Indiana Jones & the Crystal Skull (Spoilers)

[LadyTevar]

The movie just premiered at Cannes, and Time Magazine had this to say about it:

Indiana Jones: Smart, Sleek, Familiar

Early in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull — which had its tumultuous world premiere today at the Cannes Film Festival — our hero (Harrison Ford) and his sometime pal Mac (Ray Winstone) come up against a convoy of tough Russians. "This ain't gonna be easy," Mac says, and Indy replies, "Not as easy as it used to be."

The old-guy jokes are as true for director Steven Spielberg and producer George Lucas as for the star. It's 27 years since Raiders of the Lost Ark started the Jones boy on his adventures, 19 years since the most recent Indy movie, The Last Crusade, and 30 years this month since Lucas and Spielberg sat on a Hawaiian beach and made a handshake deal for an action film that one would produce and the other direct. They'd be stupid to ignore the toll that time takes on moviemakers and movie stars. All were in their 30s when they made Raiders. Now Spielberg, Lucas and Ford are, respectively, 61, 64 and 65. And don't forget two other crucial collaborators, composer John Williams and editor Michael Kahn, who have given all the Indy films their cheerfully martial sound and cut-to-the-bone fury.

There are scenes in the new movie that seem like stretching exercises at a retirement home; there are garrulous stretches, and even the title seems a few words too long. But once it gets going, Crystal Skull delivers smart, robust, familiar entertainment. Ford looks just fine, his chest skin tanned to a rich Corinthian leather; he's still lithe on his feet, and can deliver a wisecrack as sharp as a whipcrack. Karen Allen, 56, who was Indy's saucy love Marion Ravenwood in Raiders, still has that glittering smile and vestiges of her old elfin swagger. They needn't break a sweat keeping up with the (relative) kids: 39-year-old Cate Blanchett, the movie's villainess, and Shia LaBeouf, who plays the young lead Mutt Williams, and who may be tapped to continue the series after Ford's retirement — at least that's what Lucas hinted a few days ago here in Cannes.

Crystal Skull is intended, and works effectively, as instant nostalgia — a class reunion of the old gang who in the '80s reinvigorated the classic action film with such expertise and brio. So don't expect the freshness of the what-one-man-can-do plot in Iron Man, or the oneiric visuals of Speed Racer. Spielberg and Lucas, and screenwriters David Koepp and Jeff Nathanson, are looking not forward but back, to the first three films. They know that moviegoers would be disappointed not to see the talismans of Indys past reappear here. Shall we itemize?

1. The Paramount logo dissolves into some kind of mountain. Every Indy films opens this way, from one monument to another. (As Veronica Geng wrote in a review of the first movie, "Spielberg" is German for "play mountain.") In Raiders the logo became a mountain in South America; in Temple of Doom, a bas-relief on a Chinese gong; in The Last Crusade a big boulder in Utah. This time, suggesting more modest aspirations, or maybe kiddingly deflecting the audience's gargantuan expectations, it's a weeny prairie dog hill, from which a critter emerges just before being nearly run over by speeding cars. We're in Nevada, near Area 51, and it's 1957, a time of rock 'n' roll (Elvis's "Hound Dog" on the soundtrack), fear of the Soviets (and why not? they've just penetrated a U.S. military base), fear of The Bomb (hey, what's that mushroom cloud on the horizon?) and mass sightings of UFOs (coming right up).

2. International conspiracies. Nazis in the first and third Indys, Indian Thugees in the second. But it wouldn't be the '50s without Commies, in the chic person of Irina Spalko (played by Blanchett with the severe demeanor of Cyd Charisse's Ninotchka in the 1957 MGM musical Silk Stockings and the black bob Charisse sports in The Band Wagon). Rather than the simple matter of conquering the West militarily, Irina is part of a Soviet plot to cloud our minds by getting access to some secret technology that is concealed either in an Area 51 warehouse or in the remotest jungle mountains of Peru. "We will change you, Mr. Jones, all of you, from the inside," she proclaims. "We will turn you into us." Ewww, creepy. Glad that didn't happen.

