For the life of me, I can't understand why May 22, 2008 wasn't a national holiday. What, we can observe the birthday of the guy who, aside from leading the genocide of our country's indigenous population, thought he was actually "discovering" a subcontinent 10,000 miles away (to quote John Turturro in "Quiz Show," "They're Indians because some white guy got lost"), but we can't pause to reflect on the release of the first Indiana Jones movie in almost 20 years???
It's probably for the best. In this country we tend to mark our national holidays with things like gas price hikes and furniture close-out sales. Frankly, Indy deserves more than that.
"Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," the most recent of the franchise, was the movie that made me want to make movies. When I heard that Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, et al had finally gotten their sh*t together and were making Indy 4, I was both exhilarated and terrified - that it would suck and would sour the first three films for me. The Indiana Jones (formerly) trilogy hold a sacred place among movies for me. Even "Temple of Doom," which doesn't hold a candle to "Raiders of the Lost Ark" or "Last Crusade," is redeemable because it introduced Spielberg to Kate Capshaw, and I can't begrudge a man his life partner. (Plus, there are elephants, which always ups a movie's cool points for me.)
I went to see "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" on opening night with my mother, my sister and my nephew Alex, who's the same age as I was when "Last Crusade" came out. I was surprised when I arrived at The Grand half an hour before showtime that it wasn't more crowded. Hello??? When I saw the regretable "Phantom Menace" on opening night, every TV station for 40 miles had a remote van hovering out front to document the hoards of fanboys who'd made the pilgrimage.
Alex was more excited to be allowed to wear my vintage Lucasfilm-licensed Indy hat than to be seeing the film itself. I swear, I told myself, if this movie sucks, I will personally drive for the next three days to California to find George Lucas and demand a refund, like in that "South Park" episode with "The Passion of the Christ," $4 per gallon gas be damned.
It doesn't suck - far from it. Indy 4 has its flaws, but it's still the most entertaining film I've seen in a long time. Just a partial list of things I loved...the fact that they let Harrison Ford just be his age, instead of pretending it was still 1939...Karen Allen, who hasn't done much of anything since her role as Indy's perfect foil Marion Ravenwood back in "Raiders," instead of some 20-something love interest...the sly references to previous films, such as the warehouse (you know what I'm talking about) and Indy's snake phobia, which comes back at a particularly unfortunate (for him) time.
For the first 10 or so minutes, it's an aggressively Spielberg film in its visual touches, like he went back and rewatched "Duel" and "Jaws" for the first time in several years and remembered what he loved about filmmaking in the first place. There are moments when I can picture him on-set thinking to himself, "I'm Steven Spielberg, bitches!" And, as someone who couldn't sit through "A.I.," hated "The Terminal" and didn't even bother to watch "War of the Worlds," I'm thrilled to have the director I love back among us.
And I was pleasantly surprised by Shia LeBeouf, who was the biggest question mark for me coming in. I freely admit I was a little resentful of this child whose name I'd not heard a year ago getting to take part so prominently in the franchise that I love. But he made me a believer. At times, it seemed like he was acting in a different movie than the rest of the cast, but not because he was in the wrong...Does that make sense? For instance, he's the only character whose reactions made me believe that he was really feeling the reality of what I was seeing on-screen - Crazy Commies have kidnapped everyone I care about and will likely kill all of us. At one point, he lets a tear slide down his cheek, and I thought, Why is he crying? Oh yeah, because if this situation were actually happening in real life, guess what? He'd be crying.
That's my main complaint with "Crystal Skull"...it's not very deep compared with the other films in the series. The Indy films are a cut above the typical action flick precisely because they've got all the major organs - brain, heart, funny bone. This one's basically one long chase scene punctuated by moments of exposition. It's underwritten, but still well made. And, because I'm a bit of a Luddite, I have to gripe a bit about the CGI. It's nowhere near as bad as the "Star Wars" prequels, which looked like cartoons to me. But, one of the things I always loved about the Indies was their reality - everything you saw on-screen was real, even if only in miniature. That's missing here, for the sake of action sequences that still don't impress me because they, well, just don't look real.
All that said, "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" made me feel things I hadn't felt upon leaving a contemporary movie in some time. One of the members of my screenwriting group and I were talking about this last week, how films are basically rides - you pick one because you expect it to leave you with a certain emotion. "Crystal Skull," despite its imperfections, made me want to jump on a horse (which I'm allergic to), crawl throught the jungle (ignoring my sweat phobia) and crack open a 5,000-year-old sarcophagus and rip out some bones because, dammit, I need a torch - all with that frakking gorgeous John Williams score urging me along. It made me feel like a kid again. And after all, that's kind of the point, right?
(All together now..."Da da da DA, da da DA... da da DA DA, da da DA DA DA...)
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