By Keith Uhlich
[SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT]
“The writer is too well acquainted with the laws of narration to be unaware of the nature of the pledge given by this brief preface; but, at the same time, he knows enough of the history of the Thirteen to feel confident that he shall not disappoint any expectations raised by the programme. Tragedies dripping with gore, comedies piled up with horrors, tales of heads taken off in secret have been confided to him. If any reader has not had enough of the ghastly tales served up to the public for some time past, he has only to express his wish; the author is in a position to reveal cold-blooded atrocities and family secrets of a gloomy and astonishing nature. But in preference he has chosen those pleasanter stories in which stormy passions are succeeded by purer scenes, where the beauty and goodness of woman shine out the brighter for the darkness. And, to the honor of the Thirteen, such episodes as these are not wanting. Some day perhaps it may be thought worth while to give their whole history to the world; in which case it might form a pendant to the history of the buccaneers—that race apart so curiously energetic, so attractive in spite of their crimes.”
The Thirteen in question in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull are a so-called “hive mind,” a race of beings that the mad-as-a-hatter Professor Oxley (John Hurt) might describe, quite seriously, sans irony, as “interterrestrials.” Call them—in deference to the late-50s setting of this fourth Indiana Jones adventure—fellow travelers, those creatures that move around, per Oxley again, in “the space between spaces.” Alien life forms not from without, but within. To some they are gods; to Professor Henry “Indiana” Jones, Jr. (Harrison Ford) they are the supernal means to a seemingly fateful end (for the immediate moment, at least).
An end needs a beginning: here it is a Nevada desert molehill, wittily juxtaposed with the snow-capped Paramount Pictures logo (returned to a rough ‘n’ ragged two-dimensionality, circa-1981), then destroyed, dually, by joyriding teenagers and a “Hound Dog”-bleating Elvis Presley. Roll opening titles. What’s past is past and time waits for no one, not even Indiana Jones, currently locked in the trunk of a car driven by stoic KGB agents, who lighten up long enough to engage the fresh-faced Presley fanatics in a friendly bout of vehicle-to-vehicle combat (the white picket fence vs. the Iron Curtain). Nobody wins, they only diverge, the lonely Atomic Café marking the spot that leads either away from or toward the purported mother lode: Area 51. (But whichever way we go, we have to always, always be looking.)
Every Indiana Jones film tells us, upfront, how to read and experience it. It’s clear now (if it wasn’t already) that each installment, whatever the shared similarities, has its own tenor, rhythm, and approach. As compared to what has come before, the dissonance of Crystal Skull’s credits sequence and the immediately following chase through, around, under, and out of a government facility cosmopolitan enough to contain both the Ark of the Covenant and the Roswell UFO remains is bracing and beautiful, the Spielberg shorthand (oft-profound, as often piteous) in full-on, awe-inspiring bloom. A bloom of another kind climaxes Crystal Skull’s prologue as Indy—betrayed by his wartime buddy ‘Mac’ McHale (Ray Winstone) to a Russkie mafia led by the Garbo-cum-Brooks-sculpted sword-swisher Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett)—races around a plasticine 50s suburbia, a horror show of brightly colored homes and gaping, gawking mannequins (several of whom, in their jaw-dropped countenances, recall Raiders of the Lost Ark’s awestruck, flesh-melting Nazis). It’s a brilliantly banal pantomime of watering lawns, walking dogs, and watching Howdy Doody. It also happens to be an atomic bomb test site, and the countdown’s already begun.
In conception, Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp’s analogy is bludgeoning (the nuclear family laid literally, brutally to waste), but in execution it is thrilling and, in retrospect of the film entire, deeply moving. This is no world for Indiana Jones, who climbs into a lead-lined Frigidaire (brushing aside, at the last second, an obstructing container of Crisco™) and is then launched miles through the air, deep into the barren desert, expelled from Ike-era Eden. Nary a surface scratch, of course, when he finally emerges (shaken, not stirred), but the pluming mushroom cloud wreaks havoc with the heroic iconography. Was a time when Spielberg might have had Indy rising into frame full-face and body, the blast behind him merely a source of Slocombe-superintended backlight. But here, in concert with his visual Herrmann—from Schindler’s List on—Janusz Kaminski, he makes sure to dwarf Indy, obliterating him (as per the final sequence of Last Crusade) into silhouette, forcing character and audience alike to bear witness to the glory and the horror, to reconcile the realities of mankind with its no less tangible myths.
Note Indy’s placement in the image—frame-right, diminutive, photographed, with Antonioni-esque remove, from behind. It will find its mirror opposite at Crystal Skull’s end when he comes face-to-face with another icon of 50s-era fascination, this one fictional, though still carrying the heady, expansive weight of metaphor. The hemisphere-traversing journey between these visual bookends is best explicated by an offhand order the soon-to-be-blacklisted Indy gives to his university class: to study and then expound on “the difference between migration and exodus.”
The Indy series’ push-and-pull between the secular and the spiritual is as strong as ever, though it takes on a more labyrinthine resonance here what with primary characters’ quotations of Oppenheimer (“Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds”—itself a sadly knowing invocation of the Bhagavad Gita) and Milton (from Comus: “To lay their just hands on that Golden Key/That ope’s the Palace of Eternity”), to say nothing of the thematic meta-mix of practical sets and locations (expected) with Computer Generated Imagery (unexpected). The lie of CGI (one at times perpetuated by Spielberg and his peers) is that it is meant to extend reality, when the truth is that, in its best uses, it is a falsity that helps us to see, feel, and experience more clearly.
There are points, few and far between, when Crystal Skull’s effects distract (mostly in regards to animals, one scene in particular conjuring up memories of executive producer George Lucas’ sad bit of monkey-on-the-back graffiti in the re-released THX-1138), but Spielberg’s sheer talent for everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink-and-more momentum pretty much smooths out the rough patches. More often, the effects work/production design helps to sell this particular installment’s immersive, illusory sheen. It’s probably the “falsest” looking Indiana Jones film, but to a degree that near-entirely enhances the fantasy and its signifiers.
More than once, Jones and his companions—among them Shia LaBeouf’s switchblade-wielding greaser Mutt Williams and Karen Allen’s Raiders-returning love interest Marion Ravenwood (she of the infectiously beatific smile)—engage in ingenious semiotic play. Marion and Indy have a hot-blooded reunion (piled on high with acerbic remarks and familial revelations) while sinking in quicksand, the sequence climaxing with an extended gag involving a snake that Indy hilariously insists on calling a “rope.” The wordplay extends to the primary quest (a search for a lost Mayan city to which Indy and his companions must return an oblong-shaped and psychic mind-melding Crystal Skull), which hinges on the multiple meanings inherent within a long-dead language (“gold” equals “knowledge” and vice-versa).
