It has finally arrived. The screenings have finally taken place. And the audience was delighted. Just as it was expected, fans have crowded theaters all over the US and the movie hasn’t let them down.

Both older and younger cinemagoers were there, happy to be among the first persons to actually see good old Indy back in action. With this kind of a debut producers can say they’ve nailed it once again. But how did they do it?

First of all, let’s be frank. Even if you have one the of world’s top three superheroes, I count here James Bond, Indiana Jones, and Spiderman, chances are that using the same actor over a period of time longer than 20 years would make the latest films of the series look a bit dusty. And then, if you have a gap of almost 20 years between two movies, you are very likely to lose the support of the younger generations.

These were just some of the problems George Lucas and Steven Spielberg had to solve in order to make ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ the enormous success it has become. So here’s the recipe: humor, old-school action and an actor that the new generation loves.

Yes, Harrison Ford is 19 years older than in ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,’ but so is the new Indy. This gives life to the whole series. Unlike James Bond, where viewers have to get accustomed with new actors playing the hero all the time, Indiana Jones is a character that is aware of his own limitations. He knows he’s older, he’s wiser, and fighting for democracy is not as easy for him as it used to be. And this is what makes the audience love him: he’s human, he’s one of us. Indy is, after all, the portrait of the daring part that lies in any human being.

But this idea would probably appeal only to the persons who have seen the previous movies in the series. To make the success complete, kids had to come see it. And what better way to do this than casting Shia LaBeouf, an actor loved by children, for the supporting role.

The ‘Transformers’ star is not really comfortable with his character, a rebel teenager who dropped out of college to feed his passion for motorbikes, but he is there, and this seems enough for what will probably become the next generation of Indy fans.