10 Movies Released Way Too Late To Make Sense

All of the problems with Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull could have been fixed by simply making it 10 or 15 years earlier.

Harrison Ford was 39 years old, on the cusp of middle age, when Raiders Of The Lost Ark was released in 1981. He was 42 when Temple Of Doom was released in 1984, and 47 when The Last Crusade was released in 1989 - 12 years younger than Sean Connery, who played his father.

It would have been possible to give us a fourth Indiana Jones movie sometime in the nineties without anyone really noticing Ford’s advancing age. That film could have been set during World War II, thereby allowing the Nazis - Indy’s perennial punching bags - to play villain once more instead of the Russians. It would have negated the need for a torch-passing moment with Indy’s son - at the very least, that son wouldn’t have been played by Shia LaBeouf. It would have had practical effects instead of that godawful CG. It could have featured a fifth Indy franchise role for the late Pat Roach.

Instead, 19 years after The Last Crusade, we get a 66 year old Harrison Ford playing a 60 year old Indiana Jones, arthritically stumbling around the Amazon looking for UFOs while pursued by Soviet soldiers (who stopped being anyone’s idea of a sinister antagonistic force around the time of the last good Indiana Jones film).

And now Ford is filming a fifth Indy movie, at 79 years old, due for release next summer - 14 years on from the last one. Who’re the bad guys going to be this time, hippies?

It’s not going to make any sense either, is it?