Indiana No-Cojones

Or the Death of Another American Franchise

It seems these days George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are out to destroy everything they’ve built up over the past thirty-something years. Not monetarily of course, anything from the past they touch inevitably turns into piles of cash, but more in concern to their artistic vision and credibility. I can’t fault Lucas too much this time around, as he thankfully stayed away from the director’s chair subsequent to churning out three horrible excuses for Star Wars flicks after helming his first directorial effort in over twenty years, with Episode I: The Phantom Menace. No, more blame lies on Spielberg’s head this time, which is disappointing in that I have quite enjoyed his recent works like Minority Report, Catch Me If you Can and especially Munich.

After watching a well-made trailer, I had high hopes for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Maybe whoever edited it should have edited the actual film, because it captured the mood and feel of the original flicks. There was a lot to like about Crystal Skull, don’t get me wrong. Visual homage was rife throughout, from the classic Indy silhouette shot, to inside references to the Ark of the Covenant, Marus Brody and Henry Jones Sr. But this was no Raiders of the Lost Ark or Last Crusade. I was never a huge Temple of Doom fan, and would almost rate this one as exceeding it, if it weren’t for poor chroma keying, odd plot mechanics, entirely unsurprising “twists” and aliens.

Aliens, you say? Yes, aliens. I never thought I’d see the day that the oval-eyed little buggers would cross paths with the whip-wielding archeologist, but I guess nothing’s sacred anymore. I’m not entirely opposed to the main thrust of the story, I just don’t want to see it made into an Indiana Jones film. The other installments all reference the supernatural, but it was a veiled reference to a higher, unseen power – not other-worldly life. What’s more, the idea is entirely unoriginal based upon the known work of the auteur. Spielberg made his bones on countless alien flicks, could rightly be hailed as the farther of the modern spaceman adventure, so throwing a little green man into his action-adventure serial franchise is nothing to write home about. Unless it’s to say, “Mom, he finally went mad!”

There’s also little left to the imagination concerning the alien plot and its inevitable culmination in otherworldly skeletal remains, a glowing wormhole in the sky and a gigantic flying saucer. From the moment Indy finds the titular crystal skull, there’s no doubt we’re not talking actual Martians. The skull is unimaginably “crafted”, remarkably free of decay or blemish, and emits a powerful electromagnetic field. There’s no mystery, no style, its just there, thrust before you. We’ve all heard the stories of the ancient Egyptians and Mayans, and supposed references to space travel and extra terrestrials. So it’s not entirely without cause for their to be a reference to such things in a film of this type… but not Indy. That's never what it was about.

The other plot twists that we’re subjected to are all too predictable. I avoid reading plot-specific hype and rumor like the plague. Yet even I knew, from years ago, that the film would feature his son. More recently I happened upon the return of Marion rumor, and well, once you catch the trailer, the rest falls into place. It was boring, uninteresting and unfulfilling. The overuse of chroma keying or “bluescreening” during high-action sequences looked amateurish and revealing, while many of the sets literally reached out of the screen and said, “Look at me, I’m fake!” What’s more, given the recent success of the comparable Natural Treasure movies and the latest installment’s premise, the words “City of Gold” should never have graced the pages of the script.

I thought Harrison Ford looked and acted fine in the film, but I just couldn’t reconcile him in the Indy outfit. Cate Blanchett was acceptable as Irina Spalko, though she wavered between a Russian and Australian accent at times. What can I say about Karen Allen? She looked haggard, like she hasn’t aged too well and for the nay-sayers out there, it has a lot less to do with expectations of the female form in media, and a lot more to do with the Make-Up Artist and Stylist. Then there’s Shia LeBeouf as Mutt Williams – the future of the Indian Jones franchise. LaBeouf did and okay job, as he usually does, but he is no Indiana Jones! There’s nothing rugged or tough about him. He’s small, young, delicate. Not charming and rough and tumble.

Finally, there’s the inevitable political head-shaking that has become more and more prominent in Speilberg and Lucas’ work of late. The Red Scare is a minor theme in the film, and although it does seem as though a great many people were unfairly harassed, mistreated and blacklisted during this period of history, there are a few things many people forget: there were a lot of Communists in the government and elsewhere, that wanted to bring the country down or at least irrevocably change it, and we won the cold war thanks to some of the tactics employed during this time.

In the end it was an okay movie. If it had been an original work, I would be a lot less harsh on it. I found my disappointment akin to Terminator 3, except that in this case the original autuers were directly involved in the creative process . I guess its going to continue to be hit or miss when it comes to Spielberg, as Lucas has long since been lost to me. Let’s just hope that years from now when they take out their magical bottle of CGI correctional fluid, instead of turning the guns into walkie-talkies, Indy's whip into a banana or the Red Army into a batallion of enormous, fluffy teddy bears, they just white this one right out.