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Blockbuster Buzz: with the fans awaiting the return of Dr Jones

For almost 20 years, Hollywood has been waiting for the next instalment in the money-spinning Indiana Jones adventure series. Indy is back this week – and even an ageing Harrison Ford can still crack an impressive box office whip.

The worldwide opening on Thursday of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – the fourth instalment in the series featuring the world’s most indestructible archeologist – has been accompanied by enough controversy and intrigue to merit a film of its own.

Disagreements among producers, arguments between screen-writers and actors, and lawsuits against anyone who has dared to reveal a smidgen of plot, have combined to make the $185m (£95m) film one of the most eagerly anticipated of the year.

Directed by Steven Spielberg and produced by George Lucas (of the equally spectacular Star Wars series), the film returns to 1957 – the height of the cold war – for another round of heart-pounding chases through tunnels and across clifftops as a motley gang of intrepid treasure hunters span the globe in their quest for the usual nonsense.

The long delay between the new adventure and the previous instalment – released in 1989 and unwisely entitled Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade – has piqued Hollywood’s interest.

In the internet/video game age, when most recent action blockbusters have been derived from superhero cartoons, can an ageing screen idol who hasn’t had a decent hit for years reprise the wild success of his youth?

The good news for Ford fans is that Indy may be older and greyer, but there’s still a spark to his repartee, and he still gets the girl in the end (the girl in question being Marion Ravenwood, played by Karen Allen, who was the love interest in the first Indiana movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark).

Whether Ford’s charm will be enough to earn the film the $400m it is estimated to need to recoup Paramount Pictures’ investment remains to be seen. However, a preview attended by The Sunday Times last week suggested that the internet gossips who have doubted the film’s drawing power may be proved wrong.

Jones admits early on that chasing baddies is not as easy as it used to be. In one scene he escapes from a nuclear blast by hiding inside a lead-lined refrigerator. Science and probability were never among the series’ strong points.

It rapidly becomes clear that since we last saw him saving the Holy Grail from the Nazis, Jones has become a sadder and more solitary character.

His gloom is broken when an unlikely pair of treasure hunters – Mac, played by Britain’s Ray Winstone, and Mutt, played by Shia LaBeouf, a teen idol – warn him that the dastardly Soviet Union is after a crystal skull that, in the finest Indy tradition, offers dangerous powers to anyone who possesses it.

Much has been made in internet chatrooms about LaBeouf’s potential impact on the film, and fears that he is merely a sop to lure teen viewers. Yet LaBeouf, who made a striking impact against computerised villains in Transformers, matches Ford quip for quip and leather jacket for leather jacket.

The first Indiana Jones film in 1981 was Spielberg’s homage to the Saturday morning cliff-hanger serials of the 1930s. The latest film still has a pleasingly old-fashioned feel, with several long, slow shots, plastic-like foliage, tinny sound effects and a silly python.

Cate Blanchett makes an eye-catching appearance as Irina Spalko, the spooky leader of the Russain villainry; John Hurt, the veteran British actor, lurks menacingly as a rival hunter.

The crystal skull itself was formerly the subject of obscure disagreement between Spielberg and Ford, but it’s now hard to see what the fuss was about. It might as well have been a brussels sprout for all the difference it makes to the plot.

The real pleasure for series fans may lie not so much in the madcap action, the carnivorous bugs and the familiar perils of quicksand, but the restored romance between Ford and Allen, and the fatherly relationship that develops between Ford and LaBeouf, who is clearly the new pretender to his whip.

Indy treats Mutt with the same sarcastic disdain that his own father, played by Sean Connery, lavished on him during the Last Crusade. You can probably guess how it all works out.

The new film has long appeared critic-proof – audiences will flock to it whatever the critical verdict. Yet will it have the box-office legs to join its distinguished predecessors among the most popular films in Hollywood history ?

It is bound to triumph this weekend – the Memorial Day holiday in America – but the latest Narnia adventure, Prince Caspian, is waiting in the wings, and the late Heath Ledger will soon make a posthumous return to screens in the Batman film, The Dark Knight. Indy may have his work cut out to save the day for Spielberg.

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