Christmas is a time for family, food and, most importantly, movies. What you watch, when you watch and why you watch it can be used to identify what type of person you are.

If you think Die Hard is a Christmas movie – you’re about movies and know your stuff. If your favourite Christmas movie is 4 Christmases – you probably spend a lot of the rest of the year sending Vince Vaughan monologues to your friends. If you think Home Alone is the peak of Christmas cinema – you’re a child of the 80s who subsequently traded that innocence for a fondness for Britpop or Grunge.

In aviation you don’t always get to watch all the Christmas television that networks and stations have planned for you, because you’re probably in a hotel on the road somewhere eating room service that includes a troublingly shit mince pie. The beauty of modern technology is that no matter what your favourite Christmas movie is you can watch it anywhere anytime. This is also why Die Hard and Trading Places are not pure Christmas movies. I could watch either of them anytime and not notice they’re set during the festive period. If I watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation anytime other than 21-31 December I don’t make it through, despite the depth of comedy on show.

To be very clear – my favourite Christmas movie is National Lampoon’s. It presents the pure stress of Christmas like nothing else on show.

Not a Christmas movie, but definitely on most stations every year is at least one of the Indiana Jones movies. As I was flying on the 26th and in hotels from 26th – 29th I decided it was the perfect opportunity to binge the series in full now that the Dial of Destiny is streaming.

I’ve never done a ranking of the Indy movies before so I decided as I watched them, in chronological order, that I’d rank them.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is probably one of the best adventure movies ever made and sits atop the pile lonely for some competition. From the first time you hear John Williams’ Indy theme to the suspension of disbelief as he adventures through the desert searching for a magic religious relic it’s a straight ten. It is hard to fault.

With Raiders at the top, I moved on to The Temple of Doom. It is without doubt the worst Indy movie by some distance, with its clunkiness and lack of heart. The opening sequence involving Spielberg’s future wife, Cate Kapshaw as ‘Willie Scott’, doing a very weak musical number. Shortround is great, however the less said the better.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, billed as Indy’s last adventure – until there was more money to be made – brought back the Nazis as baddies, River Phoenix as a young Indy and Sean Connery as his Dad. It is a solid movie that relies on the chemistry between the father and son to keep you interested as they stretch it out to an entertaining finale. Once again a total suspension of disbelief is required, although it’s not necessarily hard to do when you’re swept away by Indy and his Dad bickering their way through the various set pieces. After watching the first three movies it ranked number two on my list.

It was then time for the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and the introduction of Indy’s son (Mutt), who is ably played by Shia LeBouf. Shia is a beast of an actor, but he couldn’t save this character from online hate and disdain. It was unnecessary! The whole thing is all over the place, but Mutt pulls it all together giving Indy someone as exciting and intelligent to work with. It gets even better when it turns out ETs are involved. The great crime of the movie is that the online mob (fanboys/fangirls) didn’t get the movie that they wanted and crapped their pants for all to see. The Last Crusade bumped out of second place.

Finally, I got to the Dial of Destiny. It goes for de-aging Indy to set up the movie and to be fair it works really well. If you’ve seen Tron: Legacy you’ll have seen bad de-aging when they essentially had a wax-works doll playing a young Jeff Bridges. This time they bring in a female counterpart archaeologist with an emotional tie to Indy as his partner. When it was Catherine Allen, Connery or LeBeouf it was for some reason easy to get on board. This new character, name already forgotten, only wants to make money. So even though she knows solely about archaeological practices as educational and historical she’s hell bent on selling antiquities to make money. It never lands, and it’s actually unresolved at the end, it just seems she drops the hunger for money all of a sudden and that’s it. I’m not sure that’s the pay-off that I was hoping for. Despite the weakness of the character arc, Phoebe Waller Bridge is great! Both her and Ford are top drawer throughout but the whole thing is hanging onto another Nazi plot to change the outcome of the war with a sacred and magical antiquity. I know that sometimes it’s good to play the hits but it was feeling old five movies in. All that said I watched these movies over 3 days so recency bias on being sick of this plot device could be an issue. It’s number four on the list.

My list after twelve hours of binging:

1. Raiders

2. Crystal Skull

3. Last Crusade

4. Dial of Destiny

5. Temple of Doom

You can quibble, argue or post your thoughts on the above, but like Spielberg ramming his girlfriend into Temple of Doom I’m not for changing direction.

Whether you love Home Alone, treasure John McClane’s Nakatomi Plaza adventure or drown in the hilarity of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation we can all agree there’s no time like Christmas to bury yourself in nostalgia with your favourite movies. It’s a great way to ignore your ‘loved ones’ or fill time in a hotel when you can’t see your ‘loved ones.’ Aviation is always going to offer a different potential Christmas but Indiana Jones will never fail to save the day. As Willie Scott would say – anything goes!

Thanks for reading, feel free to share your favourite movies in the comments below or when sharing.

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