A particularly memorable Kaminski composition has Indy and Spalko placed on opposite sides and varying regions of the ‘Scope frame, their shadows cast onto a foreground scrim so that they are encompassed within their own outlines. The implicit query: Which is the true self before us—the flesh-and-blood, walking-and-talking facsimile or the dark-night projection? Do the characters, like the movie they inhabit, contain worlds, or are they empty vessels fed by a potent mix, from Creator and viewer alike, of nostalgia and memory?
Tempting to call Crystal Skull Spielberg’s own Youth Without Youth (a perfect subtitle for this enterprise in more ways than one). It shares with Francis Ford Coppola’s unjustly maligned time-traversing romance an elder man’s world-weary sensibilities (“We’re at the age where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away,” says Indy’s academe confidante Charles Stanforth (Jim Broadbent), paying homage to the story-deceased Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott) and Henry Jones, Sr. (Sean Connery)) as well as a penchant for refracting era-specific fears and proclivities through the prism of pulp fiction. Yet this Indiana Jones distinguishes itself, too, as the first film in the series to take place during a time of which Spielberg has actual recall. No longer solely couched in a movie-geek’s distanced obsession with old-time serials, Crystal Skull is a simultaneously multifaceted ode to an artist’s formative years, to an imagination stoked as much by the possibilities of destruction as by the worlds out of sight.
It is the collision of such extremes that results in Professor Oxley’s “space between spaces,” though even this observation has its grounded, mortal corollary, as the suddenly sane Oxley is later heard to express (during a sublime moment of long-delayed sanctification, complicated by its numerous parallels to the prologue’s nuclear suburbia) “how much of human life is lost in wait.” As befits Spielberg’s artistry, the statement resonates at once backwards and forwards: back to Irina Spalko’s ultimately self-destructive desire to possess all the knowledge of the ages (a Thirteen-bestowed “gift” no one human being could ever hope to retain); forward to, in the final shot, Mutt’s raw, instinctive presumption to assume, via Indy’s chapeau, a singularly iconic mantle. It’s a pure John Ford setup (jokey and profound all at once, touched—deliriously, irrevocably—by both glee and loneliness) with the added benefit of Spielberg’s inimitable hovering camera, which acts as an expressive “god’s eye” conduit. Is this the artist’s perspective, the viewer’s, the Thirteen’s—all of us, whether fictional or actual, inhabiting some nonpareil form (sometimes harmonized, as often discordant) of inner space?
Final thought, on that note, from Indy: “Depends on who your god is.”
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Keith Uhlich is Editor of The House Next Door and a contributor to various print and online publications.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Migration and Exodus: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
—Honoré de Balzac, from the Author’s Preface to History of the Thirteen—
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46 comments:
SPOILERS BELOW
"Indy 4" is a deep shallow movie, poignantly personal and rich in humor, action and visual wit while still feeling very relaxed, sort of like mid-to-late period Howard Hawks (all that bickering and joshing around and philosophizing reminded me of "Rio Bravo"). I adored it. I think it's different from but equal to "Raiders," and so immense and complex in all its aspects (despite the tossed-off feeling characteristic of Spielberg) that it could only have been made by a director with two-plus decades to hone his craft and expand his horizons.
There is too much in your review to respond to after just one reading. For now, I'll just thank you for making me feel less alone in my ecstatic response to this movie (I saw it opening day with my younger brother, and we were both so jazzed afterward that if I didn't have to head home and relieve the babysitter, I would have gotten right back in line and seen it again). Thanks also for bringing up the bookended, mirrored images of Indy (at the end of the prologue and the end of the climax) dwarfed by otherworldly panoramas (did anybody else note these twinned shots in a review? Lots of people noticed the mushroom cloud, but I don't recall anyone citing the second shot, which answers and expands upon the first). This film is very much about knowledge -- knowledge of self, of family, of national and personal history; congruently it's a celebration of Indy's smarts (book and street).
Janusz Kaminski has probably done as much to shape Spielberg's aesthetic in the second half of his career as John Williams did during the first. All three men are in fine form here.
I'll also add that I think you're absolutely dead-on about the movie being the first Indy to take place in a time of which Spielberg has actual recall -- which does explain why it has such a knowing, intimate vibe and such a visit-to-the-Smithsonian aspect, what with all the cultural signifiers colliding like ping-pong balls in a washing machine. (For long stretches of the movie Indy seems like a doll tossed about by cosmic forces.) I need to see the film again to judge whether the space-between-spaces, the attention paid to time and loss, the preoccupation with migration/exodus and extermination/rejuvenation all cohere as well as I thought they did the first time.
So many reviews have dismissed the "space between spaces" line as vague sci-fi nonsense, apparently not thinking that there's a reason that John Hurt's character says it, and there might be a reason why this same character delivers the line about all the time lost in waiting at the end of the film.
Spielberg's one-world vision is very much in evidence here, too -- the sense that language, geography and generations are arbitrary barriers that can be transcended, or perhaps collapsed, under the right circumstances. The extradimensional creatures being separated into 13 aspects/layers and then collapsed into one dovetails nicely with the family dynamics of the film, with the nuclear family of Indy/Marion/Mutt, splintered by time, distance and withheld knowledge, finally getting reunited. There's a father/son-holy ghost thing going on, too, with the ghost of Henry, Sr. (glimpsed in a photo) emerging in Indy's cantankerous Old Man Wisdom posturing, and the grandfather and father merging seamlessly with the son in the end. (The bit with Mutt picking up the hat has been unfairly misread by so many reviewers and critics. True, Lucas has talked about a spin-off, but look at the scene itself: the wind blows the hatt toward Mutt, he picks it up and starts to put it on, then Indy, the rightful owner, snatches it away and walks off into the sunlight. It's like the movie is saying, "Don't get ahead of yourself, kid -- you don't get to wear the hat unless the owner is willing to part with it."
David Koepp did a great job with this screenplay. As a blueprint for a comedic action/adventure loaded with cultural signfiiers, it's damn near perfect.
I suspect a lot of people are going to accuse you of reading too much into what is advertised as a popcorn entertainment. But I don't think it's possible to read too much into a movie by a director as careful with his compositions, camera moves and edits as Spielberg. He truly is a director whose images can be read -- usually that's where his films' complexities lie, whether the screenplay is straightforwardly expository or more theatrical/poetic. This is as rich a movie as he's ever made.
I suspect a lot of people are going to accuse you of reading too much into what is advertised as a popcorn entertainment.
