the blog of nathan loding

Indi­ana Jones and the King­dom of the Crys­tal Skull (2008)
Star­ring: Har­ri­son Ford, Cate Blanchett, Shia LaBeouf, Karen Allen, Ray Win­stone, John Hurt
Directed by: Steven Spiel­berg
Writ­ten by: David Koepp
Rated: PG-13
Rat­ing: **** (four stars out of five)

Indy’s back. And in full fla­vor. I com­pletely enjoyed myself, but I can­not say the same for every­one else in the theater.

We begin with the stan­dard Para­mount moun­tain fade into some­thing else — this time it’s a prairie dog mound. Elvis begins play­ing and we meet the Army, dri­ving in the Nevada desert, just out­side “Hangar 51″ (you make the con­nec­tion). After a small skir­mish, it’s revealed the men aren’t US Army, but Sovi­ets, lead by the icy vil­lianess Irina Spalko (Blanchett). Out of the trunk of one of the cars comes Indy and his pal Mac (Winstone).

Spalko is a psy­chic, or wants to be, but since she can’t coax Indy into doing her bid­ding with men­tal pow­ers alone, the guns along­side her help. They then search for a box, about the size of a cof­fin, in a ware­house of boxes that will be famil­iar to fans of Raiders of the Lost Ark. For­tu­nately for every­one involved, the box is highly mag­ne­tized and there­fore pretty easy to find.

This sparks the main adven­ture, details of which I will not expose here. It’s easy enough to find the spoil­ers on the inter­net. I will say that most of the rumors you have undoubt­edly heard are true — all but a mea­ger few of the ones I had read early on were false. I will say this: Had George Lucas’ orig­i­nally pro­posed title of “Indi­ana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars” stayed the title, I’m not sure I’d have seen it.

Indi­ana Jones is def­i­nitely back, but in a dif­fer­ent way. Age doesn’t mat­ter much in this film, except for comedic effect. The age is played up, almost too much at times, but never once did I look at Indi­ana Jones and think to myself that he’s too old for this shit. To me, Indy has always been a bit of an anti-hero — gruff, tough, and not too much of a gen­tle­man. His work seemed to go under the radar, unac­knowl­edged beyond acad­e­mia. To Crys­tal Skull’s detri­ment, he’s hyped as an incred­i­ble hero. If any­one uttered the phrase “war hero” again, I was going to be upset.

Why try to make an icon iconic? He’s already an icon! All three of the pre­vi­ous films were also cheesy — they didn’t take them­selves all that seri­ously, and that’s a sig­nif­i­cant rea­son that they are great films. There are moments through­out Crys­tal Skull where you get the impres­sion that the film­mak­ers were too con­scious about mak­ing it cheesy and tried too hard to not cross that line. Unfor­tu­nately, there were times that they did, most notably in the cli­max with Spalko.

Does any of that actu­ally detract from the film? I don’t think so. I think it lives up to it’s lead char­ac­ter and more. The whole expe­ri­ence got me think­ing (and my thoughts are likely to become another blog entry). Was I expect­ing too much? Or was I too sold on the orig­i­nals? Def­i­nitely not to the lat­ter — Raiders of the Lost Ark is, and always will be, as fan­tas­tic as the first time I saw it. Last Cru­sade will never be bor­ing, and, while it’s not as good as the other two that book­end it, Tem­ple of Doom is still an amaz­ing adven­ture yarn. I think that because I know the pre­vi­ous three films so well that Crys­tal Skull was almost cer­tainly set to dis­ap­point. The fact that it wasn’t nearly as dis­ap­point­ing as I had feared says a lot.

My only true dis­ap­point­ment with the movie is that there is likely to never be another after it. The orig­i­nal plan in the 1980’s was to cre­ate five (yes, five) Indi­ana Jones films. Four are now com­plete, and new star/character has been tapped to pos­si­bly con­tinue the series (Mutt Williams, played by LaBeouf). Sean Con­nery as Indy’s father was time­less. I want to see a fifth film with Indy play­ing that role to Mutt’s novice adventurer.

I don’t want to be done with Indi­ana Jones yet, and this film didn’t help that. That is why it’s wor­thy of the title and a great movie.