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3 films that tried to fill the Indiana Jones gap – 3 Things
Now Indiana Jones is back, it does make things a little different, but just remember that there was a massive void in the cinema for an Indiana Jones style series for almost 20 years. Many came and tried to fill the void and none appeared to really succeed in capturing the fan base or the hearts of the Indiana Jones fans but that didn’t stop them trying though, let’s take a look at what was offered up to the gods of treasure hunting at the movies.
First up was the Stephen Sommers CGI fest The Mummy, released way back in 1999. With a great cast of talented comedy actors I thought the Mummy worked, Brendan Frasier, Rachel Weisz and John Hannah all played it up suitably and created some fun hi jinks in the desert. Ignore the rather insane plot and some quite dark moments and you have a fairly decent steal attempt at the Indiana Jones mantle. The Mummy has already spawned two sequels thanks to the massive worldwide takings it made which in total was more than 400 million.
Next was Sahara, a movie that held a lot of promise, based on the best selling Dirk Pitt books by author Clive Cussler. Leading the cast was Matthew McConaughey in the title role, with Steve Zahn picking up as the comedy sidekick, and Penelope Cruz playing the pretty and smart love interest. With a catchy title a promising cast and lots of desert related fun, Sahara showed promise but ultimately messed up with a flabby underbelly that forced its way past the belt around halfway into he movie and never really got tucked back in. If there is a sequel to Sahara I would be very surprised it was quite the giant flop costing over $280 million to make and only just breaking $200 million back. The movie was however intended to be a franchise with a whole wealth of books to take stories from, and even though it did okay at the box office as far as actual takings its high production cost effectively crippled it.
Last but not least is National Treasure, one that deserves mentioning but isn’t quite the look-alike that the last two are. Produced by old pro Jerry Bruckheimer, National Treasure had a less macho lead in the form of Nicholas Cage’s character Ben, but with strong backing from Jon Voight, comedy sidekick name name* and another pretty and intelligent female lead into he form of Diane Kruger, National Treasure wasn’t short of box office draw. With a massive worldwide grossing, National Treasure was going to be a one of movie but after being such a success a sequel was planned and made in the form of National Treasure 2 – Book of Secrets. The third movie already has the go ahead but the production team has stated they have no intent to rush it out.
