Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Posted on May 22nd, 2008 by Jeremy.
Categories: Rant, Reviews.

I’m going to write a review of Indiana Jones IV.

I’m going to use lots and lots of spoilers and then I’m going to be really really critical.

The only note before going any further is that I DO believe that art is almost always subjective. It can be argued only about as far as trying to convince you that your favorite ice cream flavor is NOT your favorite ice cream flavor (which is Vanilla in case you were thinking it was something else).

I’ve said it in the vlog below but I didn’t like this new Indiana Jones movie. I’ve spent the day fielding geek dialogue between myself and a few other of the clan de Nerd that DO like the flick so I thought I’d just write down my thoughts, if only to look back years from now and laugh and my strange cynical attitude.

It’s hard for me even to know where to begin with this. It’s not as if it was the worst movie ever (though the more I pick it apart, I might think so by the end of today). It’s an enjoyable ride if you don’t expect anything out of the film.

If you are walking in to this flick for a nostalgic romp, and are willing to traipse past large plot holes and lazily written plot devices, you will find this movie on par with what you expect.

But for me, I was EXPECTING something more. I didn’t drum up this expectation. I didn’t inflate my fantasies about what the movie SHOULD be. Lucas and Spielberg had the honor of doing that for me. They are the ones that have lovingly made three of my favorite films in the entire world.Edit They are the ones that put together sweeping journeys of adventure, intrigue, romance and supernatural mayhem. They were the ones that seemed to keep the flame alive for the “spectacle” film, the Cecille B DeMille-like set pieces, with large swaths of people bringing together this fantasy and placing it firmly at the feet of believability.

It was also those two culprits that built the model of how Indiana Jones movies are sculpted, so it’s no surprise that when they change their own rules some of us will feel a little betrayed.

And that’s what they did.

Indy 4 opens up, years later, with the new baddies being the communist Russians who have captured Indiana Jones and a friend of his named “Mack” and transported them to a woefully under manned Area 51. There the action kicks into high gear as Indy leads the Russians to an magnetized box, which when opened reveals a gnarled hand of something otherworldly. Sure it’s an alien and you know it right away, but you are thinking okay, it’s not that bad, it’s not going to be so overt as to stray away from the usual mystery surrounding Indiana Jones.

Oh I know what you are thinking. The first three movies were about the supernatural, spiritual mumbo jumbo, why would they go to aliens? Well it’s their self important nod that the time is different now. It’s the 50’s and people were looking toward the skies. Indy is different, so should be the formula that we set up previously, and the formula that you so loved.

This is about as smart as making Halloween: The Season of the Witch, after already establishing that Halloween was about a serial killer named Michael Meyers. Even if the intention was to have each movie tackle something different from supernatural to sci fi, or whatever, it’s too late when you do 3 movies about one thing and then expect people to like it when you change it up, especially after almost 20 years of waiting for a film.

Sorry I digress. Indy loses the bad guys, walks through the desert until he finds a fake city, fake people, fake houses, but evidently REAL lead fridges. There are some people, not sure if they were the bad guys or not, because they zoom off and don’t take Indy with them…not really sure who they were, but they decided they should get out of there because of the NUCLEAR BOMB THAT WAS ABOUT TO DROP.

Soooo there is STILL going to be a bomb test when RIGHT NEXT DOOR RUSSIANS HAVE KILLED AND STOLEN GOVERNMENT SECRETS??? Yeah I think they might have postponed that for a day or two…you know…just to get security under control.

But they don’t, and Indy is left to his own devices, and as smart as he is, he does what everyone knows to do when confronted with a nuclear bomb…he jumps into a refrigerator.

Oh yeah, it’s lead lined, pshaw, never mind the blast destroys the fake city he is in, never mind that the car that left without him is seemingly destroyed, yet his refrigerator lives on!

After that refrigerator hits the ground at a rapid clip, bounces several times, he rolls out fine enough to get up and see the giant mushroom cloud not very far away.

Great I gotta worry about my hero having cancer for the rest of his life…thanks.

So now the FBI thinks that Indy could be a bad guy, but only for a second because this little plot device is only to show everyone, “hey look we are in the 50’s everyone is paranoid about the communists and we need to make that clear to the audience.” Plus we need to tell you about the plot, since you couldn’t figure it out by the ALIEN they picked up and disappeared with.

