Kelly Wand"Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Crystal Skull" Review
May 23rd 2008 05:13
I, like most of the audience I saw it with last night, was looking forward to this with childlike zeal. It even opens with some teenagers bird-dogging an Army convoy in a dragster while some Caddyshack gophers look on, and I and everyone in that audience felt just like those kids and those gophers. Indiana Jones 4, FFS! It was real, it was here, cinema history, childhoods born anew and all that, and maybe "Phantom Menace" was just a glitch that Spielberg and Harrison Ford must feel the same way we do about: blameless. There was palpable goodwill in that theatre.
We kept watching. Hopefully. Patiently. As the convoy stopped, some people got shot offscreen, and Indy's silhouette appeared, filling our hearts with eagerness and love...
And the characters start talking...
Okay, Cate Blanchett can read minds. No worries. But she can't read Indy's. Of course not. He's Indy and she's Cate Blanchett. They're in the warehouse from the end of "Raiders." They need Indy to help tell them that the mysterious thing they're looking for is highly magnetized. They also need him to demonstrate this personally several times. Why's he being so helpful to the Russians? It's Indy, he must have a plan. His friend Ray Winstone turns out to be evil. D'oh. Better not trust him anymore, huh. Indy starts a distraction by tossing his pistol on the floor, which is enough to make it go off. This is the only time Indy will shoot anyone in the whole movie, but fortunately we don't know that yet.
A big chase ensues. At one point a crate breaks open and we get a glimpse of the Ark inside. What the! Didn't see that coming. Say, why aren't the Russians here for that too? Actually, isn't there a shitload of metal from nails and equipment in this warehouse that should also be affected by the alien corpse? Never mind, Indy's swinging from a whip. This is the only time Indy will use his whip in the movie, but fortunately we don't know that yet.
Indy eventually manages to heroically run away without killing any of the Russians, including the unconscious one asleep on his shoulder after they roar across the desert in a rocket-car. Indy will actually kill no one in the movie and spend most of it getting captured by the same small group of Russians and helping them out, but fortunately we don't know that yet.
Indy wanders around in the desert until past daybreak and reaches a fake town just as they're about to test an atomic bomb. It's a bomb-site. You'd think he'd know that because he's smart and because everyone in the audience knew it before they even show the first mannequin but it's a funny bit so okay. Luckily there's a lead-lined refrigerator in the fake house that's the only genuine thing in the whole fake town. Indy climbs in, is nuked at ground zero, thrown a few miles by the concussion wave, and lands with a heavy clang. He gets out and watches the mushroom cloud thoughtfully. Must feel weird to see an awesome explosion that he hasn't caused.
The Feds are mad at Indy, probably for fucking up the results of their bomb test with his madcap refriger-omedy. He points out that he's a former Army colonel and Cold War spy. Huh? Okay. That stuff will surely pay off somehow later. He tells them he just happened to be at the Roswell incident when it happened and doesn't know anything about it except seeing "small bodies" and "wreckage." He seems pretty incurious about the whole thing, considering he's Indy but maybe extraterrestrial biz doesn't technically qualify as archaeology.
He meets Shia LaBoeuf, a greaser who likes to comb his ducktail a lot. Ha ha, that's great. I wish this character had his own franchise; can you imagine all the crazy stunts he can do with that comb? They talk at the malt shop. Most of the movie will consist of talking but fortunately we don't know that yet. Some Russian guys pull guns on them. Since Indy doesn't want anyone to get hurt, he has Shia punch a guy in the face and start a massive malt-shop brawl between jocks and greasers smashing broken bottles and chairs over each other's heads. Luckily, no one besides jocks and greasers happened to be in the malt shop just then, except for the two Russians. And the staff, I guess.
Indy and Shia outwit the Russians thanks to some clever motorcycle hijinx. The chase leads to the campus, where the massive bronze head of Marcus Brody's statue lands on the Russian's crotch. Does the Russian die from this? We don't get to see his face, but it still made the kid in the row ahead of me laugh and cheer and raise his arms. Do the Russians get captured? Never mind, Indy slides across a library floor on a motorcycle and a kid asks him a question about an upcoming exam. Indy tells him the answer will be "diffusion." Then he tells them that if they want to be better scholars, they need to leave the library. Then he leaves the library. Now Indy and Shia are at Indy's place looking at books and stuff. Good thing the Russians didn't think to post guys at Indy's residence.