3. The Fedora, the bullwhip... the snakes! We see the hat just before we see Indy; brown headwear is still in style in 1957. As for Indy's bullwhip, it's still faster and deadlier than a bad guy's gun. In the opening Area 51 scene, he uses it to disarm about a quillion Russkies, and to swing in Errol Flynn style from one warehoused beam to another. (Mutt will later show the same swinging derring-do on Peruvian jungle vines.) As for the snakes, there's just one, but indy is readier to die in quicksand than to use it as a lifeline. The nifty new predators are South American red ants, which Spielberg and Lucas may have remembered from the 1954 movie The Naked Jungle, and which can swarm over a man by the millions and drag him into their formicary for a nice fat meal.

4. A cool car chase. A lot of the elements in Crystal Skull may feel like mandatory reprises of the old tropes, but the high-speed two-vehicle fight between Indy's team and Irina's goons is up there with the Raiders jeep sequence, more complex and sophisticated in its engineering of physical action. (In the post-film press conference this afternoon, Spielberg said, "I believe in practical magic, not digital magic," and in "real stunts with real people.") If there's a scene that film students will be poring over, decades from now, this is the one.

5. Family revelations. Spielberg movies are often about the separation and reconstituting of a family, and the last two Indy films are no exception. In Last Crusade we met Indy's father (Sean Connery) and learned that Indy's real name was Henry Jones, Jr. Indeed, "Junior" was Dad's apparently derogatory form of address for his son. That gag is repeated here, since — as everyone who's paid the slightest attention to pre-release scuttlebutt knows — Mutt is Indy's son by Marion. (Why is he called Mutt? Presumably because, as we learned at the end of The Last Crusade, Indiana was the name of the Jones family dog; Mutt's just extending the breed.) He enters on a motorcycle, in the leather-jacket regalia Marlon Brando sported in The Wild One, and soon displays some of the athletic skills he must have inherited from his absent dad. Whether the smooth-visaged LaBeouf can grow into Ford's craggy machismo — or even whether he can top the teen Indys that have been played by River Phoenix (in The Last Crusade) and Sean Patrick Flannery (in the TV series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles) — is a question later Indy installments will have to answer.

6. Archaeology! Recall that our hero's day job is as a professor of archaeology. On vacations he goes out, makes trouble and saves the world. Or does he? Indy's job, basically, is plundering indigenous cultures for treasure, in capers that will cost hundreds of lives and add exactly nothing to the lore of civilization. (And, in three of the four movies, he comes home empty-handed.) But heck, it's an adventure movie; leave all ethnic scruples home. Scholars of antiquity will be pleased to know that Crystal Skull — with its runic inscriptions, vanished languages, hidden caves and dreadful secrets — is the archaeolog-iest Indy film yet. In fact, the movie is a little plot-heavy around the middle. It seems more determined to tell a complicated story than to use a story as the excuse for a convulsive. nonstop thrill ride.

7. Start with a big bang, end with terrifying mysticism. The creation of these movies always has this method: start with the opening and climactic sequences — in Raiders' case, the South American cave with the rolling rock and the opening of the Ark with the melting skulls — and work inward. (Or as Spielberg says on the new Last Crusade DVD: "How do we fill in the middle?") Here, the bang couldn't be bigger. The 12 min. opener takes Indy into Area 51, where he escapes into what seems to be an ideal Levittown ... except that the people are mannequins, a nuclear bomb is about to be detonated, and Indy has exactly one minute to find a safe place to hide. (That place is one of the film's smartest inspirations.) As for the ending, well, we're not giving everything away. Let's just say that Indy and Marion could be The X Files' Mulder and Scully on assignment in Peru.

We'll see how David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson cope with middle age in their X Files movie later this summer. They may suffer from the occasional creaking joints of Crystal Skull. (And, truth to tell, there was more applause here at the beginning of the screening than at the end.) But they'd be hard-pressed to inhabit the sleek, satisfying adventure that three septuagenarians and their pals dreamed up here. There's a moment in the film where Mutt sees Indy negotiate some really cool bit of action, and the kid can't help mouth a "Wow." That's the right response to this inevitable summer blockbuster. Lucas, Spielberg and Ford ain't the Over the Hill Gang yet.

