When is a sequel a good thing? This question ran through my head all throughout watching Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, a film that consistently boggles the mind with the fact that it actually exists. Did I really just sit through another Indiana Jones adventure? Because for the record, I really can’t remember much of it at all.
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, as any average filmgoer knows, can do whatever they want. The duo has had their fingers on the pulse of Hollywood for the last 30 years, and they have provided us with many timeless pictures that, in turn, have grossed billions of dollars. Since Jurassic Park and Return of the Jedi, however, Spielberg has been expanding his horizons in one way or another (Munich, Catch Me If You Can), while Lucas went a far murkier route: he gave us an unnecessary extension, of sorts, to the original Star Wars trilogy, making three digitized prequels that, while entertaining, ultimately carried none of the magic that made the original films shine to this day.
The new Indiana Jones film is similar in how it attempts to play on the nostalgia of the audience, but it ultimately never rivets or resonates. It’s not exactly a bad film, but it’s certainly the worst of the series, in part because it spends too long on the storyline, which is arguably the films’ weakest aspect, and here it stands out more than ever. The script—apparently the reason why the film took so long to make—is missing many of the memorable one-liners and rapid-fire conversations that heightened the pace of the previous films. We never really care about what’s going on, because so much of the plot is inanely exposed through conversation, rather than actually happen in front of our eyes. In the meantime, we’re hoping for at least one overblown action sequence to take us away. It comes, and it does, but by that point the film has spread mud on the welcome mat.
And by overblown action sequences, I mean the legendary 10-15 minute long opening and closing sequences that defined the original trilogy, which, aside from a magnificent jungle chase scene—in which Mutt (Shia LaBeouf), and not Indy, steals the spotlight—are depicted sparingly here.
The entire point of Raiders of the Lost Ark was to recreate the Saturday matinee adventure films that Lucas and Spielberg grew up with. Those movies were never about anything other than having fun, with a keen sense of intrigue and discovery. The trilogy paid mostly excellent homage to that, with gloriously built setpieces and riveting music by John Williams. The unfairly maligned Temple of Doom played as a deliciously campy extended action sequence, and Last Crusade offered some great character interactions between Jones and his father, played by Sean Connery. The acting was never the important part of the films, but rather the dialogue, and the way it was strung together into the action. Watching those films today, it’s understandable why they were so popular, and they seem to exist in a time and place entirely apart from the CGI-infused superhero pictures we see today.
Crystal Skull hardly ever invites us into its world as its predecessors did, partly because it’s all so fake-looking. Rather than focusing on the natural settings that in the past had greatly added to Indy’s vulnerability, many of the backdrops look green-screened, or the scenes have an oddly dusty, grainy sheen that has characterized many of Spielberg’s films since Saving Private Ryan. A humorous scene in which Jones stumbles into a suburb-as-nuclear-testing-site is so distractingly colorful, it makes the 1950’s and the 1930’s look like different centuries. You might argue that the point of that scene is to poke fun at how happy and “safe” people felt during that decade, but to watch Indy run through that kind of environment just doesn’t feel right. In that sense, the film doesn’t fit into the series stylistically, because it’s too good-looking to try to pretend to be a B-movie.
It also inexplicably misses the chance to develop what Spielberg has already proven he does best: aliens. I may not have expected a Close Encounters of the Third Kind conclusion, but I felt like shouting at the screen when the film ends without any sort of unprecedented encounter or revelation. Rather, we get a lot of broken stone neatly thrown across the screen, and not much is really resolved. And we’re still left scratching our heads as to whose side Mac (Ray Winstone) is on, since he seems to change his mind every 20 minutes.
Perhaps the real problem with this film is that Spielberg seems bored with the material. What compelled him to make this movie? If it was really out of a wish to continue the series, he could have developed real conflict and excitement from within, and given Indy a chance to truly get beaten down and risen up as he does in all the previous films. There’s no problem with Ford’s performance, really; he seems fit and able-bodied, or at least the movie makes him appear to be. But it seems like Spielberg thinks that the audience just wants to see Indy in the costume, and not in another major, life-threatening situation. He’s not actively pursuing the kingdom of the Crystal Skull; he’s just walking towards it, and manages to bump into a few familiar friends and situations along the way. Spielberg should be creating new magic, rather than expecting the audience to already have it. There’s a difference between making a great movie and making an occasionally interesting reel of images.
“Knowledge was their pleasure,” Jones says of the extraterrestrials we don’t ever really get to know, and perhaps knowing only three Indiana Jones films would have been pleasure enough.
Grade: C
