Indiana Jones, Thanks!

Thank you, Indiana Jones, for growing old.

I’m serious.

I’m as giddy as a schoolboy, filled with effusive gratitude for Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Harrison Ford.

They allowed the world’s most famous archaeologist and action hero extraordinaire to be played by a 65-year-old actor.

And they pulled it off.

The reason I’m so pro Indy?

Pure self interest.

Ford’s fourth foray into Jonesville gives me hope that I, too, can still accomplish amazing things at an age when most men traditionally contemplate retirement.

I must confess that I’ve been riding the slow train to Funksville ever since the producers of the James Bond movies fired Pierce Brosnan after he starred in four films as Agent 007.

Brosnan and I were born in May of 1953. I’m his senior by a whole week.

As long as James Bond was my own age, I could maintain the fantasy that growing older hadn’t affected me.

Not really.

Sure, the knees are going. The hair is turning grayer. But I could still be sexy, cool, ruthless, and able to pick up any woman, if I wanted to. As long as Brosnan could be James Bond, so could I.

Then, horror of horrors!

Brosnan got kicked to the curb, a Bond reject at age 49. He was replaced by a younger, tougher Bond, Daniel Craig, a mere 38.

What did this mean?

Had I become an official AARP member suffering from a pitiful lack of youthful self-deception? In the lyrics of Paul Simon, who would be my role model now?
I remembered that Sean Connery, the longest-running Bond, started playing the role at 32 and finally retired from Agent 007 – a second time – with 1983’s “Never Say Never Again.” He was 53.

That didn’t help.

Curiously, my frail self-image didn’t improve to note that Roger Moore made it all the way to 57 before turning in his license to kill in “A View to a Kill.” Who wanted to emulate Moore’s ascot-flailing dandy?

I looked around for macho action figures played by actors my own age or older.

Anything to give me hope I that I still had it.

Architect Paul Kersey? He was still taking out the street trash as the vigilante killer in the “Death Wish” movies, even as actor Charles Bronson turned 73.

But he was just an immobile, aging actor who mostly shot people deserving of a bullet. That didn’t make me feel better.

Then, super heroes began to depress me.

Take Superman. He never ages. The late Christopher Reeve once told me that he thought the Man of Steel should always be around 35 years old. He last donned the cape for 1987’s “Quest for Peace.” He was 35.

The idea of Batman as a senior citizen sounds absurd, too. He constantly needs to be in peak physical condition to battle baddies without benefit of comic book super powers.

A middle-aged Tarzan?

Please.

The aging cast of the “Star Trek” movies gave my ego little comfort. Yes, all those single guys aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise were still running around the universe as if they were just out of Star Fleet Academy. DeForest Kelly made his last voyage to go where no man had gone before at 71.

But these weren’t classic action heroes by a long shot.

Then, something amazing started to happen: action heroes began appearing on the silver screen played by actors who by all rights should have had silver hair.

Sylvester Stallone resurrected two of his most popular franchise heroes.
First came 2006’s “Rocky Balboa,” in which a fiftysomething Italian Stallion (Stallone had actually hit 60) returned to the boxing ring and KO’d critics and the box office with a convincingly powerful and energized performance.

He also brought back disillusioned Vietnam vet John Rambo in this year’s “Rambo,” although his almost grotesque physicality resembled the extreme musculature of a comic book rendering of The Hulk.

Stallone is a vain actor who doesn’t want his characters to age anymore than the rest of us do.

That probably explains why both his Rambo and Rocky coiffures look as if somebody plied them with black shoe polish, then buffed them down to a shiny, helmet-like finish.

So, I say again, “Thank you, Indiana Jones, for growing old.”

With his graying, sandy hair and old-man stance when he’s not in motion, Ford’s archaeologist doesn’t pretend to be young. Just your average, stuffy, past-middle-aged college professor who can save a civilization or two before lunch if necessary.

Yes, he can still be sexy, cool, ruthless, and able to pick up any woman if he wanted to.

I like this older, wiser, more settled Indy. He gives me hope for my pitiful lack of youthful self-deception.

Now, if we can just get Chuck Norris to bring back ’80s action icon Colonel James Braddock in one more “Missing in Action” martial arts action epic.

Norris is a mere 68.

— Originally published May 23, 2008