Visions of the "Hitchcock and bull" criticisms of Vertigo dance in my head. Somehow, we survive...
Thanks for your response, Matt. :-)
Fantastic review Keith (and Matt too). I'm glad I finally found a worthy critic who has stepped up and write a detailed review of what makes this film so great. It's sad when I hear people comparing this to the prequel putting all the blame on Lucas over silly CGI issues and Shia monkeying around. Even though Spielberg has noted that this film was made for the fans, and not the critics, it is clear that he aims for both.
It sure would be nice to find deeper meaning (or, anyway, deeper meaning that has any intellectual force) in this movie, but it's just a terrible, terrible picture, a plainly awful Spielberg movie to rival "1941" and "Hook." Everything exciting and involving (the test-site sequence, as fine a thing as Spielberg has ever made) only makes the movie's overall failure more acute. It's as though he said, "OK, George, you want a UFO? You got it, buddy." The screenplay is miserable, the acting indifferent and most everything else insulting. And it breaks my heart.
It is interesting that most commentators seem to want to deal with this fine film as a direct follow-up to the director's other Indie-movies without crediting the hugely-impressive canon of work he has completed in between.
I think your article redresses the balance very nicely, well done!
I wrote about this a few days ago here, so I'll just say that any review of Crystal Skull has to acknowledge how deeply inferior this movie is to both Raiders and Last Crusade, and how unnecessary in the context of those two very good films as well. It's fun to go back to Indiana Jones after all this time, sure, but it still would have been better for all of us—and for Indy as a cultural touchstone and object of art—to have just left well-enough alone.
Keith, you hit upon the points I've been chewing over for a few days (especially the "nuclear family" theme and the Hitchcockian devotion to the resonant image), and a few more I thank you for illuminating. Thank you for your insight and your refreshing rebuttal to critics seeing only a shallow CGI fest. Crystal Skull is definitely worth a second (and third , etc.) viewing.
Keith: I appreciate your review. I find “Crystal Skull” far from profound, but at least your appreciation provides visual evidence (unlike, say, Armond White’s, which insists that everything he calls profound is profound, without really arguing why). And I agree with you and Matt that Spielberg is too thoughtful a filmmaker to presume that the aforementioned visual compositions were somehow accidents. I respect that.
But I couldn’t possibly disagree more about the quality of the screenplay, which I feel fails to capture our understood character of Indy or to establish a new one.
Has Indy ever seemed less urgent? In the original trilogy there’s a delicious blend of fascination or exasperation, always one or the other, making Indy the guy with the tapping leg, unable to sit still. This Indy is mostly inert, no matter how fast those jeeps drive, no matter how far those waterfalls drop.
The final moment with Mutt and the hat is well conceived, as is the moment in the Russian jungle camp, where Indy is rambling on (becoming his father before our eyes) and Mutt surveys the scene, decides “to heck with it,” and makes an impromptu getaway attempt (becoming Indy before our eyes). But what about …
* Indy’s apparent 20-strikes-and-you’re-out relationship with Mac? When did Indy become so damn forgiving?
* Indy’s eventual willingness to collaborate with Irina, which in any other movie would have made his skin crawl.
* The way Indy immediately accepts Mutt as his son and Marion as his wife. They go from reunited past lovers to lifetime friends in about 3 seconds with no chemistry whatsoever.
I could go on. But why bother? The film may indeed be filled with deep thoughts, and Spielberg has earned the right to have us pause long enough to admire the message underneath. Still, the message on top provided no magic for me whatsoever. If the film doesn’t work at its most basic level, what’s subtext worth?
My comparatively skin-deep review is here, should anyone care to read it.
I have to say I'm shocked that Matt loved this film and I agree with Jason's review.
This is just a bad film. The first half hour sort of works but it just falls apart afterward. I know we have to suspend disbelief in these films but there a scenes he that make me gasp with incredulity.
1)Why is the only thing that shoots out of the mushroom cloud is Indy in the refrigerator? Where are the other refrigerator's?, just stupid.
2)How does Indy survive the launch out of the cloud? He should be crippled.
3)The horrible CGI chase sequence in the jungle. It looked fake with no respect for the laws of gravity.
4)The absurd swordfight with Mutt taking it in the crotch. Lucus school-yard humor triumphs again.
5)I won't even go into the horrible Mutt is tarzan with the monkeys sequence.
6)Marion drives off a cliff on purpose because she knows she will land safely on tree branches???? I almost walked out of the movie at that point.
7)The horrible 3 waterfalls.
8)When we don't get CGI, we get really fake looking sets. What happened to the great on location shooting of the prior films?
9)The screenplay is horrible. Jason already said it all. I really feel bad for Karen Allen in this (I hope she got paid well).
10)The whole Mac character was absurd (and the fact that Indy keeps trusting him).
Where is the danger and grittiness of the prior films? No wonder Spielberg and Ford were resistant to this idea for years. They knew Lucas was off his rocker. They loved Darabont's script which Lucus (the screenwriting genius) nixed. Ford and Spielberg finally caved in to Lucas (I'm sure the money helped) and created this CGI mess.
And don't tell me that all of the films are equally absurd. This one takes it to an entirely different level and the key difference is that here they don't earn it.
I saw it last night and I'm still in disbelief.
I've always found general fan reaction to Spielberg & Lucas rather fascinating. Not to pigeon-hole, but the general perception is that Spielberg is good and Lucas is bad, so when they collaborate on something that they find less than satisfying, they choose to arbitrarily assume that everything they didn't like was Lucas's idea and everything they did like was Spielberg's idea. Such an assumption seems so illogical, yet so many insist upon it. I don't get it.
Anyway, I found the film to be excellent, and it does have a thematic weight that not enough are recognizing.
I like this label: "a deep shallow movie." For me, the rich subtext almost forgave the careless surface, including the terrible acting (Allen seems too aloof to participate in the movie and actually play her character, Ford lacks any kind of seriousness whatsoever). I also couldn't decide if the DP was creating an intentionally hallucinatory color scheme for his atomic-age tale, or if this was just a way of blurring the CGI transitions. Although I usually adore Kaminski's work, I prefer a crisper, more "analog" look (Slocombe) for my Indy movies.
However, the choice of story was brilliant for the 50s, when pop culture had shifted into sci-fi panic. The opening sequence thrilled me: those Russian soldiers enviously watching the American teens speed along the desert road, the Atomic Cafe, the faux Levittown, etc. All this, plus Indy's conversation with Broadbent's Dean, gave me a "no country for old men" feeling about America in the 50s. Indy-as-veteran was a great choice. It's almost as if the series never stopped for twenty years. Instead, we can just fill in the gap in Indy's chronology by watching Spielberg's interim war movies. Thanks for the great analysis, Keith. I didn't like the film as much as you, but I've certainly thought about it a lot since yesterday.
