Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Single-Disc Edition)
by Steven Spielberg
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Actor: Cate Blanchett, Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Ray Winstone, Shia LaBeoufDirector: Steven Spielberg
Brand: Paramount
Cinematographer: Janusz Kaminski
Editor: Michael Kahn
Producer: Kathleen Kennedy
Producer: George Lucas
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; German (Original Language); Russian (Original Language); French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 122 minutes
Published: 2008-10-01
DVD Release Date: 2008-10-14
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Paramount Home Entertainment
DVD Reviews of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Single-Disc Edition)
DVD Review: In Which X-Files Abducts Indy and Does Unspeakable Things
Summary: 1 Stars
Long story short: this movie sucks. If you liked the original Indiana Jones movies, you will only want to say horrible curse words after watching this film.
(WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW. Although unless you are a moron or beneath the age of 3, most of these "plot points" will become apparent within the first 10 minutes.)
I got to see a late-night showing of this movie, and I was psyched. I happen to adore the first three movies, which are breathtaking joyrides full of adventure, fabulous characters, and exotic locales. Unfortunately, this movie is their retarded younger brother, who is no doubt a drug addict.
THE GOOD
Yes, it's entertaining... sometimes. It features some sweet fight and chase scenes, hilarious dialogue, and some nice slapstick, but the plot? The subject? The characters themselves? My sister hit the mark when she said, "Well, maybe it's because they're making movies for our Stupid Generation. They don't want to spend a lot of time on character development because all people care about are explosions and fight scenes."
Which also made me wonder: has anyone in charge of that movie, you know, SEEN the prior movies lately? And I mean watched them and really let themselves get into it. They got the entire mood of Indy 4 completely wrong... and here's why, in detail:
THE VERY UGLY
CG and Sets
What happened to the locales? Whereas in the old Indy movies you felt like you were in the nitty gritty underbelly of foreign societies, getting filthy, going to real exotic countries... in this movie everything looked prepackaged, too perfect, compact, and felt like movie sets from the first moment you laid eyes on them. There's no "feeling" for any place the characters visit. Remember when Indy went to Cairo in the first movie, and they pan this fabulous shot over all the rooftops? You felt like there was boundless adventure waiting somewhere out there, and the location felt REAL. But each place in Indy 4 feels like a level in a video game; there are walls; you MUST do these quests in this order to gain enough Experience Points to progress.
Worst of all, the extensive CG use made the movie feel disjointed -- as though it were split into two different planes of existence. Let's just say that if your CG can't pass for reality, you shouldn't use it! Please tell me how an OBVIOUSLY CG Prairie Dog is any better than an OBVIOUSLY FAKE Prairie Dog puppet. At least you feel like you can reach out and touch the puppet and that it exists somewhere! Instead, I felt like I was looking into a Dreamworks movie. Take, for example, the car chase along a perilous river gorge in Indy 4. Now, in Temple of Doom, when Indy is dangling over a precipice, you feel like Indy is going to topple over the cliff any second. In Indy 4, as they race along a sheer cliff, it looks like a video game. I realized that it was an obvious green screen and felt that there was absolutely no threat for Indy and co. at all.
Characters
It is my belief that a film is only as good as its villains are. If this is so, ouch. The villain -- Blanchett as some KGB Trinity-lookalike with skin like porcelain and an obvious wig -- looked more like a doll than a person. Nor did she ever seem particularly threatening. If she was supposed to have psychic powers, they never showed it... so she seemed more like that creepy chick who sits by herself at lunch mumbling about getting in contact with THE OTHER SIDE. You know, creepy, but harmless.
Indiana Jones himself didn't come across like his previous iterations... and don't get me wrong: his age was not part of it. I was actually looking forward to the movie to see how he succeeded in SPITE of his age. Instead, he came across as a "Mary Sue" -- he can instantly read extinct Mayan languages, and speak various sub-dialects of various South American peoples. He actually gets MARRIED in the end, which just didn't seem probable at all... and most terribly, instead of really feeling WITH him as I am always doing in the old Indy movies, I just felt like I was watching him from far away. I couldn't associate with him. He wasn't like a person anymore, but a stock character.
Marion alone felt solid and real to me, but unfortunately, her character seemed to just be shunted in for one sole, goofy purpose.
Don't get me started on the pasty white, skinny twit kid who is apparently going to take up the hat of Indiana Jones. Disgusting.
Plot
Then the plot. Oh, the plot! It was like a scriptwriter came running to work one day and said, "Guys, guys, I woke up in the middle of the night and I had this really cool dream and this is how it goes!" And they were all hung over and one of them says, "Oh, geez, my head hurts too much to think... let's just go with his idea."
Firstly: ALIENS. What?! Seriously?! Newsflash! This just ISN'T Indiana Jones. Let me break it down: what does Jones deal with in the previous movies? The occult, religion, stuff firmly planted on terra firma. Aliens are for sci-fi. Furthermore, how derivative can you possibly get?! I HATE UFO tales and their stereotypical aliens -- the ones with the gray skin and the huge heads and the huge black eyes. I have always hated them due to a combination of factors, mostly because I associate them with loonies and the downright irritating belief that human beings cannot survive on their own or develop their own technology without someone else's help. So for Indiana Jones to go this stereotypical way, this OBVIOUS way, just annoys me to the nth degree.
