Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

One of my earliest movie theatre memories involves Raiders of the Lost Ark. My mom, my sister, and I were planning on seeing some Disney movie. The show we were going to see was sold out. So my mom took us to Raiders instead. I was 5 years old. Raiders was already playing, so we missed a good portion of it. I remember the scene where Marion is hiding in the baskets in India or somewhere while Indy is being chased by sword-wielding henchmen. That must have been the point when we walked in. I remember being scared by the creepy looking German with the coat hanger, the one who burned his hand on the medallion. I remember the ending, the scene where Indy says something like, “whatever you do, don’t look”. My mom took that to heart and told me to cover my eyes. I peeked. My sister didn’t (she’s a wuss). Ghosts flew out of The Ark of the Covenant and burned holes in people, melted some faces, and even blew one guys head apart. I was amazed. Pure face-melting brilliance. This has to be the reason why I like to watch gory horror movies. It’s my mom’s fault.

I love Raiders. It’s one of the best action films of all time. I’ve watched it numerous times. There are some genuinely tense scenes and some great humorous moments. I love the fight with the big, bald German badass who gets cut up by the airplane propeller. I love the snake in the cockpit. I love the car chase where Indy ends up on the grill of the truck and has to slide under it while it’s driving. I love the shootout in Marion’s bar. It’s over-the-top action that retains a sense of reality. Great stuff.

Then came the sequels: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Alabama Jones and the Busty Crusade (not really…yes, it really exists, but it’s not a true sequel, it’s a tangential storyline), and the latest mouthful, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. If I remember correctly, the original movie was simply called Raiders of the Lost Ark. I don’t think it had the “Indiana Jones and the…” attached to the title. I might be wrong. I don’t care. I think that when the producer/director/whoever put the Indiana Jones part at the beginning of the title, the films went downhill. Too much focus on Indy; not enough focus on the rest of the raiders. Just kidding, but not really. I enjoyed the dark and gory Temple of Doom, but could have done without the stupid side-kick and the annoying love interest character. Nothing beats a good heart-ripping scene. I also liked The Last Crusade. Sean Connery did a great job playing off of Harrison Ford. It wasn’t as gory as the earlier two films and relied a little more on humor than on action sequences. The part where the one dude drank from the wrong cup and got old really fast was kind of cool, but nowhere reached the level of awesomeness as the face melting of Raiders. I do give The Last Crusade props for severed heads, though.

Now, 19 years after The LAST Crusade, we get Indiana Jones and the whatever, whatever. It’s a sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. They completely ignored The Temple of Doom in this one, while constantly referencing the other films. Going in, I wanted to give The Castle of Crystalskull the benefit of the doubt. I avoided reading any reviews or criticisms of it before watching it. I still haven’t read anything about it; I don’t want to flavor my reviews with the opinions of others. If I wrote for Chud or AICN, I would have already seen an early screening and this review would be called Jared’s Take. It would accompany Devin’s Take and Nick’s Take and Jeremy’s Take and Russ’ Take and Harry’s Take and Moriarty’s Take but not Vern’s Take cause Vern didn’t review it. He reviewed The Class of 1984 which I just watched and it is awesome. I watched the new Indy Jones Jr. flick on Memorial Day. I didn’t take any notes or anything, so if I get something wrong in my review, fuck you.

The movie begins with the Paramount fade-in on the mountain, only this mountain is a pile of dirt. A computer generated gopher pops up. Shit. I should have left at this point but I decided to stick it out. Indy looks old. That’s fine, but he runs like Sam Cassell. Sean Connery was old in The Last Crusade but he didn’t seem old. Harrison Ford looks tired and beaten. It must be the earring and the booze. The story is set during the Eisenhower presidency. The Nazis are no longer the bad guys. Now it’s the communists, the fucking red bastards. The opening takes place in a warehouse at Area 51, where the government stores all its secrets like the Ark of the Covenant and other powerful, supernatural artifacts like aliens from Roswell and the faked moon landing stage and staplers and Sharpies and stuff. The main badguy (in this case, badgirl) is played by Cate Blanchett. She has short black hair and a bad accent and she thinks she can read minds. She’s part of the KGB’s brainwashing unit or something. She carries around a long saber, like the kind you see in those Marines commercials where it looks like the guy is going to cut off his ear (I wish that would happen, just once). Indy has a friend named Mac who is a turncoat (spoiler) and a greaser motorcycle kid named Mutt who follows him around. Mutt is played by Shia LaBoofer and his character is actually Indy’s son (spoiler, but everyone saw it coming). Indy must have had sex with Marion on the submarine in Raiders of the Lost Ark (putting two and two together) and Mutt is their spawn. Indy doesn’t realize that Mutt is his son for most of the movie. We know this going in because we aren’t that dumb. Well, the people sitting in front of me probably didn’t figure it out until the reveal because they were retarded. And they smelled like one of those pine air-freshener thingies that you hang in your car.