Anon: "2)How does Indy survive the launch out of the cloud? He should be crippled."
This falls under the heading of "stuff you complain about only when you didn't like the movie."
It also reminds me of a conversation overheard during the Jean-Claude Van Damme movie "Sudden Death," between two guys who spent a good part of the movie counting how many bullets each character fired and complaining if they fired more bullets than a particular firearm could hold in real life.
In the last movie, Indy survived a face-to-face encounter with Hitler, who signed his dad's book; shot three Germans with one bullet, and saved his father's life with water from Christ's Last Supper cup, then exited the scene of the miracle with an 800-year old knight waving goodbye to him.
There are no rules here -- only Spielberg's sense of momentum, which (if it's working for you) can crank up your heart rate no matter how ludicrous the onscreen action. Clearly the movie didn't work for you. I don't think any further common ground is possible here.
Jason: "Has Indy ever seemed less urgent?"
No, he hasn't. But he's 65 years old, he's buried his father and his best friend, and he's getting drummed out of the profession that defined his real-world identity for most of his adult life. I'd be exasperated, too.
Plus, old guys don't move or behave as urgently as young guys -- partly because they're older, partly because they've been around the block a few times and don't get worked up as easily. I bought Indy completely in this movie -- as other posters have noted, he's turning into his dad (loved the running gag with Indy chastising Mutt for not finishing college), except he can still kick ass.
Matt: I noted that Indy is turning into his dad, but the character still doesn't work for me. And I don't think he is exasperated here, that's part of the problem.
Sure, we can say that he's older now and imagine all the ways that he would have settled into his silver-haired years like any normal person. But any normal person wouldn't survive the explosion and walk away as if it were no big deal. Indiana Jones can do that. And James Bond can do that. Etc. And that's why I have no problem with that specific scene. But once we start forgiving all that Indy isn't (and I'm talking emotions here more than feats of daring) by making him normal, what's the point, unless it's to explore all the ways that he isn't what he used to be? And this film doesn't do that.
To look at Indy another way: I'm not pissed that Superman didn't fly in this picture. I'm pissed that Superman watched a purse-snatching right in front of him and didn't give a hoot. That's where the lack of urgency taints the character.
But, hey, Indy (and the film) worked for you, not for me. Fair enough. I'm not trying to argue away your reaction to it. I truly wish I'd responded to it as you did.
On a different subject though: In my earlier comment I said, in essence, that Spielberg has earned the benefit of the doubt in some areas. But at the same time, I wonder if "Raiders" would have taken off if Spielberg made it in the CGI era.
Judging by this movie, the boulder, the snakes, the plane that chews the bald dude's head, the truck that Indy slides under and behind, all that would have been digital. Spielberg and Lucas can pretend all they want that digital is as visceral as old-fashioned movie magic (real snakes, real plane, real truck, etc.), but it just isn't. Or am I alone here?
Let's remember that "Jaws" was saved by a shark that didn't work (prompting Steve to rely on the fear of the unseen, which is much more effective). Let's remember that in "Raiders" he kept asking for more and more snakes, because the floor had to crawl. And crawl it did. Just like the tomb in "Last Crusade" crawled with rats. And then you get to "Crystal Skull," and, forget about monkey business, what about the ants? Do the ants rival the snakes or the rats? Is it anywhere close?
Many of the gimmicks in "Crystal Skull" are good gimmicks, or just as good as those in the original trilogy. But they are so empty, thin, so EASY. I can't imagine a young Spielberg, desperate to prove himself, accepting digital. I think he would have found it to be the easy way out, except when there was no other option. But now it's as if Spielberg thinks he's earned the right to give us a cartoon. I think that's a step back. It's as if Spielberg is at his best when challenged. "Crystal Skull" feels mailed-in.
As you know, Keith, I dug it a lot, too; and, boy, what an essay! Thanks!
I saw it twice in two days and I really think it's kinda great -- in a distinctly "late Spielberg" way, as opposed to the "early Spielberg" style of the first three. Like Matt said up top, a big part of it is the role Kaminski's played in that evolution: as much as Spielberg said he tried to turn back his style clock, I don't think it's possible for him and Kaminski to shoot the way he and Slocombe shot pictures. And I think that's a good thing. As much as I still dig the "crisp" look of the first three (as Joel said), that hovering that's come to define the Spielberg-Kaminski aesthetic is ridiculously cool and appetizing. After seeing the first show possible on Thursday (at the wonderful Castro Theatre in San Francisco; go!), all day Friday I thought about how delicious a Spielberg movie looks. If I could, I'd eat that shot of Indy running his car into Spalko's, slamming her car together with Marion's on the left side of that jungle divide (is that a tree?), that sends Spalko onto Marion's car and Mutt onto Spalko's in turn. It's a three second shot, maybe, but damn if that lateral move doesn't tickle me right. Indeed: I don't need mushrooms when there's this and _Speed Racer_ on movie screens.
This falls under the heading of "stuff you complain about only when you didn't like the movie.... It also reminds me of a conversation overheard during the Jean-Claude Van Damme movie "Sudden Death," between two guys who spent a good part of the movie counting how many bullets each character fired and complaining if they fired more bullets than a particular firearm could hold in real life.
True, but the comparison is telling. I think we all expect more from Spielberg than Van Damme. And the monkey army, I have to say, is well beneath both. (As for the aliens, don't get me started.)
Eloquent arguments, as to be expected, from Keith, Matt, et al, but I'm with Jason on this one. I can see how Indy's motivations could be interpreted -- he's old, he's tired, he's a veteran, he's learned to make compromises -- but that's the viewer doing Spielberg/Lucas/Koepp's work for them. There's nothing wrong with a little mystery and interpretation, but ultimately the onus should be on the filmmakers to make the case -- as they did for me, with varying degrees of success, in the first three films. If they miss wide of the mark, then all the other distractions (monkeys, prairie dogs, goddamn aliens) become much more glaring, and I think they fit into an Indiana Jones movie about as well as Shia LaBeouf would be if he wandered into Meerkat Manor (although, if they were man-eating meerkats, the latter might at least be amusing).
MZS: This falls under the heading of "stuff you complain about only when you didn't like the movie."
Exactly. I'm in agreement on some of the complaints with Koepp's flat script, but this is an Indiana Jones movie. Plausibility is not something worth seeking here. I appreciated the shot of the "lead lined" notice on the fridge before Indy climbed into it, as if Spielberg were giving the audience something upon which to hang their suspension of disbelief.
