  "Romancing The Stone" |
"Romancing The Stone" |
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Meanwhile her sister’s held hostage by American grave-robbers in Columbia. The grave robbing brothers, Ira and Ralph (Zack Norman and Danny DeVito ,) simply want the map to the final treasure they want before they retire. Reluctantly, Joan Wilder leaves her comfortable shell in New York City with the map after a neighbor was murdered and her apartment is ransacked. In an attempt to deliver the map as ransom for her sisters life and in a series of comedic errors, she finds her self lost and abandoned in the jungles of Columbia, far from her final destination and at the mercy of mercenary Jack T. Colton played by Michael Douglas. Colton is best described as being the type of character Lucas and Spielberg had originally envisioned Indiana Jones to be, a scoundrel mercenary with few scruples with a perpetual reluctance to take on charity cases. As a side note… this type of scenario was the topic of conversation in the forum section of IndyGear.com, after one of the fellow members was stuck in a South American City that was over-run with rebels. When I learned of his predicament, I desperately wanted to get on a plane with a few maps and plenty of firearms in an attempt to rescue him... which was a moot point after he rescued him self. Weeks afterwards when he was home and safe- I started a thread asking our fellow members what would we do and bring with us in the event we were thrust into a situation that was similar to what Turners character goes through or if our fellow member still needed rescuing. I was overwhelmed by the amount of people who would have joined me in a rescue effort if needed, and how the scenes in ““Romancing The Stone” ” illustrated what NOT to bring or how not to prepare yourself for such an occasion. Much of the fun is the chase through the jungle, ramshackle villages, chaises through dirt roads and down rivers, the search for buried treasure… all of which has been done well in Raiders and Temple. What makes “Romancing The Stone” unique is how everything that was done in Raiders is done differently. All the action is with modern equivalences; while highlighted with the developing relationship between Turner and Douglas. Not lost in the fun is the desperation of Joan Wilders plight through Turner’s performance and the cinematography, the sense of being lost in the jungles and the fear factor from the multiple brushes with death in every other scene. The end of the movie is pure cliché, leaving the door open for other adventures and sequels After seeing Joan and Jack grow as people and as a couple, the audience is enthusiastic to see them again. (The Follow-up to “Romancing The Stone” was “Jewel of the Nile.” Good movie, this time Jack and Joan set out to find the “Jewel” while trying to foil an Arabian would-be tyrant. Not nearly as good as the first, and probably killed off the plans for more “Romancing” movies.) Directed by Steven Spielberg’s friend and frequent collaborator Robert Zemeckis, later collaborated with Spielberg to make “Back to the Future” and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” Zemeckis later went on to film other great movies such as “Cast-away”, “Forrest Gump” and “Contact”, many of these films could be considered as other “Films to hold you over”. But "Romancing The Stone" is still the best of the bunch. |
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By Eric Renderking Fisk, Originally posted on The Indy Experience in 2002
and updated on in June, 2008
Released the same
year as “Temple of Doom”, “Romancing The Stone” perhaps
captures just as much of the original feel of Raiders.
