously lampooned in a classic McSweeney’s article from 2006, in which Dr. Jones has learned that he has been denied tenure, for the reasons above, and the fact that he has “has failed to complete even one uninterrupted semester of instruction.” Even in our current new and regrettably stupid era of American Exceptionalism, Dr. Jones, his methods and his goals, are now relics.
(Plus, Raiders a little and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, rather a lot, trade in the casual racism of the era, in a way that ranges from mildly annoying to outright ugly. The 80s! What a time to be alive!)
If anything saves Raiders from this latter-day change in the opinions regarding respectable archaeology (and there will be differing opinions about this), it’s the fact that in this movie, and in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, easily the best of the sequels, his actions are at least keeping important and supernaturally-charged ancient objects out of the hands of the damn Nazis, who want them to get a mystical buff to their world-conquering plans. There has never been a bad time to punch a Nazi at any point in the last century, and, alas, this is true even and especially now. Say what you will about his methods and modes of science, but when it comes to punching Nazis, Indiana Jones has no peer.
Time may have passed on Indiana Jones for various reasons, but Raiders of the Lost Ark remains a masterclass in adventure film making. You can follow the action, for one thing — the Michael Bay style of rapid-fire cutting to give action a cocaine-snort boost is still a decade and a half in the future, and very few directors are or have been as good at coherent action and fighting than Spielberg. His battles are physical! And followable! And that makes them enjoyable to watch, rather than exhausting or disorienting, or both. Are there better action directors than Spielberg? I mean, allow me to pull John Woo, for one, from behind the arras. But if you have to deploy John Woo in this sort of argument, you’re already at an exceptionally top-tier level of action competence.
Even then, Raiders, I have to say, outclasses nearly every other action film across all sorts of levels of filmmaking. It’s not just Spielberg working here. It’s Spielberg and Lucas and John Williams and Philip Kaufmann and Lawrence Kasdan and Ben Burtt and Richard Edlund and so on. Raiders is a murderer’s row of filmmakers, all at the top of their game. The movie was nominated for eight Oscars, won four, and was given another for special achievement in sound effects editing. I would argue that you might have to wait for The Lord of the Rings for another film (taking them all as a single film, as they were shot at the same time and shared most of their cast and crew) to get at that level. And The Lord of the Rings was a very very very different sort of adventure film.
One final thing to love about Raiders: Indiana Jones is our square-jawed hero, who is (by the standards of the time the movies are set, and the time the movies are filmed) upright and outstanding… but he also gets the shit kicked out of him a whole bunch. In Raiders and the rest of the series, he bruises, he bleeds, he aches and he limps. He punches the Nazis, yes, but the Nazis sure as hell punch back (he just ends up punching them more). There’s a limit to this because Indiana Jones has to survive every adventure, sure. But in Raiders and in the other films, Spielberg and other folks crafting the stories aren’t afraid to take him right up to the line. If Indiana Jones were real, he would have a massive case of PTSD, and by the time of the final film in the series, he probably wouldn’t be able to walk.
I am a relic of the 80s as much as Raiders of the Lost Ark, and while I acknowledge how storytelling has changed between now and then, as a storytelling vehicle, in many ways it is still peerless and endlessly watchable. It’s distilled the best parts of movie serials from the past, and still has lessons to teach the moviemakers of today in terms of pacing and plot and technique.
I don’t want today’s filmmakers to make another Raiders of the Lost Ark. I want them to look at it and do what Lucas and Spielberg did when they looked at the serials that inspired it: Take all the things are amazing about it, and use today’s tech and techniques to make something that blows the minds of the audience of today.
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scans_daily2025-12-14 10:43 pm
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Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah!