Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull

It's been a long period of returning franchises. Hollywood seems intent on feasting upon itself lately - an act of self-gorging which makes perfect sense given the way the business works. While the act of resurrecting a franchise is less shameful than Hollywood's recent addiction to remaking everything it can, it is potentially an even more hazardous affair. Everyone expects remakes of horror classics like The Fog and The Hitcher to be worthless so there's no love lost, but embark on a new chapter in a much-loved screen franchise and you'd better do it right.

We've already been stung by George Lucas's Star Wars prequels (although apparently, according to George, it's not because they were rubbish, but because our expectations were too high - silly us expecting convincing character development, intelligent plotting and a reasonable level of acting ability....)

As I was saying, we've already been stung by George Lucas's Star Wars prequels and, for better or worse, that's kind of set the bar for the early part of the 21^st century: don't get your hopes up because they're probably going to ruin your childhood.

Why the Star Wars prequels did or didn't work, and why they were so vilified has doubtless been covered at length on a million webpages. What's important is that everything changes - audiences grow up, styles of moviemaking evolve, Hollywood's marketing practices develop. Take a franchise that first made it big in the eighties and it's going to find itself treading very different ground in the noughties.

Talk of a fourth Indy movie has been brewing for well over a decade now. Since 1989, when Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade was released, we've seen the internet become a prime tool for moviemakers and wannabe critics. Hollywood has become a virtual gladiatorial arena where the fate of most films can be predetermined by internet gossip. We've seen (very) pale imitations such as Stephen Somer's The Mummy.

We've seen that George Lucas has become a really terrible filmmaker, and even Steven Spielberg's last true blockbuster, War Of The Worlds, proved about as immune to critics as martians are to the common cold.

Perhaps most disturbingly we've seen Harrison Ford become the most boring man in Hollywood. Not only does he choose the dullest, least challenging projects these days, but stick him in front of a camera without a script and he'll send you right off to sleep.

Into these treacherous waters emerged Indiana Jones And The Crystal Skull, offered up to an audience whose overriding expectation was likely to be: I want to love it, but I expect to hate it. How could it possibly succeed?

article continues...

For my money Lucas and Spielberg did at least two very smart things: they changed nothing and they changed everything. With one or two small exceptions this new Indiana Jones movie feels just like the old ones. Spielberg was careful to photograph the movie in the same way (despite Lucas's apparent keenness to shoot digitally), most of the stunts were performed traditionally, there's some CGI but it's not too excessive (and you can imagine that Lucas is probably responsible for as much CGI as there is).

However, time has marched on, for both Indiana Jones and Harrison Ford, and the script is careful to address that fact. Therefore we see Indy in a new era (the fifties), with new villains (cold war Russians). We also see a different Indy, one who's perhaps not quite tired yet of the adventuring, but one who's certainly ready to think about settling down.

Testifying to this is the very welcome return of Marion Ravenwood, Karen Allen's original heroine from Raiders Of The Lost Ark (none of that Indiana Jones And The Raiders Of The Lost Ark nonsense around here). This not only serves to connect the future and past of the franchise, but also brings Indy himself full circle.

The news that Indy also has a son, played here by Shia LaBeouf, was one of the worst kept secrets of the production and could have proved the undoing of the new film. Shoehorning a ‘son of' character into any major franchise, often in an attempt to continue said franchise, rarely has any useful dramatic impact. Fortunately not only does LaBouef turn out to a highly engaging screen presence here, but the father and son dynamic bridges nicely with the inclusion of Indy's own father in The Last Crusade.

In fact, there's such a solid thematic link between Raiders, Crusade and Skull that you could quite easily ignore the very inferior Temple Of Doom and consider the new film as the third part in a trilogy.

article continues...

There are a few problems however. One of the mainstays of the Indiana Jones films, like the Bond films, is the opening vignette. Traditionally this wraps up an adventure we haven't seen whilst potentially introducing characters and themes for the adventure we're about to see. Most importantly, the opening vignette should be otherwise unconnected to the main plot.

This rule is almost completely ignored in Crystal Skull. Instead of having a short sequence that reintroduces us to Indy, we have what serves as an extended prologue to the main story. More damningly, it's a really, really slow prologue. Eventually the action starts, but I'm betting a huge number of old Indy fans were watching these opening scenes and thinking that their worst fears had been realised.

That's not the end of the structural problems either. The dramatic template for most of the Indy films, this one included, is the quest - both the protagonists (the good guys) and antagonists (the bad guys) are after something, we naturally want the good guys to get there first. The bad guys are there because otherwise it would be too easy and end up being a pretty boring movie. Therefore if the good guys get too close to the goal, the bad guys have to turn up and stop them.

What happens in Crystal Skull is that the bad guys turn up and the movie tends to stop dead. There are two reasons for this. One is that the bad guys are handy for delivering exposition: what do the bad guys want, why do they want it, and why should the good guys stop them? The second is that every time Indy is captured by the bad guys he seems to turn into a tour guide and starts telling them everything they need to know about how to finish the quest. Again, this is exposition - but it catastrophically slows the movie.

Talking of bad guys, as much fun as Cate Blanchett is she's sorely wasted. Similarly there are other great actors, John Hurt and Ray Winstone most notably, who are given very little to do. George Lucas proved himself capable of wasting good actors in the recent Star Wars films (in fact, he proved himself capable of wringing the worst performances from generally decent actors) but the fault here is the script. The performances are all fine, but David Koepp's script concentrates so tightly on Indy and his son that all other characters fall by the wayside.

article continues...

Ultimately none of the above flaws spoiled Crystal Skull for me. Once the opening sequence is over, and it does have its merits (a fantastically striking mushroom cloud image, for one) the movie successfully gets started. The few slow spots are countered by several very well executed action sequences, and the relationship between Indy, his son and, to a lesser degree, Marion, keeps things moving outside of the action scenes. The acting is all good and why not get the best actors you can if they're willing to join in the fun?

Indiana Jones And The Crystal Skull has met with a polarised critical reception. In general the professional critics seem to like it, while the internet critics are somewhat more scathing. I suspect that the misguided opening vignette has alienated many fans right from the outset, while an unwillingness to accept the fact that Indiana Jones has aged has ensured that many other fans will always remain unsatisfied.

There's also the George Lucas factor. Lucas will have to go a long way to ride out the resentment that many feel over the Star Wars prequels. In making the prequels, he also exposed himself as a rather poor filmmaker (certainly in the areas of directing and writing) so everything he touches for a while yet is likely to be viewed with disparagement and suspicion.

While I have no faith in Lucas, I do have plenty in Steven Spielberg. Nevertheless, I approached Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull very cautiously. Luckily it proved to be everything it needed to be - an entertaining two hours in the cinema. It's clearly the third best of the films, as many have already said. However, while it's not quite as good as Raiders and Crusade, it's still much, much better than Temple Of Doom.

article continues...