Shia says his mom's in trouble, and something about John Hurt. Indy cares. They get on a plane and travel in a red line to a big red dot in South America. A nun shows them a room with some skulls carved into the walls and floor by a conquistador who went bananas staring into a crystal skull. Indy cares. He and Shia talk some more, then go to a graveyard and get attacked by natives with blowpipes. Why? It doesn't matter, really, when you think about it. The natives all give up because Indy beats one of them. Indy and Shia head deep into an underground labyrinth of tombs, which are apparently pretty common on this continent, this franchise, and this movie in particular. Deep in a stinky, scorpion-infested sepulchre, Indy defiles the remains of some dead conquistadors and finds a radioactively humming, elongated crystal skull. He thinks it was carved from a chunk of quartz and can't be a real alien's, despite all the insane shit we know he's seen firsthand. Then they come out and the Russians are waiting for them in ambush, along with Ray Winstone, kinda like the Nazis in "Raiders", only in this case the Russians weren't nearby doing their own excavation and as far as we know had no means of tracking Indy there. Wait, so this skull is related to the warehouse incident? Well, coincidence is okay, since the movies are full of "impossibilities" already. Aliens, plot-holes; it's all the same.
The Russians tie Indy to a chair and make him look into the eyes of the skull, which Cate Blanchett explains "doesn't speak to everybody." Only to protagonists it needs to convey plot stuff to. The Russians have Karen Allen prisoner. Indy's glad to see her. They also have John Hurt, who's wild-eyed crazy and talks gibberish but is still entrusted with holding the priceless skull that made him crazy. "You were never this interesting before," Indy tells his old friend. John Hurt should be fun to have around in every scene for the next hour. Even though he clutches the skull to his bosom throughout, his sanity inexplicably returns as the movie progresses. Indy's right: he is less interesting.
The Russians assign a single guard to watch Indy and all his feisty sidekicks and take them on a truck convoy into the middle of the jungle to do some stuff. Karen Allen tells Indy that Shia's his son. Indy cares. Shia doesn't like that Indy's his father, even though Indy's done tons of bad-ass shit since they met, including saved his life by blowing a poisoned dart into a native's mouth. Shia's not impressed. He thought his dad died during the war, which is much more glamorous to him than Indy's whip.
Indy and his friends all escape, bloodlessly, by crashing all the trucks and with the help of some monkeys that Shia can control with his magic ducktail. It's kinda like the truck sequence in "Raiders," only with CG monkeys instead of brutal harrowing stuntwork and ingenious choreography. The monkeys sure do hate psychic Russians. (All around me now, the audience is dead silent, including the teenager who cheered at Marcus Brody's bronzed ball-crushing head.) After the Russians somehow get rid of the monkeys, some fire ants show up and eat a few of them, including the mean one who always hits Indy in the face without making him bleed, and the ants would eat Indy too but luckily fire ants fear alien skulls just as much as Latin American humans do. This is the first of many hurdles our heroes will get through exclusively by John Hurt displaying the crystal skull but fortunately we don't know that yet.
Karen Allen tricks the Russians by driving over a cliff and hitting them with a big tree-branch. Pwned. Then they go over three waterfalls but luckily don't get pulverized, or separated, and John Hurt doesn't lose the skull in the rapids. (For the record, I don't expect these things to happen in an Indiana Jones movie, but you get the sense that the characters all know they're in an Indiana Jones movie and like the filmmakers don't even waste time considering such possibilities. So you're watching people not worry about not getting hurt.) The Russians probably won't be so lucky in their descent because they don't have John Hurt.
Indy and Co., including Ray Winstone, whom Indy now trusts again because Indy just doesn't give a shit about anything at this point, reach a spooky pyramid temple place where more natives suddenly pop out of cocoons and chase them around. Luckily, John Hurt waves the skull around again, which the natives didn't see till the last second, and our heroes descend into an idyllic valley for the finale of the most beloved action tetralogy in movie history. They find a stone column covered with faces. John Hurt mutters something, so Indy has them all crush off the faces using big rocks (instead of using the indestructible skull). Sand pours out of the obelisk. A pit opens beneath them and now they're running down a spiral staircase into the depths. The stairs suddenly start receding into the walls so they have to run faster. Luckily there's water at the bottom so they didn't really have to run faster.
They enter a big cavern filled with dull clay pots and statuary. Indy cares. Greedy Ray Winstone pockets a bunch of stuff. They reach a big door-like pictogram. Luckily John Hurt's there again with the skull, which (!) is a key that opens the door when you put it in the alien-skull-shaped depression. (Hm, this feels like the end already and the only big tentpole action sequence was the truck stuff. Has Karen Allen done anything since she showed up? She smiles a lot. She "fights" with Indy a couple times because she's feisty but they don't have much to fight about. I take it she stopped drinking too, even though that was her big superpower.)
