INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL (2008) - ***

"Did we need to hear "Hounddog" to remind us that its the '50s?" - James "The Angry Video Game Nerd" Rolfe

So after scoring nearly $800 million world-wide, coined a new phrase in "Nuke the Fridge" that may very well retire "Jump the Shark" as the lexicon for dropping the ball, and apparently raped the childhood of half the Internet, I finally bother to review the fourth INDIANA JONES movie. I know many folks were greatly disapointed with INDY IV, but goddamn it's becomes the new geek whipping post this side of BATMAN & ROBIN. The hatred and disgruntlement is wide-spread enough that a recent SOUTH PARK episode featured director Steven Spielberg and producer/writer George Lucas assaulting poor Indy Jones DELIVERENCE-style.



Certainly I actually understand alot of their problems with CRYSTAL SKULL, which I'll get to later, but when the crest of their woes is the implausability of the action cinema, I want to ask them a simple question: Where the hell were you all with the previous INDY pictures?

If anything, the one scene in CRYSTAL SKULL that seems to annoy most folks might just in fact be the ultimate cliffhanger for a franchise renown for carrying on the tradition of the Republican serial adventurism from the 1930s and 40s. You have Ford at an atomic bomb site, and he has a minute before detonation, and he's screwed. How will he escape?!?!?!? Why by throwing himself into a lead refridgerator, of course.

Wasn't it ridiculous too when Ford pushed easily a 3,000+ year old giant stone block like cardboard in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK? Didn't falling out of a crashing airplane on an intertube, and not be squashed like a pancake on gravity impact with the ground seem ludicrous in INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM? Hell, how about in THE LAST CRUSADE where Indy somehow never notices that friggin stone bridge? I mean after it's reveal, you wonder how anyone before could have missed it.

I'm not trying to excuse CRYSTAL SKULL, far from it, but what I'm trying to say is, we need some consistency around here. I seem to remember last summer when I made similar complaints about Michael Bay's TRANSFORMERS, and people excused along the lines of "Quit nitpicking! Leave your brain at the door!" or "This is popcorn, not Shakespeare!" or whatever. To use an old cliche of saturday morning cartoon villainy, "the roles are now reversed! Bahahaha!"

First off, let's admit a truth that everyone agrees: Ford, Spielberg, and Lucas didn't come back to the franchise because they had an itching, dying desire to finish off the Indiana Jones mythos or whatever. No it was one last trip to the bank, or to the well that had served them so well years earlier. They figured that with the names attached, and the fond nostalgia that global audiences hold for Dr. Jones, it would be a hell of a payday...and they were right. Ka-Ching! I actually believe that for better or for worse, CRYSTAL SKULL is equal to THE LAST CRUSADE. If RAIDERS is a masterpiece that everyone loves that managed to marry B-popcorn charm with A-level technical craftsmanship, and TEMPLE OF DOOM is a punch drunk pulp affair, then THE LAST CRUSADE and CRYSTAL SKULL both have some fun excellently-shot sequences trapped within a meh narrative.

Let's start with the good. Spielberg is one of the greatest filmmakers, and when he's interested and intrigued, he's money. Take when Indiana Jones walks upon that desert town, revealed to be like 1950s suburbia, plastic and hollow, and how out of place such a solo masculine film icon is in the midst of domesticated America. I grinned at the YOUNG INDIANA JONES reference. Then later we get a Greaser/Jock brawl at a cage that is cliche and campy, but has a goofy charm to it. Hell, I honestly expected one of my biggest complaints on SKULL would be Spielberg's current star-whore Shia LeBeouf. I hated I, ROBOT, thought he was annoying in CONSTANTINE, despised his worthless DISTURBIA, and unsurprisingly gave thumbs down to TRANSFORMERS. Yet for the first time, I actually sorta liked a LeBeouf movie.

Yeah I know, holy shit.

Maybe it's because I couldn't help but smile when confronted by gun-wielding KGB thug, the clueless amateur dipstick LeBeouf threatens them with his dimestore switchblade. Maybe that punk has a future after all. Hell, I thought Ford blowing into the blowgun to reverse the poison dart was badass. Nice to see that Karen Allen back at the movies visibly after STARMAN. I also liked the exploitation of the 1950s American culture from "I Like Ike" to UFOs to the old Soviet Union. I must say, not enough American movies show us the so-called "Evil Empire" at its worst, not that I'm trying to equate the USSR with the Nazis, but Stalin technically did murder more people than Hitler ever did.

Now here we go with the bad...oh shit. First off, does anybody understand what exactly the value behind the Crystal Skull is? SKULL is inconsistent and changes its mind constantly over the supposed powers, which I think is that this skull can give you omnipresent powers...right? If so, why does the Russian villainess Cate Blanchett need the other skulls, or to venture into a long lost Mayan city? I wonder too why such a plot device, like say the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN trilogy in general, has to be so goddamn convulted?

Remember the Ark of the Covenant where it's God Rays melts your skin and zap your souls out. The Shankara stones glowed, but were more of a theological symbol than an actual weapon for the psychotic religious zealot in TEMPLE OF DOOM. The Holy Grail gave you immortality, you get the point, for they grant immediate simplicity of great importance as to why the villains want the object, and why Indy must beat them to it.

Also, what is up with the storyline of Ray Winstone being a double, triple, quadruple secret agent? It's pointless and goes nowhere, for if it was to keep us in suspense as to which side he holds true allegiance to, it bombs because we don't give a shit by his last betrayal. The martial arts-fighting Peruvian natives at the burial grounds are just bizarre, and the audience at my screening groaned loudly at the snake-rope joke. Blanchett works as a Bond-level baddie, but not enough to be memorable or special, but then again what INDY evils are? And no, I don't need to mention the Tarzan shot at all.

I really do think that CRYSTAL SKULL did waste a great awesome storytelling opportunity when Indy is blacklisted by the American government, ironic considering how Indy kicked so much Nazi ass to rescue those Judean-Christian relics. What if somehow CRYSTAL SKULL started off as the movie we have does now, but it's not revealed to be Roswell (which gave the big twist away too early) but just a massive military warehouse. The Russians want Indy to lead them to the Ark of the Covenant, so those atheists could have a radio to speak to God. Indy fights back and saves the Ark...but he inadvertedly gives Blanchett a greater prize in the Skull. This screwup gets Indy labeled as a commie by a FBI Agent, and basically Indy goes to get back the Skull to clear his name. Surprise Surprise this side of the original THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, the Fed is revealed to be a Red himself.

Why do I ramble my reviews sometimes with my mediocre re-scripting suggestions? I just hate waste I guess.

After the epilogue wedding as corny as any you'll find in fan fiction, John Hurt quips "How much of human life is wasted on waiting?" Eerie in that so many of you waited for almost twenty years for a new INDY adventure, arguably the most anticipated sequel of recent years, and now with Lucas & Spielberg suggesting a 5th INDY flick is in the pipeline, that might excite you all as much as a LETHAL WEAPON 5. For all their glory and mega-hits, are Spielberg and Lucas now irrelevant within summertime popcorn, the very field that they pioneered?

Just consider all the younger super-star popcorn directors at the moment, from Christopher Nolan (THE DARK KNIGHT) to Guillermo Del Toro (HELLBOY 2: THE GOLDEN ARMY) to Jon Favreau (IRON MAN) to Peter Jackson (LORD OF THE RINGS), with the latter working on his THE HOBBIT franchise with Del Toro, and the TIN TIN adaptations with Spielberg. That's like if LeBeouf was the star, and not Ford.