At about 10:30 am on Memorial Day, I walked into the movie theater on 34th St. next to Penn Station. I had just flown into Newark from Tampa, FL where I spent the holiday weekend with family, doing things families do. We also took the opportunity to watch all three films from the Indiana Jones trilogy in anticipation for the new film. I had planted the seed with the family for going to go see Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull but it never materialized. I had the itch, friends were wanting to discuss the film, so I decided to unwind from my flight in a cold, dark movie theater.
I can’t remember if I actually got to unwind because I was distracted from the total piece of crap this film was. As much as it pains me to write it, Spielberg and Lucas need to open up the Ark of the Covenant and have their faces melted off for this missed opportunity.
Act I
The film starts with Indiana Jones already captured by the Russians who were able to infiltrate Area 51 by shooting the guards at the gate. Apparently, nobody else is stationed at Area 51 which is surprising, since the facility contains some of the government’s greatest secrets (as seen at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark).
The Soviet soldiers were stupid, lifeless and completely un-threatening, which makes me think they used the same software creating them as they did the Stormtroopers in the latest Star Wars films. The exception, of course, was Cate Blanchett’s character…Dr. Spalko. Blanchett is an accomplished actress, and even as a weird psychic Soviet scientist with a bob cut, I found her attractive. At least that was how the character was established when she blew up the transformer controlling the warehouse door with her mind. I would have loved to see what else Dr. Spalko could do with her mind, but that never happened since they never follow up on her own psychic abilities. That was an enormous oversight for what could have been the best villain the series has seen.
As campy and lame as the villains were, for me, it was the cute, furry and cuddly CG animated groundhogs that set the tone for the entire film. Why does George Lucas insist on mucking up these movies with product placement for children’s toys? Clearly, he did not learn his lesson from the Jar-Jar Binks debacle. I just want to remind him that I was able to enjoy Raiders of the Lost Ark as a child with images of vicious, slithering snakes and not a digitized version of the groundhog from Caddyshack. I must infer that Lucas considers today’s children to be a bunch of pussies that require constant coddling even in an action-adventure film. Maybe he’s right, but does it need to be encouraged?
The climax of the first act ends with a nuclear bomb exploding near one of those creepy model towns built by the military to see if a nuke would annihilate or destroy everything in it. Thankfully for Dr. Jones, he’s able to fit inside a lead-lined refrigerator just before the explosion, which sends the refrigerator flying through the desert. Harrison Ford, now 66 years old, spills out of the fridge after a “rough ride”. Ouch, that must have hurt…if it was at all belivable. To me, this felt like a regurgitated sequence from Temple of Doom in which Jones, Mrs. Spielberg and Short Round beat the odds by jumping out of Lao Che’s abandoned cargo plane in an inflatable life raft. Except it felt a little more believable therefore more entertaining to watch.
Case in point: Mythbusters did a test on using a life raft as a parachute. Although the myth was busted pretty quickly, I don’t anticipate any experiments involving 1950s-era refrigerators and a nuke.
Act 2
Shia Labeouf. Really? Watch River Phoenix in Last Cruscade…or even that guy who was in the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, and tell me this is the actor who deserves to be cast as Indiana Jones’ son. Ooops, did I spoil that for anyone? It’s just ridiculous. Shia is just a part of these recent crop of young actors who maybe talented in their own right but haven’t really earned the audience’s respect yet. Let me put it another way:
Sean Connery > Harrison Ford > Shia Labeouf
Maybe the kids enjoy him but I’ve seen too much of his work to take him that seriously. I guess Spielberg didn’t watch the second season of Project Greenlight.
The second act was slightly more enjoyable than the first although this was the point that I stopped really caring about what was going on and was just looking forward to the end. That’s never a good feeling, especially when watching a film tell a story you’ve been waiting on for 20 years.
Act 3
I read that Janusz Kaminsky took great lengths to appropriate the look and style of the previous films. But I’m not buying it. There were plenty of Peruvian jungle scenes in the 2nd and 3rd acts that looked nothing like the beginning of Raiders and more like scenes from Peter Jackson’s King Kong. Too many ultra-wide shots and some obvious CG crutches. Like those computer animated ants. Ants. Big friggin deal. It was lame in The Mummy ten years ago and it’s still lame today.
I’m not a spoiler site so I could continue discuss the failures of the end but I will refrain. Or leave it like this: the climax at the end could have involved an object/vehicle from a previous Spielberg film but they didn’t and again, went for the most un-original direction possible.
If this film was truly created “for the fans”, than I am disappointed and offended. But I believe the film wasn’t made for the fans - just the suits who want to revive a franchise and make a bunch of money. Lucas already is pimping Shia as the next Indiana Jones but I won’t be there to watch.
It’s too obvious when you take beloved, well-crafted characters and stick them into a film consciously trying to plug into a concise formula of demographics and audience types. The former Indiana Jones films didn’t feel like this — they felt like they were made un-aware of their boxoffice potential. I think the difference is, these movies aren’t made by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, the filmmakers. They’re made by Steven Speilberg™ and George Lucas™, the soul-less corporations who don’t care about the product as long as it sells some tickets and lucrative merchandise deals.
Don’t look at it. Shut your eyes, Marion. Don’t look at it, no matter what happens.
- Indiana Jones