Marion's drive onto the branch was the equivalent of Indy's faith leap in Last Crusade; I liked how that bookended. Shia's CGI swing with the monkeys made me cringe, but the homage to Tarzan was right in line with the Indy series' serial based roots. It was goofy but I got over it.
I am not in love with the movie, as Keith and Matt are. It's a good time waster, and there certainly are deeper themes about aging and family to be found, but there were times I felt disengaged from the movie and I have to blame the screenplay. Dialogue goes clunk and whatever feelings I felt by seeing Marion and Indy reunited came more from my history with the first film than anything written for this one. The Ray Winstone character was also mishandled; at first I thought his constant reappearance was a play on how Indy's Benedict Arnolds (like the monkey or Alfred Molina) meet their demise soonafter the betrayal, but I realized it's just sloppy writing.
Cate Blanchett didn't even bother to keep her accent, not that it was good in the first place. Her Aussie accent kept peeking through; she sounded like Crocodile Tolstoy. Every time I looked at her, I saw her Pushing Tin co-star Angelina Jolie in this role (sort of like Jolie's turn in Sky Captain). Lucas said she was supposed to be dominatrix-like, something Jolie would have pulled off with ease. Blanchett isn't scary enough to make someone use their safe word. Her fencing duel was a lot of fun, though.
Temple of Doom still ranks last on my Indy-o-meter, but this one didn't make me as sorry as I thought I'd be. I enjoyed it more than I expected, flaws and all.
Oh yeah, many of the complaints here seem to be basing the criticism off what they wanted to see, not what they got. Anybody complaining about aliens in a Spielberg-Lucas movie hasn't been paying attention to the directors' work.
Anybody complaining about aliens in a Spielberg-Lucas movie hasn't been paying attention to the directors' work.
Or, we have paid attention and been-there/seen-that fatigue has set in.
In any case, context is everything. Aliens in E.T. and Close Encounters -- no problem. Aliens in Indiana Jones -- potentially more plausible than if they'd popped up in, say, Empire of the Sun, but other than Cate Blanchett's faint resemblance to a Vulcan, the movie didn't make the case for me.
Aliens in Indiana Jones -- potentially more plausible than if they'd popped up in, say, Empire of the Sun, but other than Cate Blanchett's faint resemblance to a Vulcan, the movie didn't make the case for me.
I don't get what you mean by this. Why should the film have to make a case for aliens? Aliens are just a storytelling a tool. In some films they do exist, and other movies they don't. You might as well say "The Last Crusade" is lousy because it didn't make a convincing enough case for the existence of Jesus.
I thought for sure that Odie would get up and leave the theater when the monkey's went on the attack. As my brother leaned over and said to me when Mutt morphed into Tarzan: "Swinging on vines like Tarzan is never a good idea." Indeed, that was the groaning moment in Octopussy
My two cents: I was excited that the film was much better than I thought it would be, though it still doesn't rank up there with Raiders or Temple. I confess to losing some interest in the alien plot stuff and the chase through the rain forest went on so long that it started to drag and I was wondering what the point was. But then it turned into "Lenigen vs. the Ants" and things picked back up. I was awestruck at the gargantuan carbon footprint of the aliens. The highlights were the campus chase and the nuclear explosion (Keith laid out some fine analysis on the latter).
Connecting this film to previous discussions from the Indie blog-o-thon, I couldn't help but wonder what the difference was for Spielberg in depicting Soviets in this film and Nazis in the first trilogy. Perhaps he needs to make the equivalent of a Schindler's List showing the horrors communism to realize he did it again.
But alas, the movie was great fun and I didn't need any dialogue to feel the chemistry between Marion and Indy. Good stuff.
Re: the presence of aliens in an Indy movie. As I mentioned above, I think that the sci-fi "artifact" is a stroke of brilliance, demonstrating the shift in pop culture into the atomic age. In all the movies, the artifact that Indy pursues promises some sort of otherworldly gift to mortals: eternal power, eternal youth, and in this case eternal knowledge. In 1957, it seems appropriate the aliens who materialized out of another dimension were just "gods" by any other name. And in the age of Oppenheimer, having both the knowedlge and the power to radically transform earth's inhabitants is no longer a bedtime fairy tale; it's an imminent threat to life as we know it. I can't defend the execution, but the ideas behind this movie's story are both clever and appropriate to the era.
I don't get what you mean by this. Why should the film have to make a case for aliens? Aliens are just a storytelling a tool. In some films they do exist, and other movies they don't.
I guess I meant that it felt less like an Indiana Jones movie than a third-rate episode of The X-Files. I don't think Last Crusade is without its problems either, but Boam did a better job at integrating the Grail Quest (mainly through Henry Sr.) than Koepp does with his plot device here. Just my opinion.
This movie can't be judged on terms of good or bad. It's a gleeful updating of a bad 1950s movie. That's the point. It's not taking something bad and trying to redo it as something good. It's just a big budget modernization of it.
Even the filmmaking is playing off its cheesy references. Anybody notice that in the crypt Indy asks Mutt to shine the torch because he needs light -- yet the set is obviously completely over-lit? Or, even better: the scene at the diner where the camera first shows us that Indy is sitting right in front of the window/wall -- then we suddenly cut to an OTS that ridiculously puts the camera in a location that's already been established where it can't physically go.
It's like if Godard directed a blockbuster.
The best review that I've come across - you've so succinctly worded how I feel about Indy amongst the suburban facade and about-to-erupt nuclear rubble.
What really galvanized me (even choked me up) was to think back to that golden, sun-crisp, horizon-fade of LAST CRUSADE - with Brody and Jones, Sr. in tow - after we've learned of their passing (via some expository convo with the Brody stand-in, Jim Broadbent). It's a beautifully crafted moment, and just one of many that I can't wait to see again.
Marion's drive onto the branch was the equivalent of Indy's faith leap in Last Crusade.
I gotta disagree with this -- on two levels -- and think it serves to illustrate the central problem many of us have with the film.
1. The leap of faith was a critical moment for both the character and the story. Yes, it was largely an 'unreal' moment, like the branch, but it was central to Indy's journey of embracing the reality of his father's obsession. Additionally, it was also key to building up a sense of awe for the audience to buy into the idea that this really could be the resting place of the grail.
The branch sequence, however, does little for the character. I get that it's meant to show that Marion is not just a damsel in distress, but there was little doubt that she was that kind of woman to begin with. Imagine the exact same moment with an otherwise flighty and fearful heroine. Now it means something. As to story -- yes, it gets them in the water, but there was no danger for her to escape by that point: the Russians were already climbing down the cliff, and there were no more ants in the car (miraculously -- don't get me started on the editing of the entire jungle sequence) .
