A Review of "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"

At least the poster still looks Indiana Jones-esque

Welcome back. I am a few days late posting as I recently had not one but two whole family Christmases. The holidays are hectic but I'll be darned if they aren't worth it. Anywho, back to the action while I have a lull in... uh... the action? I guess. I don't know, I type as I think and I ain't got time for backspacing.

"Listen, ma'am. I may be old, but I can still go
on adventures!" "Well listen to us, Doctor--"
"HUH?! WHAT WAS THAT? LET ME SPEAK
TO YOUR MANAGER!"

So far, we've tackled Raiders of the Lost Ark, years ago we tackled Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and then recently last week we finished out the trilogy with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. All three, in my opinion, stellar films in their own right... though again, take Temple of Doom with a grain of salt. As we went through the 90s, several scripts for a fourth Indiana Jones film circulated. We had some good ideas, some not so great ideas. Plus, Steven Spielberg himself said he brought the curtain down on Last Crusade by having them "ride off into the sunset" at the end of the movie, as he thought he and George Lucas would mature and move on to other aspects of filmmaking. While Lucas went on to sort of disappear in the early and mid 90s, Spielberg kept right on rolling with wild blockbusters like Jurassic Park and Oscar winners like Schindler's List. Meanwhile, George Lucas would dust off his old Star Wars franchise with the Prequel Trilogy... and it is very well detailed in this blog how those went, across many posts. But what about Indiana Jones?

Well, after Spielberg finished with War of the Worlds and Lucas finished the same year with Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, the two returned together and finally got the ball rolling on the fourth film in the Indiana Jones franchise. Only thing now is... star Harrison Ford was in his mid 60s, would that affect Indy's on-screen performance in any way? Plus... rumors had circulated in what all the plot points for the film would be as far back as the mid 90s, and the ideas were a tad... "not Indiana Jones ish". What was once called Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars, and Indiana Jones and the Attack of the Giant Ants (Lucas's joke title)... as well as Indiana Jones and the Son of Indiana Jones (screenwriter David Koepp's idea)... we have arrived in 2008, and the May month release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. A movie that teaches us age and mileage on a character doesn't really mess with their ability to do stunts and dramatic feats of acrobatics since you'll be too distracted at all of the silly Star Wars prequel-esque cartoony elements shoved into the film.

"Excuse me! Can we get a table for five?" "But
there's only four of you." "Ma'am, the skull?"
"Oh my apologies, I thought it was fine china."

Moving the timeline of the character ahead to match up with Ford's age at the time... the movie takes place in 1957. After a very American Graffiti style opening (tributing Lucas's own teenage years of racing cars)... Soviet KGB agents, working under Irina Spalko (Cate "What am I doing here?" Blanchett), kidnap Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) and his partner George "Mac" MicHale (Ray Winestone). The Soviets infiltrate a secret government warehouse, located in Nevada, labeled "Hangar 51"... the same hangar at the end of Raiders it turns out! You'll notice one of the smashed boxes in the ensuing chase contains none other than the Ark of the Covenant, still locked in that warehouse to this day. The Soviets force Jones to locate a mummified alien corpse from the Roswell UFO incident, which he was forced to work on ten years earlier. Shortly after retrieving the corpse, Mac reveals he has become a double agent on the KGB’s payroll. Jones unsuccessfully attempts to steal the body, and fights with Spalko's henchman Dovchenko (Igor Jijikine), before escaping to a nearby model town right before an atomic bomb test. Yep... you know what's coming up if you've seen the movie. We witness Indiana Jones, archaeologist, world adventurer, outright defender against Nazis and bloodthirsty Thuggee cultists... take shelter in a lead-lined refrigerator while a nuclear blast goes off as a test. He emerges, un-concussed, unharmed, and overall very well... as he stands on a cliffside and watches the mushroom cloud form. Probably absorbing lethal levels of radiation in seconds, but eh... he's Indiana Jones, and ergo immune to everything. Try shooting him, see how far you get! Ha! Anywho, after the nuclear farce that coined the internet phrase "Nuking the Fridge" (in tribute to Happy Days' "Jumping the Shark")... FBI agents eventually rescue, decontaminate, and interrogate Jones, suspecting him of working for the Soviets. Though eventually freed, Jones is put on an indefinite leave of absence from Marshall College, and dean Charles Stanforth (Jim Broadbent) resigns to spare Jones from being fired... which is, I'm not sure, but I think a silly thing to do? I mean... he must really love Jones to terminate his own job just so Jones doesn't have to lose his, but at the end of the day neither of them will be working so... win? Yay?

"Mutt don't tell anyone, but Indy is blind as a
bat, so don't let him have any heavy artillery--"
"Shove over guys, I'mma blow up some Soviets!"