But back to the "kingdom." They enter a round chamber with twelve alien skeletons sitting on big thrones, all of which have skulls except for one. There aren't any traps or puzzles or anything, unless you count the skull-less spinal column that says "Insert Skull Here." John Hurt doesn't actually even need to set the skull on, it just flies out of his hand and attaches itself. Then the Russians (who shot all the bloodthirsty natives, which I guess makes them bad) show up and capture them all again, because Ray Winstone's evil again. Indy must really be fed up with Winstone. The room starts spinning and a portal to "another dimension" opens up. Indy knows it's another dimension because he's an archaeologist. Indy suggests they just leave, so the Russians let them go, then the Russians get sucked into the other dimension. What happens to them? Not of interest. Cate Blanchett stays, because she wants to "know." The alien skeletons all merge into a single annoyed alien and makes Cate Blanchett's eyes catch fire and her body vaporize. Kinda like the end of "Raiders" only with more CGI and Cate Blanchett-ier. Ray Winstone wants to stay because he's greedy, even though the place is coming apart at the seams and they have no time. He's so greedy, he doesn't value his own life! He gets sucked into the air. Even though Ray Winstone's screwed him over repeatedly and helped kill a bunch of innocent guards at Area 51, Indy tries to save Ray Winstone with his whip, but neither of them try very hard and Ray Winstone gets sucked into the vortex (prior to which he quite presciently assures Indy he'll "be okay"; no, for real!).
Indy, Shia, Karen Allen and John Hurt all miraculously get to the top of the valley a few miles away in time to see the pyramid explode into chunks of CGI that spin around in a vast CGI cyclone, and then a big CGI saucer comes out and rises into the CG-sky. They watch it go. Indy says something about knowledge being the euphemism for gold/treasure, even though none of them know anything about what just happened.
Logically, Indy and Karen Allen get married, because who wouldn't after all that. Right after they kiss, the wind blows Indy's hat into the church from where it was apparently just sitting out on the porch. Shia tries to put it on but Indy takes it. The audience clapped at this, since the hat doesn't really go with Shia's ducktail anyway. Credits roll.
Apparently the reason this movie didn't come out 20 years ago was because the script wasn't considered up to snuff till now. I'm glad they waited. And I also know now, even more than the Star Wars prequels made me realize, that what made the original Indys and Star Warses so memorable was that they could only have existed in the small pockets of time when they did. I take that back. Screenwriter David Koepp should be slammed in the nuts with a bronze head. I'll even give up my percent of the gross.
We kept watching. Hopefully. Patiently. As the convoy stopped, some people got shot offscreen, and Indy's silhouette appeared, filling our hearts with eagerness and love...
And the characters start talking...
Okay, Cate Blanchett can read minds. No worries. But she can't read Indy's. Of course not. He's Indy and she's Cate Blanchett. They're in the warehouse from the end of "Raiders." They need Indy to help tell them that the mysterious thing they're looking for is highly magnetized. They also need him to demonstrate this personally several times. Why's he being so helpful to the Russians? It's Indy, he must have a plan. His friend Ray Winstone turns out to be evil. D'oh. Better not trust him anymore, huh. Indy starts a distraction by tossing his pistol on the floor, which is enough to make it go off. This is the only time Indy will shoot anyone in the whole movie, but fortunately we don't know that yet.
A big chase ensues. At one point a crate breaks open and we get a glimpse of the Ark inside. What the! Didn't see that coming. Say, why aren't the Russians here for that too? Actually, isn't there a shitload of metal from nails and equipment in this warehouse that should also be affected by the alien corpse? Never mind, Indy's swinging from a whip. This is the only time Indy will use his whip in the movie, but fortunately we don't know that yet.
Indy eventually manages to heroically run away without killing any of the Russians, including the unconscious one asleep on his shoulder after they roar across the desert in a rocket-car. Indy will actually kill no one in the movie and spend most of it getting captured by the same small group of Russians and helping them out, but fortunately we don't know that yet.
Indy wanders around in the desert until past daybreak and reaches a fake town just as they're about to test an atomic bomb. It's a bomb-site. You'd think he'd know that because he's smart and because everyone in the audience knew it before they even show the first mannequin but it's a funny bit so okay. Luckily there's a lead-lined refrigerator in the fake house that's the only genuine thing in the whole fake town. Indy climbs in, is nuked at ground zero, thrown a few miles by the concussion wave, and lands with a heavy clang. He gets out and watches the mushroom cloud thoughtfully. Must feel weird to see an awesome explosion that he hasn't caused.