2. Before his leap of faith, Indy's scared. He's nervous and not sure it'll work. And when it does, he's even more amazed than the audience. He feels for us. We feel more a part of the adventure because of his emotional reaction to it.
By contrast, Marion has it all planned out, it works exactly as she expected -- nothing goes wrong, there's not even a moment where she thinks "uh oh, maybe this was a bad idea" -- and we don't get a woop of unmitigated joy, or even a sense that maybe her feined bravura was just that, when something so amazing does work.
Simply: that short scene sums up everything that was wrong with the movie.
I thik if nothing else, the resonance of the Indy films -- in tone at least -- is about the characters' real reactions to the unreal. His hand hurts when he punches someone. You can see him realize at times that he's in honest-to-god mortal danger. Things almost always go wrong the first (and sometimes second and third) times, and then when they do turn out alright, he's both amazed and thrilled.
After all that, I should say I didn't hate the movie and -- apart from the branch scene and the monkeys -- I didn't even mind some of the more absurd moments. However, unlike the original films, the characters rarely were used to enhance the action, the drama or the even the sense of sacred.
That would have been nice.
Finally saw Skull last night -- as it happens, the first of the Indy movies that I have seen without my father (he's not dead, just retired to the country) -- and I liked it quite a bit, althought not so much as to overlook its flaws entirely.
First, the script was, as noted, about as flat and disappointing as the modern blockbuster-manufacturing industry can produce. John Rogers goes on and damned on about screenwriting and "breaking the story" over at Kung Fu Monkey, but I've never understood why every character in every big, expensive movie has to express him- or herself in the language of the first draft, even as the beats of plot and action reflect, for good and for ill, the gangwar years of battling drafts and credit controversies ("How many aliens?" is worth fighting over, for Lucas and Spielberg; "If you want to be an archaeologist, you have to get out of the library," said in a library, is apparently sufficiently witty).
Second, "Mac" was a drag and a waste of celluloid from the moment he survived the warehouse.
Third, I really wish we had seen three or four more Indy movies in the interim: Indy in Berlin, Indy chasing the Spear of Longinus in the South of France, Indy punching out the Ahnenerbe in Iceland, Indy running from the Arab-American Oil Company in the City of the Sands in the early '50s, Indy's father's diegetic death and consequently articulated regrets of being (to his knowledge) childless, etc., etc. In another universe, people are laughing and chatting about references to Indiana Jones and the Army of Ghosts or whatnot as they leave Skull, and I assume it is a more satisfying experience.
Fourth, where the hell was Sallah?
Fifth, and a bit more seriously, density is a problem in the Indy movies, and miscalbration is a corollary to the texture lost when Indy survives a nuclear explosion in a refrigerator: Raiders was ideal -- a persuasive McGuffin, smooth details, convincing backstories implied in Belloq and Marion, relatively realistic infrastructure (the Nazis brought archaeological dig teams, trucks, soldiers, airplanes); Doom was too dense, sodden with an excess of gore and unfashionable racial implications, with an unappealing McGuffin; Crusade was too light, as its long-lost hiding place was too well-lighted, without the well-integrated teams of villain support staff that Raiders had, and a highly sectarian McGuffin. Skull's skylighted tombs and caverns were sort of silly.
Something I forgot to add:
And as for Skull's density, there seemed to be an awful lot of things floating (on the river, in the air, on the antigravity ether).
I find myself agreeing with most of what the naysayers have been saying, except that I enjoyed myself. But this movie is far worse than the other three. The opening is horrible. Utterly boring. But the movie ultimately won me over with its sheer silliness.
The nuclear blast was odd. It was here that the movie first became interesting for me, though the movie feints in the direction of seriousness which it then ignores.
I don't buy Indy as having been an anti-communist spy. At all.
While I agree with Jason Bellamy's review at the Cooler, I had to do some soul searching to figure out why I left the theater with half a smile on my face.
Half of the half smile was a stunning "I can't believe they just did that…a “Close Encounters" plot? Really? I really disliked it and found it an odd choice, only not so much. We're dealing with the same guy who gave us the original Star Wars as well as ET, MIB, AI, etc… We should have seen this coming. Instead it felt contrived, easy, and not as cool as a real ‘50s era film could have been using the true Indy identity. I wanted adventures that didn’t foreshadow aliens the entire time. Too easy. I wonder what the other script drafts look like that they worked on for so many years.
Not a great movie, but I feel the actors didn't screw anything up. Screenplay and plot...yikes! The actors all get a pass. It was nice to see Marion as her true self—without so much work done on her face that she actually looked like she had aged (I’d say well) along with Indy.
As a decades long Indy fan who has been known to ruin evenings for others by quoting lines from the first three movies during viewings, this film ranks third for me. I still have no flesh-barbequing desire to see Temple of Doom from my collection ever again.
I’m disappointed, not devastated, as I thought I was going to be. I’ve finally come to terms with the reasons for this: I love the characters and it was good to see them back on the big screen; I had fun identifying and smiling in my head wherever scenes gave nods to similar ones from the previous films – which basically made up the entire film-- (the statue of Marcus Brody being hit by the Ruskies’ car and busting their windshield with his head); Oh, and did I mention I was an Indy fan?
I can only imagine what the kids who were in diapers when Indy last graced the screen think about this mess.
I saw it Friday with my kids, who are 7, 9, and 11. For them, this was their first real experience with Indiana Jones; they had seen bits and pieces -- and Lego versions -- of the original trilogy, but never an entire movie. I warned them that every Indiana Jones movie has gruesome deaths, so they were well-prepared.
They loved it, I loved it. There's a lot of griping around about obvious CGI but since I had already suspended my disbelief about the time Indy was tossing handfuls of gunpowder in the warehouse, it failed to register. The ants were damned creepy. The only thing that made me groan was Mutt swinging through the vines, and everything else -- including Cate Blanchett's accent - - was just seasoning for the delightfully goofy stew.
I admit I'm hopelessly bourgeois, but "you have to get out of the library," in the context in which it was delivered, was funny enough for me and apparently every one else in the full-house 1:30 matinée showing.
I expected this movie to be tired, evoking a "why did they bother?" vibe. I would really like to see it again.
Keith & Matt thank you both for giving form to some of my feelings.
Perhaps one way to bridge the critical gap here is to say that it's a mediocre movie (thanks to all the plot holes and story gaps people have mentioned) but a very good film (because Spielberg keeps those signifiers rolling)...?
