A couple of weeks ago, Hollywood Boulevard was swarmed with fedoras, leather jackets, and bullwhips (all of them screen-accurate, of course). Fans from as far away as Canada, the Netherlands, Italy, and Australia gathered for the U.S. premiere of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. It’s possible that such a large, diverse group of Indy fans had never been assembled before.
“All my life, I never imagined seeing fans from all around the world here,” said Eugene Shin, a member of the cosplaying group “California Jones” who recently organized a fan tour of location sites in the San Francisco Bay Area. “It just shows that Indiana Jones has a global reach, even in places where I never imagined Indy could be so popular. The fact that people have traveled all the way here is amazing.”
For many, including Shin, the experience felt like the culmination of a lifelong passion stretching back to their earliest memories. “My grandpa would rent videos randomly, and one day he chose Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” Shin recalled. “I was so engaged with the movie that I kept repeating it, and renting the movie over and over again.”
Kelsey Walmer, a Marion Ravenwood cosplayer, explained how “my whole family watched these movies when my brother and I were little, and we’ve continued watching for years and years together. It’s full circle, or full dial! [Laughs.]”