The Feds are mad at Indy, probably for fucking up the results of their bomb test with his madcap refriger-omedy. He points out that he's a former Army colonel and Cold War spy. Huh? Okay. That stuff will surely pay off somehow later. He tells them he just happened to be at the Roswell incident when it happened and doesn't know anything about it except seeing "small bodies" and "wreckage." He seems pretty incurious about the whole thing, considering he's Indy but maybe extraterrestrial biz doesn't technically qualify as archaeology.
He meets Shia LaBoeuf, a greaser who likes to comb his ducktail a lot. Ha ha, that's great. I wish this character had his own franchise; can you imagine all the crazy stunts he can do with that comb? They talk at the malt shop. Most of the movie will consist of talking but fortunately we don't know that yet. Some Russian guys pull guns on them. Since Indy doesn't want anyone to get hurt, he has Shia punch a guy in the face and start a massive malt-shop brawl between jocks and greasers smashing broken bottles and chairs over each other's heads. Luckily, no one besides jocks and greasers happened to be in the malt shop just then, except for the two Russians. And the staff, I guess.
Indy and Shia outwit the Russians thanks to some clever motorcycle hijinx. The chase leads to the campus, where the massive bronze head of Marcus Brody's statue lands on the Russian's crotch. Does the Russian die from this? We don't get to see his face, but it still made the kid in the row ahead of me laugh and cheer and raise his arms. Do the Russians get captured? Never mind, Indy slides across a library floor on a motorcycle and a kid asks him a question about an upcoming exam. Indy tells him the answer will be "diffusion." Then he tells them that if they want to be better scholars, they need to leave the library. Then he leaves the library. Now Indy and Shia are at Indy's place looking at books and stuff. Good thing the Russians didn't think to post guys at Indy's residence.
Shia says his mom's in trouble, and something about John Hurt. Indy cares. They get on a plane and travel in a red line to a big red dot in South America. A nun shows them a room with some skulls carved into the walls and floor by a conquistador who went bananas staring into a crystal skull. Indy cares. He and Shia talk some more, then go to a graveyard and get attacked by natives with blowpipes. Why? It doesn't matter, really, when you think about it. The natives all give up because Indy beats one of them. Indy and Shia head deep into an underground labyrinth of tombs, which are apparently pretty common on this continent, this franchise, and this movie in particular. Deep in a stinky, scorpion-infested sepulchre, Indy defiles the remains of some dead conquistadors and finds a radioactively humming, elongated crystal skull. He thinks it was carved from a chunk of quartz and can't be a real alien's, despite all the insane shit we know he's seen firsthand. Then they come out and the Russians are waiting for them in ambush, along with Ray Winstone, kinda like the Nazis in "Raiders", only in this case the Russians weren't nearby doing their own excavation and as far as we know had no means of tracking Indy there. Wait, so this skull is related to the warehouse incident? Well, coincidence is okay, since the movies are full of "impossibilities" already. Aliens, plot-holes; it's all the same.
The Russians tie Indy to a chair and make him look into the eyes of the skull, which Cate Blanchett explains "doesn't speak to everybody." Only to protagonists it needs to convey plot stuff to. The Russians have Karen Allen prisoner. Indy's glad to see her. They also have John Hurt, who's wild-eyed crazy and talks gibberish but is still entrusted with holding the priceless skull that made him crazy. "You were never this interesting before," Indy tells his old friend. John Hurt should be fun to have around in every scene for the next hour. Even though he clutches the skull to his bosom throughout, his sanity inexplicably returns as the movie progresses. Indy's right: he is less interesting.
The Russians assign a single guard to watch Indy and all his feisty sidekicks and take them on a truck convoy into the middle of the jungle to do some stuff. Karen Allen tells Indy that Shia's his son. Indy cares. Shia doesn't like that Indy's his father, even though Indy's done tons of bad-ass shit since they met, including saved his life by blowing a poisoned dart into a native's mouth. Shia's not impressed. He thought his dad died during the war, which is much more glamorous to him than Indy's whip.
Indy and his friends all escape, bloodlessly, by crashing all the trucks and with the help of some monkeys that Shia can control with his magic ducktail. It's kinda like the truck sequence in "Raiders," only with CG monkeys instead of brutal harrowing stuntwork and ingenious choreography. The monkeys sure do hate psychic Russians. (All around me now, the audience is dead silent, including the teenager who cheered at Marcus Brody's bronzed ball-crushing head.) After the Russians somehow get rid of the monkeys, some fire ants show up and eat a few of them, including the mean one who always hits Indy in the face without making him bleed, and the ants would eat Indy too but luckily fire ants fear alien skulls just as much as Latin American humans do. This is the first of many hurdles our heroes will get through exclusively by John Hurt displaying the crystal skull but fortunately we don't know that yet.