The rest of the movie is about a crystal skull that has magical powers. The skull is shaped like an alien head, but not like an E.T. alien because E.T.’s head looks like old Indy’s scrotum. Kids don’t need to see that on the big screen. This is a sleek, 21st century alien head. Whoever first returns the magical, mystical skull to its rightful resting place gets the skull’s power. Hence the car chases. Hundreds of car chases. Indoor car chases, outdoor car chases, chases along cliffs and through jungles. Indy is constantly crawling through windows and over hoods and over roofs and punching drivers and jumping from one car to another. Then Mutt is swinging from vines like fucking Tarzan and sword fighting while straddling two cars and being hit in the nuts by plants. Funny. And then there are a bunch of monkeys. And human-eating fire ants. And quicksand that isn’t quicksand. And aliens from another dimension (spoiler). This movie quickly devolves into The Mummy Returns. Even the ending is similar (all the shit spinning around in the air). Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a rip-off of The Mummy Returns which is a rip-off of the earlier Indiana Jones films. I’m at that nexus in the universe that Lewis Black spoke of…the one where you walk out of one Starbucks and right across the street, directly in front of you, is another Starbucks. It’s all the same. This film’s greatest flaw is that it presents nothing new. It rehashes nearly every scene from the previous films. It tries desperately to be funny, but the jokes fall flat. Karen Allen’s reprisal of her Marion role is a joke, and not a funny one. John Hurt’s Oxley character was obviously written for Sean Connery. When Connery decided not to do the film, they wrote him out with a photograph and a line of dialogue. Then, instead of re-writing his part, they just put in a different character name. Lazy.

The action sequences are computer generated blurs, sapped of any tension they could have had. If you want to see how an intense chase sequence should play out, watch Ronin or the second Bourne movie. Practical effects, people. Green screen magic should only be used for things that can’t be done with practical effects. If you can’t have Shia LaBoofer swinging from vines and straddling two cars while fencing in real life, toss the scene. Think up something else. He’s not a fucking superhero; he’s a greaser with a switchblade. It’s like the scene from Die Another Day where James Bond surfs an iceberg. Throw it out. The Scorpion King at the end of The Mummy Returns is laughable, but the new Hulk looks just as terrible. Stick an epee in it and call it done. Stop writing movies based on the fact that you can shoot all the action scenes and characters in CGI; write them as if you didn’t have that luxury and use it only when necessary. Goddamn. Spielberg is Michael Bay on Quaaludes.

Back to Indy 4: Why in the hell was there a wedding in this movie? Who wants to see a wedding in a movie? For that matter, who wants to see one in real life? Weddings are boring and have no place in action films. Same goes for funerals. If a character dies, we don’t need to see a bunch of extras mourning his/her death at graveside. Move past it. Take the unnecessary human elements out. Save stuff like that for right before the credits. Do that cheesy thing where you tell the audience what happens to the characters in the future in bold, declarative sentences: Indy and Marion settle down and get married. Oxley gets lost in the Amazon on an expedition in search of his balls. Mutt Jones rapes a gopher. The end.

Update: My friend asked me if I thought this movie was really as big a disaster as I painted it to be. This is my response that I posted on his website:

I don't know man. Vern liked it. I was bored with it. I laughed a couple of times and enjoyed some of the action, but a lot of it seemed forced. It does a good job playing on the paranoia of the 50's. I'll give it that. I was really upset that they went the whole CGI route with it, to the extreme. I think I'm getting old. I'm not willing to change with the times. This movie is like the Die Another Day of the series. I wanted a Casino Royale. Oh well. Go see it and review it. I'd like to read your take on it.