While Indy attempts to go start a life as a hermit, departing on a train... greaser Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf... remember Shia LaBeouf? 2008 was wild indeed!) approaches Jones, notifying him that Jones’ former colleague, Professor Harold Oxley (John "Why am I here?" Hurt), found a crystal skull in Peru, but has since been kidnapped along with Mutt's mother, who went after him. Jones tells Mutt of the legend of crystal skulls found in Akator, and Mutt gives Jones a letter from his mother, which contains a riddle from Oxley in an ancient language. Two Soviet agents attempt to capture them, but Jones and Mutt escape and, following the riddle's meaning, reach Peru. At the local psychiatric hospital, carvings on the walls and floor of Oxley's cell lead them to the grave of Francisco de Orellana, a Conquistador who searched for Akator. They find the skull at the grave, and Jones reasons that Oxley had returned it there. While the two are departing the tomb, Mac and the Soviets take them hostage and deliver them to the Soviet camp in the Amazon jungle. There, the pair find an addled Oxley and Mutt's mother, who is actually Marion Ravenwood (Karen "Thank you for having me here" Allen), an old partner of Jones'; and of course, much to the surprise of no one, she reveals while she and Indy sink in a sand pit that Mutt is Indy's son, Henry Jones III just before he and Oxley save them... right before the Soviets find them again. It's a very back and forth, see-saw kinda story we've got going on here. You'll get real nauseated real fast at how to-and-fro we go with the Soviets and their constant "Do we have the heroes captive or don't we" schtick. 

Spalko believes the crystal skull belongs to an alien life form that holds great psychic power. Finding more skulls in Akator will grant the Soviet Union the ability to control the world via telepathy. Jones realizes that Oxley is attempting to communicate through automatic writing, and locates a route to Akator. The next day, while en route to the ancient city, Jones and his team fight their way out of the KGB's clutches, with Dovchenko being devoured by a swarm of army ants. Since Indiana Jones staple Pat Roach had passed away, it makes sense he couldn't have another on-screen brawl with Indy, but this counts as Indy's "big man brawl" scene, and it's actually quite brutal of a fight. However, the army of ants swarming around makes it kind of video game-ish and silly. Not to mention, other silly-and-or-stupid things happen during the jungle chase. For one thing, Mutt swings from vines with monkeys. I don't know why I hate it, but I do. I just find it so clearly over-the-top, and it just strikes me as something that doesn't belong nor look good in an Indiana Jones movie. In another annoying plot twist (annoyed moreso later on), Mac informs Jones he is a CIA double agent... faking an allegiance to the Soviets in exchange for CIA intel. If this doesn't give you a headache now, trust me it will in a sec. After surviving three waterfalls... each deadlier than the last but somehow nobody dies, even in an amphibious vehicle, Jones and Oxley identify a skull-like rock formation that leads them to Akator, unaware that Mac had lied about being a CIA agent and has been dropping transceivers to allow the surviving Soviets to track them.

Pictured: Harrison Ford visits the set of the
Star Wars prequels and poses with the actors.

Jones's team evades the city's guardians, gains access to the temple, and finds it filled with artifacts from many ancient civilizations. It is here, right before they enter the temple home... Mac holds a gun to them, declares he's betraying them again... which reveals to us he's the ignoramus leaving the Soviets the transceivers. As the Soviets join them in the chamber, the entire troupe of characters realize the aliens are "archaeologists" studying the different cultures of Earth, showing thirteen crystal skeletons, one of which is missing its skull. When Spalko replaces the missing skull, the skeletons telepathically offer to give a reward to the group, using Oxley as a translator. She demands to simply know all the knowledge of the aliens; the aliens reanimate and transfer an overwhelming amount of knowledge into her mind, killing her. A portal to their dimension is activated, and Mac and all of the remaining Soviets are drawn in, while Jones and his team escape. Good riddance, ya pathological liar! As the city crumbles, a large flying saucer rises from the ruins and departs for another dimension, and the waters of the Amazon flood the hollow left by its takeoff. The following year, Jones is reinstated at Marshall College as its associate dean, and marries Marion, with Oxley, who has regained his sanity, and Mutt as witnesses. There's even a tease that Mutt may take over as the next "adventuring archaeologist" when Indy's fedora blows off a hat rack and lands on the floor, but Harrison Ford says "No" to his Mutt and snatches the hat back, protecting his mantle and thankfully preventing a Shia LaBeouf-led Indiana Jones movie.

"Oy! That nuclear blast shockwave sending me
bouncing across rocky landscape at Mach 3,
throttling inside the fridge like a marble in a tin
can sure is going to leave a bump on my keister!"

