 INDIANA JONES: Marion, don’t look at it! Shut your eyes, Marion!
IMAGE: LUCASFILMS |
“You’re not the man I knew 10 years ago,” Marion Ravenwood told Indiana Jones as she cleaned his wounds and examined his grizzled visage in Raiders of the Lost Ark. “It’s not the years, honey—it’s the mileage,” he replied. Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones has added many miles to the odometer since then—his new escapade, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, takes place in 1957, two decades after Raiders, and Harrison Ford now qualifies for AARP membership. In this long-anticipated romp, he’s not the man Marion Ravenwood knew 27 years ago: He’s better. Jones, once a rake and a mercenary, is now an advertisement for clean living. He’s quit the filthy whiskey, he’s a decorated war hero, and he is apparently impervious to injury. Where the Indy of old had to dodge a Nazi strongman until a plane propeller finished the fight, the Indy of Crystal Skull takes matters into his own fists, pummeling the Soviets’ largest soldier until he collapses into a hill of deadly ants. Powerful, wise, irreproachable: This man is what John McCain sees every time he closes his eyes.
Maybe Indy’s ageless vigor is a side effect of a previous brush with the Holy Grail, or perhaps it’s a product of Harrison Ford’s vanity (watching the actor leap from car to motorbike, I was reminded of the story of Kirk Douglas on the set of bad sci-fi flick Saturn 3, repeatedly asking the screenwriter if the robots could be made to remark, “That man is so virile!” each time Douglas ran past). Whatever the reason, it’s good to have the wisecracking archaeologist back, in any condition, and Crystal Skull is a giddy lark, worthy of the franchise—at least until it encounters the one foe Indiana Jones can’t overcome: The Curse of Steven Spielberg.
For the past decade, starting with AI: Artificial Intelligence and continuing with unnerving consistency through every movie he’s directed since, Spielberg has proven constitutionally incapable of arriving at a satisfying ending. Part of the trouble is that he expends his best ideas at the outset—so when, just 20 minutes into Crystal Skull, Dr. Jones manages to survive a nuclear explosion in the Nevada desert, racing among the Technicolor test dummies to seek shelter, it’s both the most ingenious and most alarming scene in the movie. Where can the film go from here? Could it be that Indiana Jones has already shot his wad?
He has, and the wad grows up to be (spoiler and bad pun warning!) Shia LaBeouf. That’s right, there’s a Henry Jones Junior Junior, and he goes by the handle of Mutt Williams—a clever joke, actually: Ol’ Sean Connery named the dog Indiana, and now Indy’s kid has named himself after dogs in general. LaBeouf, cast as the motorcycle-riding greaser child of Marion (Karen Allen), is obviously dressed to recall Marlon Brando in The Wild One, which is not unlike dressing Dakota Fanning to recall Bette Davis in All About Eve. No matter: By the time LaBeouf arrives to disrupt Dr. Jones’ study hall, Indy has already visited Area 51 and located little green men at the gunpoint of Cate Blanchett as a Commie agent with a widiculous Wussian accent. Crystal Skull is packed with this kind of Thrilling Wonder Stories boys’ pulp, true to the series’ zany serial roots and the gee-whiz mood of the ’50s. (Asked for his last words at gunpoint, Indy growls, “I like Ike.”)
A pity, then, that the third reel is such a washout, with Indiana Jones subjected to the late-Spielberg sanitation treatment—all his rough edges are rubbed away, and he’s left as the upright patriarch of a ragtag family on a South American vacation. The climax brings Indy full-circle, at least geographically: He’s back in the same jungles where he boulder-dodged at the start of Raiders, but instead of trading golden idols with Alfred Molina, he’s delivering helpful maxims like, “The treasure was knowledge.” (Indiana Jones says: Stay in school, kids!) He’s as active and robust as any geriatric hero to grace the silver screen, but there are moments—more than moments, really—when it’s difficult to avoid the suspicion that this magnificent artifact is a fake.
SEE IT: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is rated PG-13. It opens Thursday at Broadway, Cedar Hills, Eastport, Cinema 99, City Center, Division, Hilltop, Lake Twin, Lloyd Center, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Pioneer Place, Sherwood, Vancouver Plaza and Wilsonville.
The reason I write this response, however, is in regards to the comments that the writer made. He made constant referrences to the previous Indiana Jones movies, ie Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade, which made me first assume that he'd at least seen all of the Indy Jones flicks, but in the end, he said, "A pity, then, that the third reel is such a washout..." which I thought was strange because last I checked, this would be the fourth flick, with it's predecessors Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom, and the Last Crusade.
That being said, and now is when I go on my Nerdy Fanboy attack, but the action within "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" is reminiscent of the action in the Temple of Doom, which may or may not have been the reasoning behind the lack of inclusion, I mean, who would want to include evidence that points against their main point, which was, apparently, but I didn't get it until the conclusion, "its difficult to avoid the suspicion that this magnificent artifact is a fake..." which was a strange statement anyway when you know that he nearly had his heart ripped out in the second movie, and well, that was not the most realistic thing on the planet.
Regardless of what you think about the article or the style of writing, I think that the lack of information and the bold statement of it being the third reel, which is incorrect, warrant either a re-write or an editor's note/appology (mostly because they let it slip too. Doesn't anyone in that office know movies, or at least check DVD adds in the papers, 'cause TV ads, Circuit City Ads, Best Buy ads, and Target ads have all been advertising all THREE previous Indiana Jones movies). That's all I'm Saying.
Given that you're attempting to ridicule someone for not knowing movies, I find it amusing that you don't know what a reel is. DVD's are great, and digital projection is pretty cool, but seriously, dude? You don't know what a reel is? Google only takes a couple seconds, and then you don't sound like a jackass.
And on another note: if you're going to criticize someone else's writing, you should make sure your own doesn't read like a high school English paper.
Betcha yo wish you hadn't put your aka on there now. I will be looking forward to the next prolific review by 5th grader Scott Uhls in next month's "Highlights" magazine letters to the editor section. This time, though, hit the spelling and grammer checker on mom's computer.