REVIEW - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Guys, reviewers in general are saying that this film is pretty okay. I'm not really sure they are correct.

George Lucas predicted that everyone would totally hate this latest (last???) installment of the legendary (and slightly less lucrative than Star Wars) Indiana Jones franchise. He said that people would reject the fact that the McGuffin of the film (the titular Crystal Skull) was less a religious artifact (though it is, from a certain point of view) than the relics from the previous films. That audiences would reject the pulp sci-fi nature of the plot and mutiny over the Cold War atmosphere.

I think George is very wrong on many levels. I'm not sure what era he's living in, but he no longer has a grasp of the zeitgeist that he had for a brief, shining moment in the late 70s and early 80s. He can't even predict what people will object to in his films. I thought the above "problems" were just fine. I had a whole other set of issues entirely.

It's not the acting. Harrison Ford looks like he actually gives a crap for the first time since, I dunno, The Fugitive. Shia LeBoeuf does a pretty good job with a character who would, in the hands of a lesser actor, be drowning in cliché. Cate Blanchett is all right. I think she can probably do anything at this point. She could probably play Lincoln at this point and pull it off. The always-awesome John Hurt was in this waaaaay more than I thought he would be, and does a decent job of being a crazy person, though the gold standard for that is still Tom Wilkinson in Michael Clayton. Karen Allen's Marion is having entirely too much fun. Jim Broadbent is the new Marcus Brody-type, and unfortunately isn't left with much to do at all. Ray Winstone's Mac is less a character than a plot device, and a useless one at that. The only people that won't have him completely figured out from five minutes in are three-year-olds who have never seen a film that didn't star Dora the Explorer. Also, at no point in the film do I recall seeing him wearing the hat that he has in the poster. I feel slightly cheated.

The problem is not the McGuffin. Crystal skulls are real, and the secrets of their manufacture are a mystery even to today's experts. But, as we've seen from the poster, this is no ordinary crystal skull. There is some kind of alien-type thing going on here, which I'm not going to get into due to spoilers, but it all makes sense in its own...theology? I guess if the Mayans worshipped the skull it would be considered a religious artifact, so stop complaining about this film being out of step with the others, you guys.

It's not the Russians that are the problem, either. Blanchett's character is pretty far out as far as Indy bad guys go, but her peculiar skills don't adversely affect the plot. (Actually, come to think of it, they don't really affect the plot much at all, so why bother? I guess to make it interesting? George, please let us know what your intent was here.) Of course, every bad guy needs a henchperson, and we get this big Russian dude named Dovchenko, played by this big Russian dude named Igor Jijikine, who exists to inflict punches on Indiana Jones and also to receive them in equal or greater measure. He does a good job of this. The Russians as a whole are not as compelling as the Nazis were, despite the fact that they share similar goals (world domination through the aquisition of supernatural power). There's just a perfection in the idea of Nazis as villains since they're completely unsympathetic and you can just kill as many of them as you want and people will cheer. The Soviets, not so much. We are too far removed from the 1950s for the reds to be compelling bad guys. But Nazis? Well, we're kind of preconditioned, I suppose. But all in all, the Russians are decently menacing bad guys and more than sufficient as cannon fodder.

Part of the problem with the film lies in its screenwriter, David Koepp, who is a hack. Why Spielberg continues to use him is anyone's guess. The man has never written a sufficiently functional plot twist. He DIRECTED Secret Window, and if you didn't see the big plot twist of that one coming a mile away you must be Amish or something. This is also the guy responsible for writing Spielberg's War of the Worlds cacafest, wherein characters who were heavily implied to be dead miraculously show up at the end of the film with a mug of cocoa so that Spielberg can have another one of his unearned happy endings. Koepp probably thinks the character of Mac in Crystal Skull is some kind of genius move. It isn't. He probably doesn't remember why he put in a subplot about the FBI thinking Indy might be a commie, because that whole thing kind of went nowhere except to have him get on a train. David Koepp is a hack and is not fit to shine Lawrence Kasdan's shoes. I don't have an axe to grind with the guy, I'm just consistently disappointed in his work. Of course, we have George to thank for the basic story, and hopefully he'll stop making decisions now. Because Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile) took a shot at an Indy 4 script a few years back and Spielberg called it the best script he'd ever read but of course George knew better. Good call, there, George.