So now Indy is on a leave of absence…because you know, he might be a communist sympathizer, so he packs up and gets on a train. The train starts to leave the track and lo and behold that’s when Mutt Williams shows up, instinctively knows what Indy looks like, and gets him off the train in order to explain more of this incomprehensible plot.

You see this guy, who was sort of like a surrogate dad went missing, then his mom went missing and now he’s the only one that can get them back because his mom said so *snore*

Blah blah blah, Russians follow them and WAIT to capture them only until they are in a public place. Silly Russians.

Cue the really good chase scene. And it was good. It was old Indy again. Motorcycles, punching, racing around. Pretty good. At this point I’m like cooool, here we go, Indiana JONES!

But that can only last so long before Mutt and Indy fly off to another country, Mutt bringing his motorcycle…why? Who knows why, it makes for a funny quick scene but of course has nothing to do with ANYTHING else in the movie and we never hear about the motorcycle again.

Soon Indy is inside the insane asylum where his lost friend used to be, he figures out that all these pictures the guy CARVED of ALIENS points to a sound stage…err graveyard where he and Mutt go in the dead of night.

In this graveyard you have a monkey guy who runs around, fights really well and shoots poison arrows.

Now, you’d think this monkey dude has something to do with a tribe of natives sworn to protect the crystal skull. Well no, we don’t know what he has to do with, much like the motorcycle, it makes no sense. He’s just there, and then killed by Indy with no explanation

Bye and bye the Russians find Indy (you’d think Indy would have learned to lose these people by now) and capture him and Mutt taking them to a camp where we are reintroduced to Marion Ravenwood. This used to be Hellion spitfire. Indy’s true love who comes out of her tent having not seen him for years and makes a quick quip before ignoring him completely to talk to her son. Marion has about 2 sentences of dialogue in the entire film, there is no written moments of passion between Indy and her, it’s the most boring reunion ever on film, which is the exact opposite of what it should be, a WASTED opportunity.

Then they introduce Dead Head John Hurt as a guy who “evidently” turned insane by the Alien Skull and now has to lead Indy and the Russians to the city of gold where they need to return the alien skull in order to get all knowledge….*breath*, he had been there previously you see but then came back to where he found the skull for some unknown reason.

Indy goes through the same process that made John Hurt crazy, but he’s okay in case you were wondering, and figures out that John Hurt just needs a pen and paper to show little drawings that Indy can interpret as coordinates.

Mutt tries to get away as another lazy plot device in order to do one thing…to find a time to reveal Mutt’s dad’s identity. As soon as that happens they are recaptured. It was the dumbest way of revealing what should have been a “HOLY crap I have a kid” moment.

Now the movie goes COMPLETELY OFF THE RAILS.

The prisoners are left in the LAST truck in a convoy guarded by ONE guy in the with ordinance around them (though previously Indiana had to be guarded by a battalion of soldiers so known was his ability to get out of situations). Indy of course beats this guy up, takes out the two guys in the front, goes back to the truck bed WHERE he was prisoner and takes out an RPG. Indy takes out the lead truck and the entire Russian army that is down there stops and then starts to scatter at the mad Indiana jones that is driving toward them in the already damaged truck…because….wait, why are they running away? Don’t THEY have the guns and other trucks? Ohhhh I know, they want to have a rampantly excessive CGI chase scene.

This one sucks. There is a horrible scene where Mutt straddles two jeeps getting fwapped in the balls by oncoming CGI plants. He eventually gets left behind by being clothes lined by a low hanging vine.

Don’t worry though. Mutt is mayan for Tarzan and in the dumbest part of the movie Mutt starts chasing after the jeeps on a vine…with a bunch of monkeys, CGI monkeys.

He is so good in fact he GETS AHEAD OF THE TWO JEEPS who are still battling it out.

Eventually we end up in Indy’s jeep, though I could have sworn that was wrecked, and after a brief fight scene involving fire ants, and a revelation that Mac is really a good guy, we take off again with Marion at the wheel.

She jumps the Jeep off a cliff ONTO A TREE that bends their amphibious jeep to the water gently and then sends the tree back up to hit a bunch of bad guys.

Then they go over THREE waterfalls…and if their good fortune wasn’t enough they end up where they need to go.

Then they walk through caverns where evidently the natives hibernate in cocoons from the roof and come after Indy and everyone else, but it’s inconsequential because once they hold up the crystal skull, the natives walk away and have nothing to do with the movie ever again.

