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Top Ten Reasons Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Doesn't Work
05/23/2008 There are spoilers in here. Remember when your friend went to see Episode One and warned you to never, ever see it because it would destroy part of your childhood? We're that guy, and we're talking about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. We had faith. Spielberg was involved, so maybe he would moderate Lucas' worst tendencies: the gratuitous use of computer animation, the boring and trite dialog, and the insufficient story. We were wrong about that. This movie was so bad that Lucas and Spielberg should have started over once they saw the final product. They might be rich enough to do that. In fact, there are so many issues with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull that we thought it would be easier to make a top ten list of reason this movie was depressing. So depressing that Spielberg and Lucas should send us all a stimulus check like Bush did. 10. There's no mystery. Spielberg is the sort of fellow who tells you the punch line to a joke before telling the joke, and then insists on going through the whole joke anyway. We see that they're in Area 51 in the opening scene, and everyone knows that means ALIENS. There's no reason to reveal this until we see the titular Crystal Skull. So we're stuck in the theater, not wondering about anything. In fact, we know exactly what the Skull is supposed to do the whole time. With the Ark and the Grail, we at least had to wonder what would power they possessed, if any. With this, the only suspense is what the special effect will look like in the final scene. 9. The irrelevant characters. Ray Winstone's character is irrelevant to the story. He appears, disappears, crosses and doublecrosses, and there is no reason his character needs to be in this bloated film. Same with Marian Ravenwood. In fact, it seems like they finished the film, then tacked her scenes onto the movie with a staple gun. 8. Even the archaeology stuff is uninteresting. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy uses the amulet at a certain time of day to find the location of the Ark. The idea of ancient geometry and miniature cities and legends was very cool. In this movie, Indy just announces translations of ancient graffiti. We never have an opportunity to engage it. The archaeology in this story is bland exposition, not part of the fun. 7. Shia LaBeouf. We actually like the kid. He was fine in Transformers, and we even liked the Project Greenlight movie, but he is terribly miscast here. Are we the only ones that can see that Josh Hartnett already is Indiana Jones? He just needs to be sent to wardrobe. Make some movies about the younger Indy, and use Hartnett. Remember when Indy is telling the story about riding with Pancho Villa? Put Josh Hartnett in that movie and you'll get nine more dollars out of each of us. 6. No intensity. At no point did we gasp, cringe, tense up, wonder, or feel nervous. It was like watching cards being dealt. We didn't know exactly which card we'd see, but we knew the complete set so nothing could be that surprising. If this movie had been called Wichita Sam and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull it would have simply been laborious, but the fact that it is an Indiana Jones movie, with all the faith and expectation and waiting that that entails, made it positively painful to watch. 5. Embarrassing moments. From the photo of Sean Connery on Indy's desk to our glimpse of the Ark in a broken crate, there seemed to be an agenda: remind the audience of the movies this one is not. Harrison Ford gives it the old college try, but the dialog never really works, and there were way too many references to how old he is. 4. The aliens. Let's assume for a moment that the entire alien angle for the story was a good idea. The Crystal Skull looks like the alien from Alien, and watching John Hurt carry it around like a football, all the while behaving as if he is actually in a Harry Potter film is a bit much. If he had fallen over and a baby alien had come out of his belly, we might have been on board. When we finally see the alien, it looks like the alien head that gets printed on rolling papers for stoners. After all this time, with all the creative energy involved in the project, the alien is the same alien we've seen a thousand times. 3. Over the top situations. There's a scene in one of the Jurassic Park movies where one of the children, a gymnast we have learned, uses her gym moves to kill one of the dinosaurs. This is the sort of thing that makes an audience cringe, and ruins an otherwise interesting action sequence. There were no fewer than five such cringe moments in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull *Indy avoids a nuclear blast by getting into a fridge, which is then hurled into the desert. *They take a little boat car over two gigantic waterfalls. *Every romantic moment in the film *Marian Ravenwood clutching the steering wheel of the boat car on the bank of the lake *Mutt's hair-combing affectation is NOT charming like Indy's hat trick We expect a level of unrealistic action, and the other Indiana Jones movies have plenty of it, but the scenes in the new movie go so far that they end up insulting the audience. 2. They couldn't even use Cate Blanchett well. Don't get us wrong - we'd pay money to watch Blanchett read the phone book, but there is absolutely nothing going on with her character in this film. She is without motivation, totally unthreatening, and her lines are flat. Maybe she wasn't given anything to work with, but Galadriel with a BDSM outfit and no glowing aura doesn't get it done. Its not like she had to bring everything to the party... everyone knew someone else would bring the whip. 1. The computer animation. It just looks fake, and we were unable to suspend disbelief long enough to get into the story. At the end when they're running through the flooding water, you can tell the water is behind them and in front of them, like Photoshop layers, but they're not getting wet. The chase scene through the jungle suffers from the same problems... perspective doesn't work, the background almost blends, but not quite. The ants looked like a knock-off scene from the Mummy. And don't get us started on the prairie dogs, which look like they're from the intro video for Railroad Tycoon 3. We're calling them Sand Ewoks. The whole thing looks like National Treasure. The earlier films look so good because everything was tangible. They actually flipped that truck over, and someone had to hang on to the bullwhip (yes, we know it was a safety harness, etc). It fooled the eye. This doesn't, and it goes to prove that animation for its own sake is about the only thing that can kill Indiana Jones. Comments [post a comment]
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Tuesday, October 14, 2008
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Indiana Jones Crystal Skull Harrison Ford Cate Blanchett Shia Labeouf Steven Spielberg George Lucas