What do you think she meant when she said “a huge black monster with giant claws”?
I would feel a lot more comfortable with this film if Spielberg and company would just admit what it really is: an homage and not a fourth installment. Too much has changed for this to have been anything but completely incongruous with its predecessors. David Koepp is no Jeffrey Boam or Lawrence Kasdan, Jim Broadbent is no Denholm Elliott, and Cate Blanchett’s sword-wielding Russian villainess is nowhere near as wickedly entertaining as Julian Glover’s Walter Donovan or Amrish Puri’s Mola Ram; she’s too underdeveloped, doesn’t exude the dangerous sexuality of Spielberg’s previous vixens, and belongs to an organizationÑthe KGBÑthat just isn’t fun enough to hate. Sorry, but there’s something about Indiana Jones fighting Nazis that is just a lot more entertaining.
And as an homage, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is extraordinarily lackluster. The camera-based special effects I grew up reveringÑmelting faces, falling tanks, rapid agingÑhave been almost entirely replaced by computer-rendered graphics that reduce prairie dogs and an atomic blast to the same piss-poor look as a bad summer blockbuster, which is something an Indiana Jones film should never be. Snakes, hordes of creepy-crawlies, the Ark of the Covenant, waterfalls, secret underground tunnels, skeletonsÑthe filmmakers take immense delight in recalling the previous films, so much so they seem irrevocably lodged in their own feelings of nostalgia. Until the final climax, which is itself mind-numbingly outrageous, nothing in this film felt truly inspired. It felt like forced creativityÑa writer new to the franchise trying desperately to prove that he understands the franchise, that he “gets it.” (Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly summed this up better than I possibly could when she said, in part, “Everything is new and nothing is new.”)
I suppose my dislike of this film can be attributed in part to my age. I was three years old when The Last Crusade was released, so the original Indiana Jones films are iconic and untouchable in my eyesÑan invulnerable, unofficial trilogy of sorts. The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull feels almost like Lucas and Spielberg trying to amend my childhood, and it doesn’t help that Koepp kills off Jones’s father within the first half-hour, drawing our attention to a photograph of the bearded old man as his son offers us a dizzyingly saccharine eulogyÑa cinematic decision that seems almost vindictive in nature, considering Sean Connery’s refusal to reprise his role in favor of staying retired. It violates rule numero uno in how to write a decent sequel: Never kill off a character the audience loves like their own grandfather.
But I have to admit that not all is bad. The one redeeming aspect of this film, at least from my perspective, is the return of Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood. As hardy as Indiana Jones, if not tougher, she is now a mother dressed in clothes that never seem to dirtyÑperhaps an oversight, perhaps a way to signify her clean, unshakable character. And while her son is a plotline I would love to wish away, her appearance alone is the one from-the-past aspect the filmmakers pulled off without mistake. If only they had given her scenes a little more meat rather than spending the film’s bulk handing the fedora and bullwhip over to young Shia LaBeouf.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ended with four men riding off into the sunsetÑa perfect metaphor for the fading horse-and-pistol masculinity represented by the title character. In the years that followed, one of those men passed away, another retired, and the final twoÑHarrison Ford and John Rhys-DaviesÑmoved on to other projects. It was an ending that Spielberg himself has often heralded as perfect, probably why the franchise had remained untouchedÑor mostlyÑfor nineteen years. So the question arises: Does Kingdom of the Crystal Skull add or subtract from the Jones oeuvre. I know a lot of people will find this new installment entertaining, my parents included, but I for one would have liked the trilogy to remain just that.
by Adam Balz | Source: 35MM Theatrical Print
02 Jun 2008 8:14 PM | Submit Comment