Woe

New Indiana Jones movie previewed and reviewed:

In short, this is the Indiana Movie that you were dreading.
[...]
seemed to be missing 'something'. That something was tension. During the whole of the movie, there was not a single moment that I thought our hero Mr. Jones ... was in any sort of peril or even significant inconvenience.

The web has been alive with rumors that the movie is dreadful. Sadly, woefully, those rumors appear true. Sigh.

Note: The linked review contains mild spoilers. As if it matters.

You could see this coming a mile away, i.e. at the exact moment you learned Shia LaBeouf was cast as Indy's son. No. No. No.

I knew nothing about Shia LaBeouf. Yet, one look at his photo told me: 1) he's a girly type boy, 2) he's doesn't have enough soul and grit.

I think Speilberg and Lucas are fabulous at special effects and moviemaking, yet not so good at understanding actors and soul and grit. They are good at movies; they would be horrible at theater.

What helped the original Star Wars was the "lets go fight the bad guys" spirit amongst the fresh and genuine and gritty actors. But look at how, years later in Episode 2, Lucas lost touch with this and cast Hayden Christenson as a Young Darth Vader. Disaster. Christenson didn't have soul, grit, freshness, genuineness, or believability. Young Darth Vader should've been one of the memorable roles of all time. Instead, Christenson tried his best to sink both films he was in.

What helped Raiders of the Lost Ark was the same soul and grit and spirit of the original Star Wars movie. Karen Allen embodied it. Harrison Ford had it, and and has since lost it.

What's happened to Harrison? Once he was an earthy carpenter fighting to have a film career. Now, he's infected with granola/west coast disease, as represented by his infatuation with the reed thin Ally McBeal actress. Are Ford and Speilberg and Lucas all infected with money and success and Hollywood mores? Have they been pulled into effete tone-deafness, like a Supreme Court justice who goes in as a minimalist and is soon seduced by the power of legislating from the bench? Are they pulled as Colin Powell and Condi Rice were seduced by State Dept. and Western hemisphere belief that jaw-jaw equates to act-act? It would be hard not to be pulled. From my end zone - judging by the casting of Shia LaBeouf - it looks as if they have succumbed.

Any Offensive Guard on any high school football team would've been a superior choice to Shia Labeouf. Any Fullback would've melted high school and college girls across America. What about the actor who plays the hard knocks FB in the TV series "Friday Night Lights"? THAT KID embodies the son of Indiana Jones. Instead, we get Shia LaBeouf. Shia is weak tea - and I can tell it from a photo! I'm laughing at my own presumption, here. But I'll be surprised if I'm wrong.

Look, in the photo in the post just below this, at the Dudley Dooright profile of Jason Botts. Jason Botts embodies Indy's son better than Shia LaBeouf.