Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

My friends and I are children of the eighties: we were born much earlier but our formative teenage years occurred during that decade. We had MTV, Thriller and many really cool films, most coming out prior to 1985. The Empire Strikes Back, E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, Return of the Jedi and Temple of Doom. I could name other films, such as Romancing the Stone, Goonies, or Ghostbusters, but they did not hold up in the same way. During the next decade, my friends and I would embark on our next stage of life, and become separated not only by distances but by shared experiences. Perhaps it was fitting that, in 1989, when Last Crusade finished, our childhood hero was riding off into the sunset.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is not a perfect movie. It has scenes that will make you wince, but, as I said over on Creative Loafing, the other three films have a bit of whimsy, and ultimately, you have to allow the films to exist in a world where over the top action exists. They exist in a world where the difference between good and evil, right and wrong is clear cut, unambiguous and black and white. A world in which a man armed with a bullwhip, a revolver and a fedora can make a difference. And, that is the exact world where we find Indy, and if you want to go there, you need to suspend reality for about two hours.

Harrison Ford, a little older, reprises the "other" role that made him famous. Spielberg and Lucas did not try to hide his age, but, instead embraced it. Indiana may have more gray hairs, but he is still the hero.

And apparently, his services are still needed.

The movie opens with Indiana, kidnapped from a dig in Mexico by Russians, trying to retrieve an artifact from a secretive government warehouse. The warehouse will be instantly recognized, but, John Williams reprises the Ark's Theme from the first movie if you require a little nudging. The artifact that the communist want is not that item. Indy tries to escape with the item, but fails (does he ever succeed in the opening sequence?) and it appears to the FBI that Dr. Jones is a red sympathizer. He loses his job at the university and prepares to leave when he runs into Mutt.

Mutt convinces Indy to come with him because a common acquaintance, one Professor "Ox" Oxley, is in trouble. Ox was searching for El Dorado, when, something happened, and he ended up in a South American sanatorium. Indy and Mutt discover that Ox was taken from the sanatorium at gunpoint. All that was left behind are Ox's writings on the wall instructing that a crystal skull be returned. Unfortunately for our heroes, the Russians are also searching for the same crystal skull which they believe can be used as a weapon to subdue the west.

The story structure is not new. Indeed, like Last Crusade, the plot often gets weighted down with heavy exposition trying to explain the nature of the Crystal Skull. Heavy exposition is rarely good in a movie – Raiders summed it up very succinctly: "an army which carries the ark before it is invincible." Enough said. KCS has many stunt sequences, but none that rival the truck sequence from Raiders. With the advent of CGI, I couldn't help feel that they cheated just a bit. There are some scenes that made me wince (Tarzan), but I think I winced much more during Temple of Doom.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is as much an Indiana Jones movie in the same way that the Star Wars prequels were not Star Wars movies. I hope that makes sense. The only thing I feared about this film is that ultimately, I would be disappointed. I had a blast watching this film, and only wish that I had seen it with a packed house for the shared experience.

Or even better, with my pals.