Also, some of the CG in the film is kinda dodgy. Now, Indiana Jones has never had the best luck with effects, in my opinion. Stop-motion wax melting heads, matte lines a go-go, underwhelming but charming miniatures...I could go on. Anyway, now that CG is where it's at, George and Steven have seen fit to make a lot of fakey fakey stuff. Like animals. I'm not sure there was a real animal in the film, but there sure were a heck of a lot of CG ones. The rampant use of CG isn't always readily apparent, but it's there quite a bit. But, to be fair, it generally doesn't take you out of the film. Well, maybe sometimes, but that's another point and I'm not quite there yet.

There is also a lack of peril and mystery in the film. Part of this is the fault of fakey fakey CG stuntwork, and partly the pacing of the film. Indy mostly figures things out about halfway through, and pretty much the rest of the movie involves just dodging Russians in the jungle. I'd get more specific about who lives and dies, but there be spoilers. Let's just say there are few surprises. The stakes are not sufficiently high. (Rollover for mild spoiler?:) Marion does not get shot in the stomach by Walter Donovan.

I think my biggest problem with the film is the lack of realism in the action sequences. Like the National Treasure-type ancient structures that have such intricate mechanisms that they seem able to transform into the fricking Allspark. I mean, Indy films were always good because there was a realism to them. Sure, there were always complex booby-trap mechanisms around, but nothing of the kind of architecture-changing-GoBot action we see in this film. It's all video game-type baloney and poorly manufactured, scriptwriter short-cut peril.

Also, Indy is the best because he gets into all kinds of situations, but they are realistic situations. Not counting times when the relics display their power (a conceit you just have to go with in an Indy film, and perhaps for some a tall order in this particular film), whenever something happens in an Indy film it is well within the bounds of science and medicine. The Truck Chase in Raiders is a plausible action sequence. The bridge in Temple of Doom. The Tank Chase in Last Crusade. I'm even willing to give a pass to Indy strapping himself to a submarine (assuming the sub cruised at periscope depth, a common enough practice) and jumping out of a plane on a raft and down the side of a mountain (okay, that one's pushing it). But there are action sequences in this film that are so RIDICULOUS and not grounded in reality AT ALL that it takes you right out of the film.On the other hand, the motorcycle chase through the college campus only has a few unrealistic elements, it's mostly pretty awesome.

As a side note, I'm not sure what George, Steven and David Koepp were thinking with the climax of the film, but (rollover for potential mild spoilers) why on earth do you rip off, in equal measure, Raiders, Last Crusade, A.I., and The Mummy? I mean, seriously?

There are some shoutouts to previous films. Since Crystal Skull essentially begins in the place where [one of the previous films] ended, there's a plausible appearance from a familiar crate. Also, Marcus Brody and Henry Jones Sr. are depicted, though I wish the photos on Indy's desk weren't just Last Crusade publicity photos, I hate when they pull that stuff in movies or TV. They couldn't photoshop something? I guess they have better things to do. Marcus' cherubic visage also appears prominently around the campus of Marshall College, where a painting can be seen in a hallway and a statue on the quad plays a significant (and entirely disrespectful to the poor guy) role in the climax of the only plausible action sequence in the film. I'm kind of glad Sean Connery opted out of doing a cameo appearance; it would have added nothing to the story and only amounted to fanservice. The first good decision Connery's made since Finding Forrester. "You're the man now, dog!"

John Williams' music was a bit underwhelming. By which I mean, the music from the Indy films is generally superawesome, but there's really nothing new here musicwise. In fact, a lot of the cues are recycled from earlier films. I figure John Williams is probably semi-retired by now (and nobody's earned it more), so I'll give him a pass on it. I was just hoping for a new bombastic theme or two, or maybe an awesome action suite like "Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra" or "Belly of the Steel Beast" from Last Crusade.

All in all, I didn't actively hate the film as much as a lot of people walking out of the theater (I was actually surprised at the strong negative reaction), but Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a solid fourth place in the pantheon of Indy films. It's a decent film for a rainy Saturday afternoon, but it is not the film that will save your summer and mine.

Will Iron Man rule the entire summer? Will The Dark Knight be the high point of the season like everyone is hoping? WE SHALL SEE.