Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull review

(spoilers for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull 2008)

As everyone knows, there are only three Indiana Jones movies, but if there were a fourth one, this would be my review of it. Let’s be absolutely clear, though: there are only three Indiana Jones movies.

I love Indiana Jones. Who doesn’t? The Indiana Jones trilogy are the sort of films Hollywood does best: big, spectacular and almost completely lacking in pretension. Both the heroes and the villains are writ large, with little or no nuance, so there’s no confusion: Indy is our proxy on screen, and he faces off against nazis or a cult that steals children and forces them to work in mines. Not much grey area there. There are plenty of fights, some incredible stunt work, a globetrotting quest to find some mythical object imbued with supernatural powers to keep it out of the hands of nefarious foes and a smattering of decent comedic moments. Add in the sheepish charisma of Harrison Ford, Stephen Spielberg’s blockbuster sensibilities and the bravura John Williams theme and you cannot go wrong. You cannot go wrong. Um. Except... except when the other creative mind in play is serial franchise ruiner George Lucas. To be fair to him, Indiana Jones and Star Wars are both his franchises more than anyone else’s, so he can do what he likes with them, but either he simply got lucky with the first three films in each series, or he got bored of fanboy adulation and deliberately made further films in each series just to piss people off.

Like many, I had been waiting for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull for a long time. I was aware of how much time had passed since the previous film, and had some trepidation about Indiana Jones being so much older. I was also nervous about the film being set in the fifties, rather than the thirties, but neither of these anxieties quelled my excitement. I loved Indiana Jones so much, I barely cared when Shia LaBeouf was cast. After all, to counter that, had I not seen a press conference with Spielberg and Lucas saying they were going to abandon the modern trend of using extensive CGI to facilitate hugely unrealistic action scenes and effects? These heroes of cinema were going old school, in the finest traditions of Indy himself, and what we saw on screen would be real people in real locations doing real stunts.

It was thanks to that press conference that I got my first inkling that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. A big deal had been made of the no CGI promise and yet what was this in the very opening scene? A totally unnecessary CGI prairie dog. This little swine was a harbinger of the swathe of broken promises to come, but next came a extremely un-thrilling non chase along a perfectly straight road between an army convoy and a hot-rod (hot-rod! Cos it’s the FIFTIES) with ‘Hound Dog’ blaring out of the radio (FIFTIES!!!). No sign of our hero, and no sign of the John Williams score. Less than two minutes in, and it’s beginning to suck. To underline the pointlessness of this opening, the hot-rod drives on down the road never to be seen again as the convoy turns off into an army base. The following scene in the warehouse is the only scene of the film I ended up liking, but it turned out to be a false dawn.

I don’t want this to become a list of the things I didn’t like about the film, not least because it would go on too long, but given the sheer number of things I, and many others loathe in it, I feel I should pause in wonder at the fact that so many people with such experience and proven track records managed to almost universally make the wrong choice at every turn. It really does feel at times like a massive joke at the expense of anyone that liked the series. I know in Spielberg and Lucas you have two movie industry titans, but surely a cast featuring Ford, Cate Blanchett, John Hurt, Jim Broadbent, and Ray Winstone collectively had the clout to say: “Steve, George - this is drivel! Can’t we do a bit better than this?” Apparently, though, none of them saw anything wrong with it either, so we have bloody Shia LaBeouf playing a greaser (FIFTIES!!) who never knew his dad (please don’t let him be Indy’s son, please don’t let him be Indy’s son, oh shit of course he’s Indy’s son) who starts the plot creaking into motion and annoyingly tags along to take care of the fight scenes that Harrison Ford is too old to do himself. (I suppose if I’m being charitable, at least there is precedent for Mutt as a hugely annoying sidekick in Willie, and to a lesser extent, Short Round from Temple of Doom) What follows is a joyless melange of uninvolving plot, LaBeouf scowling, John Hurt talking gibberish, dull dialogue, LaBeouf calling Indy ‘daddio’ (FIFTIES!) Ray Winstone continually swapping sides and ludicrous action sequences.

I must reluctantly address this last item. The film is famous for a risible car chase through a jungle. In a series justifiably renowned for its action scenes and chases, like the fight inside and outside a moving tank in The Last Crusade, we have been reduced to a wholly CGI’d sequence that within five seconds has audience credulity stretched to breaking point then cheerfully marches past that to a point where two characters are conducting a sword fight (!) on the backs of cars (!!) driving pell mell through uneven jungle terrain(!!!). Even then, Lucas obviously decided that it wasn’t ridiculous enough, so one of them straddles the two vehicles as they pull apart, and is repeatedly hit in the nuts by vegetation. Then, a baddie fires a hood-mounted machine gun straight through the windscreen of the car it is attached to and contrives to not hit the driver. And we still haven’t achieved peak ridiculousness! That comes when Mutt is knocked from the vehicle and stranded on a vine. He then swings Tarzan like through the jungle, accompanied by dozens of computer generated monkeys (remember, there was supposed to be no CGI in this movie) and catches up with the cars that must have been doing 50 mph. Hey audiences! George Lucas thinks you’re a moron!

It rattles on for a bit longer, then mercifully it stops. The one thing it has done for me is ensure that I do not get excited about the forthcoming Indy 5. I wish they hadn’t bothered, as I suspect that when it is released, there will still only be three Indiana Jones movies.