Indiana Jones

If you haven't seen the movie yet, beware spoilers.

(As an aside on the topic of spoilers, I consider the entire Star Wars prequel trilogy to be a spoiler- ha!)

I'll try to be as concise about this as possible, which is tough, because this topic is very dear to my heart. The Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies mean a tremendous amount to me. They grabbed my imagination when I was young and together we ran wild. These movies provided not just entertainment but inspiration that some day I, too, could hope to tell stories as awesome as those.

From a young age, it was settled: those movies laid out the ideal vision for the future of my own life. I wanted nothing more than to become someone who could create things as exciting as those movies.

Many people have a fondness for Star Wars and Indiana Jones, but I don't think most of them realize just how special those movies are to those of us who were inspired by them. There are a lot of us who were so inspired, to be sure. But we're not the people who love the stories for the stories' sake, and we're not the people to get into an argument with about the films themselves, because we don't treat them as pieces of entertainment- they are literally akin to religious artifacts to us.

The greatness of the original Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies to people like me owes much to the timing of their release within our lives, their place on the timeline of popular culture, and a number of other factors far beyond the actual movies themselves, which in a vacuum do not alone contain the magic that surrounds them, and cannot withstand the criticism of someone who was not inspired by them.

Perhaps another way to look at it would be like this: Imagine a young kid, barely old enough to comprehend the concept of fiction. He's seen some fleeting imagery on TV of classic entertainment- some hokey scenes from science fiction films and perhaps Star Trek, a few rickety, grainy shots from the westerns. And then, suddenly, out of nowhere, BANG (literally): STAR WARS, this incredibly intense, incredibly real powerhouse, with the most memorable music ever, the coolest sound effects ever, the most unique characters ever, and yes, even a hot babe (before you knew what that even meant). It just blows the living shit out of everything you've ever seen before, and then, BANG, there's another one, everything you knew and loved about the first one is riffed upon, repeated in appropriate ways and then expanded in unimaginable ways, an exhilarating example of excitement and hope being met and exceeded.

And then... hang on, because the same people are bringing you something else now, sort of like those westerns you've observed other people enjoying but always found boring yourself. And holy shit, it's your favorite character from the Star Wars films, in a completely different genre, something old fashioned, bringing you completely different thrills and excitement and imagination, and it blows you away. And the music...

Between 1977 and 1989, two perfect trilogies were brought into this world, and they really were perfect. To this day, when I hear someone my age taking issue with Return of the Jedi because of "the Ewoks", or Temple of Doom because of- well, pretty much "the whole thing", as far as they're concerned- I instantly know that they don't get it. I don't mean that in a negative way- it's just that I realize that they're not like me, because they're looking at these films more as individual pieces of entertainment, and less as a magical sequence of events that pounded out excitement and inspiration over and over again during a special time in their life, and then receded into the increasingly yellowed memories of childhood.

Resurrecting those memories with new chapters to stand beside them was a dangerous thing to do, for someone like me. In a sense, I was the worst possible audience for the new films, but in another sense, I was the most hopeful.

I could spend hours talking about how horrifyingly devoid of magic the Star Wars prequels were, but I won't. And while people might say that someone like me could never hope to view the newer films objectively, to them I slowly shake my head and say, "Listen, I've clearly got a lot tied up in this and don't represent a 'typical' audience member, but I'm also pretty damn self-aware, hopeful, caring, and loving. The prequels sucked, and that's all there is to say."

When I heard that Indy 4 was a go, I was skeptical to be sure but also calloused enough from my experience with Star Wars that I didn't have it in me to care enough to get excited or disappointed. George Lucas- and it is him that I blame- extinguished the potential for that kind of hope in me.

Since I blame George Lucas for the destruction of Star Wars, and since Indy 4 was going to be directed by Steven Spielberg- who has a bad day now and then but is a fundamentally grounded individual- I knew Indy 4 would not be as bad.

But, not "as bad" is not much better than "eh...", which is how I felt walking out of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Let me acknowledge that Indy 4 is a masterfully crafted film, made by top-notch professionals every step of the way. Regardless of how I feel about the film, it is an incredible achievement, and one of many for everyone involved. I am truly humbled by what they did. I really mean that; I am wary of coming across as bitter or jealous in my harsh critique of people who are operating on a plane well above my own.

That said, the magic just wasn't there for me (except for one scene, which I'll get to in a bit). The movie felt like a "diet" version of the original films, with special effects, stunts, a plot, and actors who are clearly more "advanced" in every way from the originals, but artificial and devoid of the special sauce from before.