Secondly, it's painful to recount how many elements were introduced and then instantly dropped. In the beginning of the movie, the FBI speaks to Indy, saying, "You are now a person of interest to the FBI." Indy goes on adventure. End of movie: the FBI is nowhere to be found. Then there's a downright BIZARRE scene where Indy drops in on a nuclear testing site. He narrowly survives a nuclear explosion in a lead-lined refrigerator, which was ridiculous on its own -- and then the explosion bounces that puppy thirty feet in the air seventy times which made it even more ridiculous. I suppose this was supposed to be a statement; whatever it was, it failed. What it ultimately had to do with the plot, nobody knows. A third weird thing: a convoy of trucks carrying KGB soldiers makes it into Area 51 without a fight. They kill about 12 soldiers guarding the gate and nobody is inside the base at all. Really? Are you kidding? Yeah, I know, "weapons testing", but it still doesn't make any sense. A secret base guarded by 12 people! Oh, please!
Thirdly, I didn't see ANY point in half of the things they did. So they get Indy to work on the UFO crash site at Area 51? Uh... he's an ARCHAEOLOGIST. WHY would they need an archaeologist to examine a CRASH SITE? Secondly, if the thirteenth skull was stolen in the 1500s... well, uh, this implies that the circle of nifty glass Alien skeletons was complete for a long time. So... why did the Aliens suddenly decide to up and leave when the skull was returned? Why didn't they leave a long time ago? And why did the aliens care about Earth in the first place? And how did the KGB plan to harness their power, because they really seemed to be winging it. And furthermore, the Aliens didn't seem like very nice guys, and their response to having the final skull returned (which seemed like a nice thing on Indy and co.'s part) didn't make any sense. And why did they collect art from every culture in the world in one place only to entirely destroy it all, and why did they go crazy and start up the UFO and the interdimensional wormhole anyway? Although, I have to admit... by that point, I didn't care anymore. I just kept waiting for the movie to give me a reason to care.
Fourthly: every single darn "plot point" was obvious. The minute they started carving into that body bag at Area 51, I knew there had to be an alien inside. When Indy started talking about the way Incans bound their heads to be elongated, I wanted to punch everyone who wrote the script. What was X-Files doing in my movie?!
Fifthly: The monkey scene. Enough said.
Finally, they seemed to have no idea about what native peoples lived in Peru. They talked about Mayan language, Mayan ideograms... except Maya DIDN'T have any footholds in what is now known as Peru; they lived in Central America. The Incans, however, did live in Peru. Oh, come ON! A basic Wikipedia search would have settled that question!
CONCLUSION
I think the movie disappointed me because I expected Indiana Jones and got a Sci-Fi Channel special. They broke all the rules of Indiana Jones' universe and introduced elements that utterly broke whatever magic could have been. They cast a skinny, obnoxious little twit to be our next dashing archaeologist/adventurer. The editing was awful, the plot was crap, the characters were all wrong, and they included crappy aliens. And that's annoying.
As another reviewer succinctly stated: the movie devolves from an Indiana Jones movie to a movie with Indiana Jones in it.
More Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Single-Disc Edition) reviews:
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Description of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Single-Disc Edition)
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas bring you the greatest adventurer of all time in ?a nonstop thrill ride? (Richard Corliss, TIME) that?s packed with ?sensational, awe-inspiring spectacles? (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times). Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull finds Indy (Harrison Ford) trying to outrace a brilliant and beautiful agent (Cate Blanchett) for the mystical, all-powerful Crystal Skull of Akator. Teaming up with a rebellious young biker (Shia LaBeouf) and his spirited original love Marion (Karen Allen), Indy takes you on a breathtaking action-packed adventure in the exciting tradition of the classic Indiana Jones movies!Nearly 20 years after riding his last Crusade, Harrison Ford makes a welcome return as archaeologist/relic hunter Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, an action-packed fourth installment that's, in a nutshell, less memorable than the first three but great nostalgia for fans of the series. Producer George Lucas and screenwriter David Koepp (War of the Worlds) set the film during the cold war, as the Soviets--replacing Nazis as Indy's villains of choice and led by a sword-wielding Cate Blanchett with black bob and sunglasses--are in pursuit of a crystal skull, which has mystical powers related to a city of gold. After escaping from them in a spectacular opening action sequence, Indy is coerced to head to Peru at the behest of a young greaser (Shia LaBeouf) whose friend--and Indy's colleague--Professor Oxley (John Hurt) has been captured for his knowledge of the skull's whereabouts. Whatever secrets the skull holds are tertiary; its reveal is the weakest part of the movie, as the CGI effects that inevitably accompany it feel jarring next to the boulder-rolling world of Indy audiences knew and loved. There's plenty of comedy, delightful stunts--ants play a deadly role here--and the return of Raiders love interest Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood, once shrill but now softened, giving her ex-love bemused glances and eye-rolls as he huffs his way to save the day. Which brings us to Ford: bullwhip still in hand, he's a little creakier, a lot grayer, but still twice the action hero of anyone in film today. With all the anticipation and hype leading up to the film's release, perhaps no reunion is sweeter than that of Ford with the role that fits him as snugly as that fedora hat. --Ellen A. Kim
Stills from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Click for larger image)
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