Count me among the folks who found Indy 4 disappointing in its sloppiness. (For what it's worth, my reaction was more negative after the first viewing, but softened the second time around.)
I found the first forty-five minutes solid enough, but the movie goes slack right around the time Indy and Mutt procure the skull, and gets progressively worse from that point on. And the script throughout, be it due to Koepp, Lucas, or one of the earlier drafters, is terrible. (What's more, Ray Winstone, John Hurt, and poor Karen Allen are all wasted.)
"This falls under the heading of 'stuff you complain about only when you didn't like the movie."
Maybe, maybe not...but there's a lot more of this stuff in Indy IV than the earlier films. Even notwithstanding the fridge (which I liked), the rubberband tree, waterfalls, and Tarzan Mutt (which I hated), the script is shot through with continuity errors. Why doesn't Indy know Spalko's name at his debriefing? (He just yelled it at her 5 min. earlier.) How did the baddies follow the Team Indy Power Rangers past the disappearing stairs? If the sand has never been released, who are all those bodies at the bottom? Are the natives living or dead? If the former, what are they doing in the walls? If the latter, why do poison darts and machine guns kill them? Sloppy.
Yes, I realize that the Indyverse has always involved suspension of disbelief. (How did Indy survive the sub ride in Raiders, for example?) But Crystal Skull is rife with ridiculousness, when it's not drowning in exposition or poorly written bon mots. "Their treasure wasn't gold, it was knowledge. Knowledge was their treasure." Yes, you just said that. Lawrence Kasdan, this isn't.
All in all, I didn't hate the movie. (As I said, I liked it enough to see it twice.) But, given the two decades the team had to formulate a decent script, I found the finished product disappointingly poor.
My theory on the whole driving onto the branch bit - it took awhile before Marion got back to pick up Indy and Ox. Isn't it likely that she took a minute to figure out an escape route? It wasn't a leap of faith, it was a cunning plan.
I read this movie as straight-up self-parody. I thought the Paramount mountain getting pulverized was a big clue that this was going to be a movie that pulverized the conventions of the earlier movies.
So I'm not sure why anybody is implying that this movie is somehow less than what its creators intended.
This is basically the "Bride" to the earlier films' "Frankenstein," and as such, it's pretty damn brilliant. I think you can argue preference, but not aesthetics. If you want a wiseass, dark, urgent movie for younger men, this is not your film ... a point it explicitly makes several times.
If any other director on this planet made a movie in which Indiana Jones met aliens/AI robots from other Spielberg movies, we would hail him as 1) a genius, or 2) Philip Jose Farmer.
I think Devin hits the nail on the head. If you watch the sequence, Marian first sees the cliff and looks over and you see her smile. It then cuts away from her and back to Indy, and the rest. Later when she rescues everyone and guns the engine to drive off the cliff she is doing exactly what she already figured out in her head. This is the 'spunky' Marian we all met at the very start of Raiders (not the screaming banshee in the middle and end of Raiders), and it was nice to see that version of her in this movie.
Actually, Chris P above has it right, though there's no arguement that Marion knows exactly what she's doing. Here's an except, more above:
"Marion has it all planned out, it works exactly as she expected -- nothing goes wrong, there's not even a moment where she thinks "uh oh, maybe this was a bad idea" -- and we don't get a woop of unmitigated joy, or even a sense that maybe her feined bravura was just that, when something so amazing does work. Simply: that short scene sums up everything that was wrong with the movie."
I couldn't have said it better. This is a movie void of suspense or tension.
To which I say that we do get that sense of unmitigated joy in Karen Allen's smile after the stunt works, a visual cue that rhymes with her beatific reaction to Indy's "none of them [the other women in my life] were you" and with her mad "are we still alive?" laughter after they go over the three waterfalls.
Despite its surface appearances (and based on my two viewings) I think this is a movie of tremendous subtlety and untold depth, and all the more impressive for the ease (as only a genre specialist like Spielberg could accomplish) with which it is executed.
There's a lot I want to say about Indy IV, but first: I just want to go on record saying how much I like this movie. It's flawed, it's sloppy, it coulda been a lot better. But in some ways it's great. It's as fetishistic and loving a tribute to pop culture as anything Tod Haynes, Alan Moore or Quentin Tarantino has done. (In this case, it's an homage to the Silver Age of American entertainment--1947 to 1967 or so, Marvel comics, Universal Sci-fi films, EC Tales From The Crypt and Weird Science, and ALL things 50s)
It's the first Indiana Jones film since Raiders that feels like it has reason for existing, that actually seems to be building on Raiders somewhat. (although it made me reconsider Temple Of Doom.) I had fun, even as I recognize why a lot of people don't like it; I gotta admit it was mostly made for flying saucer Rock n' Roll types like me.
Anyone notice a similarity between the thirteen crystal skull figures, and the Spielberg movie Artificial Intelligence? I need to put more thought into it, but for now only noting that there are some sort of extraterrestrial beings in the latter movie who communicate like the world wide web interconnectivity.
For the record, I actually liked the movie, and I think every "major" flaws (such as the Tarzan scene or the sometimes-fake-looking CGI) have already been discussed. Being a Peruvian, though, what bothered me the most was the lack of research evident in the script regarding Peruvian history and geography.
I mean, if they're gonna set the movie in Peru, the least Koepp and the army of writers before him could have done was to do some research. Here are some obvious mistakes I found in the film that really made me think Koepp is an ignorant guy who didn't bother to do any research for the screenplay:
1. there's not airport in Nazca.
2. the map shows Indy arriving in Cuzco, but then they suddenly are in Nazca... Nazca is in the coast, while Cuzco is in the highlands, they have NOTHING to do with each other.
3. Mayans have nothing to do with Peru. they belong to Mexico and Central America, NOT south America.
4. there are no pyramids (like the one show at the end) in South America. pyramids in America belong to the Mayans/Aztecs.
5. again, Prof. Ox speaks to the skull in Mayan; he should have spoken in Quechua or Aymara. (dialects from ancient Peruvian cultures.)
6. the music John Williams composed for the Nazca market scene sounds bloody MEXICAN.
7. there are no hills in Nazca - it's all plain, and besides, you wouldn't be able to see the actual lines from the hill as it's shown in the film. they're too big.
Like I said, I enjoyed the movie as an Indy flick, but as a Peruvian, I was negatively surprised by the lack of research in the screenplay...
Sebastion, I think they were just being consistent - like in Temple of Doom, as their plane is flying out of Shanghai and the montage shows a Great Wall of China where there is no Great Wall.
