May 27 2008
Indiana Jones and the fate of George Lucas
Saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls on Saturday. Spoilers if you follow the link…
Well, it was disappointing. More specifically:
Harrison Ford was his usual spot-on self as Indiana Jones. His age was nearly appropriate for this film. They made him sad and worn, and with too little energy to fight the nonsense of the McCarthyite paranoia running through 1950s academia.
And then they dropped him into a five-minute fist fight with a six-foot baddie. I know it’s a tradition that Indy has to get the crap beaten out of him by some guy bigger than him; but it’s also traditional that something witty can happen to let Indy escape — in the past we’ve had Indy shoot the master swordsman; or an aeroplane propellor dice the bruiser. But on this occasion the fight just went on and on like the alley scene in They Live. A missed opportunity.
Shia LeBoeuf’s character was an ideal foil to Indy’s calculated sceptical nature — full of swagger and bravado. This was the perfect situation to reverse the roles of Indiana and his father from The Last Crusade. Indy should have become his umbrella-carrying, Charlemagne-quoting father who find, when he sits down, the “sholution preshentsh itshelf”. But Indy was the same as before, only greyer, and Shia LeBoeuf’s impetuousness was lost.
Similarly Karen Allen’s personality was completely subsumed to some rather pathetic happy families routine. What was the scriptwriter thinking? I want to see Raiders of the Lost Ark again to make up for it all.
Most galling of all was the plot — a mostly nonsensical reworking of Erich Von Daniken/Stargate alien conspiracies. It wasn’t a real story, dammit! The deadliness of the aliens at the end was completely baffling (knowledge makes your eyes combust?!) and unwarranted. The bad guy has to deserve their comeuppance, but Cate Blanchett surely didn’t. Maybe this is just a lack of anti-Communist hysteria in our blood, but none of the people I spoke to thought she was evil enough to die.
I’m sad to say this, but this one probably rates beneath Temple of Doom just for the lousy story. The ending was appalling guys! I’ve seen it noted several times that George Lucas had a lot to do with the plotting of this film, so there’s another epic film series he’s managed to ruin.
Or as I saw one commenter say, “The best bit was when George Lucas wiped his cock on the curtains after raping my childhood”.
Scriptwriters, I think you’ll find.
Indiana Jones never really made sense, it’s just that religious relics seem more respectable, somehow, than the other pulp mainstays which this one throws at the wall.
Was she evil enough to die? That bit about wanting to use the scull to control peoples’ minds and essentially turn them into slaves might suggest so. Hey, she was a pulp commie… what do you expect?
And yes, someone needs to keep George Lucas the hell away from films. Especially great series he created, it seems.
That bit with the ants still makes me shiver, though. Shame about all the CG.
I would take issue with the idea that Indiana Jones never made sense. Within the confines of the story it is easy to see that — despite Indy’s scepticism — most religious artefacts seem to have pretty meaty powers. The Ark had the power to melt faces, the Khali worshippers could pull a man’s still-beating heart out of his chest without damage, and the Grail could give everlasting life (and heal bullet wounds). That all seems very reasonable in its own context. But this plot doesn’t even make sense in itself. This would have been rejected immediately had it been an X Files story. How did the aliens manage to have their skulls stolen when they were still alive? Why do they need a flying saucer to travel inter-dimensionally? And so on…