Karen Allen tricks the Russians by driving over a cliff and hitting them with a big tree-branch. Pwned. Then they go over three waterfalls but luckily don't get pulverized, or separated, and John Hurt doesn't lose the skull in the rapids. (For the record, I don't expect these things to happen in an Indiana Jones movie, but you get the sense that the characters all know they're in an Indiana Jones movie and like the filmmakers don't even waste time considering such possibilities. So you're watching people not worry about not getting hurt.) The Russians probably won't be so lucky in their descent because they don't have John Hurt.
Indy and Co., including Ray Winstone, whom Indy now trusts again because Indy just doesn't give a shit about anything at this point, reach a spooky pyramid temple place where more natives suddenly pop out of cocoons and chase them around. Luckily, John Hurt waves the skull around again, which the natives didn't see till the last second, and our heroes descend into an idyllic valley for the finale of the most beloved action tetralogy in movie history. They find a stone column covered with faces. John Hurt mutters something, so Indy has them all crush off the faces using big rocks (instead of using the indestructible skull). Sand pours out of the obelisk. A pit opens beneath them and now they're running down a spiral staircase into the depths. The stairs suddenly start receding into the walls so they have to run faster. Luckily there's water at the bottom so they didn't really have to run faster.
They enter a big cavern filled with dull clay pots and statuary. Indy cares. Greedy Ray Winstone pockets a bunch of stuff. They reach a big door-like pictogram. Luckily John Hurt's there again with the skull, which (!) is a key that opens the door when you put it in the alien-skull-shaped depression. (Hm, this feels like the end already and the only big tentpole action sequence was the truck stuff. Has Karen Allen done anything since she showed up? She smiles a lot. She "fights" with Indy a couple times because she's feisty but they don't have much to fight about. I take it she stopped drinking too, even though that was her big superpower.)
But back to the "kingdom." They enter a round chamber with twelve alien skeletons sitting on big thrones, all of which have skulls except for one. There aren't any traps or puzzles or anything, unless you count the skull-less spinal column that says "Insert Skull Here." John Hurt doesn't actually even need to set the skull on, it just flies out of his hand and attaches itself. Then the Russians (who shot all the bloodthirsty natives, which I guess makes them bad) show up and capture them all again, because Ray Winstone's evil again. Indy must really be fed up with Winstone. The room starts spinning and a portal to "another dimension" opens up. Indy knows it's another dimension because he's an archaeologist. Indy suggests they just leave, so the Russians let them go, then the Russians get sucked into the other dimension. What happens to them? Not of interest. Cate Blanchett stays, because she wants to "know." The alien skeletons all merge into a single annoyed alien and makes Cate Blanchett's eyes catch fire and her body vaporize. Kinda like the end of "Raiders" only with more CGI and Cate Blanchett-ier. Ray Winstone wants to stay because he's greedy, even though the place is coming apart at the seams and they have no time. He's so greedy, he doesn't value his own life! He gets sucked into the air. Even though Ray Winstone's screwed him over repeatedly and helped kill a bunch of innocent guards at Area 51, Indy tries to save Ray Winstone with his whip, but neither of them try very hard and Ray Winstone gets sucked into the vortex (prior to which he quite presciently assures Indy he'll "be okay"; no, for real!).
Indy, Shia, Karen Allen and John Hurt all miraculously get to the top of the valley a few miles away in time to see the pyramid explode into chunks of CGI that spin around in a vast CGI cyclone, and then a big CGI saucer comes out and rises into the CG-sky. They watch it go. Indy says something about knowledge being the euphemism for gold/treasure, even though none of them know anything about what just happened.
Logically, Indy and Karen Allen get married, because who wouldn't after all that. Right after they kiss, the wind blows Indy's hat into the church from where it was apparently just sitting out on the porch. Shia tries to put it on but Indy takes it. The audience clapped at this, since the hat doesn't really go with Shia's ducktail anyway. Credits roll.
Apparently the reason this movie didn't come out 20 years ago was because the script wasn't considered up to snuff till now. I'm glad they waited. And I also know now, even more than the Star Wars prequels made me realize, that what made the original Indys and Star Warses so memorable was that they could only have existed in the small pockets of time when they did. I take that back. Screenwriter David Koepp should be slammed in the nuts with a bronze head. I'll even give up my percent of the gross.
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