A few quick examples. I lay these out as points of fact, but my critique is not solely the culmination of things like them, but rather an overall feeling of melancholy that these points are a symptom of:

<> The cinematography wasn't right. This is ironic, because much has been made about how Janusz Kaminski, Spielberg's Director of Photography who has worked with him since 1993, put in a concerted effort to reproduce the look and feel of the earlier films. Here's another example where I have to state, for the record, that Kaminski is an immensely skilled individual and who am I to criticize, but... regardless of how much they tried to mimic the look of the originals, Crystal Skull has bright foreground lighting in exterior shots, blown out backgrounds, and an overall gauzy haze that is a distinctive hallmark of much of Spielberg and Kaminski's work- but not Indiana Jones.
<> Indiana Jones getting blown across the desert in a refrigerator expelled from a nuclear blast is cartoonish beyond the world of Indiana Jones. Clearly, Indy can and has survived anything, but this was just way too far, and had too much in common with contemporary special effects films that toss any sense of gravity, realism, or danger out the window to achieve cheap thrills.
<> On a related note- and this, again, is ironic- there were way too many computer generated effects, and- worse- nearly every scene in which they were employed was over the top, hard to follow, and more video game-like than movie-like. I'm talking specifically about the jungle car chase and the stuff in the temple(s) at the end. The action scenes in the original Indy films had me leaning forward with anticipation and concern. The action scenes in Crystal Skull had me slap my legs with my hands and shake my head side to side in disappointed resignation. This sad fact is ironic because much had been made about the fact that the filmmakers were going to eschew contemporary special effects techniques wherever possible in lieu of the "classic" techniques used in the earlier films. Riiiiiiiight.
<> Let's talk about the waterfall scene, which is another perfect example of this. Let me be clear: I have nothing against over-the-top action scenes. In fact, I love them. The first 20 minutes of Temple of Doom is one of my favorite sequences in all of moviedom, and it involves an over-the-top drop from an airplane in an inflatable raft, followed by that raft racing down a snowy hill, followed by that raft careening off the edge of that hill and soaring hundreds of feet down into RAPIDS, before finally coming to a humble stop- with everyone intact and mildly tousled. Over the top, and awesome. In Crystal Skull, Indy and company race down three waterfalls, which certainly sounds promising when you see the words on paper, but this episode is totally fucking boring in the movie itself. And you know it. (Wink wink, Ricky Fitts.)
<> George Lucas and his deranged obsession with the concept of "MacGuffin" in general, and the crystal skull itself in particular, really tanked the plot on this one. When I first heard about the fact that Indy 4 would involve aliens, I was skeptical, but I've come around and actually think that something involving aliens would have made a perfect plotline for the fourth film. You could even keep Indy's description of "saucer men from Mars," which sounds about right for what he'd call them in a good Indy film- that was well done. But the concept of the crystal skull, and whatever the hell else it was that this movie revolved around, was confusing and totally uninteresting. The Ark? Cool- I can't wait to see it! The Holy Grail? Yes! Granted, Temple of Doom did not have a strong artifact, but that was okay, because the film itself was strong enough not to need one. Crystal Skull relies heavily on a really lame MacGuffin.
<> John Hurt's Professor Oxley character is a perfect example of horrible screenwriting. Shia LaBeouf spends a considerable amount of time being motivated by this guy (as does Indy), but as an audience, we know and care nothing about him, and when we finally see him, there's nothing about him that justifies their motivation. Perhaps if Marion had been used that way from the beginning, the stakes would have been higher for all of us, but strangely, that more obvious tack was avoided for something unnecessarily sucky.

I can go on and on, and I have become alarmed by the bitterness that has taken over my tone. I did not hate the movie- in fact, everything I have ranted about, and everything else that I could but will not, merely served to blunt the positive aspects of the film down enough make the complete experience "eh..." at best.

Wait, there is one more point that I need to address:

<> From the moment when the motorcycle chase ends, to either- depending on how charitable you're feeling- a) the jungle chase or b) the end of the film itself, the movie moves along at an incredibly slow, shockingly boring pace, full of worthless exposition and slow-walking through dusty rooms (which makes me think of "National Treasure," even though I have not seen either of those films). IT'S BORING!

Okay, okay. It's late and I'm not sure where this surge of anger has come from. Let me end on a high note. The opening sequence contains a few moments that, for me, captured the magic of the original Indiana Jones movies. In the Area 51 hangar, the way the metallic objects are drawn toward the alien crate is very cool. The gunpowder floating in the air I didn't like, but I loved seeing the metal balls stuck to the crate when they finally unveiled it, and watching (and hearing) the officers' dog tags and Cate Blanchett's sword getting sucked toward the crate. That was very well done; it felt right, it had me smiling, nodding, and leaning forward.

There was also a uniquely Spielberg moment in that sequence that made me smile. He's done things like this before several times, but I can't think of those examples right now (I believe possibly in at least ET and Poltergeist). Anyway, Indy has asked for gunpowder and the Russian's are suspicious and hesitant to give it to him. Finally, they acquiesce, and a soldier slowly pours a small amount of gunpowder into Indy's hand out of a grenade. Within a few seconds, Indy has demonstrated that he knows how to use the gunpowder to track down the crate they're looking for. CUT TO Indy and company striding toward camera, quickly, a hat in his hand, several soldiers enthusiastically dumping large quantities of gunpowder into the hat.

That sort of transition- suspicious hesitation transformed into giddy enthusiasm as a result of witnessing something amazing- is uniquely Spielberg and symbolizes how the original movies made me feel.

It's magic.