This article comes fromDen of Geek UK.
How much is Spielberg, how much is Lucas, how much is Kasdan and Kaufman?
And a deeply personal one it is too.
Indy simply needs to adapt and evolve, forget the sure, reliable thing.
He has to take a leap of faith.
But darkness lurks on its outer edges.
Speaking in the 80s, Spielberg dismissed criticisms that he created simple escapism.
He wasnt interested in letting audiences escape from reality, he said.
Instead he wanted audiences to escape with reality.
This is the pure wish fulfilment of a lost boy Elliot, E.T., Spielberg himself looking for connection.
It reaches its peak when Elliot and E.T.
fly across the face of the moon on a bike.
Yet like theStar WarsandPeter Pansequences like almost all of Spielbergs 80s output theres more to it than simple escape.
Spielberg rhymes the shot during the finale, when Elliot and E.T.
escape the government agents.
Again, the pair take flight and again they pass across the face of a celestial object.
The moon was a fantasy, this couplet suggests; Elliot and E.T.
find true happiness in the finale by connecting with others and embracing reality, rather than fleeing from it.
Spielberg plays with the line between fantasy and reality throughout.
He has the Fagan-like anti-hero Basie visually resemble the pilot hero on a comic book Jim reads.
It was, in fact, the flash of the atomic bomb hitting Nagasaki.
Now his journeys finally at an end, he doesnt know what hes meant to be.
An adult with a stolen childhood?
A child with an adulthood hes already experienced?
Jim is neither adult nor child.
Hes barely even human at all.
By the end of the 80s, Spielberg was at a similar crossroads.
His task complete, Pete watches from the sidelines as Dorinda and her new love start their new life.
Bathed in the kind of blue-ish white light that E.T.
Spielbergs message (to audiences, to himself) was clear: evolve or die.
Tomorrow, we move on to Spielberg in the 1990s…