An overlong, conspicuously overcomplicated, laborious review. This is fraught with pointless syntactic nonsense and too wrapped up in its own ability to crunch adjectives and ape narrative than it is to provide any real insight or critical comment.
Two out of five stars. Must try harder.
To Jeffrey: yes, that's what I thought while watching the film, that's why I didn't pay so much attention to it.
But the other mistakes are pretty serious... I know the alien-worshipping guys are supposed to be a lost culture, but I find it really hard for them to be Mayans living in South America.
Hi there Keith
Thank the movie reviewing gods for your response to The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and, indeed, for Matt ZS' follow up comments.
At the tail end of last year I wrote a piece for www.spielbergfilms.com and suggested,as memory serves, that was interesting to me about the new Indy movie was that it was from the director of Schindler's , AI and The Terminal (to name a few) rather than more immediately regarding it as a film from the director of the first three Indy movies. Perhaps reading the film far more in terms of its directorial impulse rather than its Indy heritage is the way forward with this one.
All the best
James Clarke
www.james-blueskies.blogspot.com
Thank you for your response James. Very much appreciated. :-)
Firstly thank you for the reviews and the blog. I have found reading all of your comments very therapeutic and they have helped me deal with the real and heavy disappointment I felt after watching this movie with my girlfriend last Saturday night – after cajoling her to watch the first three Indy movies on dvd during the day before we went out to see the new one.
I was disappointed and confused by the movie and am on the verge of thinking it was terrible, but not yet prepared to call it. Maybe I am in denial, maybe I need to see it again.
My overall feeling was that the movie was just sloppy – a mishmash of ideas, hastily put together and badly edited, though after reading all of your comments I have also realised how badly written it was as well.
I also wondered sometimes if Spielberg/Lucas were making fun of us – right from the first scene where the rat poked his head out of the molehill (if you didn’t want to do the mountain this time Steven that would have been OK!) to those monkeys to the non-stop references to Indy’s age…
Anyway, to start with the positive, I think the concept of the 50s, the nuclear age and the Soviets was an excellent one – and even the alien theme could have worked and given us all a great new Indy story.
The first scene in the warehouse was conceptually brilliant – a return to the end of the first movie, and a touch of familiarity in our brave new world, though it pretty quickly started to drag.
The creepy people that jumped out of the wall at the graveyard and the pyramids were good.
I thought Indy’s best scene was when he was being interviewed by the spooks after the warehouse /nuclear explosion – yeh he was still looking a bit worse for wear but for a minute or two he was once more the Indy we all know and love – sharp, assertive and on the ball and proof that Harrison Ford has still got it. This was the only time in the whole movie that I sat up and thought “Hello, here we go…”
Unfortunately, it all descended from there, and at the end I realised that this was actually the best section of the movie.
Putting aside the myriad individual examples of plot weirdness and nowhere dialogue, some general complaints were:
• Indy in this film seemed to be along for the ride, rather than driving events. He has always been vulnerable and imperfect, but in the first three movies he was resourceful and made the effort. Wake up buddy!
• Why did Indy keep co-operating with the bad guys leaving the others to take the initiative to get away from trouble? He was a hero in the first three movies and, according to the dialogue, was no slouch in World War 2 – so why go all lame now?
• Was this an adventure movie or a cartoon, or both?
• The snake in the quicksand scene was embarrassing – yes Indy doesn’t like snakes, we already know that but since when was he so childish about it?
• Marion driving the truck onto the bendy tree was way too obviously a “look how she is an assertive female sidekick” ploy. Fine concept, but – aside from the stupidity of driving a truck over a waterfall in the hope that you would be caught by a bouncy tree, there was just no subtlety at all.
• Indy’s first lines in the warehouse sounded like he was reading a script – I am sure actors do that all of the time, but either the director gets them to do it again or uses another take or it is edited better so that there is an extra second or two of footage before the answer.
• There was no chemistry whatsoever between Indy and Marion – no fault of the actors, they just had nothing good written to say to each other.
OK, Indy is 20 years older – I get it, I get it, I get it, I get it. I don’t need to be shown it over and over, with non-stop cracks about his age, watching Indy fall over, and lecturing students about doing their homework etc... It was just too over the top.
OK - the movie was set in the 50s – I get it, I get it, I get it, I get it, but was there really a point to including the atomic test and “I like Ike” and the anti-communist protest and the McCarthyish purge and the trendy kid with the leather jacket/flick-knife and the café with two sets of teenagers and every other 50s stereotype that the writer would have read in a scrapbook of the 1950s.
Even the Ark revelation was slopped on too think – the camera seemed to hang on the Ark for an eternity. In the old Indy, we would have just seen the end of the crate broken, seen enough of the lid to wonder “Hang on a minute, is that the Ark…” and Indy would have noticed it just before or after the audience, given an alarmed look and covered it up with the nearest object with a sheepish or scared grin – it would have been there, subtle and we would all have moved on.
The monkeys, well I can’t say any more than what people have already – what a load of rubbish.
How did they get from the bottom of the third waterfall up to the rock face place again? Why was Indy suddenly rehabilitated at the end of the movie after helping the Soviets at Area 51 – did the government restore him after he told them that aliens and killer ants took the Russians away?
The plot just went on and on, I couldn’t keep up with all of the characters that would be introduced, say a few words then disappeared or conveniently got their memory back just at the right time for the scriptwriter. It seemed as though everyone was just going through the motions and that the whole thing was one big trudge from one location to another.
I usually have no trouble getting lost in a movie – but I was only rarely immersed in the story this time around – I was too often conscious that I was sitting there in a movie theatre
I will see it again in the next week or so and hope that it is better a second time around. If not, then all I can do is hope for an Indy 5 that has more of what made the first three movies such classics – great locations, great stories, great characters, great dialogue and a cracking pace, rather than the disappointing and disjointed collection of clichés and random scenes that passed for Indy 4.
Count me in among those who are much more excited by Keith and Matt's film review than by Spielberg and Lucas's film.
Why should the film have to make a case for aliens?
I think people are trying to forgive this one by saying it updates the Great Treasures of the previous installments (Grail, Ark) with the Great Hysterias of the 1950s. I'd like to see that movie; it would contain some sense of the popular mythology of 1950's space invaders, not just recitations and nods. The Ark and the Grail work because it weaves syntheses of myth and archeology from the treasures; the aliens don't really work because the movie fails to build a universe in which people care about the aliens. We live in that universe, but it's more of a flat, second-order caring -- we know what allusions to aliens mean.
It also didn't help that the skull looked like a Lucite paperweight stuffed with Saran Wrap.
But this I will admit: I liked the monkeys.
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