Boy, this one is... hard to judge. On the one hand, it looks and feels just like an Indiana Jones film for the most part. It was filmed in a non-digital film format. Something that George Lucas had adopted for shooting the Star Wars prequel trilogy. It ended up helping because, as Lucas mentioned, it "looked like it was shot three years after Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, you'd never know there was twenty years between shooting." So it still looks like a spiritual cousin of the first three movies. Also, even twenty years later, many of the familiar sound effects are carried over from the first three films, such as the punching sounds, the gunshots, the whip, and even the famous Wilhelm scream sound effect carries over into this film during the car chase through the library. John Williams returns and conducts his fourth Indiana Jones film score, echoing the famous "Raiders March" for the soundtrack as well. Obviously, Harrison Ford kicks butt, even in his mid 60s for Indiana Jones. You wouldn't even guess that there was any slowing down or aging, to begin with. Ford kept in tremendous shape throughout the 90s and 2000s, hoping another Indiana Jones film would be made and even he's the grizzled-looking older gent in this one, he's still Indiana Jones in my book, and kicks ass just as much as Raiders, Temple, or Crusade. Also it works well that we didn't have to face the Nazis again... they made the smart move of going the fresher route and, in keeping with the setting of 1957 by introducing the SOVIETS with their big villain this time around. So the movie really has a lot going for it. Государственный гимн СССР, know what I'm sayin'?

Yes, I am an alien.
Yes, I am in an Indiana Jones movie.
We exist.

Now what doesn't work? Well. Let's let the big cat out of the bag first, as she's the most cumbersome, morbidly obese cat. You know, she breathes real hard, wheezing everywhere, stepping and slobbering on all the other cats. Yeah... that big cat. Let's talk about the aliens. Should aliens be the center point of an Indiana Jones story? What does Indiana Jones usually become equated with? Mossy temples? Hidden jungles? Treasures sheathed behind deadly booby traps? Fist fighting the Nazis? Leaping across chasms? Challenging religion and fate by obtaining their artifacts? FRIGGIN' SPACE ALIENS? Well, that seems like a sore thumb that sticks out. Something about this feels... weird. I won't be one of the group that says it's horribly wrong, and sacrilegious, and that it disses everything about the Indiana Jones mythology... but I will just be the one that says it's... weird. I don't know it just feels weird to me. I mean it feels justifiable, like what else was Indy going to hunt for this time? Ra's Left Testicle? Tutankhamen's car keys? George Washington's knitting needles? Something about the theme had to change... but space aliens doesn't seem like it... fits to me. I don't know it's so hard to explain! I open it up to discussion in the comment threads in this post, or where this post is linked. Perhaps all of you reading this can make better sense out of it than I can and compel better arguments for or against.

On top of that, it feels very 2000s Lucasfilm-y unfortunately. When George went haywire with filmmaking/story decisions, that are very well documented in this blog's history. Visit our archives to read more! There's a plethora of George-questioning in there. I used to call it George-bashing, but let's face it, I can't ethically bash the guy who brought us Star Wars and Indiana Jones in the same breath, can I? No siree. However, I wouldn't be doing my hobby (a "job" is something someone does in exchange for compensation of some kind) if I didn't point out that, a lot of questionable film decisions were made here. Nuking the fridge, swinging with monkeys, Mac's back-and-forth, forward-and-back, to-and-fro, wishy-washy stance on who he's serving at any given time, Shia LaBeouf... there's a lot of really good in this movie, but there's also an equal amount of silly if you ask me.

"Legend says that a crystal skull was stolen from
a mythical lost city in the Amazon, supposedly
built out of solid gold, guarded by the living dead."
"Sir, I was just asking if you had any references
for this Burger King Manager position--" 

The final question: Is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as bad as everyone make it out to be? In my opinion? No. Not as bad as everyone says it is. A lot of your common "reviewers" don't dissect enough and just pile on the bandwagon. Is it weaker, like on the par with Temple of Doom? Actually, personally, despite my defense of it... I'd pile it right below Temple of Doom as currently, the weakest Indiana Jones film we have. I went through these so that we can lead up to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny on June 30th, 2023 in style. Will that one be the weakest after this one? Does Harrison's age have a direct impact on the matter? I doubt it. That won't stop us from seeing memes about "grandpa" Indiana Jones though trying to catch a nap in between adventures.

To sum it up: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull still is a lot of fun, and doesn't deserve much of the hate-bashing it gets. It still has silly elements, see above for a detailed list, but beyond that. It's pretty solid. It isn't as awesome to behold as Raiders or Crusade, and doesn't have the same shock-value style entertainment that sort of... I don't know "sucks you in" I guess, as Temple of Doom. It exists kind of as a genus of an Indiana Jones film all on its own. A kind of "late 2000s CGI laden" Indiana Jones film. Despite it's, shall we say, "quirky" elements... it's still a quality entry to the saga as a whole, in my opinion. On its worst day I give it a C, but if I'm in a more decent mood it's probably on the B- wavelength of it. Give it a watch if you're in the mood and you've seen the other Indy films, but managed to skip this one somehow. At least give it a try. Let me know how you liked it or didn't like it in the comments!