Raiders of the Lost Childhood

With the release of the latest Indiana Jones movie this summer came the inevitable re-release of the first three films on DVD. These had all the extras and re-remastered charm and all that crap.

What they also had was some classic Spielberg/Lucas revisionist history.

The first film, "Raiders of the Lost Ark", had been mysteriously renamed "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark".

I was there when "Raiders" was in the theatres for a few million weeks. I saw the film a couple of times in the theatres and loved it. I know it had a main character named Indiana Jones, but not a TITLE character of the same name. The two subsequent (and pretty awful) movies featured "Indiana Jones and the..." titles and we were fine with that.

Why then, do we have to ruin the first movie by changing the name? I like "Raiders" just the way it is or was , in fact.

Not that these films are anything on par with one another but there's been a bit of the same thing in the Sylvester Stallone universe.

First there was "First Blood". Then there was "Rambo: First Blood, Part II" and finally there was "Rambo III", which made no sense at all. The correct title of the third movie should have been, "Rambo Part II, First Blood Part III: The Revenge...This Time It's Personal". Then the fourth movie, "Rambo" came out this year and all hell broke loose.

There have been a few releases of the Rambo films on DVD, many of them are referred to as the Rambo movies, which I guess, given the simplicity of the plots and the folks who watch them (myself included, provided there's enough alcohol at the ready) is just fine.

But seriously..."Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark"?

FUCK, Spielberg...Did you digitally remove the Nazis as well or did you just remove all the guns a la "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial"? Notice how I used the full and correct title?

I still haven't forgiven George Lucas for his bastardizing of the original (and ONLY) Star Wars trilogy. Let's not get all geeky on this, OK?