Raiders of the Lost Ark has the best denouement. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was the most disturbing and haunting. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is my favorite because I saw it in the theaters, and it is just fun. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is either dreadful or I’ve aged out of being able to enjoy these types of films, and it is completely fine, which I don’t believe, but I’m not perfect whereas many people believe that Steven Spielberg is. Objectively the odds are in Spielberg’s favor. Maybe I’ve just seen too many films, but I’m used to Spielberg’s schtick, which is literally getting old for me. Some people’s work still feel fresh after they explore similar themes while others feel like they’re redoing something that they did better in the past.
Even though the entire plot is focused on the main story unlike the other films, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull still feels like there was a storyboard of things that Spielberg wanted to do and shoehorned it into the narrative: American Graffiti drag racing, McCarthyism, extraterrestrials. It felt so aggressively Technicolor amusement park 1950s. I knew that this installment wasn’t my jam when I got a nuclear explosion, and my blood pressure remained level. I’m a child of The Day After and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. A worthless movie like American Assassin actually impressed me with its mushroom cloud. A nuclear explosion usually gives you points, not takes them away. Occasionally there are moments when you want to ask an expert, “Is this racist,” but you’re not sure because where do you find a Kung Fu Aztec? To be fair, I didn’t Google it.
I also feel as if it is religious bias to talk about worshipping aliens as simply entertainment when the real devout followers of Space Jesus such as Ridley Scott can’t be open about their beliefs without fearing persecution or ridicule. Spielberg can make movies about aliens, but when it intersects with religious beliefs, hands off and let Scott take the wheel: Alien: The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I’d watch it starring Michael Fassbender playing all the roles including the aliens because he is a good actor and hot. I prefer Indiana Jones to stick to more traditional supernatural shenanigans in his archeological digs.
Even Cate Blanchett can barely stop herself from ditching her Russian accent, and she is a professional. In an early sequence, an artifact attracts gunpowder’s metallic nature so when the villains are inevitably shooting at our titular character, why aren’t the bullets just circling back to the retrieved object? The second that I saw Ray Winstone, I had a couple of thoughts, “He isn’t Indiana Jones. You can’t trust him,” then proceeded to basically ignore him for the rest of the movie. I’m psyched that Shia Laboeuf is so into his work and has the good fortune of getting jobs with great directors, but I’m sorry, I just don’t see it. John Hurt had bills to pay.
We’re supposed to get one more Indiana Jones movie, but I wonder with the reboot of the Cold War if Spielberg will ditch Russians as the villains as he did with the Nazis because the pulp fiction treatment cheapens the real threat that they pose. If he does, then we should probably pay close attention to the identity of the next villain and prepare accordingly. I would prefer that we just say that we got another Indiana Jones movie and not actually get one. I love Harrison Ford too, but he deserves better. We deserve better.