[Rukia]

You know, Just by sheer Name Power this movie should have been better. they did a wonderful job in keeping with True Indy Form and it was an all around ok movie in terms of storyline plot action writing and direction. But to me it was almost as if they didn't try. I'm saying don't go see it, I'm saying don't set yourself up for disappointment. It's not a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination. The problem with this movie is that it has to be compared to the three legendary movies that came before it. And when you do that, then only thing that comes to mind is, "That's a pretty good...movie, but it's not an Indiana Jones movie." It just doesn't seem to fit with the other movies in the series. As a standalone, I probably would've rated it much higher, but as a part of the series, for now, it rates at the bottom for me. I would definitely recommend this movie for first timers though, or those that haven't seen any or all of the previous movies.

[frigidmagi]

I find myself disagreeing. This movie in my mind was better then Temple of Doom and competes well with Last Crusade.

[Dark Silver]

Saw it last night finally.

Pretty cool, the Alien thing was weird, and I thought it was worth the price of admission to see Shia LeBouef get hit in the nuts multiple times by trees and bushes.


Classic Indy, and I hope to the gods dark and great they don't make more using LeBouef as the new Indy...

[LadyTevar]

"Call it a ROPE! Call it a ROPE!"
".......... It's a Rope"



So many great moments, some of the well-telegraphed, like Mutt talking about the schools he'd left, including fencing class -- I knew then he'd get in a swordfight with the Russkie. I did NOT expect when and where.

Nitram's comment afterwards was "Swinging on vines like that was better than a paternity test. Definitely Indy's."

But what I -truly- liked was Marion. Her driving skills, getting them safely into the river (and afterwards the amusement while holding the broken steering wheel), the sharp banter with Indy, the obvious love for her son and concern for Oxley : Marion wasn't the Damsel in Distress of Raiders. Her competence added to the movie, since I swear some of her needling of Indy in the back of the truck was just to get the guard to move where they could take him out.

[B4UTRUST]

Overall I thought it was a fairly good movie. It had it's moments where I thought it was a bit cheesy and kinda removed from typical Indy. And honestly the main plot drive was a bit off as well. I just didn't feel it fit in as well with the rest of the series. Maybe it was just me, and we all know my usual less then loving reviews of movies... Maybe I should be a critic or something. At least then I'd get paid to say negative things!

But, for the love of all that is holy and un, please, please PLEASE don't let them make a 5th one staring Shia Lablow. It's just not right... Yeah, I get the continuation bit, the movie drive, etc.. but really now...

Was it just me or did Ford look about 70 in the first part of the movie and then gets aged back to about 50 or so? He looked a lot older in the beginning then in the end. Maybe it was lighting(the lighting in the theater didn't help, having been left on for the first 20 minutes or so of the movie...fucking theater...), maybe it was the makeup or the scene or maybe again it was just me. I just thought he looked particularly ill-aged in the beginning but it got better after the first major location change.

[spoilers]But come on...Aliens? We go from Hindu mysticism to Christian mythos...and now we come full circle to Roswell, Area 51 and Aliens being gods... But Lucas is at the helm here and there is one thing he does well...and that's aliens... But I was happy to see that they remembered the Ark of the Covanent was in the warehouse. A little tribute back to the old movies. Well done on that one. [/spoilers]

[Dark Silver]

I think it was meant to show the passage of time, and how he had "settled down" from his old days.

But when we go back to doing what Indy does, he looks younger again....

Yeah....it had it's weird points (I mean..yeah..the alien thing...) but I actually caught on to why Indy had the need to do it towards the end. The skull told him what needed to be done, and thus he did it.

[The Silence and I]

Loved it.

I have heard many people complain about the alien thing, but I can't sympathize--in a world with real holy grails, lost arcs, and the occasional ability to rip a man's heart from his chest bare handed I find any complaint along the lines of "that alien plot is stupid/absurd" to be entirely indefensible. Ford has not diminished with time, the characters new and old were great, and *gasp, shock* I actually liked Mutt (somehow--I'm not normally a fan of the actor).

As frigid said I thought it compared well with the 1st and 3rd and beat the 2nd. Perhaps this is going beyond my place but I must suspect some of the disappointment is from a nostalgically fueled elevation of the past movies above what they were. Possibly mixed with an artificial expectation of failure provoking higher than normal criticisms (we all remember predictions it would fail because Ford is old, it's been too long, Lucas can't make good movies anymore, etc). For example one guy I know thought the alien arc was highly stupid, but he is the biggest comic book fan I know. Thoughtful, deep, plausible, and sensible plots are not exactly a dime a dozen in the comic book world... I consider his opinion unfair.