The Indiana Jones movies is finally on Blu-Ray and fans around the world who still don't own the series can purchase their first copy and on HD no less. I own VHS copies (2 sets), special DVD releases (2 sets), AND bootleg 720p files of the trilogy . . . and the new release only gives me another reason to finally buy a Blu-Ray player. Thankfully, aside from superficial improvements to the reel, the movies are untouched. As a huge fan, I can't wait until George Lucas finally gives in and creates a special Blu-Ray set of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles - one of the best TV shows of all time. The movies and series are timeless and I'd rather hand a complete Blu-Ray set to my nephews than provide them a Blu-Ray copy of Michael Bay's Transformers.
"The past isn't always preserved properly. That's why we have archeology, YouTube, and the iTunes store." Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Spider-Man, on the other hand, was featured in a new movie that in many ways is the definitive Spidey flick and despite being compared to the much-loved Ultimate Spider-Man comic book series was actually more in tune with the Spidey stories from the 60s and 70s. The updated technology, from film-making and the film plot (e.g. cellphones and web-shooters), plays a hand in Peter's adventures more now than it did during the golden age of Spider-Man during the 70s and 80s, but there's little doubt that it keeps the Spider-Man character true to his roots more than the current crop of badly illustrated and lazily written Spider-Man comic books being published today.
The web-shooters were more unrealistic than Spidey himself even way back in the 70s, but it did add a bit of sci-fi to the superhero's character.
I've written about the excellent 1960s Spider-Man series you can watch online and the digital comic books of the 80s available from Marvel. It's amazing how the Internet can keep alive so much from so long ago. The Spider-Man comic books today are garbage and preys on the blissfully ignorant Marvel readers of today while the past issues, anachronistic, silly, and innocent, shines and entertains. With Amazing Spider-Man ending this year with issue #700 after a pathetic 50th anniversary celebration from an inept Marvel staff, the classic Spider-Man of yesteryear (preserved through the magic of digital comics) is what readers should start picking up.
Spider-Man (1981) - Spidey poses in this extremely funny scene in the episode "The Sandman is Coming"
And then there's James Bond - the "oldest" character in this list. The original James Bond novels are now being published by Amazon to celebrate 50 years of the films. Vintage Books in the UK and Amazon are both re-releasing Ian Fleming's underrated series in ebook format. Forget about the romanticized Kingsley Amis, John Gardner, Sebastian Faulks, and Jeffrey Deaver novels of James Bond - the original Fleming books may have been dry and meant for a select audience, but they were the real Bond. The rest of the authors wrote with the films in mind with little awareness of the life and times of the Bond Fleming wrote about. Ebooks, free or otherwise, allow today's audience to appreciate literature that has largely been overshadowed by more flashy media such as film.
"I'm bored. You don't happen to have a Kindle with you, do you?" Sean Connery as James Bond in Dr. No.
Time moves so swiftly and technology even more so. Physics and the laws of entropy dictate that we can never preserve the past. Memories are flawed. History is a fallacy and facts aren't immutable But thankfully, technology and its users are self-aware enough to at least attempt to preserve pieces of an era - be it comic books from a more innocent time, a pulp movie about an archaeologist, and stories of a British assassin of the Cold War.
Now let me search for The Chipmunk Adventure (1987) and Monster Squad (1987) on Netflix
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