Soon we are to the ALIENS lair, and at the same time learn that Mac is still bad and has been leaving homing beacons for his Russian friends. You know, because he had the homing beacons on his person, they didn’t get broken or ruined after the car chase, the waterfalls, etc., that 1950’s tech…sturdy stuff.

OH man..and then the flying saucer, the alien comes alive and they disappear into the dimension they are from…which we know because John Hurt, who is sane again suddenly, tells us.

Okay, I know what you are thinking in the other movies there was a bunch of unbelievable stuff too! I mean the raft in temple of doom for instance. The difference is that in the other movies they made the pretense of trying to make it believable. For instance the raft in Temple of doom doesn’t just land smack on a flat surface, it actually comes down on a decline, ricocheting off things and continues to move, until they slow to a stop, not just a bone crushing thump. There is this little wink and nudge that the other movies have as if to say to the audience, this MIGHT work.

Here there is nothing of the kind, the leaps of logic and fantasy are so jarring I found myself rolling my eyes rather than laughing at the fun to be had.

Soon I found myself offended that this HUNDRED million dollar movie couldn’t find within itself a coherent story, or a chance to not offend the intellect of those of us watching it.

There were no elaborate set pieces; it was all sound stages and green screens. The cast was small and the relationships so poorly put together you felt NOTHING for anyone.

The alien angle was nothing of a mystery from the get go, which is silly because one of the great things about ALL the other movies is you weren’t sure if the Ark was real, the grail was real, the Kali stones worked. You had that doubt. Where is the doubt if you have an alien body, or heck a crystal skull that attracts all types of metal? There is no mystery at all. Suddenly Indiana Jones the archaeologist is Mulder looking after the next X file.

So yeah…Here’s a really insightful comment over at the AICN forums (yeah I know but I liked what he said)

“No Moral Dilemma
by commander jesusMay 22nd, 2008
03:56:51 PM Here goes. Like a lot of people, I agree the film was a mixed bag. But seriously, ONE CHANGE could have made it great. Quite simply, this film lacked ONE THING that all the other movies (even Doom) had–a final moral dilemma. And it’s usually the same one. After getting his ass kicked a thousand times and narrowly escaping numerous gruesome deaths, Indy is always faced with a power greater than himself, and must overcome his own ambition and leave well enough alone. In Raiders, it’s his humility that saves Marion and himself when he realizes that man was not meant to look into the ark. In Temple of Doom, as the Sankara stones fall into the water below, Indy lets it happen and it is Mola Ram whose greed causes him to fumble for them and he falls to his death. And finally, possibly the most literal example, in Last Crusade when Indy is so close to reaching the grail, his father simply says, “Indiana, let it go.” It’s a beautiful moment and it’s precisely the point of all the other films. His relationships with Marion, his father, and even Shortround are worth more than “fortune and glory.” So now we have a presumably older and wiser Indy, and undoubtedly, the key relationship here is with his recently-discovered son. It all works out reasonably well like an Indy film until the final act which could have borrowed the extra minutes gained from cutting bits from the Amazon jungle chase. The final act was too short, too muddled, and most critically, did not provide a MORAL DILEMMA WORTHY OF INDIANA JONES. Throughout this Franken-script, a lot of themes were merely touched on, but a solid closer would have solidified the main one. I could have seen it going one of two ways (because sadly, at this point, all of us have written and rewritten the movie over and over in our heads, and why not, since the film had about a million writers). ENDING 1: In order to complete the idea that Indy has become, in many ways, like his dad, Mutt could have been tempted in some way to use to power of the artifact in an unscrupulous way, only to be brought back in by a wiser Indy who knows all-too-well where that path leads. Or… ENDING 2: To solidify the idea that Indy has been running all his life from what is truly important, family, he could have had the opportunity to leave Marion and his son—to go with the alien archeologists and learn about history in a way no man has ever before him, only to choose to stay behind with them and… wait for it… let it go. But in the end, George, Steven, and Harrison couldn’t let it go, and that’s fine. It was a fun film, but it was easily the fourth best thanks to a lackluster ending without much of a point. Oh, and that marriage? Criminey.”

Great analysis.

I hear now that George Lucas is thinking of continuing the series but with Shia Lebouf as the new Indy…please stop. It just diminishes what was when you make something new and don’t even TRY to make it as good as what was before.

Ugh.

I’m done.

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